VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Dusklight Manor [Final] [Daniels K]

Started really nicely, and about toll 70% the story was going nice, then most of the endings just feels ...meh.

The character models are pretty good, the scenes are nice, the premise is interesting too, its just the final third of the game feels really rushed and most cases feels like the devs just wanted to get it done with.

Will still recommend though.

It started out pretty good. The set up was nice and it flowed well. Of course, like many other games it rushes the ending. There are different endings for each girl but most of them feel abrupt. There is not a lot of content in the endings either, that left me feeling dissatisfied. Some characters decisions felt out of character and left me less interested in them by the end. There's a girl who shows up towards the end whose story feels rushed. One of the title characters gets yeeted out of the story before you get to really know her or even want to get her ending. My girl Lemon was ruined in her ending which I don't appreciate. It's like her behavior and character changed. That happens with a few of the characters actually. There are a few characters that appear and then are never reintroduced which is a small gripe. (Semi Spoilers I Guess) The biggest complaint is the main plot revolving around the mistress is just dropped with no real satisfying ending. I guess that's the biggest problem. The story feels rushed that none of the endings are satisfying. No harem ending as well but I'm not going to base my rating off it since I enjoy games without them but it felt like it was set up to have the option. Ultimately a mediocre VN that left me disappointed.

I have to say that the game has interesting concepts (e.g. probabilities of an event occurring) which can be explored down the road. As for the negative aspects - well, it's boring. Boring as hell. There is no incentive to explore new scenarios, no grind in terms of achieving certain goals, minor variation based on choices, sex scenes are like cheap porn. Don't waste your time even trying the game.

This AVN is a supernatural sex romp. The models are extremely attractive and the sex scenes are good. The characters are a bit simplistic/childish and the story is not especially riveting. The story basically revolves around a young man who is given the opportunity to get paid extremely well for some manual labor, with the opportunity to have sex with several unbelievably attractive women that are living in the middle of nowhere - at a vampire's manor house. Don't expect any deep, intriguing story, but you can treat it very much like a game to figure out which women to seduce and which one/s to keep. Most choices are about which LI to pursue, rather than anything to effect the flow of the story.

It was a good game. I mean nothing spectacular about it but still enjoyable. Here some of my thoughts:
-Story: Starts average, gets interesting and then disappoints a litle.
-Music: I guess there were only 4 or 5 tracks. I have to say I liked some of them.
-Characters: The MC is ok, some of the LIs backstory are not that well written I didn't feel the connection between the MC and them except for Lemon and the Mistress, man ... even Cora LOL and they were not supposed to be the main LI.
- Renders: they were good enough.
- Animations: Not good at the beginning but I could see the improvement as the story progressed.
- Writing: Just one thing, I'm not against using a "narrator" but I think it is overused here. For example, in sex scenes it's annoying reading the "Narrator", the MC's Inner thoughts and what actually the MC is saying (leave some for the imagination man, or better, show it in the renders).

Overall, nothing fantastic but still enjoyable. I'd give it a 7/10.

Story in this one is pretty average, the MC feels gutless and brainless doing a big part of the story which gets annoying but ill explain that later.

MC gets hired to take care of a mansion with a vamp mistress that stars off by feeding on you without concent and erases you memory about it, so you dont really get the picture of her been good, but in truth she is doing alot of good.

The hole Cora being in story i could do without, she really does nothing but piss you off, even more so since you cant really do anything about it so your forced to be around her all the time, and never get any payback for how she treats you and your friends.

There is a mod for this game, i wouldent use that on your first run, it wont really show you how game really is since you will see scenes you might not want to see and that you wouldent see depending on your choices.

About endings there are some good ones some bad ones, some really shitty ones that dosent make sense, so a big mix which is also one of the big reasons to it only being a average game, and for some weird reason mutlple endings has lesbian/BI stuff.

I was most disapointed by the Liz ending since you can be with her from the start and then she does a 180 and go full lesbian and leaves you for another woman she barely knows, it makes 0 sense to me, you can join both of them but when you know Liz picked her over you i am not sure if it would make much sense to follow them.

As for pregnancy tag i dunno there is one ending with Mary and a pregnant sex scene but thats about it for pregnancy, so yeah a bit disapointing and not really worth the tag since you might not see it unless you pick the one ending that as it, feels like its just made to add the tag to the game.

Its still worth playing and as always this creator has nice looks LIs and a good mix so there is a bit for everyone.

Animations are about maybe a little above average, they are still somewhat short but there are multple scenes which makes up for it.

Music and sounds effects are pretty decent as well.

It was good game at start, If you have played any other Daniels K games you would like it. In the middle of the game the pace its slower than usual. Good models, unusual characters and the plot it can be boring sometimes. recommended

I played this game around Halloween looking for something easy to digest with some sort of occult theme.

I have no idea how one takes a story with vampires, witches, and a ghost and makes it this boring. This is very typical boarding house scenario game 90% of the time with rarely anything interesting coming out of the occult aspect. Any of those interesting aspects end up getting resolved way too quickly and easily while the game continues to shamble on from one extremely typical situation to another. It started to feel like a chore to actually get through this game despite being quite linear.

I'd played Lancaster Boarding House and the Pine Falls (both from this dev) previously and I felt like each one, while still extremely mediocre, had some aspect to them that was a saving grace and at least didn't overstay their welcome. So I knew what to expect and yet I was still let down more than expected with this one.

To the game's credit, the LIs are attractive and likeable but most are also extremely generic/cliched and lacking in anything beyond pretty basic characterization and development of what their kinks are. I thought Lemon was going to be an interesting departure from the norm with how she's set up but despite liking her there was just so much wasted opportunity in her character that even she couldn't save this game for me. I'd say what I ended up remembering most about the girls was a combination of their basic personality types and if any of their lewd scenes were any good or not. Even if most of the girls look great the poor writing and characterization ends up making them less attractive than they likely should be.

Non-sexual interactions/events in general were extremely bland and generic (some seeming to be almost directly reused from the dev's previous games). Again, this was a game with supernatural creatures abounding and yet a good amount of the time it completely disregards this while you're doing exciting and innovative things like going for a walk, going to the lake, playing hide and seek, picking up food at the convenience store, having a party, etc. If you've played the dev's previous games (or even any other games, really) these likely sound familiar and they're not much different here.

Renders are generally pretty decent. Animations aren't great but I've seen worse. They're mostly very short looped clips with mechanical movement and poor physics (things do move a bit as the characters do but not in a natural or satisfying way most of the time). I will give the dev some credit in this department for improving the animations a bit towards the end of the game. I guess it's come a long way from Lancaster Boarding House as well where there were mostly a series of still renders with usually one really usually out of place seeming animation per scene. Then again, some of those animations were actually a bit better than a lot in this game and I prefer a nice series of good renders over sub-par animations. So one step forward, two steps back from my perspective. File optimization is better than in previous games but some of the earlier videos are larger size than they needed to be there so at least there's progression in that department as well.

The sex scenes in general get pretty repetitive and boring themselves. Certain characters also just have way more than needed while others not enough. There are some that are genuinely good hot scenes but they're the exception more than the rule. I will say I appreciated some of the nice "finishes" in some of them though.

Music and sounds are in the game as well and I'm pretty neutral on the utilization of those aspects. I don't recall anything really standing out but it's there.

Endings are seriously lacking but that was to be expected with this dev's formula for most of his games and they're generally presented one by one in off-ramp fashion progressively throughout that latter half of the game. Only positive thing was that some of them do have some decent scenes/scenarios involved... just not much in the way of anything besides a scene or two and wrapping things up.

I don't feel like this game was a complete waste of my time but I was more disappointed in and bored with it than any other game I've played from this dev and that's saying something. You may want to give this a try if you're desperate for something pretty mindless with some good looking girls to play and don't care if the occult aspect or story is actually any good or not. If you do give it a try, I'd recommend Zoey's Raven's mod if you want to see most of the content in one playthrough as it's definitely not worth multiple playthroughs. However, you may want to skip some of it as I found one of the characters completely insufferable myself *cough*Cora*cough*.

An Overall Okay Experience

In the beginning of this Visual Novel, you're immediately hooked by the immersion/questions you have for the ongoing plot. With the well done models, and the unique setting this story takes place, this VN stands out from the rest of many other Ren'py focused nsfw games. With that in mind, the developer does not take advantage of that. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the team workng behind this game does not know what ending it wants or the path the main character should go on. You're given choice, yes, but the ultimately do not matter as when the story hits its end mark, you're given endings that feel half done and empty. One plot point has the Head Master go through a struggle, it is essentially forgotten about and the characters working to help her, just forget and go on to something else. To the point where they are written out of the story. All in all, this game had the potential to be one the best, but falls flat with uncertainty of what it wanted to do with the plot and its characters.

well what can i say ...
+ : the graphics and such

the story starts intriguing

- : YOUR CHOISES DONT MATTER !!!! --

everything is realy average and the story takes a deep dive into the the trashcan after like half the game

A game with depth and worthwhile decisions to make. The sexual content is excellent and the progression to reach your chosen endings is impactful and worth your time. Pacing is good and the models are unique enough to meet most tastes and easy on the eyes. The story isn't a burden to go through and was actually enjoyable showing the crreator had a good idea and followed through on it well. I replayed this a few times and I feel it is definitely worth downloading. I appreciate thew time that went into this and look forward to further games from this creator.

The game is...fine.

The models are attractive. The sex scenes are decent, but there is really nothing in this game that ever gets me going.

The story is meh...it never really pulls you in.

The character art is good, but I never really connected to any of the characters.

It's decent. Play it...but it's not The Best.

I have just completed my first playthrough. I've got Audrey's ending.

I have enjoyed the game. I think it is better than Pine Falls, which became somewhat boring for me after the initial good impressions. I think Dusklight Manor is engaging. I have liked the story told to us and the girls, who look good (the same as with the other games from Daniels K which I have played) and have different personalities. The music tracks are OK too.

There are two aspects of the game that I have not liked so much. Firstly, the mistress. Why could she not be Miriam, the superhot redhead vampire, instead of Clara? All right, this is my horny me speaking of course. I guess Clara fits the role of the motherly figure best, and that is exactly what the the dev wanted. But if at least Miriam had more scenes in the game... The other aspect that I really did not like was the final part of the game, which is worse than the rest. It seems as if the dev ran out of ideas to properly close the story. Well, not only the story. For example, I have really missed some mention from the mistress on the "disappereance" of Lemon and Jackie. That looks like some serious oversight right there.

But all in all, I really liked the game. Now I'm going to try my luck with the other girls.

The concept and the overall setting of the game is really nice. The beginning of the story is really strong but the more we progress, the more it drags on and starts to get tedious. I liked most of the female characters especially Lemon, who is also the most interesting and hottest girl out of them all but doesn't get enough screentime. The rendering is good enough on this one. But the ending is really tame so let's talk about it.

You get to see the endings for each girl but that doesn't matter as right after that, you get thrown into the story where you decline each of their path so actually you don't end up with any of them. If the developer wanted to make a story where you ended up with everyone of them, them just make a harem ending. If not, make the protagonist choose one or two girls at the end and finish the story. Why do all this bullshit? The stuff with Lizzie was just outta nowhere and unnecessary. And the endings with each girls aren't even that good as they are really tame and short.

Overall the game starts really strong but becomes average the more it drags on, and it becomes just damn underwhelming at the end.

Dusklight Manor is a perfectly average game. The basic premise is interesting, but the game never really does anything with it.

A young man is hired as some kind of janitor / handyman at some remote manor that serves as some kind of boarding school for young women. The twist: the head of the manor is a vampire lady.
However, Clara, the vampire, turns out to be a perfectly reasonable and more or less good character. Thus there never really is any major conflict in the main story.
Clara does have a few strict rules for the girls in her manor, they must not engage in relationships and are not allowed to have sex. So that is the sole source of any conflict (more or less) throughout the game. But Clara is still very reasonable and will allow the MC to leave the place with his chosen love interest, with two exceptions. So even if a girl breaks the rule with the MC there is no real punishment, the two can go if they want to and live together happily ever after.

And that brings us to the love interests, they are the stereotypical clichés found everywhere, maybe with one exception.

Lola - the very pretty and wholesome photo model

Audrey - the edgy one who smokes cigarettes in secret and has a really strong sex drive (partially the result of her consuming some vampire blood a few years earlier), in a short sideplot she will fist another woman and put a cigarette in her vagina with the MC present and watching, if her points are high enough. Did not like that at all and it ruined her a little bit for me, even though she's otherwise "ok" and not a bi-curious slut. That unskippable scene (once the requirements for Audrey are met) was entirely unneeded. The canon explanation for that is the vampire blood she consumed which every now and then results in a crazy sex drive

Mary - the cute virgin nerd with the ugly glasses who likes math

Lemon - is the only real standout character, since she has a unique backstory and receives the most characterization of all the women in the story. She's also the prettiest woman in the game with luscious red hair. She's a kind of ghost at first (because of a spell gone wrong performed by Clara and her witch friend decades earlier) but then comes fully back to life after Clara and her witch friend perform another spell, in order to save her. Despite that Lemon harbors a strong grudge against Clara and Lemon is also the only female that is not treated very kindly by Clara (because Lemon once tried to burn the manor down after becoming a quasi ghost)

Lizzie - the very forward girl who jumps on the MC's bones almost immediately and is open to anal sex (of course), including unskippable anal sex, a typical cardinal sin of so many VNs, I will never understand that, just make that thing optional! Especially when later in the game you DO have options....

Clara - more or less the big breasted "Milf" in this game. Not really what I would call a "love interest", more like a sex partner if you choose the blood route in the game.

Julia - a nondescript young witch and wannabe Buffy without any real characteristics - she enters the game very late, only has a couple of scenes, but receives a proper ending with the MC.

The character models are all pretty, there are no exaggerated proportions and from voloptuous to petite you will find almost everything here. Clara's bigger breasts are also somewhat affected by gravity, something you don't find very often in VNs. So if you like natural looking women Dusklight Manor will give you plenty of them. And they are all really pretty.

The problem with almost all the female characters, other than Lemon, is that you never really form a real attachment or feel a connection, since their story is paper thin and everything remains very much on the surface. Virtually all the females only exist to become potential sex partners but none of them have an interesting story about them or actual conflict.

Only Lemon has an interesting arc with her being a ghost at first, and not being treated very well by Clara. She even talks about her struggles with the MC and is not just a means to show yet another sex scene. All the other girls are basically just that: means to show some sex scenes. The only source of conflict is who you want to eventually choose and when two of the women eventually find out about each other and make the MC pick and choose. But even here everything is super easy without any real conflict, you make your choice, the other character accepts it.

Each love interest receives a proper ending with a few scenes. Dusklight Manor has a very typical approach: it's an open buffet for a long time and you can freely pick and choose whomever you want without any conflict. There is some minor branching, so to see every scene you will have to reload and make a different choice here and there, but not very often. No girl knows about the other girls you interact with.
At a certain point characters may learn about the other love interest and then you have to pick and choose. Create a save so you can pick the other love interest and see the other branch.
There are exit points in the story for all the women, as early as chapter 10 out of 16. The thing is: you don't miss anything about the main story if you use that very early Julia option. There are six more chapters after that, but in terms of main story or story in general nothing happens really. The other chapters merely exist to provide the exit point for the other love interests and to add a few more sex scenes.

The endings vary a lot in quality, some are very wholesome and overall nice, one ending also has pregnancy and pregnant sex (Mary). Unfortunately the most interesting character Lemon only gets a mediocre ending, it is a kind of happily ever after, the MC and Lemon have escaped the manor and are a couple, but I don't like their lifestyle at all, the MC is a quasi drunk and with the help of Lemon scams gamblers. Lemon was turned into a vampire (something she had to do to escape the manor) which is also a letdown.
The worst ending is easily Lizzy's who for no rhyme or reason suddenly turns into a lesbian offscreen after being removed from the game for a very long time. The MC can choose to leave the manor with Lizzy and her witch girlfriend to get a silly threesome ending that feels entirely wrong. Even ingame other characters remark how wrong it feels and they speculate that the witch put a spell on Lizzy... but later in the story you learn that there is no spell.
There is also a non canonical fantasy threesome ending with Lola and Audrey that makes no sense, I guess the dev included it to make some people happy. It makes no sense though since Lola is entirely out of character here.

If you like good and wholesome endings I would recommend to pick Lola first, then Mary, then Audrey (Audrey is a bit ruined for me because of that one scene with another woman which was completely unnecessary and felt out of character) overall Audrey is more interesting than Mary though.

If you are ok with a so-so ending then Lemon is absolutely worth picking, since she's the most interesting character of them all and easily the prettiest. And at least it's still more or less a happily ever after, but you may not like some of the life choices made here.

The Clara ending is only for those who don't like wholesome happy endings. The Julia ending is completely rushed and is silly and Lizzy's ending is only for those who need to see everything in the game. Knowing how Lizzy's story ends and given the fact that she's also removed from the game for a very long time I would say it's better to completely ignore her early in the game and not to bother with her, it's all just shallow sex scene after sex scene with her anyway and ultimately a complete waste of time.

From a technical perspective Dusklight Manor delivers, the renders are all nice, this is your standard high quality DAZ game. However quite a few times there are no renders for things that are mentioned in the script. Several times you read that two characters are kissing for example, but the render does not change and you never see any of that. This feels a bit lazy here and there.
There are music and sound effects. I didn't care for the music at all, since it was not to my taste, your mileage may vary. I found it too obstrusive. There are some female moans during the sex scenes.
The animations are of the standard variety, 1-2 second loops with varying positions and angles. Nothing you haven't seen many times before. But they are fluid and ok.

Dusklight Manor's major flaw is the very weak main story, there never is any real conflict since Clara is not a villain and actually a more or less "good" character. She has some flaws, she can get angry, she does not treat Lemon very well and at one point feeds on the MC without consent, but overall she is very reasonable and definitely not a villain. She truly cares about the women in her boarding school and tries to help them and doesn't take advantage of them or abuses them. So if you hope for some depraved actions between the vampire lady and the girls you will be disappointed. Clara will at one point get a human "pet" (but said pet is later elevated to vampire status), and on the blood route the MC can interact with both, but Clara is still not a villain in those scenes either.

So the entire vampire setting is more or less wasted. Because very few things are done with it.

And when we talk about the love interests then only Lemon has a noteworthy story and arc.

The dialogue during the various sex scenes ranges from "ok" to "hilarious in a bad way" to "cringe". Some lines are incredibly dumb and will make you roll your eyes.
The author is also of the opinion that back in the day people didn't really know how to have good sex or didn't know about certain practices... and that modern sex is so much better... I suppose the author should study some ancient Roman wall paintings.

The game also makes excessive use of the line "Ha ha ha!". That became so annoying that I loaded the script into Word and counted 640 (!) instances of a character saying "Ha ha ha!" throughout the game.

The very lackluster story makes for a quite boring game. But it's one of the few completed VNs, the women are all pretty and look natural and if you can accept that Dusklight Manor more or less does nothing with the premise then you can have some fun with it.

If you played Pine Falls by the same dev you will find some references to it in the game and there is also a cameo appearance from Pine Falls in one of the endings. This is a nice touch for those who played the other games by Daniels K.

Dusklight Manor is something you can play if you have some time to kill and nothing better to do. If your expectations are not too high the game is ok. The pretty female characters are a plus here, the renders are good, but the lack of proper character arcs or compelling main story make Dusklight Manor a more or less forgettable experience - other than for Lemon who is a unique character with an interesting arc who deserved a better written ending, even if it's technically speaking happily ever after.

Unskippable anal sex and, depending on which route you choose, unavoidable fisting and cigarette play are major letdowns. Make these things optional! Especially the latter scene made zero sense and Audrey never again displays any of these tendencies.

This game has pretty nice graphics. The story is avarage, but I am not such into vampires and so on so it could be not objective. Since the vampires played key role in this game, naturelly it bored me a bit.

I loved this game, although personally the endings kind of lacked more details for each character, depending on the route taken; just like if there had been a Harem ending I would agree of 10/10
Maybe in the future, they could do a remaster and add and make those modifications, but hey, it's still one of my favorites.

Story
Kind of generic game. The story starts interesting but then goes quickly downhill. The story is about house in the woods with girls where vampire mistress rules. The girls are hit and miss, some like Lemon (redhead), Mary (shy one) and the model girl (forgot the name) are pretty and interesting. Others like mistress, Aubrey, nurse and Lizzy are meh. Their stories are also kind of boring too.

Graphics and Lcontent
Graphics is ok and Lcontent is fine but not enough to warrant playing if you don't have other more interesting games in your list.

I would rate this 5/10 (where 1 - trash, 5 - average, 10 - masterpiece). I would say this game gets exactly half the things right and half wrong, play it if you have lots of free time, skip otherwise.

Good little supernatural visual novel

Perhaps taking everything to do with vampirism into account I wish there was more blood/gore related stuff but whatever. Seems bit of a wasted opportunity. Also there is no real harem gameplay, you can bang all the girls in the same run but it starts to get a bit worrying when some characters start getting more attached to you which means you feel the house of cards could collapse at any moment

But that isnt really a scenario that happens, also its a rather linear game meaining you can opt to see sex scenes if you want or refuse but not much outside of that changes. But theres plenty of scenes and no stupid sandbox elements

Also there is an option to go for blood drinking option or no but it doesnt change much. It just makes MC act more rough during sexual encounters etc. so there isnt much reason not to pick it

But as far as finished renpy games go this is certainly recommended

Character models are what they are I dont care much tbh some puritans get angry if the renders arent high def or what not but I couldnt be bothered to care about all that. Its a good little story

I really liked it, maybe the only unconvincing to make it a 5 * for me was how it all became a bit befuddling at some point and the hiding his endeavors from the other girls... felt a bit sickly.

The game itself is reaaaaaaaaally good-looking. However, when I saw the preview images and all, specially the main one showing off all the girls in the game, I felt a very much distant feeling than what it truly was in-game. Once I got into the game for some time already, I already had in mind how MC's relationships were quite somber so as to say.

The reason for 'any' girl liking him is also weirdly unexplained, as if they're just toying with him but at the same are genuine towards MC. Just somewhat sickl feeling.

With all this, Lurch was by far the only character that I felt existed.