QSP - Abandoned - Jack-o-Nine-Tails [v2.2.3] [Old Huntsman + Community development]

I don't know the old version of the game. I just played it for 2,5 hours. Most of the time I spent reading walkthroughs to even have the slightest clue of what to do. I can't say I know much more now. It's very complex and probably one of the best trainer games out there. I would definitely give it another try and probably play it much longer if it wasn't for the randomness of the pictures. You get a slave, but e.g. when you train her, the pictures have nothing to do with her but are some random anime pics from the internet. That totally breaks the immersion which is very sad.

I played this game since the old Hongfire days. I love how those HF guys improved gameplay through openmindedness to constant community feedback. The result of all that is the very addictive gameplay you now enjoy.

Now let's see what is new here. Not good.

Mod author is presumptuous to call himself "game developer" when he did not create or even improve this game's acclaimed gameplay mechanics. Real developers are OldHuntsman who started this game and crushboss who rewrote the entire mechanics. Mere modder tries to exaggerate pettiness of his accomplishments... always a bad sign.

Is it just me or is this mod slower to save?

Anyhow this is not real Jack. This is noobiefied Jack. Real hardcore Jack is really hard. Two glaring examples:
- Johny (called Nerd in this mod) now gets all kinds of skills during gameplay. He's not supposed to get most skills at all in original Jack. Like artistic skills. He's supposed to be a loser.
- You can now reuse clothing indefinitely. Real Jack forces you to buy new clothing for every new slave. Now that's resource management! Lorewise it's stupid for clothes to be one-size fits all e.g anorexic loli getting hand me downs from obese MILF.

There's more. My MC levels up in sex skills and guild reputation much faster than in original Jack.

Seriously? This mod is a joke for veterans of original. Hard mode Johny scenario is now for wimps. Combat is still freaking easy once you reach near-invincibility mode.

Moving on to BGM... Maybe it's nostalgia. I prefer original Jack BGM. Many new themes sound like what geeks listen to. Mood changing music sounds haphazard, with no general melody.
The new BGMs I like sound like rips from The Elder Scrolls. They are nice. I just do not want to associate my favorite series to a substandard mod of an otherwise great game.

Moving on to pictures... I do not know if they improved. I replaced pictures in my original Jack game with my own. Except for new profiles and background the new pictures look lame, boring and haphazard. In addition to that I'm under the impression this mod added a lot of scenes with missing images.

What's the reason for replacing everything with PNGs?

Back in original Jack when HF guys make face pictures they use photoshop to give them that "picture frame" look. Not mere copy paste FYI. They adjust the "frames" depending on the image. The finished look works best on JPGs.
Now you have this disturbing "beheaded" look. Like modder just cropped full profile pictures and call it a face picture. That's laziness!

All GIFs got replaced by PNGs. Why? GIF and PNG look the same if you manually replace file extensions. Look at profile pics of old mods. Do they look like ugly pixelated GIFs? No. They are PNGs with GIF extensions.

In effect modder overhauled image system to end up with just the same, even inferior, result. HF was still up until just recently. Modder should have read HF posts to make his job much easier. I'm starting to think modder is just winging this mod.

Why partner with Powerairmax for beta? Did modder know back in HF PAM started and abandoned at least two projects with serious unresolved issues? Looks like he again abandoned this game. PAM never leaves this game without leaving some mess for others to fix.

Why not partner with crushboss? He's right here in F95. Calls himself spectre1viper now. Crushboss doesn't bitch too much about game engine limitations as much as current modder.

Current modder knows his mod still has lots of bugs. Instead of fixing them first keeps adding new untested features. No different from the now forgotten modders in HF. Believed they could get away with old bugs by cramming new features... that leave new bugs they can't fix then abandoning the game.

To veterans: This mod is for noobs. Play the original HF mods for real hardcore play. If you understand Russian I hear good things about their updated version.
To noobs: If you care about stability play the last version (1.7.5) by crushboss. Pics in this version are just as replaceable as the old ones.

Hats off to Old Huntsman and crushboss for creating the awesome mechanics of this game. There's nothing like it!

With that said, this new version 2.0 mod is a big let down. Not really much changed in terms of gameplay or bugfixes.

New mod is puffing its chest on new artwork which is what it mostly did. Like the reviewer below me said the new images have the look of random stuff dumped in the game with no rhyme or reason. You would think that after one year the modders would have actually done real work making the art immersive. Instead the art looks like what you'd get from a few weekends swiping random stuff from random dudes off the Internet.

Unless you never heard of this thing called the Internet you can improve your own game with so much better art you find yourself.

This version 2.0 did not add a whole lot more slaves compared to old versions. But the save file is much bloated and saving time is still much slower. WTF!?

And why do the modders keep adding pointless stuff like Painting? They don't add anything in terms of lore or gameplay. Probably just an excuse to use random painting art they swiped somewhere.

Lots of constructive reviews before me telling the modders what they need to improve in this game. Modders seem unwilling or unable to do anything about those so they try instead superfluous stuff.

This version 2.0 isn't a real mod so much as a rebranded version of the old 1.7.5 by crushboss. If you guys want a "real" mod with real new additions to gameplay, art, lore, etc. that's a real big improvement on 1.7.5 two Russian dudes named Mars & Jinn made a version of jack with all those and more. I mean these Russians already implemented several of the stuff that are still just in the roadmap of this mod. Plus more besides. Translate their work to English and you don't even need to spend years wasting your time waiting for redundant/pointless stuff.

Fun fact: crushboss worked for a while with the Russian guys so you can be sure of quality programming there.

Games like these need more images and they need to be perfectly accurate, sometimes it truly feels someone just put some random images in there and that breaks the immersion. Apart from that I liked the game mechanics.

This game should be more popular. There's sooo many options, how to manage slave life. The same thing was in Slave Maker 3 (I'm so sorry that it doesn't have continuation). Both games deserve more attention, because they've such potential. rating 5/5

This game series is awesome. With that in mind Im gonna review this "beta" together with the best version ever that is version 1.7.5 by crushboss.

One star for picking this game up from 1.7.5. Plus one more star for effort. And... thats it. Im not gonna add stars for this betas future plans, nobody says his mod is gonna suck, everybody says his mod is gonna be awesome... eventually.

I dont see whats so great with this new stuff. Its just image and music packs. Anybody with 1.7.5 can do that. Just replace images and music you dont like with better stuff you find in the internet. You cant even use animated images anymore, thats lame.

Why is this beta so hellbent on stuff (image and music) the average Joe can handle himself? The guys back in hongfire put that json system precisely so everybody can add and remove images even guys who dont code. This game has lotsa stuff that can be improved that players complain about. Why not fix those stuff first instead?
1] Create guide on how Average Joe on his own can add or replace image and music. Not really surprising nobody puts this kinda guide. You cant claim credit for a mod Average Joe can make himself.
2] Specially when you have lotsa slaves in cryo and barn if you play 1.7.5 after a while time to save gets really slow. Slow as in slow like this beta on startup.
3] This game is turn based but feels like real time cause youre gonna break your mouse clicking and clicking and clicking all day every day.
4] Put that damned calorie count on main screen!
5] Combat goes from really really hard to really really easy. That is lousy game design.
6] Easy mode doesnt do whit to combat and everything else. Theres something wrong with a game if you need cheats on easy mode. Get rid of easy mode or get rid of cheats. Or why not allow cheats by default on easy mode?
7] Why are quest requirements hidden at all? Why bother putting incomplete requirements in the objectives?
8] For starter quests on easy mode why do you need B+ in skills when the client just wants a D- slave?
9] What good is the mithril mail anyway? By the time you get it you dont need it. Just replace it with a trophy cause thats what it is.
10] Strange artifacts on-screen. If you dont know any better you might think your GPU is going bonkers while playing this game.
11] The number of sparks you get for selling slaves isnt explained well. You can get loads selling D-, peanuts for selling S+.
12] Nobody bothered to make a definitive guide or bothered to check the guides in the wiki. This game needs a lot of reading. A LOT. The guides in the wiki sometimes contradict each other. You cant even tell if this guide works for that mod.

As for this beta... 1.7.5 is doing fine with glitches and inconveniences. Why add more?

To describe this beta in one sentence... an image and music pack for 1.7.5 that adds glitches.

Jack-o-nine-tails (JoNT) version 1.7.5 (least buggy version available) vs Other Training Games (e.g. Slave Maker 3 [SM3], Strive for Power [SfP], etc.)
PROS:
- very complex slave training algorithm: Satisfyingly so. Simple button mashing won't do.
- sophisticated rewards/punishments system: Training success and failure merit reward/punishment respectively. Too much reward/punishment will screw up training. Repeating the same rewards over and over doesn't work either.
- complex sex system: So much more sophisticated than the competition.
- image customization: One of the best features. Can customize all images, can add even more, can use animated GIFs. Can replace ugly or boring default images with better ones.
NEUTRALS:
- hardware requirements: Positive >> Can be run on a toaster compared with Strive for Power's godot engine. Negative >> Saving time slow and gets even slower over time vs nearly instant saving time for SfP.
- dark themes: Positive for some, negative for others. SM3 and SfP are very tame compared to JoNT.
- combat: Positive >> Somewhat sophisticated combat where button mashing won't do. Negative >> No party combat; gladiatrices restricted to arena and can't use the uber items.
- learning curve: Positive >> Quite steep. Very satisfying when figured out. Negative >> Quite steep. Bad for casual players.
CONS:
- hidden bugs: Because JoNT doesn't have a single modder but instead was modded over time by lots and lots of different people the game can be quite buggy. Guys who made parts of the game disappear leaving subsequent modders scratching their heads whenever they change or add something to the game and new bugs crawl out of the woodwork. In fairness some people consider this game so frickin awesome they don't mind the bugs.
- shortcut buttons: To trigger a single action/event in the game at least 4-5 buttons need to be clicked every time. This gets tedious before long. Game needs more shortcut buttons for most frequently used actions like the rewards/punishments buttons and the bathing buttons.
- need to frequently switch screens: To play JoNT it is important to pay attention to various statistics. This can become tedious in some instances. The most annoying one being the calorie counter. Watch this closely or don't bother with sexy girls at all.
- no plot: Game doesn't have plot at all except the postgame quest. SfP and the classic girls in SM3 do.
- gore button: JoNT has option to hide gory images, but just images. Texts about gore aren't hidden, breaking immersion. SM3 and SfP have little if any gore.
- endgame content: Pointless playing long game. Gold no longer a problem. Enemies become pushovers. Training becomes very repetitive. Postgame reward pointless at that point in the game. Saving time gets slower and slower. SfP on the other hand has nice endgame combat.
- RNG events: RNG events when implemented well keep games fresh. JoNT doesn't have random events except for outcomes of chariot races. SM3 has random events. SfP has random events, random items and random quests.

Jack-o-nine-tails version 1.8 (basis of most recent version) vs Jack-o-nine-tails version 1.7.5
NEUTRALS:
- wearable items common to entire household vs individual slave. Positive >> For noobs this is great, will save lots of gold during the game. Negative >> Will make players lazy when purchasing items, removing some of the resource management fun; breaks immersion when giving gifts.
CONS:
- lots and lots of added bugs, too many to list

Jack-o-nine-tails version 2.0 (beta, most recent version 2) vs Jack-o-nine-tails version 1.8
PROS:
- hands down much better image quality: uniformity of image styles rather than hodgepodge of 2D, 3D, animated/non-animated and everything in between
- much better audio: frequent volume adjustment no longer needed
- fixed some 1.8 bugs
- no loli version: Perfect for people who don't want to run afoul of certain laws. Or for those who find the theme offensive.
NEUTRALS:
- PNG vs GIF: All images are now PNGs. This doesn't achieve much actually except for mass renaming/formatting hundreds of image files at once. A PNG-quality GIF can be created by taking a PNG then changing its file extension to .gif (the reverse doesn't apply).
- image variety: Positive >> More slave face and body images. Negative >> Half of loli images are just resized images of older girls. Neutral >> Increase of variety of scene images not noticeable vs 1.8 because the usual image set is 3 images based on age and 1 image based on age and hair (noticeable when training girls of same age the same skills even with different hair).
- retained remaining 1.8 bugs
CONS:
- saving time: If you think saving time was slow before...
- animated images no longer possible: 2.0 only uses PNGs. JoNT engine can play animated GIFs, not animated PNGs.
- new bugs: Most serious is fatal bug when muting sound. Fatal bugs, unlike normal bugs, when triggered cause the entire game to crash/stop functioning. By itself this particular bug can be avoided (by not muting sound). The problem is the implication. Normal bugs are caused by tired and/or sloppy coders. Fatal bugs indicate unfamiliarity with coding language itself. Result >> Coders who create fatal bugs are more likely to overlook more bugs and/or create more bugs compared to coders who leave normal bugs. It is possible 2.0 has more unreported bugs. In fairness to the mod authors, this is a beta, they don't know much about coding and random members of the community who know coding show up every now and then to fix things.

Summary:
- If you want the best Jack-o-nine-tails version there is, play the latest beta, report findings in the thread and if you can code help the mod authors.
- If you just want to play on the get go take 1.7.5 then replace images (using the PNG-quality GIF trick mentioned above) and audio, if desired.

This game is a masterpiece in gamedesign. The Psychlogical aspect is unique and so complex that no other game has anytzhing comparable. Sure there are a few things not perfectly done but overall this game is even in the sfw mode just so intresting and with the visual aspect in it its so appealing.

One thing i would wish is that the "model" of the slave would be used in every picture the slave participates.

Very good game, definitly enough gameplay for more than once.

I suggest everyone who is interested in bdsm games to test this one - you won't be disappointed. We had few other games where you are training slave, but none of them had this quaility of deep in this.

Some folks love this game. Some puke.

If you dig lolis, cannibalism and senseless graphic violence you'll love this. You can take your preferred medieval method of killing random women, old, young and some not even in their teens and you'll be rewarded with graphic scenes in all their glory. Your character can even cook and eat them. For good measure get yourself a bunch of parasitic chestbusters, complete with sound.

The fun part is starting the campaign when the game actually is hard. You need to know your game mechanics and be conservative using Sparks which is what they call the money in this game.

But after you get the hang of it you'll get tired clicking the same buttons over and over just to get your slave to high ranks.

Finally, don't play with too many slaves in one playthrough. The longer you play the longer the saving takes.

If tomorrow were the end of the world you should play this game today. A moment of saving takes an eternity.

Dark, difficult and not hand held at all. As on old time gamer that feels pretty great, and while the learning curve may be a bit high, that makes it the more rewarding. The training times feel right, nice selection of skills to train, kinda interesting npcs to sell the slaves to. Though it lacks a bit of randomness in the day to day gameplay, making it feel a bit repetitive. Due to his hard difficulty the game feels pretty rewarding, nothing beats getting that first S+ slave, winning your first champion match at the arena, or conquering the fog battles. It's not a game for everyone, but that is life for you xD

Good game, with a lot of sex stuff! Old Huntsmen and the other modders make a good job. It is good to see, that the gamedevelopment is still running. But the game is very hard to finish, I hope for the feature, that mods it makes easier.

This game is one of the hardest, if not THE hardest, trainer games out there. Newbies can indeed be turned off by the steep learning curve. But once you get the hang of it you'll probably become hooked. This had been abandoned by its original creator 5 years ago but thanks to its devotees it has been continually modded and enhanced again and again over the years.

All the clicking is the result of the limitations of the QSP Engine on which this game is built. All the different options available to the player that make this game so complicated require either cramming the screen with various buttons or creating limited options on-screen with various sub-options. When the UI interface was being designed before almost all the players told the modders that they prefer a little more clicking as opposed to cramming the screen with so many little buttons. And so the modders went with the desire of the majority of players.

A little known fact to newbies is that if they're repeating the same dialogs over and over, doing the same things over and over, basically clicking the same things over and over, this game is supposed to make them fail. This isn't like Slavemaker 3 where a newbie can just click his way to success. The player is expected to vary his actions and to take note of the various status reports and act accordingly. If he doesn't take careful notes of the various status reports as of the current day and proceed to just repeat what he had done the previous day then he'll eventually fail as well.

Another overlooked fact by newbies who don't read the threads both here and at HF is the need to pile on different reward/punishment moodlets over the week (not just over the day). Depending on their levels these moodlets can last for just the current day or over 5 days. To take maximum advantage of this players need to vary their rewards/punishments of strength 2 or greater and to take note of when the moodlets would expire. This mechanic is similar to games such as The Sims where players pile on positive moodlets before doing any skill building activity. This is actually explained by Nemth, one of the earlier modders of this game in the HF thread.

Players can build better slaves (even S+) once they get the hang of the mechanics. Plenty of newbies (not just veterans) manage to do this without fuss if they diligently read all the tips especially in the threads, not just in the wiki, as well as asking in the F95 thread if they're stumped

At its core this is essentially a very hard trainer game. But that is the draw for most players of this game. If you want easier games then you should look elsewhere.

Players can actually easily mod this game to get their desired image, dialog, or story while knowing little to nothing about programming anything. With some knowledge of qsp programming the gameplay mechanics can also be modified to whatever suits the modder.

Note that many commercially available games out there such as many Japanese eroge games are even more grindy than this one. Sure, this game doesn't have the fancy graphics. But this is free. And any player willing to do a little work can actually easily mod this game to however he wants it to be.

The game actually has an easy mode for the benefit of newbies. If that' not enough, there are many cheat codes culminating in the maximum cheats code that combines all the other cheats. The max cheat was specifically designed for players who still fail the game in easy mode despite using all the other cheats.

Actually, there had only been just one purported case as of posting of anybody actually still failing in the game even after using any kind of cheat, let alone the maximum cheat. Note that the poster had combed through every single Jack-o-Nine-Tails post here at F95 and even at the old HongFire threads for posters claiming to have failed in the game after using any kind of cheat.

This game has been modded by different people over the years. A common theme is the extreme difficulty for newbies and even to veterans. Rest assured that the current modders will still keep this difficulty. Unless a significant proportion of the community makes the case to lower its difficulty, it shall remain that way; it already has an easy mode, cheats and the maximum cheats mode.

If you liked this game before, you'll like it even better now that it is once again actively being modded. You are hereby encouraged to participate in the improvement of this already fantastic game.

This is probably as some say one of the better trainer games. But with a lot less story or depth, grafics and toppped with grueling management.
You need to be ok with having to click 1-2 new step and 3 repeat dialogs away, EVERY single time you make a decission... EVERY SINGLE TIME. You dont get visual effect changes, so if you wanna learn on your own... the learning curve is very steep (effects of what you do, can take a week to show a minor increase and in temperament cases, a LOT longer than that.) Many mechanics are just grueling, keeping them from going insane, just long enough for u to sell them, requires around 60-100+ clicks PR DAY, the excact same clicks as the day before... so redundant.
Ah yes, and dont think you can spend time on your slaves to build good ones, thats not really doable or worth it here.
If you prefer all that micromanagement over everything else, this is def the game for you, if not, play any of the other trainer games. Youll get trainers with better story, trainers with better grafics, and trainers that arent using mechanics grind to prolong the game unncessarily. Youll most likely get a lot more sex options with a lot better dialog , than this. And often youll even get grafics for the specific girl youre training, rather than here, where you get milf sucking dick picture, when training a loli. For sure, you wont get as many optionals for selling your slaves in other games... but that is not really what i seek in a trainer game.
Its really not that great a game... for me. Spent some 4-5 hours on it, then went and read guides for hours, because the logic approach wasnt working. Then spend another 6-8 hours trying differently following guides that pretty much assumed you cheated (and so i did), to very little different effect from first go.
edit:
In case someone says read everything then you learn the game, be prepared for days of research... and I mean actual days of actual research, not just a random read. Everything conflicts with former statements. And the above rating is a direct comment at mine, where he says youre doomed to fail if you do the same repeatedly. I didnt say i did that, I stated the game itself is one big repetative loop, of clicking away information boxes that says exactly the same as the last time you clicked it. A huge increase in workload to get any results. So much so, that if you play this game for a longer period of time, youll get a sore clicker finger. And its not at all needed. When I say you will do 100 clicks, it means 100 clicks to do very little. 5 6 things or so. Menus are crap and every option you do have several unchanging information boxes to click every single time you do them, regardless of if you do it right or wrong. This is a game where you spend more time clicking away infoboxes than you do actually paying attention to the game itself. Mostly because you already knows what the infobox tells you after having read the first word, since its repeated oh so many times. And that alone drags this game down A LOT.
Newer trainer games manages this a lot better. As said, time ran away from this game, it probably was good, and it has a hardcore following, but if you didnt play back then, dont bother. Itss a mess conpared to others. Calling it hard to deflect from its poor management system, is kind of redundant, because its hard because its badly made. Even modded. Just pay attention to the key words ppl use about this game. Diligent reading, hardcore, steep learning curve, veterans... those are all bad words for a game, and worse yet for a porn game.

tldr:
If you didnt play this back then, youll most likely not gonna be fond of it now. It doesnt meassure up any longer.

First and best game ever made for me and maybie many others

- Strategy
- Gameplay for 1000 Hours until you balls are dead
- Slavery Managemant
- Can be hard to play if you slave wanna kill you
- Dark atmosphere niiiiceeee
- Many posible housing options
- Cooking, Cleaning, Slavery, Tranning, Medical care, Tattos and many more

This game may be old but still the best for Hardcore Gamer

Jack-O-Nine-Tails is best slaver/trainer game I tried so far.
You play as slaver in dystopian mythical city and your goal is to become renowned slaver and eventually patrician of the city. Game is focused around training girls into quality slaves, and in this part, no game I tried isn't nearly as good. Training is divided in general and sexual skills. You reward & punish as requared, and so on.
Game is rich in content, atmosphere is very dark & excellent, and if pictures are not to your liking (I am not fan of anime, and there is no other style as far as I know), you can change them (there are several packs to download, or you can change them yourself). Game is also very moddable. Writing is excellent, and there are pictures for every situation.
I played 1.7.5 version, although there is 1.7.6 version (they increased grinding, and I hate grinding).
I highly recommend this game to anyone who can endure truly dark atmosphere (cannibalism, dehumanization, slavery...), for as far as adult games go, I think this is one of the best.

Need more games like this. I would personally love to play a reboot of this game with fully animated girls rather than watching images of different girls for the same slave. And if there is more to mail characters story that would be amazing too!

This is probably the best slave training game out there. It has a good story and background. Great visuals and game options. There is a difficult setting for new players. Overall, it is a great slave training game.