VN - Ren'Py - College Kings [Act 2 v5.2.5] [Undergrad Steve]

This is clearly a game for teenagers...I know it has a college setting, but still the whole thing is average for my tastes. I could not get very far into it as I quickly lost interest.
It's overrated IMO.

- Some typos. Writing is flat, dialogs are plain. There are some painful "funny" lines/jokes' attempts that just made me facepalm myself.
- MC looks dumb
- Renders are nice but sometimes people have strange facial expressions
- Music doesn't fit the situations...at all

Just played through all the main girls' paths (Chloe, Riley, Aubrey, Lauren, Emily, Penelope), and I must say I really love this game a lot.

While the college setting is a background that I may be too familiar with, the story is told in a way that it really distiguishes itself from other games.

The girls all look great, and each have their own set of unique and very endearing personalities (haven't seen anyone that I dislike yet). Looking forward to the events with each of them.

Also, being a fan of MMA myself, the fighting tournament between the 2 fraternities Wolves & Apes is pretty good.
Fight mechanic I admit can be challenge to get it right, but it's also pretty interesting.

Looking forward to seeing how MC's story unfolds, and his road to becoming the champ.

Nice game. Likeable MC and female characters. Renders are neat and so the animations. The story is interesting and easy to follow. Very recommendable for anyone who wants to have a good time and like school setting games with a good background

It's not bad but, the renders, the the sex scenes, the plot, all of it, it fits comfortably in it's genre but there's nothing here that stands out either. If you're a fan of the genre it's a new one to play and it's decent enough at what it does if you're cool seeing renders that don't particularly stand out. If you're not, it won't convert you but you probably won't hate it either.
It's 2-3 range, it's not the best, it's not the worst, it just is.
I round up to 3 because it has a bit of walkthrough/gallery mod support, which does make me want to round up, and because I would say it's slightly improving, so if I had to guess if it might jump to 4 or drop to 2, I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.

Previous review: Steve is an excellent writer and a constantly-improving artist who elevates the college setting AVN and makes it something better. The comparisons of this game to others are, frankly, unfair. The voice here is wildly different, the characters more nuanced, and the choices far more impactful. Easily one of the best games currently in development.
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Current review: Keeping my previous review intact for posterity's sake, but unfortunately College Kings went downhill fairly quickly after Steve gave up most of the duties on the game. A revolving door of writers only exacerbated the issue, and now we're left with this Frankenstein's monster of a game that had tremendous promise once, but is just not great anymore.

It's a shame. I was an early supporter of CK, and to see one of my first favorites fall apart like this is disappointing.

I should start the review saying that there are 2 girls so far, the rest either reject you, or they are directly unavailable.
The other one allows contact inside a dream and is not connected to the plot, and you barely know her, so you could dream about her, or dream about some street lamp you saw some time, both have the same relevance.

The game is just too short and the plot its just a thing that is there.
The Mc is someone who has a shiny blue ball in her room and he always forgets to bring it to a girl that he is interested in. Is not like he lives in a mansion, that ball is impossible to miss. Well, plotholes i guess.,

Overall not worth the time, or the 3.9 GB, i seriously dont know how its so big and so short on content.

Started playing with the last update, and I am REALLY hooked on this story...

and yet I'm grading it pretty low. Stick with me on this.

At first glance, it seems a bit derivative of another college life game that includes fighting, but it's really not. If anything, the biggest resemblance to that other game is an innovative and original system that uses your choices to define a sort of sub-metric that feels much more natural than the standard "This choice will give you love / lust points for this character". This is fantastic, and probably the absolute best reason to keep up with this story.

Speaking of story, it is great itself... mostly.

You see, it's still too early to tell, but there are very strong indicators that the author Undergrad Steve has a very clear set goal in mind for you as the MC to take. This is fine, but it leaves me a tiny bit worried that this central story will end up over-riding that oh-so-innovative metric. You see, that metric is actually cool enough to make you as the player WANT to play as, well, yourself. That metric is for your personality, so it's just too juicy to ignore.

The problem is that by sticking to your own personal choices, you might just be breaking that central story. Might is the operative word as far as this point of development, but the indicators are just a bit damning. Try this for example;

Try playing as a pacifist, and only actively pursue the NPC's you really like. For something really funny, try to not pursue any of the NPC's (<ahem> waiting for Ms. Right). Just give it a shot.

It's pretty awesome that you can actually do this so far, but only barely. The pacifism streak actually works perfectly. The choice to not chase everyone though seems a bit strained. I can already tell that there is an element of how your personality will influence your interactions (AWESOME!!!), but if you abstain from most or especially all of the girls...

Your character's headspace seems to believe that you are actively pursuing everyone, and actually trying not to pursue certain people forces you to make choices that make you into a bit of a douche. In my own "personality" playthrough I found my character absolutely besotted by someone with whom I really did not have any interest in. Heck, in my hardcore test where I tried not to pursue anyone I ended up having girls chasing me... I guess it's because they liked being treated like crap?

The reason I decided upon what for me is an early review is because this particular update (as well as the very name for the story) has me believing that pacifism will not be an option soon, and I don't know if the author will give me a compelling enough reason to keep following the story.

Have you ever met a really big guy before, and they had the personality of a cuddly teddy bear? We do that on purpose, and it's hard to break out of even when we are playing a fantasy. We enjoy actually being able to interact with people without them being afraid of us, but our physical size is all it takes to genuinely leave a lot of people trembling. That teddy bear act, or over-acting, is often the only way we can even make eye contact with nearly anyone we meet. We even avoid fighting because "authorities" tend to look at the big guy in a fight as the bad guy. Don't even get me started on how much worse this can be when we have had to deal with anger management.

This puts me in a strange place in this particular story. I have no issues with pounding someone to a greasy stain so long as I am protecting another person, but myself? Hit me all you like. I've ended fights just by letting some angry little dude hit me until they got tired. I don't even get hurt the same way as other (littler) dudes because my size allows me to soak up a lot of hits.

So this update is really making me feel as if I will be fighting, and I still have no real incentive. Okay, maybe whatever has my character so stunned at the end of this update might be it, but I'm having a hard time imagining what it might be... maybe my mother is chained up at the frat and they'll force me to fight?

The thing is, both in pursuing women, and in fighting, there needs to be a bit stronger incentive to do one or the other, or else the choices simply don't seem to matter. This may sound funny since Undergrad Steve does use a few good forces to make you travel some paths, but forces should be used sparingly and have some element of story to drive them.

So my ultimate suggestion to the writer? Make me want to follow this path please. I love the gameplay, and I am very interested in the story, and I will continue to follow this VN for quite some time, but if you need me to follow a particular path, you need to make me follow it. Force the player to fight with a story, not by arbitrarily making them do it. Same with the women. I think we need a particular personality to get any headway of the women, but so far I seem far more irresistible than I am comfortable with.

Thank you for the great game Undergrad Steve, I hope to stick with you for quite some time!

This game is fun the college vibe is very good. Renders of the characters are nice so girls are beautiful. Story is engaging sometimes funny. Choices seems matters. I'm looking forward the next updates in the future.

It is a really high quality game. But...

The MC's look is the same as we've seen in hundreds of games. For some reason, the producers are reluctant to create a character look of their own and I don't understand that. The game is really good, but the fact that the main character's appearance is almost the same as other games changes my perspective on this game. I want to put the game in my favorites, but because of the factor I mentioned above, I couldn't take the game seriously. Remember, all the best games have one thing in common: a unique looking MC. I think the game does not aim for the best and the producers do not respect the game they make. For me, it's just a average school setting game right now.

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that way. Or I am over-thinking, I don't know. I just want the game to be better because the game is good.

Updated review
for v.11.0.1, reducing the rating from 5* to 3*

The models are mostly pretty, the characters are basically lovely, but the recent updates, especially v11, have lower quality:

- Instead of correcting bugs, they add more.

- The protagonist is made pretty helpless, for instance:
(1) Two cute bisexual girls he loves start a lesbian session in his room. He doesn't even have a voyeur scene, not mentioning a threesome. Instead he goes to sleep.
(2) A schizo narcissist obsessed manipulator tries to ruin all his relationships. MC does nothing to counteract this.
(3) If you play not a monogamous person, there are no other options than having only 1 girl at a time and hide them from each other. For instance, no way to explain to Lauren that the more lovers the merrier; and if she discovers him with another girl then there is no other option than to mumble that he made a mistake.

- The game is ambitious with all those branches (though why would I want to join Apes instead of Wolves?), but it's hard to get the actual content without looking into the game code and cheating through the console. So it feels like there is not that much content, especially the juicy parts.

- There are just hidden parameters that prevent you from taking some routes, and you have no idea why and how.

Previous review text (5 stars):
v0.5.3
Not so much content yet to evaluate the story, but the writing is good; the renders are sharp and the girls are nice and cute.
Supporting characters help to create rich environment.
(Often though it's not so clear how the character traits affect the choices, and what exact numbers are there for particular parameters).
Anyways, this game rocks, and it seems to have great potential!
Keep up the good work, Steve, my man!

One of my favorite games on this website. Steve has done a great job with development so far. The characters are great with good personalities, the renders are really well done (some of the best I've seen) and the lewd scenes (although not many as of 0.5.3) are great. I'm super excited to see how this game progresses especially with it's unique KCT system. Good luck on future developments

Very Good Game. One of my Favourites. Good Graphics. Interesting Story. And the one thing I like the most is the MC becoming a fighter and a good one perhaps. This game is a good combo of action and romance. Best Action-Romance game ever. Most Recommended. Hope there will never be NTR in the future. Thank you. Keep it on.

review after v0.5.2

While this game starts very promising, it quickly becomes a bit messy. The game is about a guy starting college and it's pretty much what you expect from this type of games. Some friends, some enemies, lots of beautiful girls, and you basically choose what kind of person he is and who's girl he's after.

Pros
The girls are stunning!
Beautiful renders and the one sex scene was decent which means in the future they're gonna get better.
The writing is good with some humor and nice grammar

Cons
Some of the choices don't make any sense. It's like two completely opposite choices and there's no room for middle ground. It's like you're forced to pick a side even if you don't completely agree or disagree.
I find the whole consept of college guys settling their differences with violence too extreme. And it seems more extreme because there's never room for discussion. They act as if the whole idea of talking first is not "alpha male" attitude.
Very short updates for my taste. I think the dev needs to have a good talk with his patreons and ask them if they'd prefet frequent but short updates or taking his time to provide with a bigger update.

Overall, this game is a 3/5 but i gave 4 stars because i see the potential it has. It's never gonna be a 5stars game, but with some changes it can easily become a loved game by this community.

First thing first.

Developer listens to feedback and not only takes it into account, he fucking goes back and fixes shit. No "ey that's how I want this to go so fuck your choices". That's invaluable and merits taking my time to point this out

Besides that you have beautiful renders, enjoyable characters, good enough writing (Once you know mauling in MMA has a particular meaning ) that would make the game a solid 4 (real 4, not inflated 4). Having the dev listen to feedback? Can i give this a 6?

To do this review I made all the possible choices in the game and re-played it twice (version 0.7)

The game is good, but it is not perfect, version 0.7 had some bugs within the mechanics of the cell phone present in the game, some scenes and dialogs bothered me because they did not match the route taken by the protagonist in the game, for example: in a certain part my protagonist joined the Wolves, but scenes after they had just shown him with the only one in the group, they already show him without and talking about things that suggested that that later scene was out of order and at that moment he was not yet part of the Wolves or Ape's fraternity. Choices have greater consequences than in most other games and this is a positive factor, but what breaks the immersion is that regardless of what you do, some events with the girls, even when you don't date, are immutable in situations that maybe it shouldn't happen in a normal situation, another positive point is that all the characters are well developed, as well as the fraternities, the difference between the two is very clear and this really generates expectations of what is to come.

Below are my grades for each category, where 10 is the highest grade:

Graphics: 10;
History: 9.5;
Plot: 9;
Character development: 10;
Animations: 9.5;

Verdict: It is worth playing and this project has a lot of potential, it just depends on the developer to improve it more and more.

(Note: I do not speak English fluently, so perhaps the text has some connotation errors.)

Edit: Game version 9.1.1

This game regressed a lot, before it was very polished, but now the console that represents the phone is full of bugs, bugs of the type that prevent its progression in history ... I'm a guy who always likes to test all the possibilities of history, on the route in which you gain loyal status, join the Wolfs and are faithful to dating Loren, when you get more or less in the middle of the game, you can’t advance in the story anymore, because you depend on the cell phone for that and the game phone goes into an infinite loop, always giving you the same actions and this happens again on other routes, the developer released a patch to fix bugs that didn’t solve anything, all the bugs are still there.

Verdict: Cyberpunk 2077 optimization.

Edit: version 12.1.1 of the game:

They started fixing the bugs that came from version 8.1 and wouldn't let you play, the bugs the game has is interface, they don't affect the gameplay. The start of bug fixing is a positive point. The girls became more developed in terms of history, in this update Nora was the main girl ... But that's still a harem and in a way you're the sultan of it, it remains to wait for the bugs to be fixed and for more content to be added.

Verdict: It's playable and worth a look.

This game has so much potential and if you like something like this you won't regret. Graphics, stories, features are good. It sill under development, but this has everything to be great.
And don't forget, if you can support the creator, do it!

Thank you and have a great day!!!

-- original review --
TL;DR This game tries to be a college drama, but it actually feels like high school drama. Teens acting like dumb teens. Its like fiction written by 16 years old teen.

Story: 0/5
- I have serious issues with story. There are huge plot holes and things that dont make any sense.
- Especially depiction of college life is wrong. It feels like author has no clue about real college life and he "studied" it by watching (bad) teenage TV shows or by playing (porn) games. Majority of characters suffer from childish behaviour.
For example huge part of interaction between characters is about gossips. Girls are like "she said bla bla bla" or "She said I have nice jeans. That bitch!". Male characters dont avoid gossiping either. Even MC goes there with "Ryan said that Grayson said that Chloe is playing me". So much TEEN DRAMA!
- Once you notice the discepancy it will keep hitting you. Guys bumping shoulders into somebody they dont like. High school all over again.
- Another teen thing is the way it depicts violence. Small verbal insult has to be answered with a fist? Sororities centered around fight clubs? College chicks going crazy about guys beating people? Sorry, but college girls are usually more mature.
- Especially huge nonsense was the fact, that game mentions one (bad) guy that had GOUGED OUT opponent's eyes during fight! And how did it end? That guy was only kicked out from sorority and he is still going around and beating people up. No police or college staff wondering about a student without eyes. HAHAHA. Like I have said "fiction written by 16y old teen".

Art: 5/5
+ Majority of girls are hot.
- Unfortunately there isnt much content at this point. Only 1 sex scene (plus one dream, but that doesnt really count)

Gameplay: 3/5
+ Its typical visual novel with choices.
- Unfortunately choices dont matter at all. Even though you refused to do something the game will force you to do it.
- Also User Interface has some amateurish stuff. (buttons to jump to different part during linear sex scene feels weird. Or you can only check your stats when you receive sms because mobile phone button disapears during playing, etc.)

To sum it up:
If you like stupid teen drama, then you might enjoy this. Otherwise this might feel dumb.
Also game is in early development, so there isnt much to see at this point.

-- edit after few updates --
Author of the game had reacted to critics and promised to change some parts of the game. Eye gouging should be changed to eye poking. Some useless game choices should be changed.
Since author is trying to improve his game, then I am raising my original review by 1 star.

-- edit after even more updates --
This game turned into total mess. Author simply doesnt care about original storyline and keep adding random stuff. You will think that there is an important decision in front of you, but it will ultimately dont matter, because 10 minutes later the game will turn the switch and it will go into an unexpected direction.
Its especially annoying in case of girls (LI). You are presented with the choices who you want to date and how do you want to treat the girl. Then the girl will become your girlfriend... but it ultimately doesnt mattter, because 10 minutes later the girl will disappear from game and MC acts like nothing is wrong and tries to secude new girls. Thats just so dumb.

The game doesnt even work as a source of cheap fap, because there is really lot of (dumb) talking between characters. You have to suffer through a lot of dumb interactions.

I seriously dislike this game. I reduce my review to 2 stars.

I've recently finished College Kings 2 Act 1 v0.9.1s, so I figured it's time to update my review as well. Fair warning though, there will be some unavoidable spoilers.

Let's start with gameplay features. For the most part, they aren't exactly unique in this college porn game subgenre and frankly, being serviceable and properly integrated for narrative purposes is already good enough, with some fun and creative uses sprinkled in there. Features like smooth combat animation don't exactly take priority over good storytelling. The one feature that really stands out was the campaign system, which was introduced late in Season 1, but still good for playing different routes. The free-roam sections could be a pain at times, but that's not really worth elaborating upon. However, if you're a save-scumming player like me, you'd find yourself encountering exceptions and weird-looking saves while playing College King Season 1. Fortunately, the developers pretty much said "fuck it, let us help you skip to the fun bits you want to play" and introduced a path builder, especially useful for those who want to start a new route late into Season 1.

With the boring stuff out of the way, let's talk about the story. The premise is simple: Enrol in a college, join one of two frats based on your aesthetic preferences, fight in a frat brawl and in the process, make friends, enemies and love. The frats in question are Wolves - a combination of nicer frat bro stereotypes like brotherhood and stuff - and Apes - basically the Sith to the Wolves' Jedi. While your choice could affect some details of the story, joining either of the frats doesn't necessarily require any Dark Side points or anything. For instance, I once played a nobler Ape whose niceness was noted by numerous characters to be out of place, and I got to fuck Nora. I've also played a pretty decent Wolf who was a really good friend (for the most part) and doesn't really sleep around that much, and I got to fuck Nora.

This brings us to the characters. I have a confession to make: I deliberately avoided sex with numerous characters because I didn't like their appearances (and one of them is the ex-girlfriend), so we'll have to focus on the ones I actually courted. First comes Aubrey, a noncommittal long-term booty call whose emotional scars are covered by her cool, party-girl side. She's not available for any serious relationship until late into Season 1, so don't rush things with her and just focus on chipping away her emotional defenses. In fact, you can't really rush things with any of the girls in-game.

Now let's move on to Chloe, the poster girl who initially appeared to be the pretty president of the sorority. However, a conversation with her rival Nora made it clear to me that there might be a nastier personality under Chloe's looks, while her unwillingness to do much with her position didn't exactly help her case. Then Chloe revealed why the position was so important to her and all of that kind of made sense, and if you encouraged Lindsey to campaign against her, you might even have some mixed feelings. I would know, since I was dating Chloe in all but name while conspiring against her.

Finally, let's talk about Nora. Unlike the other main girls, Nora was first introduced as the long-time girlfriend to the Wolves' president, so you couldn't start courting her right off the bat. However, it was soon clear that through no true fault on either side, there was serious trouble in paradise, and you might have a chance to profit on her vulnerabilities. She's actually a pretty nice girl with the looks and personality that made me ponder starting a serious relationship with her. So I did, in both my playthroughs, and all that buildup was worth it.

All in all, this is a good game with at least serviceable gameplay features, a surprisingly engaging story with sympathetic characters. While some polishing would be appreciated, I am more interested in seeing the story continue with the same, if not higher quality it already has.

The game draws immediate comparisons to another college based visual novel game, primarily because both games have a focus on college frats as their central conceit. But that is pretty much as far as similarities go, and it's not usual to see different games explore the same set-up. (See for example, the dozens upon dozens of games feature a young male PC, his single mom and two hot sisters.)

Overall, this game is pretty good. It's polished, and bug free in my fresh play through of 0.4. Character models look decent and custom UI elements and mini games all seem to work as expected.

The writing is serviceable, but nothing spectacular. There's definitely an issue of a lot of the female characters not really showing too much of their personality traits, and end up blending together.

Other people have mentioned that choices don't matter, but that's not exactly true. There are absolutely choices that do matter, in particular you making decisions that can end or cut short your potential romance to different girls. What there is though is a fairly on rails main plot line that you can't deviate from, and that's the part that rubs people the wrong way.

I think the one star rating below me is unnecessarily harsh. This is a good game about the college experience. Not as good as the game we're not allowed to mention, but then again what is?

The renders are excellent and dialogue is decent. I like the three pronged personality system, and I hope the game gives you different outcomes based on those choices you make because as of now, your choices don't really matter that much. One thing there has been zero focus on so far are the classes themselves, which matters because most of your time at college will be in classes. I like the other girls more than Chloe so far, but given the story focus on Chloe, I'm not sure why sneaking into the gym at night to play Volleyball is somehow more meaningful than a simple conversation in the dorms. I also don't understand the obsession with fighting. Like why is this important to the school? And you'd think that faculty and staff would moderate this kind of behaviour. The fighting system is impressive but overly complex so i know I'll set it up for auto-win.

All in all though, there are a lot of good looking girls to pursue, the story isn't cringe-worthy and the English is good. These factors alone warrant four stars.

A side note: I mentioned this in a comment before. If the story is insistent on side stories with Julia (mom? step mom? Adopted mom? It's unclear), then you might as well make her a romanceable character. Slap an incest-patch on that and call it a day