VN - Ren'Py - Femdom Academy [v0.02] [D8rin]

Game Version 0.02:

Writing: Pretty readable and clever, though slightly amateurish in places, sex scenes cringe-free.

Potential & Concept: The core idea of "reward-based" femdom (instead of punishment) is highly appreciated. The setting and characters have great potential.

I can hardly wait to see what happens next.
I'm even considering changing my Patreon subscriptions to support the developer.

Coming into this as someone who likes Koikatsu graphics, and likes dramatic femdom plots like this game's.

Pros
- The writing is very readable. Amateurish, but succinct and slightly clever in the way it phrases things, smooth to read for the most part, with just a handful of awkward phrases here and there. This is all I hope for in an erotic VN.
- Characters aren't unlikable. I've dropped so many Ren'Py VNs because the characters felt insufferable or egocentric, so I'm happy to report that's not the case here. The male lead has a fairly bland personality, but he at least has fairly normal way of viewing things (when he takes the time to mentally form a viewpoint) and interacting with people. The heroines are generally flirty and sociable.
- The sex scenes have a fairly good sexy atmosphere, they aren't cringe.
- It feels like there's probably potential with these characters and plot. It just depends on what the dev does with it.

Cons
- Every sex scene so far is basically a handjob. Some with the male lead bound, some not. The game's story follows Japan's femdom logic of "edging clouds the male lead's thoughts and makes him complaint". It's essentially a soft femdom game with a slight BDSM aesthetic, at least in the first version which I played. I'm just putting this as a con because for a game that clearly markets itself as "femdom" people usually want something slightly more exciting than this.
- The heroines are overly cryptic in every conversation, and say stuff out of the blue about how you just need to follow the rules and be obedient, or they're going to have fun with you soon, or referencing "something bigger" behind the scenes. I start to wonder whether they would have any hobbies or personality if they didn't have secrets to hint at.
- The male lead has the curiosity of a brick. All this weird behavior and he is never thinking about how unusual it is or questioning it at all. Girls saying all sorts of surreal things to him and it doesn't make him think much at all. To elaborate:
- The way the heroines talk is just a little too weird, to the point it never feels like the male lead is having a two-way conversation with *anyone*. The only things they know how to say are cryptic comments or subtle flirting with a possessive tone, and it feels like their words sometimes make little sense in the context. I'll give an extended example based on the first scene with a heroine.

My verdict: I'd rate it a 3/5 for a first version, but lowered it a star just because my personal opinion is that this game probably won't develop in the direction that people hope.

Update x0.02 ...And the dev ruined it. Its no longer a novel. Its just endless grind of 3 choices of the same repeated scenes to build your score with each girl to maybe reach a scene at some unknown point. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz 4 stars down to 2.

Review at v0.011. I really enjoyed the story so far. The tone is perfect with reward over punishment, creating the perfect environment for willing compliance. I hope this concept continues in the story; punishment is only when doing something wrong, reward for being good. Most femdom AVN's are only about punishment and often are just cruel, brutal and not fun. The story has a light touch and you feel yourself there with the MC taken along by everything.

The downsides: I am surprised at the beginning when applying to Veridia, that you only have to click on the link an enter your name. I would have thought that you would have to provide some pictures and answer a personality questionnaire. I think they would only want certain types of malleable males with an accepting personality. I could see lots of guys with different personalities rejecting everything straight away and demanding their million dollars, to the point of violence. Therefore on a practical level, they would have to pay for lots of flights back for those that didn't comply, instead of doing a simple online check beforehand. Also why do we always have to have the same cliché of missing your alarm so being late on the first day. We have already seen it in countless VN's! Why can't he just wake with his alarm and go to the Academy, he still wouldn't know where to go and need help. Being late is completely unnecessary. It is early in the VN's development but the text also keeps referring to the MC as Nick even after you have changed it so hopefully this will be changed (meeting Minami for the first time and Minami first day at the Academy). The name is correct in the scene with Yumiko. I would also appreciate the option to change the opacity of the text box.

I am disappointed with the look of the VN. It's done in my least favourite visual style for an AVN, being anime/cartoony. It just doesn't fit an adult visual novel to me. Basically, visually it isn't sexy, so you only have the words. I appreciate many will disagree with me but the vast majority of real looking femdom games don't have as good a story as this and go too far in violence and tone. This has the story but the look doesn't back it up. I'm just thinking how good this could be. I have so far only found one femdom game that looks amazing and had a great story and it was abandoned. So many try and just disappoint. If this one looked more realistic and real world, it would be 5 stars.

So far so good! I loved what I saw (for a v0.01). I love the direction that the dev is going with this. Too often, femdom is portrayed as 'no pleasure allowed!', but this opinion fails to note the fact that pleasure itself can be used as an incredibly powerful controlling factor in S&M, and the dev leans into this, which I love! You just don't see it enough.

The only thing I would point out is that in one of the scenes, there was an additional participant (side character) being dominated. This in itself is totally fine, I felt that it helped to add foil and explanations to the current situation. My only caution for the dev is to not fall into the trap where the MC becomes an observer of kink content instead of its recipient. Some games fall into this trap, where we get to view a side character having an H-scene while we (the MC) get to... watch. Again, I'm not accusing the dev of doing this, since the MC was also having a mirrored experience, but I just wanted to point it out so as to potentially avoid that pitfall in the future. Overall, I was sad when I got to the end (which is hard to say lately)!

I can't wait to see more! Bookmarked!