Ren'Py Harem Hotel [v0.19.1] [Runey]

[RapideRabbit]

...and when was the first release? Over seven years ago.

I remember the elven slaves being mentioned a LONG time ago, towards the beginning of development. The elven maid, one of the first characters you become intimate with, mentions it several times throughout her story

How is someone supposed to know that that's any part of this game, much less (now) the main focus of the game?

If you ever have a question about tags, you can ask. Even better, use the search function at the top of the page - stupid simple stuff. More people should use it, especially before posting off-topic nonsense about how they TOTALLY never saw it coming...

 

[c3p0]

For the whole discussing about is this a ... game. Simple: It is a game in development, nothing more, nothing less. We don't know where the voyage will take us, so guessing where we will end, is only that guessing. Runey, theoretically, could scape all the harem and elves slavery out of the game and make a silly nude shooter out of it.
Will that happen? I serious doubt it, but it is still a very marginal, slime probability that it may happen. For the rest of the 99.99% of the probability this game will be around freeing the elves from slavery and change the world for a better place for all.

 

[emma5132]

any 0.18 complete save? so I can start playing from there...

 

[Skode]

I don't come to futa/trans threads and complain about women with penises. You played a game where you rescue slaves - what did you expect? The slaves to tell you it wasn't that bad? To completely gloss over the fact they were slaves in the first place?

I think you are glossing over the entire premise of you being put in the hands of a new manager running a hotel where you know... you form a harem with the residents staying there. The preachy aspect of the story was when Runey starting drinking the "modern audience" lemonade. Not a bad thing, still a good game but a very different one to degree most really feel the game dipped for them at the mid point.

Start the game and maybe you really like the yandere who was not gonna take no for an answer, she was having your babies and you half told yourself "red flags be damned, i am going along for the ride" and we went from that yandere suck you off in front of her disgusted mom main character to an entire arc on her being deeply depressed and pining for a surrogate mother. That is a tonal shift and then some.

Or the anti-Lin aka her big sister Jin who is proud of her wanton sexual appetite, gives zero fucks what anyone thinks of her degenerate behaviour and mannerisms and was the active plot device to "train" using the dungeon where it is literally a sex room for BDSM fun times... now being turned into Lin 2.0 and significantly less interesting for it. They even had her protesting against going "clean" in her story only for it to be forced on her with with no say so as a player and now she... well she looks after the garden in her spare time. That is a tonal shift and then some.

Or the cock sure sex pest cam girl who wants to fuck everyone, wants you to fuck everyone and will facilitate that for your needs, her needs and for the sheer viewing pleasure of it. All that confidence stripped away from her and is now a moping barmaid has no agency no more because of course she is now elf number 1244 in the story. That is tonal shift and then some.

I am not sure if this was the direction the story was always heading (not convinced it was in totality given age of the game and drastically different approach to content we had then vs now... back then there was a lot of focus on degrading your girls at the local cafe and making them submissive in the dungeon - you ain't getting none of that now). The fact he has rewritten DOZENS of scenes also shows he changed directions somewhere along the lines and that is his right to do so but Harem Hotel now is very different game from what it was then and that i think is fine. We all have to acknowledge this and it will always grate on some people and that is fine too. I do prefer the older style of HH though - back then it was add in a scene where you can creampie a drunk MILF in the bar despite her asking you not to... now you know his focus will be more on reminding us that religion is bad, corporations is bad, slavery is bad and so on.

It was always presented as such do not get me wrong even back in the day but not nowhere near this extent and would largely facilitate more sex scenes not depressing story beats... your meeting with Cornwall in a busy street would result in a fuck off competition for all to see. Those days are gone and very likely have long since been removed from the game by now (will have to start afresh one day and see how much has changed in all these rewrites). Slavers were always presented as assholes but they would be shown as such in scenes taking place smack dap in the middle of an honest to god orgy (i wonder how much of that scene was rewritten as well).

He has aged as a developer and the story he wants to tell has aged and matured with him but of course some of us old guard will miss the days when HH was more escapism than message and more mindless fucking than exposition. I have not tried the new update yet but it at least seems a positive direction based on changelog with a lot of focus on the side girls and a focus on sex scenes. With the better balance between heavy story beats and more fucking around the hotel i think there should be less arguing around here. We all like the game or we would not care so much so maybe after public release we can all stop squabbling for at least a week lol

 

[shadowtempered]

any 0.18 complete save? so I can start playing from there...

I posted a v18 save 1-2 pages ago.

 

[henk1]

This may be a bit of a stupid question, but is PR1 "Public Release 1"? Or is it still a test release?

 

[Evil13]

This may be a bit of a stupid question, but is PR1 "Public Release 1"? Or is it still a test release?

Pre-release.

 

[emma5132]

I posted a v18 save 1-2 pages ago.

I tried but it crashed

 

[emma5132]

I tried but it crashed

nvm it works now

 

[Hfgyy]

What are the codes for version 0.19 PR1?

 

[darkflamemaister]

an honest question: i wonder in the final version will runey be able to smooth out the stories between each girl? coz right now the stories feels little bit weird like Felicity is definitely not available at the hotel at the current version yet she shows up in Lin's story without any issue.
Just a small thing but feels a bit weird when i play through all of it in one go

 

[jocoyo]

I think you are glossing over the entire premise of you being put in the hands of a new manager running a hotel where you know... you form a harem with the residents staying there. The preachy aspect of the story was when Runey starting drinking the "modern audience" lemonade. Not a bad thing, still a good game but a very different one to degree most really feel the game dipped for them at the mid point.

Start the game and maybe you really like the yandere who was not gonna take no for an answer, she was having your babies and you half told yourself "red flags be damned, i am going along for the ride" and we went from that yandere suck you off in front of her disgusted mom main character to an entire arc on her being deeply depressed and pining for a surrogate mother. That is a tonal shift and then some.

Or the anti-Lin aka her big sister Jin who is proud of her wanton sexual appetite, gives zero fucks what anyone thinks of her degenerate behaviour and mannerisms and was the active plot device to "train" using the dungeon where it is literally a sex room for BDSM fun times... now being turned into Lin 2.0 and significantly less interesting for it. They even had her protesting against going "clean" in her story only for it to be forced on her with with no say so as a player and now she... well she looks after the garden in her spare time. That is a tonal shift and then some.

Or the cock sure sex pest cam girl who wants to fuck everyone, wants you to fuck everyone and will facilitate that for your needs, her needs and for the sheer viewing pleasure of it. All that confidence stripped away from her and is now a moping barmaid has no agency no more because of course she is now elf number 1244 in the story. That is tonal shift and then some.

I am not sure if this was the direction the story was always heading (not convinced it was in totality given age of the game and drastically different approach to content we had then vs now... back then there was a lot of focus on degrading your girls at the local cafe and making them submissive in the dungeon - you ain't getting none of that now). The fact he has rewritten DOZENS of scenes also shows he changed directions somewhere along the lines and that is his right to do so but Harem Hotel now is very different game from what it was then and that i think is fine. We all have to acknowledge this and it will always grate on some people and that is fine too. I do prefer the older style of HH though - back then it was add in a scene where you can creampie a drunk MILF in the bar despite her asking you not to... now you know his focus will be more on reminding us that religion is bad, corporations is bad, slavery is bad and so on.

It was always presented as such do not get me wrong even back in the day but not nowhere near this extent and would largely facilitate more sex scenes not depressing story beats... your meeting with Cornwall in a busy street would result in a fuck off competition for all to see. Those days are gone and very likely have long since been removed from the game by now (will have to start afresh one day and see how much has changed in all these rewrites). Slavers were always presented as assholes but they would be shown as such in scenes taking place smack dap in the middle of an honest to god orgy (i wonder how much of that scene was rewritten as well).

He has aged as a developer and the story he wants to tell has aged and matured with him but of course some of us old guard will miss the days when HH was more escapism than message and more mindless fucking than exposition. I have not tried the new update yet but it at least seems a positive direction based on changelog with a lot of focus on the side girls and a focus on sex scenes. With the better balance between heavy story beats and more fucking around the hotel i think there should be less arguing around here. We all like the game or we would not care so much so maybe after public release we can all stop squabbling for at least a week lol

You just perfectly explained why it always bugs me when people say "well Runey always meant for the game to be like this!" Well, no, surely the fact that Runey is rewriting the majority of the early game is indicative that his direction for this game has changed drastically at some point.

And this isn't a dig on the current direction of the game. I respect it and find it somewhat interesting and will probably never drop this game unless it somehow goes completely SFW. I've been around since some of the earliest updates, and yes, there were always themes of slavery and corruption and discrimination, but the game was still very porn-driven. But now to compensate for the growing number of new events that go into the politics of the game's world, Runey's added an entire worldbuilding section to the beginning of the game, which I fear feels too much like an exposition dump.

 

[c3p0]

an honest question: i wonder in the final version will runey be able to smooth out the stories between each girl? coz right now the stories feels little bit weird like Felicity is definitely not available at the hotel at the current version yet she shows up in Lin's story without any issue.
Just a small thing but feels a bit weird when i play through all of it in one go

Perhaps. We don't know how much time Runey will invest to iron the bugs out and at a metric shit ton of checks so that those event can't happen eg. Autum showed in a event, but not yet in the hotel as a resident.
That is the negative part of having a sandbox play style game, you need a lot of guards.

 

[DigDug69]

You just perfectly explained why it always bugs me when people say "well Runey always meant for the game to be like this!" Well, no, surely the fact that Runey is rewriting the majority of the early game is indicative that his direction for this game has changed drastically at some point.

And this isn't a dig on the current direction of the game. I respect it and find it somewhat interesting and will probably never drop this game unless it somehow goes completely SFW. I've been around since some of the earliest updates, and yes, there were always themes of slavery and corruption and discrimination, but the game was still very porn-driven. But now to compensate for the growing number of new events that go into the politics of the game's world, Runey's added an entire worldbuilding section to the beginning of the game, which I fear feels too much like an exposition dump.

Starting with my original account that I had forgotten the password for, I have played this game since it was first released, and I distinctly remember the MC's thoughts on slavery, coming from someone who grew up in a country where slavery was not legal. And no, I have not restarted a game and played through a second time.
The occasional comments that cropped up about how cruel slavery was to the elves started a very long time ago, when the game was still new, and before Runey started reworking graphics, and removing scenes that no longer fit.

Those were the foreshadowing that I spoke of earlier.
In the comments you can find people talking about how slaves are treated, and what protections are in place for them, all of the way back in 2018, when version 5 came out.
So no, the ideas about freeing slaves is not just stuff that Runey retconned into the story.

If I understend her characters corecttly she is anty-slavery activist alongside her father.

This is a quote from a post made in December 2018 by a player that very clearly talks about anti slavery sentiments.
So anti slavery sentiments have existed in the game for years.
That post would have been made about the time that version 4 or 5 was out.

 

[jocoyo]

Starting with my original account that I had forgotten the password for, I have played this game since it was first released, and I distinctly remember the MC's thoughts on slavery, coming from someone who grew up in a country where slavery was not legal. And no, I have not restarted a game and played through a second time.
The occasional comments that cropped up about how cruel slavery was to the elves started a very long time ago, when the game was still new, and before Runey started reworking graphics, and removing scenes that no longer fit.

Those were the foreshadowing that I spoke of earlier.
In the comments you can find people talking about how slaves are treated, and what protections are in place for them, all of the way back in 2018, when version 5 came out.
So no, the ideas about freeing slaves is not just stuff that Runey retconned into the story.




This is a quote from a post made in December 2018 by a player that very clearly talks about anti slavery sentiments.
So anti slavery sentiments have existed in the game for years.
That post would have been made about the time that version 4 or 5 was out.

I never said the addition of slavery was a retcon, and I literally said the themes of slavery and political corruption were present throughout the entire run of the game. It's just very clear that through the development of this game, specifically with the revision of the entire early game, that Runey's goals towards exploring the themes he wants to explore has significantly changed.

 

[DigDug69]

They have, but recently people have been whining a lot and claiming that freeing slaves was not something original to the story plot, when it most certainly was as evidenced by the foreshadowing that was taking place early on, talking about the evils of slavery.

It makes sense for Runey to update early story content while he is redoing the graphics from the earlier part of the game. Because over time Runey has learned a lot that they did not know about game creation and storytelling, that he did not know when he first started creating Harem Hotel.

As you create, you learn.
As you learn you get better.
As you get better you look back at your older stuff and think, I could have done a better job with that.
Then you go back and correct the mistakes, to bring the same quality to the old content as you had in the later content.

That is basically what Runey had said they were doing, when he said that he was going to redo older content.

 

[Lolicon Kami]

They have, but recently people have been whining a lot and claiming that freeing slaves was not something original to the story plot, when it most certainly was as evidenced by the foreshadowing that was taking place early on, talking about the evils of slavery.

It makes sense for Runey to update early story content while he is redoing the graphics from the earlier part of the game. Because over time Runey has learned a lot that they did not know about game creation and storytelling, that he did not know when he first started creating Harem Hotel.

The goddamn prelude where MC is in the plane already foreshadowed, for christs sake

 

[DigDug69]

The goddamn prelude where MC is in the plane already foreshadowed, for christs sake

I was looking for proof of it outside of the game, since I did not have any of the really old versions of the game to use.
Grabbing references of it from the comments seemed to be the best choice for that.
Anything that was in game the people whining about the early changes and how freeing the slaves was added later, would simply claim that it was later added by Runey, and not original to the story.

rangaru's post was from December 2018, so that shows that anti slavery sentiment has been in the game since the beginning.

 

[Fauno36]

The goddamn prelude where MC is in the plane already foreshadowed, for christs sake

Exactly!!!!

 

[DigDug69]

Exactly!!!!

We all know that, but the people claiming that the content was changed by Runey in the last few releases won't accept it now as proof, because they will claim it was added within the last few releases.
That was why I dug through the comments from players to find references from the early days of the game.
The whining people can try to object and say that those comments mean nothing, but everyone will know that they are completely full of shit at that point.