VN - Ren'Py - Harem Hotel [v0.18] [Runey]

One of my favorite games on this site. The girls are all different enough to make you want to play through their stories. Even the the side girls are interesting. The story is better than you would expect for a game called harem hotel. Would absolutely recommend it.

What a lovely game that was! Spent 34 or so hours on it and looking forward for more! I've gone through the main content and have "most" stats maxed I think. Great and likable characters. I have a few reservation about some of the side characters still, but that may yet change! Very nice that the different music options are available. Impressive amount of content too!

I am reviewing an in progress game, please understand features I reflect on may be different in the build you play.
I am reviewing build 0.12.4
I have some history with adult VN's, but I haven't played the more recent hits.
I am playing on PC.
I used a money cheat early on in my first (only so far) playthrough.

Pros

The writing is well done. I don't necessarily love every story beat for each guest/employee in the hotel, but the personalities of the characters are distinct and interesting. There is character growth in abundance, and the relationships and actions of the characters are noticeably influenced by the player.

Player choice is important, and the results of your choices are seen throughout the game.

The 'Plot' is great, the work the dev puts into the characterization and writing gets the player engaged with the characters, which makes the 'Plot' that much more impactful/effective. There is great diversity in fetishes among the different characters, and the player has a lot of choice in outfits, scenes, and activities.

The game is balanced well between stick and carrot. The player does need to put work in with the game, but rewards are drip fed at a good pace and keep the player engaged with the work and reward. This gives it a 'One More Turn' feeling: some nights I think I went a whole hour over intended quit time just 'One More Day'ing' myself. Addictive, fun gameplay loop that rewards the player at a good pace.

Cons

The backgrounds and things that fill them stand out to me as the biggest weak point to the game thus far. There are some good settings (Dungeon, Kali's room, Kitchen), but many (Ashley's room, Maria's room, PC's room, Maid rooms) are bland, flatly coloured, and uniformly lit. The backgrounds are what keep me from screenshotting my favourite scenes. Some more personality in the room for each guest (streamer stuff in Maria's room, some lived-in ness to the PC's room, make Ashley super messy or something) would really spice it up. This also applies to things like food; stock items from the modelling program make lots of appearances and stick out more than they should (pizza anyone?)

There's a lot of stats, and it seems like at some point the player needs to decide if they're focusing on a couple of guests or going for a general, more shallow playthrough including more of the guests. I had difficulty figuring out how high certain stats need to go, or whether I was wasting my time doing certain activities when I should be optimizing someone/something else.

Some player choice (at this point) seems to be fake. When . Would be nice if the player action mattered here (and a few other places) but maybe this is in progress (or maybe it did address the choice and I read the dialogue wrong?).

There could be some more diversity to the women themselves. Different body types besides young, skinny and white-ish (are Elves considered white or not? idk. Maria's a little darker as well). A thicker woman (Ellen is closest to this?) or two as well could add some flavour too.

Noteworthies

Time goes by a bit quickly, some activities take all day and unless you're playing optimally (increasing stats) for the characters/scenes you want, you'll miss certain things. Almost a negative, but it gives incentive to replay with strategies in mind and variety in those replays.

I used a money cheat and didn't have to balance my cashflow. Prioritizing cashflow conflicts with time spent doing stats management, and I had enough trouble with that already. Some items seem expensive for how money moves in this game, and the bar (the place to really get money coming in) has not engaged me like the rest of the game. Hopefully there's more to do with the bar/cashflow later.

Game takes forever to boot. I can do a cold PC start to desktop faster than this game wants to load up.

Could do a bit more with Ellen or another (even slightly older than the other guests) woman in the MILF'y/Mommy sort of way that isn't currently on much display (this is personal taste showing).

Music is ok, not bad. Not too much by way of sound effects for a lot of the game. Not a con for me, I'm usually listening to something else. Could be a con for others.

The Slavery storyline seems to be controversial among players. I enjoyed it.

Conclusion
This game has great bones in its body, but the flesh needs some massaging at the hot springs to really perfect the experience. I fully recommend this game. This is a great effort and I'm very excited for the future of this game and Runey's future projects. Great work Runey!

Definitely one of the best porn games available right now. Allows you a lot of freedom with how you progress while still presenting a cohesive story. Honestly wasn't expecting to get this invested in a porn game world but the writing does get you hooked, making the game easily playable even if you aren't looking to relieve yourself. Only things I would say need improvement are maybe a hint system to figure out how to progress in the main story for each girl, had to look for a guide cause some content is gated till other main storylines are completed, though with good reason. Hoping the dev team expands and we can see larger updates and keep up the great work!

Man, it's easy to get attached to the girls here. It has a progress tracker for each character. Nice story especially, lin, Android, Ashley and Maria. Kali best girl, also love the twins. I hope the game gets another update soon, I can't wait to continue all the stories here, especially since the Floor 1 character will have continuations in v0.12.4.

Dveloper is consistent with content style. Ton of story and content to play. ∞ nuts. On serius note if you looking for game that you can get lost in play this. If you finish it wait a year or few months and there will be whole new story branch. Please support developer if you can!

i really love the Game ,one of these Gems where u come for the Porn and stay for the Story ...
i hope the Sanctuary Elves and Sidegirls get some more content
More Upgrades for the Hotel(new Etage)/Sancturary/Bar...maybe a Stripclub,a ChildrensDaycare/School dont know a Poolarea or a Garden

after Hospitalevent with Maria (i hope there is a way to make that Bitch of a Doc suffer somehow) she avoides the Dungeon i hope she get better with the next Update,same for our Android i hope she get better soon (maybe with the Upgrades from Kalis Dad's Firma it sounded she can get pregnant with them)

for the Story i hope for a real Big Happy End and many Pregnant Woman, maybe the MC goes in Politics and make self new Rights possible for Elves/HalfElves/selfawareAndroids
preferable legalize Polygamy so he can Mary all his Girls at once

or he use the connection that the Android have to all other Droids have and just Takeover the Continent ,like the Guards for the Owlclan

keep up the great work Runey,so much potential in this Game..no better Work of Art

Art: 5/5 - Cute anime characters. You can find your next waifus here
Music: 4/5 - It's OK
Sound: 0/5: I don't know why but I couldn't hear any sound effects
Story: 5/5 - The story is very very good. Must read!
Animation: 4/5 - The animation is a little bit awkward. But still very hot.
Gameplay: Simple gameplay. Not very grindy. Easy to unlock lewd scenes. The downside is not every lewd scene has a replay option

Overall: Definitely a good game to play. Adding sound effects would make the game much better

I just completed a quest with my Android friend and she got very philosophical about life and death and it was beautiful. Acting Lessons made me cry and now this game did too. Thank you and keep up the amazing work. You inspire me. Girls play these naughty games too and I love this one.

Maybe I'm alone here but I think Harem Hotel is spending way too much time world building. Usually I love when a game takes the time to flesh out the universe the story takes place in but it's becoming less and less interesting when we have multiple long ass exposition dumps every single update.

I also don't think we need to have an elf turn to the MC and explain everything that happens. For example, when Lin gets treated like a dog, she turns to the MC and say something like "this happened because these type of people see us as pets" but it just felt unnecessary. Given the amount of history lessons we've had at this point, the player should be able to piece together why a human is treating an elf like a dog.

I used to look forward to this game updating but now it feels like all I'm waiting for is more history lessons on something we already know so much about. I think Runey should consider world building through real conversations instead of just having somebody talk at the MC for 20 minutes. For example, instead of going to the museum (again) with Vanessa just for her to primarily teach us about different revolutionary leaders, we could've just had the actually revolutionary leader tell us about it through a series of dialogue options. That's just an example but the point I want to make is that being talked at is boring. Please make it more of a conversation.

I'm going to take a break from this game and wait a few updates before I pick it up again. I'm really interested in Androids story so I hope that'll make some progress by the time I get back into this.

I had so much fun with it! I rarely play VNs with anime style graphics, but I'm definitely glad I gave this a go. You need to have patience in the beginning to 'train' the girls but at one point it gets pretty depraved, pretty fast There are quite a lot of fetishes, as you can see looking at the tags.
Visuals are not top notch but on the plus side, there are quite a few girls and they are all pretty and also likeable. There's music too, not amazing, but certainly better than none at all.
Another thing I like is that MC's face isn't shown. And there seems to be quite a lot of content.
I played the game using the mod which lets you see what you need to do to advance the story and also the relationships with each girl. I wouldn't have played it if it wasn't for this mod because sandboxes kind of annoy me.
Anyway from the enjoyment point of view, this is easily a 5 star!

It was one of the first few games I came across, and it's hard to give an objective assessment when I look back now. Great characters, great story, ample amount of content. Personally one of the best games on this site.

Absolutely love this game. This game's interesting because with some characters, I find myself sleeping with them not because I like their bodies but because I genuinely like their personalities, I love the writing in this game! What it lacks in super HD visuals it more than makes up for in story and content.

Just two things though:

Really wanted to like this one, but was disappointed in most of it.
The Good
Looks pretty, has some decent story, and a lot of content for the girls, when you can find it.
The not so Good
Pretty grindy. Especially early days, not a lot to do, and the stats level up very slowly.
Lack of direction. Needs a better hint system, and idea of what to do. Too easy to miss stuff here and there, which makes it more of a grind than it needs to be.
Politics are a bit much. Lots of political backstory, and such seems very out of place in a porn game.
MC is kind of a Dick. He doesn't say much, and doesn't really show much empathy. If he's not making the girls into sex slaves, he doesn't seem to know what to do with them.
Not enough girls. Expected more than a handful of girls in a Harem game.
The lack of sound effects, especially sexy sounds in the lewd scenes, hold the game back from being enjoyable.
Overall, with the huge amount of backstory and political intrigue, I think this game would be better as a more traditional VN with some Ecchi elements, than an actual Porn game, as I found the Adult content a bit lacking.

An interesting story and characters that really tug at your heartstrings (and other things) and HOT DAMN there is so much content it is actually ridiculous.

The one complaint, and its a minor one, is that the poses and animations are the typical HoneySelect faire, so you'll see a lot of repeated poses and animations across the fairly large cast. This is barely an issue, because not only is the main cast quite large, each of them also has a boatload of stuff.

Most of us come to lewd games to fap but is is a rare treat when you get the feels as well. Harem Hotel starts out as an ordinary harem manager game. You run a hotel occupied only by hot women who you can build relationships with and corrupt. The lewd aspects of the game are top notch, great scenes with gorgeous and expressive character models. What is surprising is the emotional connections you make with the characters. Each girl is unique and has their own fully developed background and personality that hits on universal themes such as loneliness, loss, and abandonment. Just a top tier game in all aspects.

One of, if not, the best VN I've ever played. The individual stories draw you in, and the characters all have their own personalities. Each of them has grown on me, and are special in each of their ways

This game was/is a good surprise to me.
PROS:
- Nice renders and expressive facial and posture attitude
- Sexy scenes
- Interesting story development
- Lovely characters with various background stories
- Good mix in the writing for the girls' dialogs...funny, sexy, hot, touching
CONS:
- A looot of grind
- MC is a jerk and doesn't seem to have feelings towards is girls . Except to manipulate them into sex. He barely speaks and, when he does, his lines are so dumb and very insensitive. He doesn't take the girls defense in various situations. Just want to slap him !

A great game with a lot of depth and story. It's also refreshing that the characters aren't overly stereotypical. I'm not saying there aren't stereotypes, that's hard to avoid, but the characters have a lot more depth than a flat stereotype. Yes that's a wild nymphomaniac, but you get to explore the background of why she's that way and how she adjusts her world view. There's a nerd, but she has some style and an interesting background.

You'll start playing it because it's been recommended, or has a good review, or its name, but you'll keep playing because you're attached to the characters and the story.

The animations are simple loops. However, they are with well drawn art that doesn't look like a simple cartoon. I'd give the art and animations a 4.5/5 rating and the story more than makes up for any lack.

Edit: I had to update my review to be more positive. This game raised the bar for me, so when I went to another game, I was surprised by what I saw and I realized my earlier review claimed this game was much more average than it is. This game is far above average.

There is so much content here. And I’ve enjoyed 99.9% of what I’ve seen so far. I have literally been playing for 2 days straight . On the first day I fell asleep at 7 am the next day. I cannot recommend this enough. And once I finish I plan on donating some money.