VN - Ren'Py - Homelander [Ch.4 P1d] [JabbonkGames]

Some may dislike this game because the "Gary Stu" MC, others may find some trivial plotholes.
But, the real thing here is, you can CLEARLY tell this dev gives a shit about the game and the players. And you can see that in how many topics in the game have been put through seriously though in them.
Also the characters are quite hot and the sexual nuances are cool, but again, you don't feel treated like a retard by the dev which is A LOT nowadays. And you can clearly tell that the story has direction and a goal, and is not a simply bunch of sex scenes poorly chained one after the other.

I know there's supposed to be some level of suspension of belief when it comes to playing games but this one is really makes no sense right from the very beginning. The MC was 5 and the only family he had was a father and 2 brothers; they get killed and he proceeds to live and somehow survive for 10 whole years before accidentally running into the princess of the land. What makes zero sense is that he somehow knows about the palace guards and such despite having zero education and despite having no one to teach him concepts for a whole 10 years straight. Hell, he even accidentally calls the Queen "Mom" even though he should have no concept of what that is since he never had one and was only 5 when he lost his whole family. For a 5 year old to somehow survive the wilderness, but also somehow magically know the definition to tons of words as well as learn social norms without any human contact for 10 years straight just really breaks the immersion. If it isn't obvious by now, this is a completely Mary Sue story where the MC is Mary Sue who just so happens to be great at everything despite having zero background for it at all and all the women just somehow love him for no reason either. This type of story might be fine if it were some extremely outlandish and kooky comedy but it really tries to be a serious story. Although clearly taking place in medieval times, the dialogue is just extremely anachronistic; using tons of terminology of the modern day. Overall, the whole story and premise just fails to capture me.

Review for Ch.4 P1d

I think my entire issue with Homelander boils down to the fact that it is simply boring at the end of the day. It's a very textbook example of those Gary Stu power fantasy harem type of games. MC who's naturally good at most things, has insane amount of magical potential, looks that make all the girls fall for him immediately, and last but not least; the token comically oversized dick.

The MC lost his family due to a raider attack, he survives on his own out in the woods for a bit, and then has a chance encounter where he saves the young princess of his nation from drowning in a nearby river. Long story short, this leads to the Queen essentially adopting him into the royal family. Insert time skip, and now the MC is 18 which means it's time for every woman he looks at to start falling in love with him.

In the three chapters I played, I think about ~90% of this was jumping from love interest to love interest fawning over the MC in various ways. Now it does feel like there's a bit more thought than usual going into the world this takes place in. Wars, different nations, history, etc etc. General lore to group it all together. This could be cool, and I was waiting for the game to do something with it. Do anything with it. To the point where I started holding the skip button for ANYTHING that wasn't another girl thinking about how attractive the MC is.

The very end of chapter two is where I finally get something. Shortly after having sex, the MC emits some sort of burst of magical energy that is felt by mages all over the world? Indicated by jumping to various locations showing new characters never before seen. Alright now that that's over, lets go back to flirting with all the girls and introducing another three girls who all once again immediately fall for the MC. In response, I went back to holding the skip button.

You could argue that this is just a slow burn taking its time, but there's nothing within these slower parts keeping me truly invested in the first place. The whole game so far is various small events with different girls all taking place within the castle/town around it. So then are the girls themselves worth sticking around for? For me, not really.

The love interests don't really shine because they are all just revolving around the MC, and we see few moments where they aren't. The Queen: wow this guy is making my daughter happy and also he's hot. The girl homeschooling us: wow this guy is smart and also he's hot. The guard training us: wow this guy has great combat potential and also he's hot. The maid: wow this guy is so nice to me and also he's hot. You catching a theme here?

The renders are alright, but the character models are a mixed bag for me. Some are decent, some feel overdone. I love strong women, but the beefy blacksmith girl feels jarringly extreme as an example (and I hate her hair). The animations were also alright I suppose, but sex scenes where a girl is screaming in ecstasy from us just putting the tip in feels goofy more than anything.

I think this is just not for me at the end of the day. I bash on this a fair amount, but if you like more mindless power fantasies this is probably decent. It's not as if anything is egregiously bad, it just isn't that interesting of a game thus far. I needed more than sitting around in a castle while all the girls fall in love with minimal effort from the MC.

Homelander, Chapter 4, Part 1.

This is set in a medieval fantasy world, that has been fleshed-out with more world-building than most. Aside from men and hobbits (renamed), it focuses on a different set of fantasy races than the usual bunch. It has the typical overpowered main character with the huge dick that women can’t resist. Not much originality on offer.


It plays primarily as a kinetic novel, with choices mostly serving to allow the avoidance of unwanted sex scenes. The cast is sufficiently diverse and inclusive to be suitable for modern audiences, but I’m not sure the dev’s heart was entirely in it: I swear one of the black insert-characters was modeled after Aunt Jemima.

Overall it is shaping up to be a fun harem. Some of the girls and sex scenes are very hot, and you can mostly skip the ones that don’t appeal.

As of Chapter 4, this was a happy surprise

- Good amount of content
- Overall interesting story/direction
- Decent scenes, image quality and/or animations

What the game "teases" you, it often delivers after some buildup. Which makes into a good amount of sex scenes.

Things I dislike is the necessity for the schlooooong haha half of it would make more sense. The amount of blood needed to only get it up is absurd haha kinda break my immersion

I disagree with the affinity with all types of magic being a downside, specially because I believe it plays well in the high fantasy this games feeds on. Yet the way the story will use that is important, not to make progression or consequences meaningless.

And reaching the high fantasy, I like the way it is envisioned. Feels like a good amount of 'lore', with races, conflicts, etc. Definitely way above average.

So far I don't think we had many impactful choices, but since it's earlier that's still fine.

I'm a sucker for high fantasy, medieval games without too much drama/conflict, so take all I've said with a grain of salt if you dislike any of that. In any case, I definitely think this is worth at least a shot.

Pros:

• Competent worldbuilding. An entire continent with fleshed out geographic zones, varying civilizations and species, an interesting magic system, a fleshed out matriarchal society, etc. Could be more fleshed out how the Bad Guys are both disjointed criminals while also being a significant and coordinated threat to your Queendom, but whatever, not a dealbreaker.
• Player choice for all but the most important romances
• Player choice in the inclusion of bi/trans romances
• Sexy scenarios built around an OP self insert character and his horny for open relationships love interest

Cons

• Characters are often too similar to one another. There's the shy archetype and the forward archetype, and that's about it. And the giant Big Sis super soldier blacksmith shouldn't be shy, imo. If anyone were to be casual about sex, it'd be her.
  • Every single romance character basically says verbatim "I could tell you were big, but wow!" Maybe have some be fully surprised instead of half surprised, have some think it's a little off-putting, have some not comment at all. Variety is the spice of life!
• MC is too perfect and his dick is too comically big. Reducing both by like 25% would be nice. Give him like one interesting flaw, c'mon. I rolled my eyes when it was revealed he
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• Some choices take too long to pay off, if ever. Like I know it doesn't matter but the dream hammer looks silly, wish I had picked something else.
• Some of the faces are a bit rough. Ariana and the mage in particular, former looks a little too gaunt/cheekboney, and the latter's face seems vertically compressed

English:..........8/10
User Interface:...5/10
User Experience:..7/10
Art:..............7/10
Dialogue:.........3/10
Story:............4/10
Opinion:..........4/10................
Avg:...........5.43/10 [2.71/5]

Parts of this seem familiar, so at the current time of writing, I don't remember if I've played through an earlier version of this or not. It obviously didn't leave much of an impression if it did, at worst. Anyway here at the opening, MC is made out to be some superior altruist that, after his family is murdered, he doesn't even revert to crime to keep himself alive. He's also capable of swimming to save someone against the current of a river. Later revealed that he was barely standing due to starvation no less. So tiny issues in the writing that just compound on themselves. And after meeting the queen, I remembered, I HAVE played this. The only red flag I get so far is "Chapter 4 Part 1" Why is it not just chapter 4? What justifies it to be part 1? It's already episodic in nature, what is the point in cutting it up even further? Even still this all just feels like "MC walks from room to room and all the girls love him for no particular reason." All while riding off the namesake of a character from The Boys. But really all I can hope for at this point is to not be annoyed by every part of this.

The story starts out with the world building, bad people do bad, queen built her empire. Then you see MC's family die and it cuts to him saving the princess from the aforementioned river. She fell in love immediately. Remember that line, it's going to happen with EVERY female you come across, I guess except the queen. Anywho, the queen adopts MC for saving the princess and thus begins the domino effect of nothing but amazing and good natured things happening to MC. He's adopted by the queen, because her daughter is attracted to him. Time skip, you meet Sabrina, a nervous maid that is working in place of her mother, and loves MC because he's the only male in the vicinity. Then he meets Abigail, a hobbit teacher that he somehow met before. She also exclaims that he's already smarter than most and remembers things from infancy. So, super smart, add that to the list. Right after, he trains with Miranda, somehow he, a rookie with ZERO experience, almost out maneuvers captain of the guard. He also can shoot a bow perfectly. Add perfect fighter with no need to train to the list. She also had tackled him to the ground and started to swoon over him right there. Move into the bathroom with the queen, "Wow he has big dick" She's smitten right then. And currently it is unclear what age he's supposed to be but I thought he was still a mid teenager at this point, so it felt a little weird. Also every sentence trails off when they allude to the queens brother, who I'm 90% certain was MCs dad, queueing up that dumb incest tag. Eventually you meet Maryn, she can see the future and knew before she even met him that she'll be in love with MC. He also has affinities for every kind of magic, so super strong and super powerful, add them to the list. Gary-Stu is on his way.

Onto chapter two, not only do I realize how short that chapter was. Which adds to my concerns about the ch 4 pt 1 stuff. But nothing really happened, and it time skips to MC being 18 or so. No character/relationship building, just "Yeah we had years of fun, wish you were there!" This is a recurring theme in so many of these AVNs, they skip the parts that would make you care, tell you you should, then just have yes or no sex options. It even gives a bunch of nondescript "You trained with this person, you learned a lot and had great times." But the opening went into some deeper lore? Why can't we see any of this? The whole point of a story is to get invested in characters, but it gets more and more apparent that may only be me thinking that. This also subscribes to the writing style of the characters having long, drawn-out thoughts, then saying those thoughts out loud right after. Why did we need to hear the same thing twice over and over? But most of chapter two is MC as an adult getting into sexually charged situations, one by one, to illustrate that all the women want to be with him. As if they haven't been obvious about that already. And it's all in the same day too. One of the odd things is the two mothers essentially say stuff like "I'm so happy you make my daughter happy, lets have sex." All leading to actual sex with Ariana that night. But the ONLY thing of note is the scene where MC's obscenely comically large penis, that essentially is long enough to poke himself in the neck, won't go in. And just the tip entering makes her scream out in orgasm. Whoever made this had to be laughing the whole time, there is no universe anyone thought "Yeah, this is sensual and sexy." It goes on forever too. Followed immediately by her saying "I'm a cuckquean, please have sex with others." Leading to "Look at all the fantasy women it will take 6 years to get to fuck." Wow! Cool. Not gonna wait.

Chapter 3 is just a victory lap to get more intimate with the LIs. The only thing that happens is MC loses his virginity and the whole world knows, literally. So this story is quite literally going to be MC's penis is the solution to everyone's problems. It's almost wholly asking if you want sex with the girls you've met. The story handles at the beginning and end just foreshadow that MC will be the macguffin. And I started to completely lose interest around when chapter 4 starts. None of the dialogue matters. It's just there to fill out space between getting from girl A to girl B. Chapter 4 just ends abruptly because they couldn't think of a good way to get to sex with the next girl, so they pushed it out to get that patreon money. And MC starts acting like he's god's gift to women, which is ungodly annoying, but the saddest part is, with the story going the way it is, he probably is. They try to hind at some global conspiracy, but, I'm not sure if you noticed, all the scheming villains were women. So sex is the solution. I guarantee you will see this one around forever to milk patreon and it will become this boring milquetoaste story where MC tries to be disgustingly wholesome then getting rewarded with sex from everybody like a couple of other longer games on this site. The clearest "inspiration" for this is about a guy that returns to his House with his Grandma.

All in all, it's nothing too special. All the women look like bimbos made of wax. The one "slow burn" interest is just that to fill a checkbox. MC is super smart, strong, intelligent, powerful, agile, and any other super- you might want to add. Boring. The description should be enough touting the "No NTR" and "Sorry there's two 'forced' love interests" I won't go into how dumb I think some people are for feeling so attacked they're "forced" to be in a relationship in a harem game. Meanwhile they can't handle another male being in the vicinity of a certain bundle of pixels, my god. The English is good. More than a few spelling and grammar mishaps, but someone that speaks English has a direct hand in what is put out, so I have not a lot to complain about. The UI/UX is partially customized, I think the font is a bit much, but default everything else is an eyesore that needs work. The art is alright, the subsurface scattering makes everyone look like hollow wax dolls and even then they have the typical DAZ "Plastic surgeon's delight" look to them. Dialogue is either "I'm such an innocent young lad what ever do you mean?", "Haha, we're so quirky and relatable!", or "Yes! I'm your dirty slut fill me up and breed me!" Not to mention the over use of exclamation points, I can practically hear their over-dramatic sighs in my head. No one is that excited or cheerful, tone it down. The story, frankly, doesn't exist yet. We "don't" know who MC's parents are. Even though we're sure it'll be the queen's older brother and his mother is a queen somewhere, and he'd been gifted gods magic for some reason, yadda yadda. Nothing remotely interesting in terms of writing has, or WILL happen. Problems will all arise, take place, and be solved off screen, and if not, MC will be all big and tough and solve it with his penis. If your ego is so fragile you need to live vicariously through Gary-Stu here, here ya go. If you're looking for a fantasy tale that is well written with sexual elements, move along my kindred spirit, you unfortunately won't find that here.

Love the story so far! Keep up the good work. Hard to believe it's your first game. Only complaint is the time between updates but I do understand you may be working on it solo and also life exists outside of the Internet too lol.

Good game

Love the characters.
Love the romance.
The graphics are pretty damn good. There are a few animations.

This is a story I would love to follow and see more.

@Jabbonk Thanks for the game! I hope all goes well with game development.

Love the queen, love the soldiers.
Genuinely hope for more development with Selena. I forget what the tutoring student's mother's name was. But my WORD is she the perfect MILF!!

The blacksmith is an ABSOLUTE UNIT!!!

In an interesting way, it looks like we'll meet the mc's mother. I'm not sure why the mc's father and brothers were taken out like that. They should be at least half or a quarter as special as the mc.

I recommend this! I like the game.

There isn't a lot to say, as there isn't a lot that stands out. The girls are mediocre, (and all their names are similar and I'm bad with names and I don't know who anyone is.) The sex scenes are underwhelming, the plot and writing are not special. I don't regret playing to the end up v0.03b, but I didn't get much out of it.
The only thing the game actually does wrong is the scene(s) with the queen; given her power and status, she needs to make it very clear to the protagonist that this is an offer, and he can say no without repercussions. Alternatively, he could be flirted with and teased until he shows clear interest. Otherwise it's sexual assault. Imagine if the genders were reversed...
Also, what's the deal with those two girls turning into sleepwalking (or not walking) sluts? It's, at best, poor writing. There are much better ways to have the protagonist figure out that they're interested.

One of the best ive played. I had no expectations going into this but holy shit. The characters are a hair away from being too "bimbo-ie" but I think they just pass. 10/10. 200 word requirement ignore this

Story 5/5
Renders 3/5
Animations 2/5
World 5/5
Audio 3/5

Overall great game. I like MC giga chad, not some weak wimp.
I really like the story. Sex scenes are ok, animations are average at most.
Renders are not the best, but not terrible either. Face expressions are strange sometimes.
I cannot wait for next update! Keep a good work. I ll gladly buy this game

10/10 from me. The game has an awesome fleshed out game world with interesting characters with different personalitys and sometimes even races.
I usually dont play the visual novel type games which tell a linear story but this one is actually really good.

You will have to start a romance with the princess and her mother. I dont care. Its fun and interesting. But i see a lot of people dropping the review score because they dont like that. So here is your official warning if you cant read descriptions.

If you still decide to play this game: SUCK IT UP AND STOP WHINING !

.03 Version

I love good writing. I love great backstories and plot lines. THIS STORY HAS BOTH. Deep thought went into this story. It is clearly written by someone that should or could be a novelist. (Yet, chose to do the harder route of creating a game).

Not a fan of FF sized boobs. Most Devs are either really into them or think every male on this planet is into them. No...unless it concerns "Hucows", No. This Dev delivers multiple body sizes shapes and heights. From A cups to MOOO!

Characters are diverse and wildly different from each other. Each has a backstory. So far the two LI's I like the most, have not been made available. But the Dev hints that it will be possible. Of those that are available, you can choose if they are trans/futa or all women in the beginning. Brilliant idea. In my play through there are two trans/futas available to start a fling with.

I'm not a render expert, other than playing AVNS for the last three years from F95. That being said, the people, back grounds, scenery, and effects are fantastic.

Jabbonk this is going to be an epic story! Please stick with it!!! You have loyal fans!

This is a MUST see, even in it's current form. I got lost in the story but I think it was 3-4 hours at this stage. Enjoy!!!

This game has good writing and even better renders! I found each of the girls we've seen so far quite endearing and sexy as well. This story is still in its early stages, but it seems to be shaping up into something quite interesting. Overall a great start and I can't wait to get more of it!

The game has been good and disappointing at the same time.
The story has been nice so far, but the forced romance/sex with some characters doesnt sit well with me.
Specially with ariana. Her character is pretty bland and i dont like the fact that she has to give permission to MC to date other people rather than on his own accord.
I hope the dev can actually redesign that part and let the players choose. I skipped so much of the game, because the scene was ariana was so unnecessarily long and boring.
Giving three stars only because of miranda and the queen.

It feels a little unfair to rate it so poorly having quit the game in the middle of chapter two.

I was really excited when the game told me that all romances would be optional at the beginning of the game and entirely distraught when the game initiated a romantic relationship and sexual encounter with Ariana without player input. I would even go along with it since the rest of the story was fairly enjoyable up until that point but Ariana is the one character I'd actually say "No" to. A dullard and a bore and (to my subjective standards) the least attractive of the characters.

Might try to cringe myself past the forced sex scene at some point to see if the story gets better but agency is what I look for in games as a medium.

Played up to on V0.0.3b on all woman version. Ive been trying to get into this game for a long time but postponed it because it used to say sandbox was planned and all that kind of stuff. I really hate myself for not liking this game, i have a soft spot for blondes and ive got a feeling i will like most of the content here but i hate the way its delivered.

Good stuff: Blondes!
Good Lore and writing in general, dialogues are believable and suited for characters personalities.
Game begins with the Mc being a kid and follows through until hes grow up, i liked this format instead of the classic flash backs setups.

To be improved: The way the lore is delivered, it would be better a more progressive approach instead of a massive info dump specially when you are talking about Races, places and people we dont know and probably wont come up into play until way later.
Music and sound would obviously improve the experience.

Bad stuff: Characters are boring and generic, they lack depth and quirkiness.
Forced romance on said boring characters, i wouldnt mind as much if it were a sexual thing but i had to skip cringy lines and lines about how much the MC likes "X" character while i as a player have 0 interest.

TL;DR: I would rate this 4/10, i wont try this again unless some rework is done regarding choices and player input. This looks like a game where the dev has most of the story on his mind and while the Worldbuilding is good the game is falls flat and is standard on every other aspect. Personally i didnt find it engaging enough but was interested up to the point when the forced romance and scenes started rolling, that was the end for me.
Wish the dev good luck tho, there isnt such a thing as too much long hair blondes so cheers to that.

This for up to v0.03b... Renders are nice. The model for the women are beautiful especially the glowup after the timeskip for a certain character. The plot is good (dnd/wow/midieval fanatsy-esque) Mc's dick is almost bigger than some characters are tall so that'll be funny when those scenes ever come around.The amount of content so far is a few hours which is also nice. Cant wait for more

v0.03b

Pretty good VN. It covers quite a few of my kinks and still has a decent story. Wish some of the character models hadn't changed like they did but nothing's ever going to hit on 100% of what I want and it didn't take too much away. It's still pretty new so it hasn't reached donating level for me yet but if it makes it a few more updates without things going to hell then I'm definitely in.