VN - Ren'Py - Karlsson's Gambit [v0.8.1 Part I] [Grym Gudinna Games]

I generally have a rule that I don't review as-yet unfinished games, but this will be one of the exceptions. I really only do this when I just know that the game can't really reduce my score at this stage.

I think the game is fantastic. It's a visual novel in a future dystopia revolving around the machinations of an evil dynastic megacorporation. The story is interesting and the game features many variables and different routes, some even just subtly different - it's very impressive. Both sub and dom pathways, lots of relatively hardcore and even extreme BDSM. It covers many desirable kinks. The models are very hot, if a little samey in build.

All told, I love it! Ideal. Can't wait to see the rest.

I got really into this game a while back, and was a patron. I still play it on occasion, but it's clear to me that the devs have kind of run out of steam on it, since the last update (even though it did develop a potentially good femdom character, Angelica). The best thing about chapters 1-7 for me was the snappy dialog and the power-politics and intrigue between the sisters, neither of which seem to be present anymore -- I think the plotlines have become bit too tangled, and the narrative spine of the story is pretty much gone.
My five stars are there simply because of the hours of fapping fun the game has given me, playing (and also majorly modding) the "Secret Sub" route.

The female models are beautiful. The renders start out average and become very good over time. The writing is very good. There's a good amount of content and lewd content for a 4 1/2 year old VN. The story is a dystopian off-the-rails batshit crazy excuse for explaining the sadistic femdom cruelty in the game.

Fair warning: going down the good+maledom path is a complete waste of time that will trigger players that aren't into femdom because the vast majority of content that players see is still femdom. The developer should've used the effort spent on the nearly-fake maledom path to develop other content instead of pretending to provide a maledom route.

Overall: 3.5/5 If you're into femdom and humiliation, you'll probably enjoy it immensely. Otherwise, you need to run away.

Good things for all tastes but the story is also good. The storytelling in this, makes me forget why i started playing this. If all lewd scenes were removed in the next updates, it would take too long to notice.

- Story: It's like a wet dream of a dominatrix or someone who enjoys femdom a lot (not my case). I appreciate that there is a DOM path (not that bad). That being said, the developer made a great job at making it interesting and engaging for most of the game, personally I don't like how the main plot is progressing in late chapters, It feels like the developer is overcomplicating things, adding dialogs and background to stuff I didn't care.

- Characters: MC and girls are fine (I suppose, for a game like this). Mc's best friend, he could as well not exist, you barely see him. MC's brother, his scenes were boring.

- Renders: A bit outdated.

- Animations: Only a few during late chapters and they were bad (though it's better bad than nothing IMO)

- Music: There were some interesting tunes.

- Others: I'm not sure if this a bug.Everyone mentions MC's dick being "enhanced" by Veronica (many times thorughout the story, even the MC admitted it xD), however, I couldn't remember that ever happening which was super weird and kind of a letdown.

Overall, it's worth checking out specially for those who enjoy Femdom and Bdsm, also it's cool that choices here matter. So I'd give it an 8/10, it was fun to try something out of the ordinary.

Base storyline is solid and interesting, but there's far too much mysteries. It becomes exhausting to get another name that characters can't talk about. Also the dialogs "You're the smartest person", "You cannot trick me I'm so smart" etc. are too cliche, sounds really bad after some time.

Art is nice, I really appreciate the fact that there are few completely different story branches, with completely different arts, situations etc. It's not that common.

Overall the game is good, I can recommend it to anyway, whether you are top or bottom.

Why am I reviewing this game? - It’s pretty obviously a fdom/msub game and I’m really not into msub. Well I stumbled upon this game quite a while ago, but I never finished it or remembered it well enough to review it. It has the bdsm, mdom, fdom, slave and spanking tags, so I checked out the summary where the creator claimed that there would be a dom path and that you could avoid the harsher femdom and amass power and influence to get mdom content and turn the tables. Considering the high rating I decided to give it a chance.

First off – I played through all (mdom) content of season 1 (act 1-7). I then installed sancho mod and checked whether I missed any interesting scenes. With season 2 (act 8 Part 1) I only checked the scenes with Sancho mod because my rating of this game was pretty fixed already and I just wanted to make sure there was no content that’d change my mind. (and get it over with)

Second – this review is for people like me who are into mdom but not interested in msub content and want to know whether they should give this game a try. If you are into fdom/msub stuff then you probably already know this game – if not – give it a try – you’ll probably love it.

Let’s start with the simple stuff – strengths and weaknesses. The game has pretty good background music that is used well, the story is pretty interesting (at least at the beginning- it wears out its welcome), the fdom content is inventive and varied, the characters are pretty and there are quite a lot of choices that influence the story.
Negatives – The women look (with few exceptions) incredibly similar to the point that you usually recognize them by their hairstyles. The creator keeps introducing more and more women until it gets hard to keep track of who’s who and how they are all connected. The walkthrough is a necessity because there are a shitload of points, flags and choices to keep track of.

So let’s get to the interesting part – is this game worth playing for the maledom?
In the game’s introduction the creator writes that “she likes submissive males (to abuse and get off on sadistically) and dominant males (actual sex)” – to me it seems that this is the main problem of this game – the creator’s understanding of mdom and mine are completely different.
You collect dom point after dom point and use a walkthrough to get the best result and your reward is … drumroll …. - vanilla sex!!!!
fdom/msub scenes are varied, sadistic and obviously lovingly made – mdom scenes are you having sex with a woman as an equal partner. Because that seems to be mdom to the creator. Every male who isn’t a “worm” is a “Dom” when he dares consider himself an equal to a woman. Sex scenes are pretty vanilla with a woman telling the MC when to start, how to act and when to stop. She might even get generous and suck his dick. Actual content where you dominate a woman is either really light or under the orders of another dominant woman who uses you like another toy to dominate another woman.

The MCs sister – kind of a second protagonist – seems to be the actual protagonist. You also can only choose whether you want her to be an evil bitch or a good bitch. She theoretically has dom and sub points but those change jack-shit – even if you make her take every single sub option it only changes some dialogue lines about her – sub points options disappear after a while and don’t change her personality at all – she just starts using men as furniture or humiliate them (Jake) for no reason with no way to change that. Because we can’t have a submissive woman.

Considering scenes – like I said mostly vanilla sex, if you dominate someone it’s always with another woman involved who calls the shots. (light spanking (once), light domination, domination, device bondage, watersports, snuff)
The game tells you that if you rise high enough you get to take advantage of the people below you – this might not be a lie but it is definitely an exaggeration – if you try to take advantage of (piggy) and try to put a bondage hood on her, your sister countermands you. If you tell Hyori to give you a blowjob you get a minuspoint (and it’s once again vanilla sex). The game also considers it a dom-scene if you help a woman cheat on her boyfriend/lover as the bull (more vanilla sex, all you can do is act on yet another woman’s orders).
In season 2 you can so far (very lightly) dominate your housekeeper (1 scene) but all other scenes are more of the above. Maybe there will be more real domination content in the future (you are supposed to take a supervisor position with some female slaves) but at the moment you have an extremely tedious slog of a game with no to very little mdom content. It’s very much not worth it. It also feels like fdom scenes are more inventive and better made. (most of it is msub content fdom on fsub is a lot rarer)
I also starting to doubt that we’ll ever get to dominate any/all of the Karlsson sisters. More likely that you’ll get a single ending slide if you turn the tables. It looks more like you’ll have to choose to be one sister’s partner.
Considering that I fucking hate all of the sisters and want to either execute them french revolution style or break them and turn them into slaves I don’t think I’ll bother with the game in the future unless the creator changes course by a lot.

To make one thing clear - the three stars are for the game in its entirety - if I just rated the mdom content it would be one star and that only because there's no lower rating.

One of the kind best femdom games on the market!
it's so good, story is amazing, much more story branching, a lot of unique choices with end in different routes, characters are beautiful as hell!
Great avn overall.

i am not too much in to dom/sub/slaves kink but this game was worth my time.
very nice made with great story/plot. to say it simple you maybe not in some of the tags of the game but its a game you must try once or you really loose the meaning of F95 existence and some great work from this developer.
not a fast game as you must discover all the characters (they are many) and the story behind them but have a lot of action and choices. looks like Dev has throw in a lot of hours and the result looks amazing. you could even make a movie out of this game without changing anything.
p.s. to Dev keep up the good work and thank you for you creation

Not only a lot of interesting and great variaty of Femdom Scenes with different possibilitys to choose, also a intriguing and large storyline. And interesting characters and beautiful women with sexy clothes and footwear as well. Clearly in my oppinion the best Femdom game, that i know.

An excellent game, full of creativity, I'm a fan of femdom and high heels and Karlsson's Gambit offers me plenty of them. The game is tough and the developer's idea of using female slaves seems to me to be an excellent idea. Congratulations ^Grym Gudinna Games^ for what you provide

Beautifully dark and twisted. The characters have genuine depth and everyone of them is slightly more repulsive than the last (in a good way). I really enjoyed how the pathing was constructed as well.

Short summary:


Do you like it when girls make you lick their dirty boots and drink their piss? If yes, this is the game for you - it’s got plenty of ridiculous degrading femdom. If not - its a hard skip.


There is no meaningful or believable story. Writing is ridiculous, character actions are unbelievable. Oh yeah, you get so many of the characters, often poorly introduced, and many with samey looks, that they eventually blend in together. There is a lot of content, but that’s because most of there renders are pretty low effort - lots of sci-fi looking asset flips, flat boring lighting, overdone expressions, awkward poses.



Good Things

• Satisfies specific kink, if you are into it
• Girl bodies are generally pretty good, but samey. Tits looks good upclose
• Huge number of scenes
• Choices seem to actually matter

Bad points

• Idiotic story, actions, writing
• Models are often marketplace asset flips, you've seen them a hundred times already
• Faces are mostly too smooth and don’t have enough variety
• Expressions are not good
• Renders are mostly low effort, with boring lighting
• 90% of the sex scenes are: girls stepping on guys, making them lick dirty boots, floor, or pussy. Get very boring very quick

Ok, I tried this before and really couldn't get into it. Femdom is not my thing and I felt it's all about this, like so many 'specialized' games here.

So obviously I tried again and what really drew me in now is the writing. Especially so, the development of the characters. It is interesting to see the change in them as they succumb to power over time. Some is a bit over the top (like the Sister on the evil path) but all in all, it is a great study of how power can corrupt you.

So even if the topic isn't your thing, it's worth reading for the story. It really is excellent.

[v0.8]


I initially would have given this 5/5 as it ticked so many boxes on first walkthrough.

But I lost my saves since 0.7, so I redid the whole thing, now, when 0.8 came out, and, well, obviously the feeling is not so excited, and you start to notice things that poke through.

First things first, major kudos to devs for keeping open different paths for MCs! There's a ton of work and content gone into the game, you can see that! The game can be considered a genre classic.

As I am only interested in maledom, I wouldn't have played the game at all, if it weren't possible.

As it is, I wasn't sure what path to choose for the female protagonist (you have to switch occasionally between them), as ideally I would have liked her to be subservient to MC, regardless of what she is to others. But finally I chose dom path for her too, so my review is solely for this combination:

dom male MC + dom fem MC + they team up

So, let's go:

1. Loads of content. 99% (or even 100%) of sexual tensions are powerplay, domination, bdsm, slavery and assorted things associated. You can happen to have a murder or two, too.

2. As I understand, game is heavily femdom (also due to the plot setting), but it is quite possible to carve a semi-mdom MC, too, if you wish (and I do).

3. The writing is pretty hot on many of the dom scenes (especially ones involving heavy hitters like Juliette and some others), but can turn pretty bland and repetitive in others, point in case MC being reminded of his miraculous high status and possibility of dropping back into oblivion. Due to that among other things, it is no true mdom, but rather being given a female euqal rank in a femdom hierarchy. The hints are dropped all the time that he could top the hierarchy at some point (in competition or in team with the female MC).

4. On repeated walkthrough the visuals start to feel quite average. There are issues with all female models following a pretty similar "beauty standard" body plan, even though we have different ethnicities. Now, considering how we are reminded frequently that females are competing in the hierarchy as well, and they all need to keep up fit, that's sort of understandable. However, males, even though they are underrepresented, have much more varied body plans. When you see two females next to each other, you can differentiate between them, but if you don't see their faces it might become more difficult, especially with some secondary characters. Faces and haircuts are different enough.

The sameness goes towards sex scenes as well, which felt very hot on first walkthrough. On repeated one you start to notice the fact that they seem very repetitive, and there does not appear much attention given to detail. Dialogues during scenes frequently save the day, but not always on re-read.

For example, while the fetishes witnessed should elicit strong emotions from participants, they frequently keep wearing the same, or only mildly affected expressions. That goes also for body poses, which hardly change during scenes, even if flogged, for example.

This is particularly noticeable, when any of the character's heads are ground to floor by stepping on them with the foot. Also, if you opt for male MC to, well, kill a criminal by stepping on his throat. Okay, you may dislike graphical portrayal of violence, but if you do have that actual scene in the game, it should look like it's happening, instead of MC supposedly hovering his feet right above the throat, while the affected criminal is lying motionless (he does not appear to be paralyzed the way it can happen with some others).

(On that note, I was mildly peeved with the idea that MC decision to kill/spare that guy [who framed him and due to whom MC started game in jail] didn't include the obvious choice to keep the guy alive for the purpose of a possible future witness. Instead the decision to spare would assume I did that because I was playing a good guy, instead of being cunning).

Similarly, when doing the MC dom scenes, they are frequently repetitive and.. well, only sometimes expressively dominant. Also, we are very limited in actual expression of kinks, there is, I think 1 or maybe 2 golden shower scenes, and no anal (except by dildo/pain device), if I remember correctly.

5. I agree with some other reviewers, that there is a huge proliferation of characters, many of which are used just to drive the plot and have no interaction with either of MCs. That might be OK, if there is a real need for that. As it is, v0.8 introduces yet ANOTHER missing daughter of Karlsson, who seems to be a possible major character, with yet another bunch of complications.

In short, the game starts to feel dragging out. At the end of 0.7 I felt that we are due some fun gamehost event. Now with the 0.8 test version (albeit partial, yes), we get a tonload of conversations and plot reveals, but are still sitting in the same pre-gameshow place. The male and female MC both have a number of slaves to amuse themselves with, which are practically completely underutilized. Instead we are given yet another (personal assistant) with whom we simply have no time to spend with, except for the potential bj scene.

So in the end, I give game 4/5 -- 5/5 for premise; 4/5 for plot and dialogues; 3/5 for visuals; 2,7/5 for (male)dom

If the game doesn't nosedive, I would still eagerly hope for next versions, hopefully giving some actual leverage to MC and some scenes to express his very evil+dom score I've racked up.

It's good but it's dragged on for too long at this point. If you're first discovering it, it's a lot of content and it's easy to overlook flaws. But now with it being separated into seasons, long update cycles, and things getting repetitive and not really advancing, it's hard to really care.

There are just way too many characters and this mystery setup is falling flat to me now. Astrid also just randomly showing up and being the paragon of virtue with the other characters suddenly dropping their previous dark character traits also feels inconsistent and that the writer fell in love with the character. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, so this criticism won't apply, but for me it takes me out of the setting and logical consistency, it's an evil dystopia, I'm excusing a lot of stuff and chalking it up to a video game, but now they selectively have morality.

I previously thought this was an easy 5 stars and arguably the best game on this site. Maybe it still is in the top 3 and I'm being overly harsh, but as of Chapter 8 Test I just don't care about the story anymore.

this is the last straw for me. I was excited for the first 2/3 updates but now I can say with confidence that this game is repetitive, slow and a tad cringe. the sex scenes are as exciting as a walk from the sofa to the fridge and despite all the bs talk about the peak condition most characters have an ugly flat ass. juliette is supposed to be a blonde bombshell but her body is so bad, just look at the pic of her ass on the main page (idk how the first comment in a thread is called)

When talking about a scientific advancement in gravitational fields (or some other kind of cringe made up field) made by a 18yo hot supergenius:
"It's beautiful. elegant even" -the ultimate supergenius, the mother of MC and we dont even know who else who maybe hooked up with the super ultra boss Alexander. and despite being dead, he's still somehow "gathering data" and revealing new things. Call the ghostbusters..

+ nice idea for story
+ music
+ renders

- avn quickly become very monotonous, most of the time you see pussy eating scenes. There is literally tons of these scenes.
- Olivia is dumb as a rock (especially when you realize, how important she is)
- you can't punish any of these cruel bitches
- too many characters. What is even worse most of them have exactly the same personality - cruel and sadistic
- DOM route is a real joke. First of all mc don't have a personality to be dominant, and this don't even change during game progress, he is boring/bland/dull wimp. So yea, this path don't have humiliation content, but you are still a sub and behave like one
- no revenge plot, or maybe even simple situation like for example - prisoners trying to assault some of these girls? This game is enough brutal to do something like that
- lot of meaningless and boring conversations that lead to nowhere
- girls keeps reminding you every fucking time how badly you can end if you drop your rank, or how much power you can get by raising it, Just stop, i already know that
- one of the most boring avn i ever played

nice beginning, but later story becomes really boring, 2 stars

Great game! I like how there's so many branching story paths. I really feel spoiled for choices. It's also interesting learning more about the world and how characters feel distinctly different. I wish there more vn characters like Juliette.

This VN is going the road of having too many characters, too much scenes per "ingameday" while "not enough time passing" which leads to a fuckfest of sort.

Which is obviously not very good since it destroys the rythm and pace of the otherwise interesting story.

Girls and kinks are diverse, which is good, but not exceptional with that many girls. Different POV characters is unusual for me, not badly done, but it's not very well cut.

So I'll play next updates, but I'm keeping open the possibility that this goes in a way which I find very inferior to what it could become. It can also become better, all remains open at this point.