VN - Ren'Py - Harem Hotel [v0.18.2] [Runey]

Harem Hotel—a name that gives off little sense of depth at first glance, appearing like just another run-of-the-mill R18 game. Six years have passed, and it's fair to say the character models and scenes now seem somewhat dated, limited by the early technical constraints. Of course, you could argue they're still serviceable.

But the real charm of this game absolutely isn't about those overused intimate scenes typical of the genre. Odd as that may sound for an R18 title. Perhaps it's like that old joke: we often seek risqué content in ordinary games, but delve deeply into the storylines of adult games. Undeniably, the storyline of Harem Hotel is nothing short of top-tier.

Maybe my perspective is shaped by the current trends among big companies, obsessed with DEI initiatives and various forms of shallow political correctness. They bend over backward to gloss over the cracks in our decaying world, yet can't even tell a proper fairy tale anymore.

Back to Harem Hotel, the tenants—along with the protagonist—are all brought together by their respective struggles and disillusionments. Some may seem glamorous on the surface, while others carry heartbreakingly heavy burdens. Yet in one way or another, they are individuals rejected by their previous environments, and in a broader sense, outcasts from society itself.

Why do people become society's outcasts? It’s because we love using labels to divide ourselves, to prove our superiority and righteousness. By doing so, we trample on others, standing on their shoulders—or even enslaving them—to elevate ourselves. In the world of this game, humans refuse to tolerate beings different from themselves, reject the eccentricity of geniuses, fail to protect the precious innocence of childhood, deny shelter to those who seek independence, avoid teaching privileged youths to understand and love the world, disregard the altruistic efforts from some of the religious, and certainly won’t accept challenges to their dominance from anything new.

But how different is reality from this game’s world? Perhaps it’s even worse. After all, people today are merely not called slaves anymore. Naturally, it’s in the obscure corners of the internet, through R18 games like this, that we can finally find some sharp critiques of our twisted reality.

Sure, the plotlines or characters' methods of resistance in such games may occasionally seem naive or simplistic. But I’m still comforted by the fact that there are ordinary people out there whose hearts carry seeds of idealism.

On the other hand, it’s been a long time since I’ve encountered works willing to sharply critique topics often avoided in real life—be it monopolistic capitalism, selfish interpretations of free speech, or even the commercialization and superficiality of gift-giving and love. And there are so many more enlightening lines to find. Outside of the works of past greats, I’d never imagined I could find such resonance in an R18 game.

And that, precisely, is the charm of Harem Hotel.

May a pure and beautiful world forever have a place in people’s hearts.

By far my favorite game I've played on here. Absolutely fantastic, can't wait to see where it goes. So much content already and it feels like there's still plenty to come. The characters were all interesting and engaging, and it feels as though you can play at your own pace, while also still feeling like there's stakes when story events happen. Keep up the amazing work, can't wait to see what the future has in store.

This game is one of my favorites, and it's one of the best I've ever played, and I've played a lot of them. The characters are beautiful and charismatic, you easily get attached to them. The scenes are very good and the game doesn't lag, preventing progress.

Harem Hotel is a fantastic game.. if you've never played any rendition of a dating sim/visual novel in your life.

First of all, to suggest that this game is bad would be inherently dishonest. It isn’t. I've given it 4 stars (it's closer to 3.6ish than 4) because I do genuinely like a fair few parts of it. Many of the elements within this game jell quite well with each other. A fair few of the stories presented are actually quite compelling and offer interesting insight into topics that aren’t frequently used in visual novels. The development between the characters is very varied and have unique pacing, meanwhile, there’s a large enough ensemble within the cast that you’re bound to like someone. Even a character that you initially disliked, may later become someone who genuinely grows on you.

But that’s the thing, this game is like a spring. It shoots out quickly, with great force, leaving you with a “wow!”. But then, as time passes, and the spring lands on the ground, it crashes loudly and starts becoming so interwoven by the force of its springs hitting the ground that it becomes just a jumbled piece of scrap.

That’s how I feel about this game.

The overwhelming majority of my enjoyment factor of this game comes in the early parts of it. The longer it goes, the more messy the main story becomes, the more characters there are who feel like they’re just added to fill in some sort of gap.

Here's an example.

Have you heard of the Harem Hotel? We have the nymphomaniac, we have the daddy problems girl, we have the goodie-two-shoes girl, we have the regular girl, we have the.. robot girl? Eh, why not. We have sisters who are twins, is that weird? No problem! Hare you go, we have sisters who aren’t twins. We have the big titty elf, we have the small titty elf, we have the medium titty elf, we have the edgy elf.

Uhh, what are we missing? That’s right, we have the autistic girl, we have the “awkward friend” girl, we have-..

I think you get the point.

When all you’re doing is filling in the quota, what you’re effectively building upon is less so an organic world, but more so a puzzle that you’re trying to complete. It might be fun to do as a writer, but it’s less so enjoyable when it comes to actually going through a story. Now, taking a step back, it’s not as though you can’t write compelling stories by setting up a bizarre cast of characters. People are different, that’s true, but if you talk to enough people, you come to notice how much overlap there is between each and every one of our problems. While the character might differ, we have overwhelmingly similar likes, wants and needs in life.

Fundamentally, people are often more similar than they are different. It’s the reason why even with strange characters, you find yourself drawn in by their stories. If you disregard their demeanour, if you truly listen to what they’re saying, you can almost hear the same words leave your own lips.

Here’s an example. Let’s take Ashley, who I consider pretty much the only properly explored character in this entire game. Her story arc caught me completely off guard. While I was initially going through this game, years back, with my dick in hand, it actually made me stop furiously grappling the hog. Now, as a late teen-gooner myself, this was a shocking revelation. A porn game.. that can make me feel things?
Can this be? Is this a new world, is this the greatest game ever made?

Naturally, however, none of the character stories actually appealed even remotely as much to me as Ashley’s did. I was like a druggie chasing that first high I got, all those years back, coming back to my drug dealer, hopefully and naively hoping to relive something. And yet it never came.

As dramatic as that personal anecdote of a tale I gave you was, the rest of the “main” character stories do not suck. Some of them are good. Some are even almost great. But they are not the majority of this game’s plot. There is no other way to describe the main story of this game other than “compulsive reading”. Like the book that you pretended to read back in 8th grade for your literature class, I pretend that I’m reading something of value.

I’ll keep the “main story segment” short. It’s fine enough to not fall asleep to, but you won’t derive any special meaning from anything that it’s trying to say. Parts of it come off as very preachy, parts of it are extremely random, and some parts are fairly good. However, it’s never consistent. It’s a mish-mash of ideas. I wouldn’t mind a story that’s trying to do either of these three elements, as long as they were done well, but what’s presented here seems like something I’d write in my journal on a late night after a drink.

Ultimately, focus on fewer girls, enrich their stories further, instead of introducing new ones that are “completely different and unique” from everything beforehand. It’ll come off as more organic, more enjoyable to read, and you’ll be more drawn into the world that the story is trying to present. If I cared more about the characters, I might pay more attention to the story itself (if it wasn’t obvious, the only truly good parts about this game are the characters and their internal stories).

The gameplay. Oh god, how much it sucks flaccid cock. The waiters in McDonalds have to go through less menus in a day than you do when playing this game for five minutes. If you’ve ever experienced the grueling and grating feeling of opening doors in resident evil, this game will finally put the final bullet into your carpal tunnel ridden body.

Want to interact with a girl? Sure. Let’s go to her room. Click upstairs, click upstairs again, click on the door, click to select an option. Woops, she’s not here. Click downstairs, click downstairs again, is she in the living room? No? Let’s check the kitchen, click on the kitchen, click on the side room of the kitchen, nothing here. Okay. Let’s check the bath, click out of the kitchen, click onto the bath part of the house, open the bath, woops, wrong girl.
Let’s try going outside, - ah, shit, now we’ve initiated a new quest for a completely different girl.

This is MOST of the gameplay that you’ll experience in this game, past a certain point, and it’s genuinely mentally exhausting. It’s like a more autistic version of Where's Waldo.

Then there’s the way that the “porn” part of the game is done. Let’s get some small details over. This game uses the good ol’ honey select models. They don’t exactly look amazing, but when it comes to 3d models/2d art, it’s more so how you utilize the medium you’re given, and less so the fidelity of the given tool. I find the way the characters are presented to be appealing enough to draw eroticism from the situations that your character is thrown in. Moreover, the designs range from good to great, and generally nothing under that.

So you might think, ah, so the porn game actually does the porn elements well? That’s perfect, that’s just what I wanted-

A-a-ah! Not so fast. Here’s the kicker. While a lot of the scenes are quite effortful, well framed, and well animated…
...They end and start extremely abruptly. They last less than England does in the FIFA world cup, and are never enough to get a proper squeeze out. One moment you’re hit with a sex scene, and you think to yourself, alright, great, let’s start the deed! - aaand it’s over.

There’s not enough characterizing dialogue in the sex scenes either. There’s too many one liners and not enough characterization being done. I hate the “ah, that feels good oni-chan” dialogue as much as the other coomer, but this is an overcorrection. It feels too piecemeal and is simply just not enough.

And then, as if there weren’t enough insults to injury with all of that combined, it hits you with some completely tonally different storyline right after almost every other sex scene. The amount of blue balls I’ve gotten playing this game is astounding. Purely porn games are fine, heavy story games with light porn elements are fine. But this isn't either of those. And if it is trying to be either, it hasn’t managed to hit the sweet spot.

Now, having said all that, let me share something with you. A cat does not have the ability to understand that two doors can lead into the same room. If the room in which their feeding bowl is has multiple doors, the cat will think it has multiple bowls. It will come into the room through door A, see "I have no food", will leave the room through door A and come back through door B to check if the other feeding bowls are also empty.
This also works with windows and doors. Cats can look through a window/door and see "It's raining", and then go and check another window/door to see if it's raining outside of the other “outside”, too.

Now, you might be thinking, Hey man, what the fuck did you just make me read? What does that have to do with Harem Hotel? Why should I care about some random cat fact on a website about porn games?

Well, my dear friend, you just experienced what it’s like reading Harem Hotel.

Thanks for reading.

(P.S, Ashley is the only girl that’s worth fighting for. Fuck the harem, become a Based Monogamy Enjoyer, today.)

Harem Hotel, a simple yet complex adventure, it feels like a voyage through heaven without reaching it, it has a complex lore, good character with a good background, the characters feel like almost alive, you can feel the love for the protagonist, this case you, if i had to summarize in a few words they would be, elegant, simple, deep, complex and heart-touching.

This game combines a good story with beautiful characters, good renders and good animations, a true masterpiece.

v0.18 review

Overall this is a very solid game with just a little too much stat and money grinding.

The plot is pretty basic: You inherit a hotel for women, women move in, you trigger events with them to increase relationship and eventually you're having sex with all of them. And there are so many women. Probably too many women, honestly. Eight main LIs and 10ish "side" LIs but the the only real differences are slightly less content for the side characters and you (thankfully) don't have to work on their stats. The women are pretty stereotypical but everyone is three-dimensional: no one is just a frigid bitch or cock-crazed slut even if they seem to be on first meeting.

The stats were my main turnoff. Every main character has 8-10 stats that need to be trained 10 times each. Most of this is optional but you'll be playing along and suddenly hit a grayed-out option in a lady's story requiring her to be a BJ expert or Exhibitionist and, unless you don't care about the scene, need to pause progression for a week or two while you train her.

The money economy is also not great. I tried to treat it as a way of controlling access to content but later on, even with a maxed out bar and a full hotel, you won't be making nearly enough to purchase some of the characters without cheats or heavy grinding.

Overall I got a bunch of enjoyable hours out of this but eventually hit a point where the grind wasn't worth the payoff and I had to either use a mod or stop playing.

This was the first game of this genre that I tried and after trying a few others, this game is still considered the best!
A roster of different and awesome characters, basic but understandable progression, some minor management gameplay (I like) and damn so much content!
This game is almost perfect, and I'm only nitpicking when I mention that I would have liked a bit more fleshed out management gameplay of your hotel. You can do nothing wrong by checking this game out.

Love everything about this game, cant wait for more. The characters, story, and sex scenes are all good and lets you tailor your content to your liking very easily. Also there are unique mechanics and stats I haven't seen in other visual novels.

I wanna play wia other girls ;_; Really like harem theme but whenever ı play harem games im tired of being male. I hope i'll find another game like this. Yersterday i dream about that red hair girl btw ^-^

I haven't seen such an amazing and compelling story in any VN before this. I don't even know how the story will even continue past the point it is at v0.18 but I expect greatness. I haven't seen such masterful storytelling and gripping scenes before! Runey has surpassed expectation. The graphics, the art, the story, the animation, the world building, the ambition... I hope to see this game complete. While not as replayable as other games, I do not fault it because there is so much to unlock in a single playthrough, more than in multiple playthroughs of other games which lock content behind choices. I have never enjoyed a railroaded game so much in my life (and I mean no hate in the use of the word railroad). In fact, the story is so compelling I kind of wish it was more railroaded. It takes me out when I am too far ahead in one character's path and they show up in another's before all the things I went through, or vice versa. I kind of wish more of the story made me wait. It already does it with some portions, i.e. you should level up more with this character in order to finish the others story. I do love that this game goes full harem. It doesn't lock any content from you or force you to choose one girl (at least yet). I love how much the stories intertwine and I hope Runey can finish the game within the next few years. Amazing stuff. 10/10.

This might be the best lewd game on ichio
there is no real gameplay (welcome to renpy)
but you at least don't have to get 10 blowjobs to unlock sex...

1 thing i dislike is that you need to advance relationship with girl B to progress with girl A...its a bit unnecessary, many of the sex scenes can't be repeated and economic aspect of the game start ugly and need cheat just to end with passive stacks of cash per day and nothing to use it on

best aspect might be ability to change what girl wear not just for sex, but daily (even if most clothes/costumes are just for 1 scene)
you can also train a girl in specific kink-related aspects
give the best girls pet-name for roleplay and dominate them in restricted manner

majority of the lifting in my review does the content...game is BIG
Character design is nice, its not great, but its not lazy 3d models
game also have music, but no sound effects or voice
i don't mind no voice when game is long, but sound effects would do solid work for sex scenes

Dios mio que adictivo es el jueguito, ya que le agarras el ritmo es muy dificil dejar de jugarlo, aunque tiene muchos errores en la programacion que hace que me salte a cada rato una pantalla de error, pero como esta no afecta en la progresion y se quita de repente no es muy molesta, se siente mas como esos anuncios emergentes de google, claro que no jugue con la actualizacion que se adjunta en las descargas, pero aun sin esta el juego es muy bueno.

How have I missed playing this AVN? Oh yes I have not been a fan of the HS style till recently, but it is growing on me. Skipping the HS style I have found this AVN to be really entertaining. The story is very good. Lot's of allegories in the story which give the story a deeper meaning that the run of the mill harem style story. Found very few spelling and syntax errors which is always a big plus. Thank you for entertaining us Dev and for making this AVN for us.

this is one of the OG h games. it has some great animations and a very interesting story. of course there are some moments where i thought it was a little dialog heavy but those where few and far between. i can look over that my reason elves the elves make this game what it is. lin has the best character development and it is honestly the best part of the game. i hope runey keeps working on this one and i look forward to the final release .

I replayed this game recently after not playing it for a couple of years, and I feel like I entered a small fever dream.

First of all, the actual lewd stuff is good. The models are good, the costumes are hot, the actual sexual acts you can do are varied and well done.

The characters, by just personality. Are...decent to okay? Well to start off, The protag just straight doesn't have one. At the start of the game you can make some decisions or dialogue options. But as you get further into the game the more quiet and tag-along your character becomes. Which isn't great, because you begin to wonder what's the point of him aside from his dick. The main girls range from fun to kinda annoying. The blonde one makes my eyes glaze over when I read her scenes but whatever. The others are fun enough.

The music and other accessories are....passable. There's some of your standard sandbox gameplay features to pad out the time a bit, but nothing that annoyed me. The music is basically one looping track which can get a little stir crazy.

The story though. Jesus christ. Look, I'm all for going bold with your narrative, and a porn game doing stuff like that is cool. But uh, the one for this game is...not it chief.
The whiplash between doing climax denial with a girl and then her next event is her being found as 'tainted blood' and having her social security stripped away and essentially jailed is....
Well it's a choice. It's certainly a choice.

And a lot of the character story lines are like that. Just wild swings for the rafters in terms of themes and tone. A lot of them don't land. A lot of them are kinda cringe, and a lot of them perhaps are suited in a game where you don't do slave play with your elf.
(Like seriously, in the second half of the game your character kinda follows along with this whole 'rebel against slavery' but also you can have your character be like, fine with it? It reminds me of half of the anime isekais where for some reason the protag always gets a slave and it's seen as a romantic thing.)

I guess my review of this is...seriously written scenes about interment camps and threesomes with a robot and an elf dressed in slutty costumes should not be 20 minutes apart.

The robot and elf are hot slutty tho.

I wasn't at all thrilled at first sight, and the early stages of the game didn't necessarily make me a fan either. But the further you get into the story, the more you get to know the characters. And then it gets interesting!
Well, it's not Shakespear either, but you end up feeling sympathy and even affection for some of them.
In short, a very pleasant surprise which, in view of its development, still has more in store for us.

My favorite adult game. It's telling me I have to write 200 characters. I just wanted to give it five stars. The girl's stories are actually decent, and the world itself is interesting. Never really cared about the world in one of these games before, usually just try to click through as fast as possible.

(v.0.17 review)
It's a very good game with interesting mechanics. Here are some of my impressions:

-Story: There is no actual main plot, instead, we have a plot for every "main" girl and also some small plots for "side" girls. So... Are they good? Yes, They were... until you get past the first 40 hours (game is too long, 60+ hours so far), after that, it becomes somewhat boring and predictable. In my humble opinion The developer is extending stories way too much which is causing more harm than good to the game, He should just give it closure. By now, I think no one is expecting anything fantastic here, dude, a simple "and they lived happily ever after" after one last plot will do.

-Characters: Main girls are great, some of them are annoying at the beginning, however, when you get to know their backgrounds you kind of understand them and get to like them, except for Pixel who is the exact opposite. About side girls, some of them are good like Sylvia and Ellen, others I simply didn't care to complete their stories like Hana and Moon. MC is too fking quiet even during sex scenes when he is being rough, dam that was annoying, also, for some reason, the girls ,when fking, it feels like they become the same girl, I mean they all speak the same way (no identity), this is a serious writing problem.

- Music: There is only one track playing the whole time (u get to choose 1 out 3 tracks on the menu), during sad times there is another one and that's it, so... it's not good.

- Renders/Animations: It's clearly outdated, however I think it's good for the engine (HS1)

- Playability: I liked the fact that I had to "level up" my girls. Dungeon was great. During the first ten hours you can roam the city which was good (but eventually you get everything done there and never come back because there is no longer a reason).

Overall the game has very memorable moments and it's worth checking out, I hope the developer gives it some closure soon. So far I'd give it an 8/10. I have to confess that at some point for me this was a 9/10 but as I said before it's becoming an unnecessarily long game, so it is an 8/10 .

It took a long time to encourage myself to play this game, it seemed to me to be just a game focused on sex scenes without any context. I couldn't be more wrong. The dev is a genius when it comes to writing. The girls' backstory goes from funny to completely dark and sad. There is also a deep reflection on sexuality, family, religion, slavery, and artificial intelligence. The animations, which number hundreds, are very well done, perhaps the best I've ever seen in a VN. This game is simply a masterpiece.

Couple of years ago I would have easily given this a 4*, but that point has long since passed.
The update frequency dropped to about once a year, and they absolutely NOT of the size that would warrant such a long dev time.
The "adult" part of this "adult" VN receives barely any content at all.
And the story took a shift from being about the characters to being about the world. Unfortunately, the world of HH is stupid, illogical and not interesting. Runey is simply too bad of a writer to make his absolute nonsense of stories engaging and interesting. Every plot line has to be "grandiose" and world changing, without the basis to warrant that.
The visuals are HS1, outdated but not the worst. There is no real gameplay to speak of.
The second star is only there because of the past content this VN has.
A shame to see what has become of what used to be one of my favorite games here.