VN - Ren'Py - Innocent Witches [v0.12.1 A Fix1] [Sad Crab]

Holy shit, what a mess.
I have been following the game for a while - hardly a surprise, considerting it is over six years old. How does the game development normally go? You get a chunk of the story, wait for the next update, and the story continues from the same point. Rewrites, if any, are minimal. Well, not here.
The game fucking starts from offering you to choose which version of the plot you want to play. Who does that? Why should I know the difference between the plots and why should I care? If you for some reason are unhappy with how the game turns out, rewrite a story and delete the old material. That's it.
The amount of content that's getting deleted and moved is shocking. I've taken a good year from the game, return to it - and I don't recognise the fucking project. Instead of moving forward, the story stands on the place, with chunks of a plot being forcefully put together. Full chapters are outright skipped - you finish the third chapter, and then you go right to the fifth, and a little warning window pops up, telling you that the forth chapter will be added later and explains what will happen there. Complete interesing minigames are for some reasons deleted. The sex scenes that the developer says actually will belong to much later in the game are put in. Then why the hell would you write them now in the first place? It is not a game - it is a six years old alpha, which showcases main mechanics and general idea of the plot, instead of giving a pleasurable gaming experience.
The rest of the game is questionable as well. Art is great - yet for some reason, not sexy at all. Characters look a bit wooden, sex scenes are very plastic like and not exciting. Characters are a bit tropey and flat with any characterisation ruined, again, by a completely broken structure.
If this game ever gets finished, I will play it again and my opinion will probabily change. But by now it is a mess that the devs should aim to salvage as quickly as possible. Take time off, write the fucking story as you should have done from the beginning, delete all the old plotlines and the game can become good, because the production power(i.e. sweet Patreon money) is obviously there.
Oh, almost forgot, there are like five different sex scenes - one for each character. Six years of development everybody. Instead you have two plotlines. Smh

In short: too many words and not enough action.
The art is beautiful and the story is kinda interesting at the start but it gets more and more bloated.
I wanna read the stories but the dialogs in this game are unnecessarily long. On top of that you have to click too much. You want money? Click click click and wait. Want skill points? Click click click. You wanna progress the story? Click again and again. All of these are absolutely unnecessary.

I expected more from the game. I really liked the style, the animation even has several interesting places in the plot, which unfortunately do not develop in any way along the way. There are to little sex scenes. And the grind of characteristics begins to bother after you reach 10-11 units

There's almost no actual "content" in this game. There are *two* sex scenes, a few blowjob scenes here and there, but mostly, for how long it has been in dev for, there's barely anything here. The game has really good art, but that's it. The writing is hit or miss, mostly miss, as I've said before the sex scenes are too few, and the MC is an unlikable bastard even for the trainer/corruption genre.

All in all, this is just sad.

Not bad but far from great.

it's odd, this game starts out like an adult game with a full on pseudo rape including penetration then proceeds to be literal hours of slow, blueball, grindy cock tease game.

It's mostly requiring you to click the same documents, sleep over and over or just get fed up and load your save file into an save editor to escape the mindless tedium that is "working" to get money to progress at hogworts, read book sleep, next day, read book sleep, next day read ...

also This game if FLOOODED with missed opportunities...

this is Hogwarts !! HOGWARTS where the fuck is all the sexy magic shenanigans, it isn't until one of the most latest chapters (around version 1) you finally get to mess with polyjuice potion, which is also scriped as part of the story so you can't really just use it to mess around make a likeness of your choice go masturbate or get the into trouble, also where are the spells? partial / object transformations, body swap, mindcontrol, remote viewing private moments, body attribute +- size spells, remote genitals / portal sex, invisibility cloak! etc or what about getting students involved in mythical creatures ? centaurs anyone? maybe even fluffy?

any combination of those things!! like fluffy portal sex Hermione and see how well she can concentrate knotted in the middle of class ? while its their game they can choose whatever they want, the point is it isn't heavy on magic sexy things for the world they chose to set the game in.

There is some kind of curse in place that was supposed to prevent intercourse, also was this funny promo image where they replaced the main guys cock with a picture of a sandwich, girl ready to blow him, I was so sure they were going to use this as a fun way to get around the curse, spell to make his cock appear as a sandwich to bypass the curse ? but nope that would require creativity! kept waiting it never happened! it was only ever a random way to censor an image for the site.

there is a part where Luna teases about tentacle raping your character but that also never happens (not for everyone buy why the fuck not?) no its just some throw away comment they added to try be "funny"

there is a mini game as part of the story where you can go into the girls dorms and steal their panties.. an unconnected part in then afternoon you can call Hermione in while having the phoenix burst into flames and Hermione bend over to inspect the ashes for upskirt panty flash, when I steel all her panties why does this not make this interaction a NSFW one?

one of the side halls is off limits, completely flooded with some kind of plant tentacle, later you get to send Hermione around the school, why the fuck couldn't you send her to this corridor to get sexed ?

anyway back to the review, there are entire mini-games that feel like they take way too long and the only thing they do is softcore, show a bit of nipple and time again this is mostly ever recycled stills, the nude version of static image when you are talking to a character.

It actually plays like it wants to be one of those 80s point and click sexy adventures that has very little real or hard sexual content but also has hardcore porn opening, so maybe this game is a bit confused about what it wants to be ?

Game has potential to be great, the setting, the artstyle is amazing there needs more action with unique supporting art and a lot less 'padding',
also the living self portrait is kind of annoying...

It has genuinely good parts too, like drinking by the fire at night with Snape (I dont know why I like that) and a bunch of well done sexual interaction scenes provided you don't mind slogging through the thick crusty pie to get to the actual meat of the game.

Sadcrab seem to be working on it and already have done a rework to make the game less grindy and to better organize the story, while it seems to be in development at time of writing, I keep checking back to this and updates come at a snales pace.

If you like Hogwarts give it a go, you might have a bit of fun?

At this point, it's a bit of a mess.

I last played the game back when it was just the old plot, and quite liked it then. I have to say, I feel the new plot is actually a step-down in many ways, particularly as the old plot had more impactful changes with the few personal decisions you could make.

Right now, the game is sort of stuck between the two stories, with remnants of the old still clearly visible and contrasting greatly with the new.

The lack of player-driven gameplay and interaction with the girls is my primary gripe with the game as it stands. I want to be able to choose to put Daphne in her place, lock her in the cuffs for once. I want to be able to manipulate Hermione into changing her behaviour. I want to make decisions based on my own preferences because with the game's current state, effectively all the player does is complete tasks, dragged along with no input. It's tiresome and eventually annoying.

Technically speaking, there are some issues. The game sometimes takes a long time to make transitions between scenes, leaving you waiting there awkwardly for many seconds before the fade-to-black happens. There are a lot of typos and misspellings scattered throughout. The chat log doesn't store a lot of things, such as progress on training skills, so if you want to track your progress you're not able to skip through and have to slowly click through the same repeating dialogue.

In the end though, the game features many mechanics, things to do, and beautiful art. It's not a bad game, but very limited for the amount it pushes onto you.

I just finished reading the latest update of this game from start to finish, and let me tell you, it's a complete waste of time. I spent hours reading through tons of dialogue, hoping for some exciting sex scenes since it's supposed to be a Harry Potter parody. But even when I finally reached a sex scene, it was just disappointing. All that time and effort for a bland scene with no emotion whatsoever. It feels like the developer wanted to put their own spin on the Harry Potter franchise, but knew they wouldn't get much support unless they made it NSFW. Unfortunately, they still failed in that aspect. I didn't come here to read a Harry Potter book, I came for some wild adventures and the main character getting laid. The only positive thing I can say about this game is the amazing art style. It's the only thing that kept me interested throughout this tedious experience. If you're looking for a Harry Potter book with some adult content, then this game might be for you. Just don't expect much action from it.

The artwork and animation are phenomenal and Sad Crab does some great coding that bring a lot of life to environments. The game has so much potential yet here we are 7 years later and the story is still a complete mess.

The story is still nonsensical and unfocused. I've played this 5 times in as many years yet the story is still disjointed and poorly paced. Sad Crab made good progress ripping out MCs long diatribes that plagued the game the first 4 years yet the rest of the story line remains incoherent. If the visual artwork is 10/10 the written artwork is lucky at a 3 or 4 out of 10. Maybe Chat-GPT can help them.

This is not a corruption game or a romance game. MC doesn't really corrupt anyone like in Witch Trainer. Any fans of that game are unlikely to find many similarities here beyond the character names.

One of the biggest faux pas this game engages in is intentionally wasting the players time. There are 4 hours of "pauses" built into the game, Sad Crab is trying to one up Hideo Kojima for non-skipable content. A "pause" is coding command to tell the program to stop processing any code and not accept any input. Every time MC starts a conversation the program halts for 1 second before displaying the dialogue box then the conversation will be interspersed with 50 other pauses, some as long as 15 seconds. The result is incredibly stilted conversation and user interface, the user can't simply click to the next line of dialogue when they are ready instead they have to wait for the forced pacing. It's mandated frustration which Sad Crab believe is mandated enjoyment, they are wrong.

Constructive steps for Sad Crab:
1. Remove the extraneous pauses, google UI responsiveness guidelines
2. Remove the black screens interspersed into animations. You don't see this in any good animation why do you think it's a good idea? It breaks up the animation.
3. Go play Witch Trainer, the original one, and take away some lessons in streamlined UI, character interaction and character development, it was successful because it got so much right. This games failing isn't that it's not Witch Trainer, it's that it's the extraneous nonsense in the game. Nia is a great example of this wasted developer time, there's an entire character with wardrobe changes that has nothing to do with the game or story, nice but irrelevant and distracting. Witch Trainer on the other hand is lazer focused and sticks to a simple interaction loop, the MC pushes Hermione to do something outside her comfort zone, she pushes back then relents multiplied by a hundred corruption events. Sad Crab get this somewhat right with Susan Bones and cake baking but the user experience completing the quest is clunky instead of enjoyable.
4. Devs play this game yourself without DEV mode enabled, seriously actually play it from start to finish yourselves instead of just testing the latest content. You will see the pain points.

This is a DAMN GOOD game! Love the artowork and the story, both new and old. It's a bit laggy at times but that's not that big of a problem. Minerva's scene at the beginning is so sexy and I love how fleshed out all the characters are in this game.

I have to kind of agree with most other people that gave bad ratings for this game. The game has two plots for some reason. Both are fairly similar. I suppose the old plot has a bit more plot holes but I kind of doubt the new plot is that much better.
Now the entire game is grindy, which to me is not really the issue here, The problem is rather that the H is for the most part just you see that one girl naked for a bit.
That's it. If you get lucky maybe some foreplay. I don't mind games that are a bit grindy but they also should actually show you the good stuff eventually. This game however has multiple chapters for both old and new plot and the vast majority is just teasing. Mild teasing mind you.
Another thing I don't get is scenes for the old plot are different from the new plot. But... many are exactly the same. I would even say the vast majority is exactly the same.
Why even keep the old plot around? Why even suggest the player the old plot, if its the definitive worse of the two? I dunno.
The art is really amazing. No comment there but its all so few and far in between with the H-scenes.
The entire game is kind of built to lead up to a H-game. The first thing you do in both plot lines is pick up a broom and some panties.
But its written in such a extremely off way.
Its like a H-game one second, then the next its all serious business again. The H-scenes themselves are not really worth it, there are a few good ones that are way late in the game. But you will most likely never get there because the game is extremely slow and you will be disappointed every time you get a H-scene because its just this one girl. Standing straight and you tell her to strip down. Like she isn't even stripping in a particularly charming or hot way.
You tell her to take her bra off and now she stands there without her bra. Just standing straight looking at you. Its like you're a gynecologist or something.
Gameplay-wise you raise some stats there are some minigames but again none of them really worth it. You talk quite a lot and make all kinds of intrigues with Snape but again its all so slow and uninteresting.

To me the entire game seems like the devs just want to drag it as much as they can no matter what. They do not want to make actual H-scenes with say Hermione because they're afraid their patrons are content with that.
So they rewrite, "fix" and add the very bare minimum to the game to keep interest afloat. Does that make for a good game? No, absolutely not. Its horrible.

I mean lets be honest, dev trying their best. Each upgrade is long for 4 months so 4 upgrades annually. But they have milestone, when to deliver. and not to mention it has great art. Most importantly no paywall (thanks for that)

Let me say this straight away, if you don't like story/plot and prefer more lewd actions then avoid this game as you will be disappointed.

+ Art, Storyline and whole atmosphere is really well done.
- Very few action scene, mostly teases but that too is quite less.
+ With cheats enabled you can unlock all scenes and level up yourself.

You will be spending tons and tons of time going through the story, so if you like that then this game is for you. If you prefer rather more action oriented games then avoid this.

Could be a great game, but ain't.

When, better yet, if it gets finished, i guess it could be rated better, but RN ain't worth the time

However if you just want to read a history about HP, well, then i guess it's kinda ok? It's like cyberpunk, it's a great game, but it wasn't a great open world game, they didn't deliver what they showed, and it didn't matter how good the game was, it let people down.

SG or WIAB states cleary what you should expect, so even if it didn't deliver sex scenes, it is highly regarded because of the story. This one could be the same, but the marketing, imgs, tags and etc all kinda mislead.

Would have been much much better if they were make it stick to the point. A lot of shit to do only for little scenes.. literally. It's like bro am i playing talking sim or some indie sfw game?

I was going to make a cheat after playing it a while because i don't understand anything cuz game also have bugs too. I play both old and new version, the new version was a bit better. Thanks to them they at least put a option of enabling cheats after finish the game, that way you can able to see all the shit you wasting your time for.

Was about to give it 1 star but when we talking about the art, quality, world and characters then they literally nailed it. So i give it at least 2 star.

Ngl, i feel like i wasted my fucking time lol. Always saying a good quality doesn't make the game better. It lacks gameplay, progress etc they will immediately turn you off from the game.

A great game, with a beautiful drawing, an interesting plot and pleasant music. The frequency of updates cannot but please. It is interesting and pleasant to play. It drags on for a long time. Plunge into the world familiar from childhood and it will open up to you from an unexpected side.

Slow development but it's very fun to play in that universe, and the game still has lots of potential. But on opposite side, the quest line is a bit of messy to me. Story telling could be better i think.

Great job was done for this game, intresting story, mane activities, lot of fun! You gona go deep in school problems with intresting solutions!
Awesome game, awesome art, awesome all! Recomended for everyone!

i dont get wh only 3 stars, there are so poor games on f95 which have better rate but made poorly.
Nice story, i like the different personalities, good animations, good drawing. i guess it took a lot of effort to make this.

I just wanted to express how amazing I think this game is.. I think the developer is pure genius.. am not talking about the nice story writing or the spectacular art style that is used, but I'm mainly talking about the use of Renpy to its full power, the level of details and the amazing interface design just make this game feel so polished and complete!

Amazing start with amazing main girls plus good MC amazing game.

This was what i think few years ago before this game stuck in development hell and i know yes this gets updates but that updates like not enough for that monthly budget they been doing this like 7 years and its not going anywhere ero scenes hardly you know ERO and few scenes here that i can say good and btw i am not saying they are bad no they are not bad they are just tease sadly really long long teasing here.

Story good and main girls too they are interesting characters and corrupting them is mmmm tasty but how many years to complete this game ? I know original art plus good story but game is not something like normal VN but more like puzzle game you need to do many many things to do anything and thats annoying sometimes you stuck because you dont know what to do then you need to look guide sadly thats annoying and dont get me wrong i like puzzles but this is mmm little bad.

Scenes good and really sexy but like i was saying even after many years hardly any noteworthy here and development team have a problem too sometimes they are stuck in hiatus then they come back update but its takes time and they tease with this scenes and like i said before you need to do too many things for that scenes.

So why 5 star after this much complain ? Well game potential is 5 star not game right now sadly if i need rate that i can give 3.5 nothing more.This is amazing game with really bad update time if they fix that this gonna be solid 5 star for me so good luck to developers.