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

(17.2 reviewed)

I'll start my review with a statement, that this is not that bad of a game, and it does some things right. Orgasm denial/control scenes are hot, bdsm scenes at the dungeon are nicely done, and some characters are written very well. I really like Kali (nerd archetype girl) and Autumn (religious prude archetype). They have a more mature and self-reliant outlook on life, they try to deal with their problems and lives by themselves, and I found these qualities really attractive in women. Graphics are also decent enough. Unfortunate, that's pretty much about it on positive sides of the game, after this point I'll start to criticize various aspects of the game in descending order, starting with (in my opinion) the biggest issues and working my way downward to smaller ones.

-The story of the game is dark. Not that funny kind of dark, or a little bit dark (slavery is legal in this world); no the more you progress in the game, the more nightmare fuel the game will throw at you. It is gruesome contrast between colorful graphics of the game and the rot (societal/political variation) that has overtaken the world. If this indeed was intention of the author of the game, I applaud to him, because he clearly succeed, but I don't think it will make a good fapping game. At some point it is fairly explicitly hinted, that slavery is not the main problem and there is darker plot looming. I think anyone with some knowledge of 20th century history will understand what I'm talking about.
There are two specific cases, that I'd like to bring to your attention, that will serve a fine example of darkness in this game.
-Most of the girls are mentally unstable, emotional messes with untreated daddy issues. I sometimes feel that it is borderline unethical to make my personal harem with such material. One of the girls the other . Worse, that you (player) are in a position of emotionally regulate and 'fix' these girls, and there is not a whole lot that you can do about it (other than pressing 'skip' button). I do not think it is wise to burden player with all of these angst.
-Girl progression is intertwined, you can't really progress with your favorite girl without progressing with other girls. So, your favorite girls will go within a package deal with girls that you have no interest in. And their emotional baggage will be part of that deal (previous problem amplified).
-The protagonist is barely present in the story, he is a plot device to participate in every activity that current encounter with the girl required. Even if it does put him in mortal danger. At certain points in the story he . All of these ordeals were either due to some girl's (stupid) plan, or as a consequence of girl's previous actions. I'd really like to see a more levelheaded, pragmatic protagonist, who doesn't put his head to the chopping block for something that he has no stake in. Or even an asshole protragonist who doesn't care about all of the slavery stuff and wants to have his fun with girls. Or hell, even a virtuous non-stupid protagonist with agency. But this spineless plot-device? I'd rather not.
-Girl individual progression is grindy. Let's say that I want to make my nerd sweetheart an exhibitionist. I will need total of 10 activities, before she will acquire a corresponding perk. But there are only 4 unique activities, so I have to grind and re-do some of them to train my girl in the way I like.
-After some moment, game writing will degrade into lore-lecturing. I don't have a problem with studying the lore of a game, but it has done poorly with rather big and unappealing walls of text.
-Game economy is not working well. It is lacking meaningful choices and feels grindy. Luckily, the game will give you exact amount of money to progress somewhat painlessly.

Oh, boy, I think I'm finished. In my third section, I will try to think on how this game could become better.
First of all, Prozac does exist, and I heard it is even helpful.
Second if player does not want to participate in liberation of elves, politics and dangerous activities, there should be an option to opt out of such content.
Third, if player does not want to be an emotional regulator and listen to girl's traumatic past, there should be an option to avoid it. I read at the discord of the dev, that he plans to make all of the sexual scenes optional, well how about to make all daddy issues and angst optional?
Fourth, if player does not want to interact with a girl, there should be a path that avoids her content. Situations, where progression for one girl is blocked by events of the other girl are abysmal.
Fifth, I firmly believe that Protagonist Life Matters. Therefore there should be choices that will help the player to associate themselves with protagonist. Perhaps by meaningful roleplay choices, that will have some consequences and give him a sense of agency and make him actually a character.
Sixth, fetish perk acquirement should be redesigned to remove grind. Perhaps it will be a good idea to tie them to the quantity of the unique events that the game currently has. If there is only 5 exhib events, you could have a perk if you correctly find 3 or 4 of such unique events.
Seventh, game's economy should be overhauled to make it interesting to the player. Perhaps even cut it away completely, for it has no purpose as of now.

Conclusion:
I am fully aware, that all of these will make the game more of a sandbox style game, but I think, that such development will be good for the game.
Do I recommend the game? Only if you have special mod to remove grind and if you are ready to skip tons of bizarre content.

Story 2/5
Main story is ok even though it goes a bit to crazy with the AI stuff for my taste, theres alot of side stories with main girls and some smaller one with side girls as well where some are ok others are bland and pretty boring, one contains rape as well.

The biggest issue for me is still all the forced shit, you cant progress without being forced to have sex with all the main LIs, hate em or love em you got no controle and you cant skip them, some are even tied together so you cant progress the one you want without first doing one you might hate, its really the worst kind of sandbox setup and it feels extremly kineitc.

Dont forget harem does not mean forced LIs theres a word for that (fuckfest) harem should always be optional as to whos in it or not.

I wish devs would learn that a LIs story dosent have to be connected to the sex scenes, it would be very easy to make it so your just helping them as friends so you could avoid the sex scenes with those you dont like so its a bit idiotic doing it the way its done in this one.

You can skip some side girls story but not main girls, so you have to like crazy LIs, Loly, small to big tits, religion types, whore types and so on, most people arent into everything so it being forced is just a shitty build for a game.

Theres no MC, the real main characters are all the LIs and its their stories you follow, you never have any kind of choices and the "MC" is more or less just a dog on a leash getting draged along for the ride, its meaningless and makes for a very boring game where you as the player really arent part of anything that is going on, your just watching everything unfold.

This is also why im pretty supprise the game has such a high rating.

On top of all of that its an insane grind, every LI you need to grind up relationship points, lust, sluttiness, exhibitionism, submission, affection and some has obedience as well and it goes all the way up to 100 points in most of those and you gain one point at a time and with multiple LIs it just adds up to a crazy grindfest doing the same shit over and over a million times.

Also not a fan of rape, and Ashley pretty much rapes MC since hes sleeping and she rides him the second he wakes up not asking if its ok or anything and what do you do as MC absolutly nothing, you cant get pissed, its the same shit as always where MC is just submissive and just watch and allow everything to happen MC dosent say a single word doing the hole rape/sex act not one? he should trow her ass out of the hotel right there and then but game truely just is so bad since theres just no MC which this scene clearly shows when MC dosent even speake one word in that scene or even after.....
And how game dosent have rape tag i dont know, if it happens even once the tag should be there and its clearly rape since MC never gave any consent to Ashley for her to fuck him.

Next time you go to Ashley its like it never happened and she ask MC to go to the beach? MC just follows along yet again? not a word about the rape the night before, all Ashley say is she gave MC a BJ? even though she just raped him?, how the hell did this game get such a high rating?

On a side note the virgin scenes are awefull as well, Ashley just slams MCs huge dick in to her pussy in one go, 0 pain 0 blood so yet another fail in this game.

Girls 3/5
A bit outdated now a days but still decent, theres an ok diversity in builds but mostly aimed for people with big tit fetish when it comes to main girls.

Animations 2/5
Ive seen alot better HS animations, its not that they are really bad but they are below average.

Music 2/5
Standard background tune which gets annoying in the long run.

Choices 1/5
When it comes to main story and main girls its an all out kinetic novel, only reason it gets 1 point is due to being able to close to some side girls story.

MC -10/5
It has to be the worst MC ive ever played, how can you make a game where there is no MC? when hes getting raped or fucked he says 0 words...0...he has no backbone no present in the game hes simply just not there, its like your just watching stuff happen having absolutly no controle in anything.

Sandbox 2/5
Its just way to much of a grind and repeats, i give it two points since i like the fact that you can upgrade stuff in the hotel.

Again i just dont see how it ever got such a high rating it just makes no sense.

This is one of if not the best AVN I've ever played. I think this was the first real introduction I had to the modern Ren'Py games with the ability to use the scroll wheel to go back and experiment some with choices. While there were some mild annoyances to me, everything for the most part tied together pretty well. I actually grew to care a lot about almost every one of the main characters, surprisingly including some whom I didn't think I'd like.

The game is extremely laid back with letting you do whatever you want in whatever order and having no deadlines or objectively wrong choices since you can recover from anything. You need to increase some girls to progress others, so you can't actually fully ignore any of them which ironically is a pretty big benefit since it got me to advance girls I otherwise might not have cared much for.

There are somewhat "repetitive" stats to grind up for each character, but luckily if you don't care to rewatch certain scenes ten times to cap a stat you can just hold Ctrl to skip through and just get the stats up. Any grinds like that aren't a big deal since they go by extremely quickly.

I'm looking forward to what the future holds for this.

Very good game. Lots of repeatable scenes and a mixture of various stories and quests keep it interesting. The older scenes need to redone and brought up to modern quality however. And it would also help to improve the speed of some scenes to add to the erotica.

10/10
Just trying to keep a list of games I've played already.

Good characters, lots of storywriting
Somewhat immersive worldbuilding
Decent dialogue,
Forgettable MC, has no personality except that he's caring
Sex is great, specially once the dungeon was introduced
a little grindy
Play time was about ~20 hours.

Even if the updates take a while (a year in the current case) the game is still amazing. The writing is done well, character designs are really nice and the animations are very smooth.
One of my favorite titles on the site and one that I am willing to wait extended periods of time for updates on since the content is just that good.

Nice game, very interactive and you can feel like the main MC.

I'm excited and I'll wait till the next update.

Keep it Up with the game. I'll go and play the different routes right now.

Have a great day!

Edit: v0.18
I decided to give this one last chance since it was meh last time but not horrible and at this point it's a lot of hours played. I should have trusted my gut because I fell for the good 'ol sunken cost fallacy. First off, this has been going on for far too many years without resolution, but what does the Runey do? He keeps adding characters. Now I love harem games, it's one of the reasons I started playing and even supporting favorite VN's, but with eight main girls, it was already going to be hard to get all their stories done in a timely manner. Add to that the constant cliffhangers the time that it's been in development, and you get fatigue of the following:

1. Bruh it's a harem game you need an MC to be the protagonist or to at least be an active participant with a personality. If this personality can't be defined by the choices of the player at least the story needs to add it. Instead we've got a doll with no agency just a faceless dick literally.
2. The stories are focusing on breaking at your heartstrings. However, at certain point it stops being emotional, and you just get tired and want it to end and not in a good way. Instead we get more characters having their tragedies because now you need to have every girl have their tragedy. There’s a thing called empathy fatigue and I think this has crossed it.
3. The side girls have too many stories slowing down the already slow progression of the main harem girls. In fact, some of stories make me think it would be better to add them as main girls, but there’s been no indication that they actually will become main girls.
4. The final occupant of the empty room still hasn't been added after years of development. Again this is where cutting side girl content could come into place.
5. The Sandbox nature without a true quest log makes it kind of hard to know when an event will be triggerable. Especially when many of them can only occur on certain times or days making you need to skip time. Instead you have to figure out the checklist of items.
6. The grind oh dears gods the grind is too much because you need to do repeats of the same sex scenes to increase stats of girls like gaining the exhibitionist trait.
7. The lack of pregnancy. Runey has basically "it only makes sense at the of the story". I might be inclined to think this reasonable if the topic was not touched upon like other games do. Except plenty of time has obviously passed in the game with no protection and several girls have mentioned scenes where they are trying to get pregnant. It’s been mentioned enough that it no longer makes sense to that pregnancy isn’t occurring or at the very least addressing why it’s not happening i.e. low fertility or sterility. This is especially true since MC goes along with whatever the main girls want and at least one has expressed interest in doing it at that moment.

This used to be one of my favorites, but I'm finally done. There has been no resolutions because the author keeps piling on things. I’m beginning to suspect there is no exit plan and the author wants to milk this. With that I'll go fap elsewhere.

Old review:
It left me feeling meh because the MC is not the protagonist of the story. Instead the harem members are the true protagonists. Aside from that we have a completely passive MC who goes with the flow because you don't actually make any decisions making this more of a kinetic novel than a visual novel. Then there's the grind at this point I feel spending more time grinding than doing anything even with cheats. Aside from that there's elves supposed slavery but with rights. I'm sure this is done mostly because of another site, but this kind of makes the story feel a little awkward at certain points. This is because at times consent for the elves is dubious at best, and yet it keeps emphasizing that all elves should consent first. Overall the story feels like it's missing something to make it good.

Somehow this game had a pretty interesting worldbuilding, a sort of grounded fantasy. And the girls who inhabits this word are a good balance between well render and quite interesting.

You can "play" with this girls, either "trainning" them or learn aboth their lifes in a actual sanbox mechanics that allows to choose what girl you want to progress with relative freedom (cause some paths are intertwine).

So yeah, its worth the chance, its a fine game in the right spot to apeal both, sandbox and linear story fans

I just finished the game and it was incredible. I had a good time with every character in this game. Even though the sex scene don't really have sound effect. It was great. Though not all games is perfect. But i would say this game is good enough to have a good time. Can't wait to see the 1.8 update release. Really wondering the continuation of every character.

Hands down my favorite. The models and scenes are great and there is plenty of variety, and it deserves 5 stars for that alone, but what I love most about it is the story. Often, I will skip dialogue in these games, but this is very well written, and you actually start to feel vested in the characters.

I thought I would end up hating this due to my personal preferences but luckily most weirdo kinks are avoidable and don't prevent you from progressing through each girl's main story.

Even though the plot is ridiculous you can't expect more from a game with this title. The girls and lewd scenes are excellent and are the highlight of this game. What can be taken seriously are some of the girls' stories and you may become emotionally attached to a few of them because of this.

Even though slavery is a bit of a turn-off, you can make your relationship with them as normal as possible by having them call you by your name and most abusive actions with them are optional. There is also a plotline where you work to help free elves from slavery. I always appreciate the option to be sort of a good guy in games like this.

Another downside is the lack of background NPCs and finished content within the city. I assume these will be added and completed with future updates but it makes it significantly less immersive when you're out and about with or without the girls.

Overall, highly recommend giving this a shot and look forward to future updates to fix some of the glaring issues.

Basically this game is like a mixed between fantasy literatures about elves, the history of Conquistador, the history of French Revolution, the lore of Isola from Disco Elysium, and a little bit of Detroit: Become Human. That's all you need to know about Harem Hotel.

Usually I like to make long reviews, but I'm not in the mood for it. Four stars for now since the game hasn't finished. I will change it for the better or worse when it's complete.

Edit: hmm the longer you play Harem Hotel, the longer this game looks like a mix between The Elder Scrolls, Disco Elysium, and Detroit: Become Human. Very interesting.

Edit 2: Long review soon, I'm still kinda lazy to write it.

Edit 3: Long review will never come. My reviews on any Honey Select games were removed by a moderator (idk which one). If I decide to post my long review about Harem Hotel, it will get deleted no matter what.

Don't care much for the whole change the world plot but you can always skip past and go right back to your ladies. Not a fan of sharing either though the main girls are safe. Game is great and still 5/5.

It's a pretty nice AVN. I went in expecting just low-tier story with some decent H-scenes. The early game feels a little tedious and random at some points. You can tell that the devs wanted to do something with the option to go outside and explore the city, but it gets dropped like an hour after playing. Random events stop popping up, and the only places you can visit on a daily basis becomes the bowling alley and the brothel.

The characters are really interesting. The story goes places and the writer makes sure to cover all bases in regards to whether x person has done y event yet. The MC is just a self-insert. Barely a personality, convenient camera angles to cover the face, and half-baked answers/replies to any conversation topic. But that's fine - at least he's not an annoying, whiny asshat. He's honestly perfect for this kind of story/game. The LIs are pretty much all fucked up in their own way, whether it be in regards to the slavery backdrop for the game, their own mentalities/past traumas, or their struggling to grasp on their own lives. You basically just let them live in your hotel because you sympathize with their shitty lives.

I do love how the game always finds the right amount of balance between hot H-scenes and storytelling. There's no sound effects or voice acting, but I think everything the game has going it outweighs the need for it.

The game has a good character design with a lot of variety and a story that improves with each version

The game has VN gameplay and also has managment touches, which makes it quite entertaining and with a variety of songs that help you get into the plot.

Great game love the characters , decent story so far with good sex scenes, I haven't ran into any bugs and I've completed all available content. Cant wait to see what else they add in the future its a very promising start with a lot of content to keep most people interested

I think I'm currently around day 180. So far, I'm enjoying this game very much.

I really give props for the diversity of characters. I really enjoy Kate, and Ashley just for straight up story. It's hard to find anything that portrays people with mental issues in such a positive light (regarding Kate's autism). And Ashley breaks my heart. But there isn't really a bad character in the group.

The android, that I've dubbed Shirohime is such a fascinating character. I've yet to reach the end of her story. But the premise for the character so far actually encourages thought which is rare for a porn game.

The subject of slavery is an ambitious aspect to include in a game without making it gross. I look forward to seeing if it resolves in some way.

Harem Hotel is an adult visual novel that truly exceeded my expectations. With a captivating story line and stunning artwork, this game offers a unique and enjoyable harem experience.
The characters are well-developed and the interactions between them are intriguing, allowing to truly connect with the cast.
The writing is cleverly crafted, striking a perfect balance between romance and humour, keeping me engaged throughout the entire game play.
Additionally, the visual aesthetics are absolutely breathtaking, with high-quality illustrations that heighten the immersion in the game.
The inclusion of a variety of appealing female characters adds to the allure of this visual novel, providing players with numerous opportunities to explore different romantic relationships.
Harem Hotel is a refreshing addition to the adult visual novel genre, offering an addictive and entertaining journey that left me eagerly anticipating each new chapter.

I need to start by saying this was my 2nd game of this type and this is where my love began. The game is perfect in every single aspect. The story it's really deep but it perfectly fits the vibes of the game. The characters are so real, all of them have their identity and their stories connect among them in amazing ways. Shotout to the not-protagonists characters, they made me go into the story even more. Runey you're amazing, no jokes. This game made me cry a lot of times, and that's strange for a game of this type but here you can see how good the creator is. Love your work, I hope your lives goes well <3