Ren'Py - Abandoned - Hero's Harem Guild [v0.1.2.3b Public] [Komisari]

Wow, I did not expect so much of a game with this one. Skill trees, main and side quests, vendor system, crafting, and more all along with a great story line. This one just became an instant download any time new content is available!

The game's story is one of those that hooks you and makes you feel bad when the update finishes. So far the best of the game.
The animations are good even though sometimes can be laggy
I'd say this game needs to cover up some fethishes like footjobs, thighjobs etc. Since the scenes are pretty vanilla.

It is a solid 9'5/10 harem game though.

Version: v0.1.2 Beta
I like the game a lot but it does has some stuff that make me a bit >: (

Pros -
Good models & great animations.
I love all of the ladies.
Cute / funny writing & story.

Meh -
The guild board glitch out on me and I couldn't get money or items from it.
( So cheats )

Cons -
It can be that times glitchy and slow.

prologue
TLDR - Wonderful game can't wait to see more.

While the models quality and rendering are not that good, I encourage everyone to play this game!! This game in absolutely amazing! It's super obvious that the creator(s) have put in tons of time and effort into each of the characters, their backstory, and the over arching story. It really does show! It does get grindy at parts, but if you can look past that you'll be glad you did! I seriously wish I had the income to support creators like this! The overall quality blows other games I've played (100+) out of the water!

Man.. I came here to fap.. not to cry!
Damn the story so far is reaaaally amazing.
The characters are well written. The scenes are actually really well made aswell.

Best character you ask?
100000% it has tobe

JIMMY! Jimmy for President!

keep it up really good work!

One of the best games I've ever played, the story is good, the characters actually have personalities and it has a very likable main character. I have high hopes for the updates to come until it's finished.

Review of 0.1.1


It's a good lighthearted game. All in all, it's about what I expected when reading the OP, but I was pleasently suprised by the quality of the chemistery between characters.

The positives :

Good wrinting : So far the game doesn't have outstanding story (well, it's just the begining) but it flows very well. I don't know what make it works, but I think the strong point is the natural chemistry between characters. There are all based on anime tropes but the dev did a good job to make them feel alive.

Decent worldbuilding : I wish it was a bit more developed and less manichean but there is a real worldbuilding in this game more than 95% of the game in this site, even withing the fantasy genre. And I have hope it will extend in near future, we are still at the begining of the game.

No slow-witted MC : There are too many adult games where the MC is such a turn-off. In this game, he has a functioning brain. He hasn't done anything clever yet, but I hadn't felt the urge to falcepalm too often.^^

Some review said the game is grindy, it didn't feel that way to me once I give up on the idea of min-maxing. So far, there is no time-limit, no real management system, so we can just play without any worry. I won't talk too much about it, since the game system will change completely in next version, but to me, it feels less grindy than Harem Hotel for instance.

The negatives :

No choice : There is not a single choice in the game. I was surprised by this, you would think a sandbox means you have the liberty to go for the girl(s) you like ? Nope, you'll have to level them ALL. It's a sandbox but at the end of you 0.1.1 playthrough, you MC will have the exact same story as mine. There is no choice what's so ever. This is my major grip with the game. I would be glad to have the illusion to be a hero and have my journey, my Guild House, my harem. At least chose who I will accept in the guild house and who I'll sleep with.

Basic renders : As you can see yourself, there is definitely games with more outstanting renders. To me, the technology feel a bit outdated, new game offer way better pictures. That being said, the renders are numerous and serve the story very well. There is no wow, but I definitly got emotional with some renders (often cuddle ones now that I think about it). On the bright side, simple render allows faster release schedule and yes the dev seems fast and hardworking.

Small inconsistencies : I do think it's will be fixed in next version, but with small detail you can tell the game is still work in progress. There is some recuring line of dialog that make perfectly sens when the girl is level 1, but not anymore when she is level 10. Speaking of level 10, I would have been glad to sleep with Rebecca at least until Evie level 10, at least once but nope, she must have been invisible.^^ So yeah, I would be glad if the event would have a sensible impact on the game outside of the event in question.

All in all I would say Hero's Harem Guild is an amazing basic game. Basic because I would be hard pressed to find a reason why this game stand out. Amazing because when you lose sleeping hours because of a game, you know it just works.^^ HHG made me smile, I think we all need a good lighthearted fantasy game in our life.

PS : Shout out to Lady Rebecca. I don't know why I didn't expect this sort of character in the game, but the progression of her relationship with the MC is very well done and give some depth to the story. Leticia is probably the most amazing character so far, but for 0.1.1 Laddy Rebecca was the light of my playthrough.

Edit: Lowering review to 4/5 from a perfect score. I know that the dev is a perfectionist that is still working on the game and it is in fact not abandoned - but there hasn't been any new content in forever. Not only that, but. I have since come across AVNs that match and at some points even surpass this quality that will actually be complete in my lifetime. Still a really good game that is worth checking out when more content drops, but until then I don't recommend sinking your teeth into the story. By the time the next update drops you will have forgotten everything about it and will need to replay it from scratch anyways.

Original Review: This is honestly one of the best visual novels out there. I would give it more than 5 stars if the site let me! Komisari does such a wonderful job with this world and the characters in it, that I could not help but get attached to them and care about what is happening in the story. The writing is genuinely phenomenal (much better than a lot of new AAA games out there), and balances being witty, smart, and going from serious somber moments to lighthearted funny moments better than almost anyone else. If I could cryogenically freeze myself in order to speedup my perception of time so that I don’t have to wait so long for this game to be finished, I would!

Based on the (as yet) unfinished v0.1.1.

My usual disclaimers when writing reviews on here are that A. I am here for the "plot" not the plot and B. I generally dislike visual novels. So take both of those into consideration for my review when thinking about this game.

Pros

• Graphics - Super unique and crisp appearance for the game. Obviously the game is designed in an anime/hentai vein, so if you don't like that then you won't like this. For me, I'm a fan. Plus, given that literally every other game on this site is either the same "photorealistic" models or Honey Select, this is a proper breath of fresh air. Add to that the fact that some of the girls are just hot as hell and it all works in its favour
• Lots of sex - I'ma come out and say that I was persuaded to try the game because of the review by DogManSalad. And y'know what, he's got a heck of a point, there's a LOT of sexy content in this and it's fucking hot as hell. Exactly what I was hoping for. Plus it definitely seems to be going a bunch of good kinky directions, which is fun.
• Story and characters - Everyone is well-written in that "porn game, we're not taking this too seriously" fashion that I generally approve of. It's mostly fun and light-hearted and it knows its a harem porn game, but also the characters do have their own motivations and desires which elevates it a little. I've said it before, I'm not here for story, but good writing can be the cherry on the cake for porn games.

Mehs

• Character clothes - As it stands, there isn't a great deal of HHG that I feel particularly "meh" about. It's either stuff I like or really dislike. At a stretch I'd say that I am SUPER confused as to why a medieval fantasy setting (with swords/magic/witches/bows etc) often has characters in BLATANTLY modern-day attire like trainers and bikinis. But I figure it's best to not overthink it.
• Character approval boosts don't apply when they are maxed - A bit complicated, but allow me to explain: essentially, to progress in the story/with the girls, you need to raise their "approval/attraction" until it fills a bar. Then you get to access a scene with them that progresses their story (and by doing this with all the girls it progresses the overarching story). Now, during the story cutscenes you can get approval boosts for other characters, however, if their approval bars are already maxed then this doesn't do anything at all. This is a pain in the butt because it felt like 9 times out of 10, I'd get these boosts to characters will full approval, and so the boost would be wasted. It would be nice if the game would remember these buffs and add them onto the character's approval the next time you progress the story, just as a way of speeding things up.

Cons

• Traversal - Good lord this is a big one. The map in this game is GARBAGE. I don't mean the overworld map, picking between different hubs, rather I mean that the local maps (they aren't exactly maps but are instead "move forwards/backwards") like in the town and in the guild. They are both, quite simply, FUCKING terrible. It's so easy to disoriented and lose track of which way goes where. Also, as an aside, the game is absolutely crying out for a system where it shows you were the girls are at each time slot. For example have a picture of the girl over the icon of the Market at midday if that's where they are.
• The grind - I WILL COME BACK TO THIS BELOW...

Overall, I was pretty sure I was gonna rate HHG a 4/5 maybe even a 5/5. I've already said I liked the sex, which is what I'm here for, I liked the girls and found them hot, I liked the story and animation and in general just thought the whole thing was just bloody well made and enjoyable to play. I genuinely went into the game with high expectations and was all ready for them to be fulfilled by getting my very own anime harem of babes I could fuck and impregnate.

That was until I was about 3 hours in...

After 3 hours it felt like I'd seen one or two sex scenes. It felt like my character had been actively avoiding a few until that point, but that wasn't the issue. The issue was just how much fucking clicking you have to do to get anywhere.

I mentioned above that the central mechanic of the game is the approval system of the girls. And oh. My. Lord... I grew to hate that thing. At first it seems eminently reasonable. At level 1 you speak to them once, and it gives them one approval, BOOM you've maxed out the bar and get a cutscene.

But you don't really start getting ANY kind of sexual content until level 5 for most of the girls and that means talking to them 5 times in a row... NOT INCLUDING the previous levels you've already done. And this just keeps on increasing.

Even when your approval is going up 2 points per interaction, having to speak to each girl 5 times a pop before progressing is SIMPLY NOT FUN.

Not to mention that despite the game having timeslots. Despite the fact that you do end up fucking most of the girls. There ISN'T any option to go visit them and get some nookie/repeat a sex scene for bonus approval. Nope, instead it's just more and more and more talking. Repetitions of the same interaction which are boring and do nothing.

I've seen reviews of other games on here which complain about the grind in games and honestly I am stunned this isn't the first thing mentioned by every review here.

The framework of the game is amazing, but FUCK me... That grind just absolutely killed it.

Truly a top tier harem game. Very interesting and funny storytelling and great characters. So far it feels like the whole game up to this point (v0.1.1) was just a prologue of what is to come and I, will be patiently waiting.

Amazing game, this is only version 1.1 but it blows me to how much content this game has, even if the updates are long its 100% worth the wait, give this a try this will absolutely become one of the best lewd games ever if it continues forward like this.

Fantastic game, The animation is fluid and pretty, Everything moves naturally and is very visually appealing. Even without the sex, the story comes together and you develop affection for each character. I was never a fan of cartoon-ey visuals in most games but this game changed my mind. Best thing is the developer is making better changes with each update. Bravo

The game was so good i binged it in a single day. Still surprised that this was only the prologue of the game. There's a whole lot of content. (and the game is massive 6GB atm OWO). I will definitely be keeping up with the developer for future updates.

Pros:

Story was interesting enough to keep me entertained, as well as feel like a had control in the story.

Story was good and a nice change of pace from more Hentai heavy VNs

Ever character is cute and charming in their own way, and written well enough that you end up liking them all, Luna is bes girl tho.

Jimmy, nuff said.

Con: (mostly just a small thing that i had issues with)

Some of the music in the soundtrack was way too high pitched for me, if your sensitive to higher frequencies you will probably want to lower the volume quite a bit like i had to.

Absolutely masterpiece. Thanks for the developer for the hardworking. There are so much content on this game. I wasnt expecting that much and I agree that scenes should be more lewd. Expect this town is little bit empty. There should be some male characters just for the look.

As of December of 2020, I've now been involved more directly with the community of the game as well as played the most-recent build. I've come back to quickly restructure and reevaluate the previous review. If I can, I will make the attempt to summarize a very lengthy, passionate, and first-hand experience that carries on to this day down to one sentence...

Hero's Harem Guild is, truly, at both its heart and its extremities, a one of a kind piece of art.

- Adding onto my previous comments, this game not only continues to improve, but the community surrounding it is truly wonderful. Overall, a very open, friendly, and entertaining Discord server; I've had many nice experiences as well as experienced personal growth.

Game-wise, it's improved tenfold; the animation, mechanics GUI, grammar - considering the dozens of other Eroge games and VNs I have played - is very well done (for the most part >;3 heheh~). Little things have been tweaked and implemented with a lot of obvious care, and with a heartfelt amount of real-world passion.

A rewarding, rich story that grips you tightly when you aren't looking - and makes you laugh hard and cry, too. The developer is a hard-working, fun, and interesting individual who is active - even when they're supposedly taking it easy! - there's always work being done behind the scenes! Expect new gameplay mechanics, more characters, and an even larger experience to come!

Honestly, just give this game a chance. Don't pass it by. Play it for an hour or two, it's not a huge investment, right? Wait a while before judging it for yourself. Get into it, explore the world and its people, join the community behind it, and you may find an irreplaceable experience. I could wax poetic about Hero's Harem Guild for hours - in fact, I already have (Discord, Patreon, Itch.io, Etc) - so I will try to cut this down a few pages... Adventures, memories, and many hours of playing with your fishing pole await!

[Above is an up-to-date review. Below is for a previous version and experience - though it does still applies today.]
This is an interesting, quirky, and enjoyable experience! I can recommend it to anyone who enjoys sweet-natured, tough-exterior, and otherwise adorable and memorable characters. The game is currently undergoing a full rebuild, but as it stands, the game already has good animations, writing, and an easy-to-use UI with Q.O.L. already built-in.

I played for around 15 hours over the course of a few days; I simply got hooked on the cheekiness of certain interactions - I couldn't put the game down easily!

DISCLAIMER: This Review has been written for version v0.1.1 Public. I am not a supporter of the game as of time of writing.

TL;DR and verdict up front - clear 5 stars.
This thing is a passion project that is well worth your time - of which you can expect to invest 4-6 hours of if you are not skipping any of the story texts and just rush through it. So if you enjoy yourself getting immersed into a well-written, character-driven story with characters that (depending on your liking) range from initially unlikable, comedic relief to extremely well-rounded with surprisingly powerful arcs that will actually manage to get an emotion out of you, I'll gladly take your coat.

But, for those of you that want to read further, here's the actual review of the game:
So, Hero's Harem Guild then...

After playing through the game (multiple times even, despite being a linear story with no branches or anything like that, I just wanted to experience these moments again) and reflecting a bit on it, I feel ready to write down a review for this. First up, I gotta say that I'm honestly stumped to have missed out on such a great game. but we need to take it from the top with a look at the story:

In Hero's Harem Guild (HHG for short) you take control of a young man (that has the default name Zack) that lives an idyllic if poor life with Elizabeth (his mother) and Ari (his sister, that is if you uncensor it). Your world gets turned upside down when you have to not only save Ari from an ogre attack while running errands in the village, but shortly afterwards get attacked by a demon and end up presumed dead, only to awaken in some faraway location where you have been touted to be the new hero of the town. From there on out your adventure takes place, if at your own pace.
So, to sum it all up, the story is driven by its characters and their actions, with an overarching plot looming in the background that you will gradually learn more about.

So I think it is time to briefly talk about those characters. No worries, I'll keep it spoiler free and talk in very generic terms, as they are the meat of this game:
On your sandbox journey to explore the new world you've been thrown into you will meet a variety of different characters, not just in looks, but also in personality. Their models not only look exceptionally well-made, quite varied, but also their actual characters are: They all have excellent writing, with their own personal backstories, flaws, preferences and interactions between each other. Those can range from rivalries, to loving care and even some strong outbursts when things start to boil over, but when it really matters, you can totally count on them helping you, yet they never come out as some hamfisted clichee. You can see different stereotypical influences on some characters, but like I said already, the writing gives their presentation the edge in making them feel just as alive as some people you might know from the real world and not have a feeling like you are talking to a piece of wood - either through comedic moments (which have been extremely well realized - Johnny is the bestest bro) or through the exploration of their backstory and their way forward, which have some really hard hitting moments in them. Even characters that feel abrasive and unwilling to listen will eventually open up to you and give you their support and in due time, thus you might learn to appreciate these characters just as much, if not even more. Hell, even characters that at first glance feel like joke inclusions or comedic relief turn out to be really well integrated. This all just oozes production value in terms of writing. Moreover, due to characters and story being quite heavily intertwined here, you will always feel like they are actively reacting according to their previous behaviour and thus give your immersion an even stronger effect. You generally just want to keep on playing only to see what happens next and how these well-rounded characters will react. There is never that moment. You know that moment when a character reacts so far out of their usual behaviour that it just rips you out of the experience entirely. This all does mean however, that in order to progress the story, characters will also need to progress. So if you want to have a more story-driven than character-driven experience when playing, this might not be for you.

Well, since I'm now talking about playing, how does it all play?
For the most part, it's about exploration and finishing Quests of the Chapter you are in. This means that you're tasked to check certain conditions, like meeting a person at a specific time of day in a location to drive forward a certain event, or to progress the affection with the different characters. This will unlock more locations, more actions you can do and more characters to interact with, while also progressing the story. So far so typical. The player has different stages of the day to do whatever they want to: be it making money, advancing with characters or explore somewhere specific to advance a quest. The game has no timed events or anything similar, meaning you can fully immerse yourself in the sandbox and explore the characters to your hearts content. This, combined with the clean and easily readable UI makes for an experience you usually don't expect from a game made in Ren'Py. You aren't just clicking through a ton of dialogues and select your reaction from a bunch of possible sentences to "maybe" hit the right note and thus maybe unlock some sexy funtimes with all the different characters you meet - God I hate games that do this - no. You just interact with them on a general basis throughout the town and at a certain breakpoint in their affinity, you trigger an event at a certain time of day to advance them, which is once more where the excellent writing comes in. The only issue I have here is that due to the amount of characters, limited locations and all you will potentially end up with events that overlap on a timeslot, sometimes even location - if you happen to level multiple characters at once - meaning that you will have to trigger one first (which generally advances time), the next day the other. Not even the minigames with which you earn money (like fishing and later down mining) pull me out of playing, if only for the excellent choice of music:

This game uses some excellent music as a backdrop. Some for certain events, something different for all the locations and they all sound astonishingly good. I'd even go so far to say that many of the tracks you will hear in the game, you most likely haven't heard in some other game. Lots of care has been taken to select the appropriate music strings for events and locations, just amplifying their effectiveness further.

Guess with all the technical stuff out of the way, you probably want to know about the smut and all that, right?
Right: It's great, simple as that. Not just in technical execution, but in pacing... You don't just unlock the standard variety of sex scenes you are used from other games flooding this forum at the given breakpoints in the characters stats, this would make no sense if you've been reading through the character and story section. No, this is paced out like you'd actually expect from someone faraway just stumbling into this new life and getting the grips on the world and its characters (sometimes quite literally), meaning only very specific events have intimate actions. So while you aren't getting bombarded with quantity of sex events that you can repeat ad nauseam - which is a quality of its own - you instead get some of the most high quality stuff out there at the time it is actually appropriate. Honestly, these scenes are just flat-out great. While it's a shame that as of right now only a very select few select scenes are repeatable, their production value is just top notch and you might have a bunch of saves on different events for that reason alone. At the time of writing, this is not a sex game with story elements thrown in haphazardly, but instead this is a well-written story game with a nice aside of sex in it, and one that is well worth your time.

With that I feel that I have covered basically everything there is, except maybe content available, which I shall touch upon right now:
I generally am under the impression that the version numbering is a nice indicator of content, and boy was I wrong. This game has from start to finish of all available content (assuming you actually play for the story and don't just skip through everything) between 4-6 hours worth of playtime, with only marginal amounts of grind. I remember my first playthrough of what the game had to offer clocked in at nearly 9! hours, though this was more due to me trying to get as well immersed as I could. This is exceptional amounts of content for something with a version number label of v0.1.1.

So, to sum it all up in my final verdict...
I honestly have very few complaints for the game as of right now. What little complaints I have there is nitpicky at best - the performance dipping in some moments is the only one that I feel comfortable leveling against it, and that is being adressed at time of writing. Honestly, a fuckton of devs could really get a slice of this methodology and take this game as a shining example on how to get your audience hooked, instead of releasing the same old tosh you see day in day out here. I can't really say much other than that this really is the stuff that raises the bar for game development in the adult industry to the point that I will most likely consider supporting this project, not for some early access or other shenanigans, but because this actually deserves to be seen through to the end.

To those that have managed to read through this wall of text with all of its writing errors (or just scrolled to the bottom), congratulations! You won nothing from doing so, excepte my gratitude.

Hella good game love how it builds up. I can't grind much tho coz im too lazy to do it and i don't actually know how to use the console config idunno what to input. But the game is hella fire good animations good drawing love the background as well

Got nothing much to say, very good game and even comes with an android version, keep it up!
Im actually not a very big fan of VN games but i really got stuck on this one, is a lot of fun and i would definitely recommend at least checking it out.

I followed this game development for a long time and saw the changes over time. I have to say that this really grew and it become higher quality as time went on. There was constant render upgrades and solid animations all around. The performance was great on the computer and I have no complaints on how it ran or the story. The story was what committed me because it was just a fun and hilarious time, especially jimmy's input to the story and player experience. The only downside I could imagine is that its not a 100% complete game yet, but that also adds to the fun of always coming back to just better content one after another and I am rather hooked on reading upon the new interactions and increased story additions. The overall "busy work" or "grinding" aspect is really done well and it is not cripplingly boring and if you really want to get everything its not a hard bargain to just grind out a bit if you have a small amount of patience. I don't believe there is much in voice acting, but the writing is superb and the jokes are most likely fun and funny to majority of audiences. I would give it a solid 9/10 for replayability once new major updates come out as well and the story may appear to be unoriginal at first, it will quickly become a sweet experience that will swiftly take you into a fun world with tons to explore. I probably spent 30 hours playing this game over time and updates. It never gets old to relive some of the experiences! There are also very few bugs and the game never really crashes for any reason, the development of it in "beta" is really good and I would recommend it for anyone looking to try something new or especially get into a SOLID visual novel/rpg adventure with numerous companions to engage.

The game itself is perfectly done. But I think it would better to play the scenes not only from the gallery, like replay the scenes from asking for blowjobs or whatever. It would make the game feel more smooth and lifelike.