VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Follow the Leader [v1.0] [SuperWriter]

  1. 5.00 star(s)

    Éama

    FtL is well done and impresses above all with a creative story idea and with relationships that have enough emotional weight that you want to explore them.

    What I like very much is that Follow the Leader is an "explained" harem game. By that I mean it is not taken for granted, nor is it an expression of any fantasies of grandeur, but there is lore that explains why it makes sense in this context.
    On the technical level, this VN is upper average with good but not outstanding renders, so I give five stars mainly for the storytelling, surprising twists that are well staged and a coherent arc of tension.
    All the ingredients for a good gaming experience are there. What is perhaps missing here and there are smaller conflicts beyond the main plot. Sometimes the interaction within the group of refugees is too smooth, considering the extreme emotional and physical strains everyone is exposed to. When the VN starts there is a certain level of tension, especially because of Eights attitude, but this is resolved rather quickly and from that point on the relationships are very secure and unthreatened, which is nice for everyone involved but makes for mediocre drama.
    Still, the time I spent with FtL was entertaining and while I haven't really found emotional access to this developer's stories in the past (maybe it was because of their slice of life character, fantasy seems to suit him better) I find Follow the Leader to be the first VN that I enjoyed from start to finish. (v0.8)
  2. 5.00 star(s)

    DABOMB00

    Very enjoyable game so far. The looks are really good and the renders are great. The women look really good even tho it kinda feels like the dev tried hard to satisfy everyones taste in women with the three women you get to be with. But besides the goatee of the MC which looks absolutely hideous btw the characters in this game do look beautiful.
    The Story is pretty good with the challenges you have to face on your journey and has a good mix of action happening and moments to calm down. I really enjoy the pace in which the story is progressing and the pace in which the MC develops a relationship to the Lis. Its good that every relationship has its own pace and is connected to the character of the women.
    The choices are mainly focused on relationship points and it would be great to have more choices that influence how the story is progressing. I always enjoy Vns where the choices influence how you behave or how you develop certain skills which isnt the case here but the choices still let you feel like you are involved in the outcome of the story so its alright imo.

    Overall i can say this is a top-tier VN even tho its has no music or sound but i guess a lot of perople dont really care about that. Im excited to see where this will go and i hope to see the Dev getting back to Sun Breed after this is finished.
  3. 3.00 star(s)

    Moisthammer

    Follow the Leader [v0.8] fails at the attempt of captivating the audience with an interesting game genre. While I appreciate the ambitious attempt of the developer, unfortunately the dialog could not breath life into story. The mediocre story telling left me bored and disinterested in the characters, plot, and novel.
  4. 5.00 star(s)

    hungneet

    Good game with interesing story and concept. The characters are androids but feel more human than ones in other games.
    The new twist in the v0.8 is a nice touch that make me to write this review. Outstanding move from the dev.
  5. 4.00 star(s)

    Askwad

    A slow burn that values character development and story over other elements, sometimes I think it forgets the sexual aspects as they're quite tame for a long time.
    Nevertheless, it does a good job of creating an atmosphere of being on the run - save for a few stupid details
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    .

    The girls are all interesting and unique in their own way, their personalities and chemistry mixing well with each other. Not to mention the art is great.

    So why a 4 star? Well that's because of the MC. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first but the more I play the more I realize he's a neckbeard. Afraid of female intimacy, quick to apologize and put them on a pedestial. He's too much of a beta, even if that word has lost its meaning. He's letting the girls do the dangerous tasks, doesn't really step up. At times it feels like the girls could be better off without him. You're playing a wimp and that isn't very entertaining in the long run.
  6. 5.00 star(s)

    Kemb

    Honestly, loving it so far, but since i'm a huge fan of SuperWriter I may be a bit biased

    The story is really compelling it takes place in a futuristic dystopian setting which i feel could be explored a bit more but the story is character centreal so it's fine.

    The characters are interesting and well developed each LI is unique and it's showen. though they are rather cliche archtypes it doesn't really matter as it is done well. though the fact that a harem is encoureged by the game can rub people the wrong way it makes sense narritavly.

    The slow burn might turn some people off, but jumping straight to sex withe the LIs backstory wouldn't really make since. So kudos for that.


    The way story devlops gives a sense of urgency wich helps with immersion and makes sense in the context of the story.


    Since some people may complain about Anoushka and the lack of side LIs, looking at the realationship between the MC and the clones, Side LIs wouldn't really make sense and will have to be forced in for the hell of it which may ruin it.

    All in all, an excellent game and can't wait for more.
  7. 4.00 star(s)

    Gray21

    A pretty good game so far, the characters are very likeable, especially Nine. Its a slow burn, but its well written enough that it doesnt feel like its wasting the players time. Every character has a pretty well though out personality and background, and they are shown and told pretty well.
    The girls look great, but the environments could use some work, most of the time they feel they had the least amount of time necessary spent on them, and the dev is cutting corners wherever he or she can. The lack of animations is also a bit disappointing, but not necessarily a deal breaker. Hope to see more things happening with the girls, alone and together. Looking forward to see more.
  8. 3.00 star(s)

    xXxNeospiritxXx

    i had a hard time to think about how i should rate this one. i will start with the good things.

    i love the story and see a lot of potencial here. the characters are very loveable, good looking and have nice personalities. BUT and that's the sad thing, i really wish there would be more interactions between them and the mc.

    for example: instead of rushing from one scenery to the next (like the scene between leaving Anoushka and visiting the Doctor) they could've used a rest in their hotel to build their relationship.

    in general i have to say i love slowburn games (and girls that didn't throw them to the mc right away) but for me to make sex as an endgame content in and adult game is way to late. so my recommendation would be: more lewd scenes (animated would be awesome) and more interactions between the mc and the girls.

    i just wrote this review because i care for this game and see what this could be become. wish you good luck and i will keep an eye on this one ;)
  9. 3.00 star(s)

    Jnx

    English: 8/10
    User Interface: 6/10
    User Experience: 5/10
    Art: 7/10
    Dialogue: 8/10
    Story: 6/10
    Opinion: 5/10
    ------------------------------
    Avg: 6.43/10 [3/5]

    It's been about a year, so let's see how things have changed. Yeah, The UI updated.. Eh.. It's gaudy, not set up well, clunky, text leaves the textbox, and STILL USES DEFAULT FONT. At least it's custom and does all the things. But. The WINDOW IS LABELED "A Ren'Py Game" ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Let me tell you why. The Options file has config.name and config.show_name, config.name labels the window and if config.show_name is True, the main menu shows the title for the default renpy project. Instead of changing that to false, or removing the title text from the main menu screen, they erased the title of the game, making it look infinitely less professional. My god. INB4: "Just play full screen." Windowed > Fullscreen. Snappier and less restrictive. Those issues I constantly harp on aside, the writing is fine. It's still fine. It's better than most stuff on this site. Are there still issues? Yeah. But it's original, focuses on characters and growth(ish), and I don't want to break my keyboard critiquing every aspect of the story. Do I have things to say? Yeah. But if all my issues end up being "The UI is a bit much, there's contrivances in the plot, minimal sex(which I usually don't care about, but this time it feels pretty anemic), and removing content is dumb." This isn't bad.

    The story starts a little tropey "MC is 2 weeks away from retirement, tragedy ensues." That whole joke. But it's not thrown in your face and mostly ends there. He's an indentured servant that was bought by a baron in a futuristic corpo hellscape. Thank fuck it's not cyberpunk themed because I don't think I could handle any more of that. The baron bought MC's mom because sex and the mother just abandoned her son there at age 4 for reasons? And he's rightfully mad. Which, by the grace of whatever you believe in, it's FINALLY not a throwaway incest tale where MC screws his family... Unless Eight, Nine, and Ten somehow end up clones of his mom, in which case I will lose my absolute mind. Moving on, The baron brings the aforementioned trio to his palace(?) they're his new clone wives. Like I said in my previous review, Eight is the pop culture references with androphobia, for good reason. Nine is the motherly type. And Ten is, really, given all the more complex character traits which is a shame. I think it might be a dumb bias toward redheads, which I don't understand, but I couldn't be sure. Either way, Ten is written as a better character than the other two. Sure, Eight was sexually assaulted and is traumatized, rightfully so. But after that it's sunshine and rainbows pretty much. Anyways, the baron brings them home, lets them acclimate as he's away for two weeks, and once he comes home and tries to sleep with them, Eight freaks out. And since every other male is, of course, a rapey goblin troglodyte, the Baron says "Fine then I'll kill you." So MC saves them, is useless, and gets imprisoned.

    So, right here is the first contrivance. The baron is evil, doesn't care about killing, and has total power. Why didn't he immediately kill MC and instead throw him in a prison to kill later? Nobody knows. But the clones rescue him because they're essentially 3 months old or whatever and think "He was nice, lets help him and ruin our lives." Because, you know, they're stupid. They escape, and find jobs on the dark web? Do you ever feel like you're the only person that actually read something? That's what that feels like. A slave with no access to anything but a library and clones that barely know what a TV is found the dark web and accepted the first job they found... Okay. And the snowballing keeps going from here on out. They're just given the crime boss' address, show up, and after they're found out to be green, are given a bogus job by probably the most interesting character in the game. That, to my understanding, had content removed? Why? This is a disservice to everyone, including the dev. If nothing else its ACTUAL early game sexual content to keep the more simple minded users engaged. My only gripe with her is her lines are written for a Russian/slavic accent which I could only assume is a jab at the russian shovelware asset flippers in this "community." But whatever, MC and the gang does a job for her, she likes MC, they leave to find the only nice lady at the cloning facility.

    It's at this point I'm going to tell you, I wrote all of that from memory. Anything written after or during gameplay will be in brackets. The next bit of the story is MC and the clones living at that woman's house attempting to be normal for a bit until Eight gets sick. From there it gets hazy, so I'll pick it apart as I go. They head to light city for a cure, trying to keep it from the other clones. They have to steal it from an abandoned warehouse? Using youtube videos? AGAIN? It's a little lazy to use the same contrivance of "Character watches a youtube video to get through super secure door." more than once. And the clones gush about how MC is the nicest person they've ever met, but he's generously, the 10th person they've ever met. But I guess I gotta put on the "dumb porn game" blindfold, otherwise I'll look too far into it. Then they stand still in the forest for 3 days, I say that because the CG for them in the forest never changes, and find MC's mom. She drops a bombshell on MC and tries to get them fake papers to leave the country. Everything that can go wrong does, and they end up back at Anoushka's. Only this time, her accent is completely unreadable? Her first appearance it was mildly charming and you got what she means. This time, borderline gibberish. They train with her, and instead of getting serious, like MC internally monologues constantly, they treat it like happy fun times goofing off. And suddenly Victor is a doctor that can help Eight with her disease that wasn't cured by the magical cure-all they stole a few chapters earlier. Have you been counting contrivances? Add that to the ticker. And MC has the AUDACITY to say "Nothing's ever easy" But the solution has always fallen into his lap. You get the drugs, get the sex, end of update 11.

    There's a lot of issues. The more I play stories written by the "super writer" the more disillusioned I am by so many simple things that compound on each other to make the story a mess. And the visuals have a lot of issues to. The handgun changes skins in the Zeke gun scene, why weren't we asked to get the "getting peed on" angle with Eight? The extreme closeups need a different field of view because they look weird. And when they get to the "buffet" they're not even looking at stores that have food in them. Also a lot of the poses were so stiff or exaggerated to a straight up T-Pose. And DO NOT tell me that the visuals don't matter when 90% of people "play" this shit for the visuals. Gotta be one or the other. MC just being this encyclopedia of knowledge doesn't make a lot of sense, and the references to these far reaches of books and media just to try to show how big brained he is gets grating. And the sex feels shoe-horned in. Like not only did it take forever to see anything but it also felt rushed at the same time somehow. They all came at weird times and MC never initiated anything it felt a little weird. But whatever, they weren't bad. And this is more to other reviewers/commenters that said stuff about "The man hating one" You'd hate men too if they tried to assault you your whole life. You obviously hate women because they reject you, so maybe a little self-reflection instead of lashing out at pixels on a screen, yeah?

    All in all, I don't hate it. There's more story than most games and thank fuck it's not a throwaway incest tale. The English is good, as always, but there's frequent wording and tensing issues. Which is idd, but they're sparse. The UI is customized, I'll give it that. However the imagebuttons on the main menu overlap each other, making it hard to use. Also you have no way to get to the options menu if you go to the save menu? And the font is default, burn it with fire. The UX suffers a bit for that but it's fine. Art, like I said, it's weird but good. Certain artistic decisions don't make sense to me, but oh well. The dialogue, as always is naturalistic and good to read. Nothing is stiff, but characters are stupid and aren't equally fleshed out. The story is alright but it's walking one contrived story beat to the next. I like it, but it needs work. Do with that what you will.

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  10. 2.00 star(s)

    TFFBladez

    Not a fan of deleting content especially since I liked Anoushka the most out of all the characters you produced and like the idea of seducing the dangerous merc. I know you said possible character in another game but I honestly didn't see a reason why she wouldn't fit here after all you put her in the game yourself and made that an option to romance her, to begin with.
  11. 5.00 star(s)

    ___abbas___

    The story is new and fairly good. The characters are lovable with interesting personalities, good character development so far. A likable MC who is not a wimp nor a jerk. And pretty decent writing.

    Keep up the good work. (y)
  12. 1.00 star(s)

    hyperjack38

    Pros:

    -Great renders.
    -A very interesting story premise and setting.



    Cons:

    -The story itself gets kinda boring and dumb as it goes on.
    -Kinda stupid characters - I understand why the clones r naive and innocent but what I don't understand is why all the other characters act in the same dumb manner.
    -The dialogue is really bland and boring and there's a lot of it. And it's also not as if all that dialogue is needed cause in most cases u can kinda figure out what the conversation is about with the first few lines of the convo . From then on the convo feels like a chore that you need to get through so u can get the specifics of the conversation.


    Tldr: beautiful renders and a great premise executed very poorly.
  13. 5.00 star(s)

    Ghostly

    This is my review for Follow the Leader by SuperWriter version 0.5.
    The good
    • Renders are looking good
    • Characters have different personalities
    • Story is fresh
    • No errors
    • 3+ hours of content
    The bad
    • No music
    • No animations
    In conclusion, 5 stars worth playing.
  14. 4.00 star(s)

    Wicked Garden

    Props to SuperWriter for having the stones to do something different, this story is very dark compared to his other titles but I enjoy it, all the same. The MC isn't the badass "I'm gonna kick everyone's ass" type of main character but he also isn't the Neanderthal, wimpy doofus type of a character also. He's easy to like from where I sit.

    The story as I mentioned is dark, there's slavery, rape, human trafficking the whole nine. I'm just going along on the ride because I wanna to see the girls as well as the MC reach their salvation.... Okay, I totally fucking lied. I'm mostly playing because of Anoushka, the goddess. I want her and Dr. Fisher in a random miniskirts with bras made of grass.
  15. 5.00 star(s)

    JumPin

    As I like games with a Cyberpunk theme and dystopian future, VN captivated me at first, the women are beautiful and with strong personalities, despite not liking the MC's confidence, I believe it will be worked on throughout the plot.

    I liked what I saw and it has a future, I recommend it.
  16. 5.00 star(s)

    haooni

    The game is still in active developement but from what i've seen there are all the premises for another great game by the dev!
    The story is a little different from the usual: you need to help three beautiful girls escape from a powerful villain and in doing so you get to know and appreciate them.
    Each of the main LI (the three girls and others you will encounter later) has her own personality and interests and they're all well thought and written.
    The renders are very good and probably the best ones yet made by SuperWriter (at least for my preferences).
    Bonus point because the dev is active on the forum, interacts and takes into consideration the opinions of the fans (a prime example is the recent promotion of a side character to main LI).
  17. 5.00 star(s)

    b3488c87

    Well since the release I have been enchanted with the story, a premise of breaking free from slavery by becoming a fugitive. With Women who on one hand are charming`(sexy) and at the same time innocent, in a science fiction world.
    I am in love with the story, the characters and scenarios are very good
  18. 5.00 star(s)

    Spatenklopper

    In advance.
    I don't like science fiction stories.
    I don't like stories with "mythical creatures" either.
    My history with SuperWriter games began with Picture Perfect, which I loved and still play to this day.
    Then came Secret Summer, which has now entered the lineup of great games.
    And then all of a sudden, SuperWriter throws my world upside down.
    Suddenly there was Sun Breed, which I ignored for an extremely long time due to my dislike of mystical creatures, eventually I tried it anyway and the story hooked me within minutes.

    When Follow the Leader appeared on the scene, I immediately gave the game a chance because I liked all previous SuperWriter games and what can I say, you managed to at least rethink my aversion to science fiction with this game.

    It's refreshingly well written (like all your stories) and you can quickly bond with the game characters.
    Although it is science fiction, it is not an extremely utopian and unbelievable scenery and you captivated me right away with the first release.

    I'm excited to see where the journey takes you with all your games and rest assured I'll be watching you for a long time. :)
  19. 4.00 star(s)

    dmico

    Reviewed as at v0. 4a

    This is my second game from SuperWriter, and it's already my favorite from the developer.

    Gameplay: It has been good so far; I enjoy the choice based play through. I was initially gutted I missed the scene with the character that piques my interest, Anoushka, due to my prior choices. But I'm glad SuperWriter revised and changed it in v 0.4. Other than that, it has been a smooth play through so far.

    Graphics and character design: I have no technical knowledge here, but the models for the LIs are great. All four LIs are beautiful with diverse looks that should appeal to a wide range of players. My favorites so far are Anoushka (the eye patch and scar elevates her looks, for me) and ten.

    Content: This has been a slow paced game in terms of content so far. That has been my only gripe, but it's understandable and consistent with the characters introduced based on the story at this update. That said, the scene from v0. 3 was really good, and I can't wait to see more content in later updates.

    Story: It's not the most interesting or captivating story, but it has been a decent one with a good pace and consistent plot. My favorite aspect of the story is how each character's personality is distinct, and the MC isn't written from a 'black and white' perspective; the mc has a perfect balance depending on the choices of the player. Anyway, It's still at the early stages of development, so there isn't much to say. I will wait for future updates to have a better review on the story.

    Overall: It is a solid game, and I have enjoyed my playthrough so far. I'll recommend it to those who aren't looking for anything too complex yet not generic. It doesn't get a 5-star rating from me due to the amount of content, and the story still hasn't fully drawn me in yet.
  20. 5.00 star(s)

    LazyPanda

    One of my favorite projects from SuperWriter.

    from Design and Graphical prespective:
    Daz3D will provide very limited assets to creators, mix and matching those assets together to sit well on the eyes of viewers is the other challenge; I’m glad to say SuperWriter overcame these challenges, some models should be pretty familiar with Daz3d novel enthusiasts other than that renders are decent.

    Storywise:
    This is the spot where SuperWriter shines the most, he puts you in a world where technology is more advanced (around 20 or 30 years from where we are). But this time you are neither the hero or villain of the story, you are a normal person trying to survive.
    Every character develops at a different pace, which makes them more interesting.
    And on the plus side you got a rare MC which neither is a complete imbecile or a six brained mega nerd.

    Overall: this game might not be a revolutionary one, but it's the one that worth your time, you will bond with all the characters, enjoy the journey
    and things might get spicey here and there...

    Reviewed on Version: v0.4a