Ren'Py - Dark Magic [v0.20.1] [F. Lord]

I really enjoyed this game. The visuals are quite good for a Honey Select game, and the characters are beautifully designed (both in appearance and personality). The game's storyline is also quite strong. I should have played this game earlier.

Gorgeous Honey Select women and animated sex scenes are the only reasons to bother with this game.
Story and writing are brain dead dumb right from the start. MC is the only male and is very lonely surrounded by horny women who want to have children with him. MC begs gods to make something exciting happening in his life and then some witch offers him her magic, which will help him seduce women. Because of course you can't have sex with horny women who already want you without magic.
Most of events are boring and pointless filler. Characters are extremely nice to each other, kissing each other's asses with compliments or singing and clapping to entertain small children.
My advice is to just unlock gallery to view sex scenes.

This game is a real drug... the female designs are excellent, the update times aren't that long. The gameplay isn't the best, but you'll get used to it. Back to the most important things: the story is fun, the sex animation is 10/10, and the female body design is 10/10. In short, good dev work.

One of the best, which I often replay. It's the kind of game where you slowly corrupt each of the girls and in the end you can have relationships with all of them at the same time. The world is well-built, it's awesome.

Great corruption game!
I have to specially highlight the animations: great job bringing the lewd scenes to life.
The amount and diversity of characters is great. Good job on the lewd scenes script, they're a nice read. Simple, easy and intuitive map navigation...
And I could be all day listing good qualities about the game so I'll summarize: 5 out 5 stars. LITERALLY how a honey select incest-corruption-game has to be done. Just like KCD2 is so good you can overlook the bugs, this game is so well done that you can overlook some minor issues it has and still be a 5 star game. Excellent work!

Awesome Game.
In this Game it´s about the good Stuff. And from this a lot.
The Game has a extremly well rewarding Balance.
Animations are good and there is so much it never stops.
The developer knows how to design a good Game.

I don´t recommend the Game for ppl that are into the 1 billion text VN boring stuff.
Just go back to your VN Story read hours over hours for a few decent scenes.

This Game right here is a diamond for ppl who wants scenes over scenes , getting flooded by scenes.
Tits everywhere and always , every few minutes. Thats the shit we need right here. Hell yeah!

v0.19.0

A 2-star game that could be a 5-star game if it were a bug-free VN with pacing the reader could control and with a respectable gallery. Really, just reader-controlled pacing with a lack of bugs would be enough.

Regarding pacing, what I'm saying is, the dev has banned instantaneous text and also inserted countless pauses. This makes the act of reading supremely annoying and encourages the player to hit the fast-forward button, giving up on the dialogue and story. It could lead some to give up altogether and eschew the game in favor of the gallery. Problem is, as indicated, the gallery sucks, because it combines sex scenes with the most boring and pointless scenes in the game. You can't tell which is which until you click on them.

The endless bugs come in various forms, but the biggest ones include:
1) The map indicating a new event that does not exist.
2) The map failing to indicate a new event that does exist.
3) Catastrophic failures that lead to all or part of the game/storyline becoming unplayable, with the same scene playing every time you visit a particular location.
4) Scenes displaying out of order, like a girl fucking MC's brains out, then later acting all shy, like they've never kissed.

Grammar is also an issue, as the dev is obviously not a native English speaker. He could use a proofreader. Also, the UI is dumb. There is a mouse symbol that tells you to click to advance the story when every Ren'Py game is the same.

So why could it be 5-stars if the dev ever gets his shit together? It's just good fun. Boobs and laughs, and plenty of sex but with an actual plot. The girls are mostly attractive, and this would be a good time if the dev simply addressed the obvious problems.

This is a rating that is a shame to give out. It used to be really good, fun lovable hot characters with a decent enough plot, hot scenes and plenty of content. Even if the sandbox isn't your thing, it still feels fine thanks to the cheats and the way its structured so you can just follow the ! marks.

The tragedy of this game is the increasing use of AI. Before, it used to just be a little but it seems certain things are now being replaced by AI. For instance, when talking to Airi, her entire body and clothing is AI, its even more apparent if you strip her naked. I believe in the past, she used to be a fully rendered 3D model same as her head, but for whatever reason she is just an AI body now, and it does not look great (its jarring). The weird part is some, but not all characters are AI in their idle poses. Not only does the AI look bad, its inconsistent across areas of the game as to whether or not its being used, so it doesn't feel cohesive.

This game genuinely needs the AI CG tag added, its absurd. Any dev time speedup is just not worth it with the declining quality. About a year ago I'd have given it a 4/5 but it doesn't feel like anything has improved, only declined. I pray this developer sees sense and either consistently uses AI or improves how it looks, or goes back to the old models which looked far better.

Dark Magic is a really fun corruption visual novel that backs out of that premise pretty early in development to instead focus on sappy stuff. I like and appreciate the cast, and the kinky situations they get into, but it's simply not the premise that the game started off with - and therefore, I think, requires a little more scrutiny than the game's worldbuilding was designed to withstand.

Long story short: somewhere in the game about three or four girls in it stops being about "casting a corruption spell" on women and becomes about befriending them. Progress switches from a sandbox mechanic to something you achieve by talking to the girl in question and romancing them, like a dating sim. The plot motivates tension by more traditional damsel-in-distress means, instead of just the protagonist being caught. You're not supposed to play a bad guy here.

Other games have done this switch up before, where the protagonist catches feelings and changes his ways, but those felt a lot more intentional - probably because they were inspired by Dark Magic, actually. But what we end up with is a harem world premise seemingly build specifically around the idea that we'd be skipping all the romance stuff, delving deep into the romance stuff. We have to learn how society in this weird Amazon land copes with the lack of men, we have to learn what they do in their spare time, what their military looks like, and what kinds of threats they face. I just don't think the answers to those questions are compelling enough to replace the lost spice when the premise switched up. Nor do I think the new characters have the same x-factor when we're just seducing them normally.

Try Dark Magic, for sure, it's got a lot of meat on its bones, and a lot of that meat is really, really good. But be prepared for a romance visual novel instead of one focused strictly on corruption, and be prepared for a lot of like, F-tier ecchi anime worldbuilding.

Story 2/5
Its another one of those mindless fuckfest games with the same plot as a million other games, MC meets deamon/witch thing and gains power to corrupt everyone so he can fuck em all so the deamon can get stronger.

MC will make them into slaves which i still dont get why he would want to, i mean even hes own family so i guess MC is just a crazy evil dude for whatever reason.
Also how big a loser is MC when he cant get laid in a world where hes the only man? i mean really....

I could be ok with all of that if you atleast had a choice in who to corrupt and fuck, but even recharging mana is done by some ugly bimbo giving you a BJ.

Its also one of those type of games where kinks and fetishes like feet stuff, big tits, anal and so on, all are forced on you and thats really my main issue, personaly i hate big tits and i dont have that fetish but game forces it on you over and over making game nothing but a turn-off and thats why choices are the most importen thing in a game and thats a big fail in this one.

Game is also kinetic no matter if its a sandbox or not theres only one route and thats to fuck em all, young and old, small tits and huge tits, its weird how devs thinks that all people are into everything....

Its also a very wierd corruption, you can get a girl to show her tits but corrupt her even more and she wont show her tits or do anything else? not even at 100% corruption? it just dosent make any kind of sense and kinda kills the hole point and idea of corruption.
Another one you corrupt you have to pay for her to do stuff? corruption gone out the window in this game and it has nothing to do with corruption.

Girls 2/5
As for the girls main focus is ofc big tit fetish which is quite annoying when you arent into it, almost every main girl, deamon, ghost, mother and so on is big tits, sure there are a few normal and a smaller or two in builds but main ones which you have most to do with theres pretty much none.
The girls also has no personaly they feel bland and mostly the same, no real relationship build ups either everything is just bland.

Animations 4/5
This is proberly the best thing about the game, even for HS the animations are really nice.

Chooices 1/5
Its kinetic and has alot of forced stuff like kinks and fetishes that you might not be into.

Sandbox 2/5
At bit boring and has alot of grinds, also pretty pointless since theres no real freedom just follow the set kinetic questline, only thing you controle is which order in some cases, so if you think you can just skip girls by not doing questline with someone you hate then think again, at some point you wont be able to progress untill you do the quests so yeah its just forced kinetic stuff.

I like the corruption aspect of this. I wish there's more of those instead of kinetic events. I hope MC gets the queen or dominate her soon.
The animations are not bad, and the corruption aspect is good. Again, wish there are more.

Really enjoyed playing this game! Initially sought out more corruption and harem elements with the adorable girls, and the mom was a pleasant addition. However, it pleasantly surprised me as it turned out to be quite a wholesome game. It offers a variety of enjoyable actions and features beautiful girls. I particularly appreciate the intriguing concept of the dark magic world, the mysteries surrounding the red witch, and the challenge of attempting to corrupt them. The game's sandbox style and abundance of content make it a delightful experience. Highly recommended for those who appreciate this genre!

0.17.1

It starts good, but gets worse in lategame.

First 2 characters are the only polished characters in game . They have a ton of sex scenes and events, they are actually corruptable with magic and you can interact with them in sandbox, not relying on some special events.

Other 38 characters are a mess. The later they are introduced, the less content and interaction options they have. Almost all of them dont even have an option to corrupt with magic, while some have story circumstances that restrict magic usage on them. So basically, they are out of sandbox. Their progress relies on special events.

Game starts as easy to fap material: nice sandbox, understandable gameplay.
And then it turns into shitfest with long VN events, drama and impossible threats. You have to wait for specific events to progress with anyone.

There are alot of cliffhangers. I havent seen "Main quest" marker for a few ingame weeks already, but some shit keeps happening. Like one of my girls goes missing, or somebody plotting behind my back. It completely ruins the mood for me, leaving me with no options than just to feel bad and incapable to fix the situation. Because MC is not aware of what's happening, but I have to endure this stress. I dont care about sex scenes anymore because of this.

Overall:
5* - For earlygame, sandbox and first few characters
2* - For lategame cliffhangers and drama.

I feel bad for giving it low rating, because earlygame and corrupting MC's family were done great, they have alot of great scenes.

For a while now this game has caught my attention and every time I downloaded it I left it in the intro, but today I try to play a little more and I must say...

THE GOOD
It has good background music, several female characters to interact with and the scenes are good and there are quite a few of them so there is a lot of sexual content but...

THE BAD... or not?
There is no good story. I feel that the framework of everything that happens is just because, there is no context as to why things happen. I know I didn't play until the end but I must say that everything makes no sense at least as far as I got, which was like 40% of what is available. The protagonist has no personality, most female characters almost have the same personality, it only changes in the skin. I found the gameplay to be as tiring as possible since quests appear for hours of the day and they change and if, let's say, you keep track of one, you can get tangled like it happened to me. I didn't particularly like this because everything else seemed very good to me. Although I highlight something and that is that I feel that the creator should not use AI renders to improve static scenes... I feel that that takes away some of the essence of a game that is using Honey select characters as a base (But that is my opinion ). I've gotten bored with what I've played, I feel like it's a lot of farm and the hints help but sometimes they get confusing. As I said, I only played 40% of what is in this game and I wouldn't particularly recommend it, but we shouldn't detract from what it brings either.


IThe game has room to grow in content but I don't like its gameplay, it tires me and the story doesn't particularly catch my attention. I must say that what I liked the most was the waifu renders but everything else makes me not want to continue playing it.

I want to clarify that this is my opinion about this game, after having played atleast a 40% of what the game offer to us. I am not a judge, nor an executioner to say that you should play this game or not, but if you ever want to give it the opportunity I invite you to try it and let your review.

My favorite character was the mother, but only in design. for everything else it seemed zzz to me

Summary (SCORE: 6.7)
o Character Design/Visual: 8/10
o Background music/sound: 8/10
o Plot: 4/10
o Animation: 9/10
o +18 Scenes: 8/10
o Gameplay: 3/10
o Interface: 7/10

Version Played: v0.17.1
Time Played: More than 15 hours. Seems like there's still a long way to go to reach end of content.

It might be weird to single out this game as a "guilty pleasure" amongst all the others I've played and particularly within the genre itself, but given that it really doesn't check many of my boxes beyond a ton of cute girls, some scant bush on a few characters and sex scenes focused more on mutual pleasure than domination or humiliation, that really is the best way for me to describe it.

Taking a more generalized approach, I think another way to describe this game would be "serviceable" -- particularly when you take into account what the porn game medium can offer on the whole. What can it offer? Well, to me, that would be the potential for an interactive storytelling experience with an engaging narrative and interesting characters with slamming. Therefore, by "serviceable," I mean the game offers both a narrative and characters and a whole lot of slamming, but how interesting the narrative is and engaging the characters are is up for debate.

Positives
+ A ton of pretty girls to woo and slam
+ A generally caring and sweet approach to sex focused on mutual pleasure
+ Generally good ratio of sex scenes to clicking around to advance story progression
+ Clear in-game hint system so you shouldn't get stuck
+ A ton of content

Neutral
= Graphically serviceable, but nothing to write home about. The dev doesn't go beyond moving a few sliders around to create his girls and the assets are your typical HS you've seen in every other game.
= Sandbox (I am totally fine with this but I know others might not be particularly since you basically end up seeing everything anyway with how the game is structured)

Negatives
- Overall, pretty bland from story to characterization to graphics
- English usage isn't great, but it doesn't detract from the experience

It's worth noting that while there is an overarching narrative, it moves glacially and never feels very high stakes since the game is mainly focused on making sure the MC is treated like a demigod. It's easily ignorable and not once have I found myself really caring.

To circle back to my initial comment, this game is comfort food to me since you can basically turn off your brain while you click around and jerk in this quaint little world where you are the only man wanted by every single woman. The women are visually pleasing and the sex frequent enough to get and keep you going, so it's a very comfortable experience.

If you love harem games, Honey Select and slow stakes fappin' you're probably going to really enjoy this one. Even if you don't, it might just be worth giving it a look if anything else I've written sounds appealing; who knows, you might find it to be comfort food too.

Note to devs: You've clearly put a lot of effort into this so thank you for that. The only requests I have are more bush, more older ladies (like Yumi's age) and more darker skinned characters.

Look i don't mind games with lot of sex in it
But almost the whole story in this game is meet a new person corrupt her have sex
Visit the queen of your town corrupt her have sex
And that's with every woman
There is more sex then story
Renders are really good
No bugs
Magic corruption is good

'

I don't know how this game got such high review rating, but the script, the spelling and grammar are all terrible. Is the rating just based entirely on quantity over quality? Maybe everything I mentioned gets improved on over time as I progress in the game, but it still wouldn't explain why 4 1/2 star overall rating and why it was the next top recommendation for me.

I've seen my fair share of bad stories and bad grammar and spelling, but the beginning on this one is just too horrible for me to push through just to see if it gets any better, not for a honey select game.

This is my favourite erotic game on earth. The story and the theme are wonderful. The characters and the animations are the best thing. I have discovered many things with this game, and i am grateful.



I always look forward to every update and i really enjoy every one of them. My congratulations to @F.Lord of this wonderful work. I look forward to more from you in the future.

Dark Magic 0.14 (played in 2021 and not really planning to update until it's either finished or there's enough new content to warrant it)

This is a magical corruption game that I think actually corrupted me. There's a point pretty early on where your sister passes out and it gives you the option to "Molest her." At this point at was kinda shocked and thinking it was extremely messed up to have as an option. Curiosity won out and I still tried it, however. By later stages of the game I'd gotten to the point where if I came across a sleeping female that I couldn't mess around with I'd be disappointed and call BS on it. It's a slippery slope in this game, haha.

Pros:
-LOTS of quite hot content despite not being completed (pretty much all the scenes are also replayable once unlocked from an in-game book)
-Nearly the ultimate setup in terms of a harem corruption power-fantasy
-Progression of corruption/romance elements is satisfying (and sexy)
-Sandbox game that wasn't grindy nor hard to figure out what to do at any given point
-Lots of attractive girls, without feeling like too many for the most part
-I actually found I was interested in what story there is to the game (which isn't really the focus)
-It's a game that's a bit self aware has a lot entertaining and humorous moments. The levity and fun really enhances the game quite a bit.

Cons:
-Some animations are overly pixelated or watermarked (this may have been fixed by now)
-I didn't appreciate the points at which the game tried to tell me which girl my character really loved
-The writing does leave much to be desired. It seemed like different parts were written by two different people entirely - one who was a fairly decent writer with a good enough mastery of English and one that really struggled with the latter. The writing styles seemed entirely different from section to section due to this. Even within the same scenes things would shift in a more minor manor from perfectly good English to stuff that I got the meaning of but was starting to fall apart drastically to something no longer recognizable as normal English (I have a tolerance for this but others may not).
-Not only is the game unfinished, but it doesn't seem like it'll ever truly be finished realistically. I would have preferred they cut down the scope of the game rather than continuing to tease completely new storylines before progressing the ones that existed. Any significant updates are extremely few and far between.
-The game has admittedly dated graphics at this point. The use of Honey Select models I don't have an issue with myself and I like the look of a lot of the girls. The renders and animations are a bit more hit or miss and the background textures are awful. I still find the style holds a special kind of charm and the renders and even animations still can seem pretty good (definitely still hot) but I'd understand people taking issue with how it looks in 2023.

If you want a ridiculous but fun magical corruption harem power fantasy with an abundance of content and don't mind some slightly outdated graphics along with some writing/translation issues... then maybe give it a shot. Also, if you watched enough raunchy harem anime, you'll likely feel at home with some of the tropes and humor. This one was a guilty pleasure for me that I truly enjoyed when I played it and felt it was above average in more areas than below but I know objectively on the balance of things it likely should be 3/5 at this point, so I'm having a lot of trouble deciding how to rate it. I went and played a handful of scenes and it's even better than I recalled... a lot more effort, detail, humor, and heart put in to the interactions than I remembered. Since there is no 3.5, I'm going with 4 for now. I'm hoping some day it does get finished.

Truly a nice and content-rich sandbox with a minimum of grinding.
There is a bit of the main plot/story, but most of the time will be spent continuing the various routes of the girls in play.
There are many characters, most of them have big boobs.