VN - Ren'Py - Kingdom of Deception [v0.14.2.1] [Hreinn Games]

I like this quite a lot.
It has zero animations, no voiceover, the graphics are.. fine, I guess, but not outstanding, either, and there is quite a lot of text. Sounds bad - only it somehow isn't.
Because the overall plot is interesting, but mainly because it feels like your actions have real consequence and also like you have an actual choice how you approach different tasks. Making a "mistake" and witnessing how things slowly and consecutively spiral out of control for you and your surroundings can be especially satisfying.
At times, this feels a lot like an alpha build. It makes you think that you are stuck and that this simply doens't work as a game - but then you find the next questline, see your choices and the consequences and realize that it works quite well as a porn game.
The game feels and plays very unique, overall, and I can but apllaud the developer for giving us something different to yet another VN or RPG Maker stereotype!

Looking forward to being able to update this to 5 stars in the future.

I'm honestly bewildered as to why the rating for this novel is so mediocre because I love Kingdom of Deception.

This is a legit roleplaying game with choices, very good writing, tons of lore and story and interesting and complex characters designs. And it is hand-drawn. The erotic parts are well paced and timed and make sense within the plot. Even though there is lots of pornography going on it never felt cheap or lazy to me. In fact, I understand it as a part of the world where sex is a common currency.

There is some grinding, especially regarding money. But also, lots of content and progression and the plot seems very orderly and planned. Unlike some VNs where everything feels like it was designed from update to update with no end game in sight, here you actually have plot points that develop over longer periods of time and intertwine.

Kingdom of Deception has several roleplaying elements, like different skills, it has a combat system and the use of items both for progression and choice making.
Characters develop and change over time, the protagonist included. And the game has a nice balance between individual adventure and great power politics.

So, this is quite clearly at least a four-star experience and in my opinion five stars, because it is rare to have this level of complexity in adult visual novels and still have a decent amount of progression and immersion going on. Well done.

TBH I really like the character design as well as the game concept. However, this game is probably really tired to play. You hardly know what to do even if you follow the dialogue very carefully. I have check the walkthrough step by step, and often annoyed by the lengthy but meaningless text.

Speaking of the h scene, it used to be great. But judging it in 2024, there is no animation and barely consists of a few still images. I think in the recent contents, the h scenes only consists a single picture being overused for many times.

Okay, Kingdom of Deception.

This project is not bad; it's quite interesting, and the dialogues are not as dull as in most games. However, the main problem with the project is that it sank into a pile of crap several years ago. There is no progress at all, and the new dialogues are not as interesting as the old ones. The project has turned into a boring routine, and the concept, which was undoubtedly the main strength of the project, has turned into a mess. Playing the project, you will feel its degradation and artificial limitation of the player, where your decisions no longer carry weight.

In any case, you will lose interest in tracking the storyline development due to the developer's irresponsible attitude toward his project, which is no longer what it was several years ago in the initial stages.

"Go, capture the castle"

Once a game exists for long enough - and you've played it before, and have followed it - the rating stops being for the quality of the game, but rather, for the quality of the progress that the game has.

KoD is a good game, despite the visible drop in quality towards later sections. However, the issue with KoD - other than the obvious visible drop in quality - isn't in the game itself, but simply in the development of it. It's been 6 years and it's hard to say the game has gotten out of its prologue at best. As such, there is simply no way to recommend this game to anyone in good faith.

Kingdom of Deception is a very interesting game, it has a good plot and has a high level of replayability. I also like the fact that you can see how to unlock nsfw scenes in the main menu, makes it easier to see how much you have completed. I hope they fix the quest menu soon, because sometimes it can get confusing as to what you are supposed to do.

Version: v0.14

I remember playing this game a few years ago, decided to download it again and see what is new and how the the story has progressed and... There is nothing new? Its been like 2~ years and the story has barely progressed and there is now like 30%~ more sexual scenes and nothing else. I was really looking towards the future development of this game, considering the story concept and its early execution had a lot of potential for a really good story, yet it seems that i will not be seeing that good story anytime soon.
If i played this game for the first time, i could have easily given it a 5/5, just for the mere potential that this game has, but i already did give it a 5/5 stars back then for the potential, now it was time to cash in on those expectations, only to be disappointed.

Game was innovative and good when it came out. But now it feels like a stretch. Art is good, no doubt , but there needs to be a better fleshed out story with more depth to characters and please have some variations in the sex scenes. A little more eroticism and foreplay in scenes would be good rather than " Orc see Sabia, orc fuck Sabia" .

The beginning of game was quite hot when i started to play it few years ago,i had expectaion from this game but now it seems like it is only ben dragged the dev's previous game noxian knight was alot bettter than this.

v0.14

In general, this was my favorite lewd game for a long time, but I feel like it's dragging on and on with no real substantial progress.

It seems like the last couple of updates have been recycling the same couple of poses of Sabia in a tent, only adding the occasional leg of a new character, or maybe sex pose that matches up with the pre-existing pose. Not to discount how difficult art can be, I get that, but it does feel like a meager amount for the time it takes for the updates to come out.

The writing is almost always good, though again, as the game goes on and updates come, the quality of the writing is wavering. I get the distinct sense that the heart is gone from the process.

The beginning chapters of this game (up to about the time the warchief disappears) are top-tier and the reason that I feel this is still worth 3 stars. Sabia is an interesting character that you can play in several different ways at the start.

Over time, however you get locked into either being a confident, capable dom that takes control of a situation, or a foolish, meek, sub that is constantly being taken advantage of and is too dumb to see what's coming.

The sub route literally doesn't make sense to me. In fiction, Sabia is a veteran of an intense war, with minotaurs, and yet suddenly on the sub route she's being manipulated by and is scared of a few horny orcs. She is capable of tearing them to shreds. To me, the sub route should've been about Sabia working through her repressed nature (as seen in her hang ups she eventually gets over about working in the tents) and learning to enjoy sex and letting go of her control.

During the festival, you even get to help her decide whether she wants to lean into the fact that all the orcs want to fuck her to get the things she wants. To me, that seems like that could be her unlocking a willing sub persona or a plain ol' dom thing.

A willing sub is always more attractive (to me at least) and makes waaaay more sense in the context of Sabia's abilities.

(Edited due to 0.14)
TL;DR: Used to be a great game that has slowly degraded over time and became a much worse experience due to greed and -probably- laziness.

Pros:
+Art is quite nice for the most part, females have slightly different bodies and variety, but males are kinda very same-y, still makes for a great viewing experience due to Nomo's art being quite easy on the eyes. However, a lot of the recent artistic choice are questioable.
+Almost every choice you make has consequences, giving the game a lot of replayability and giving some sense of uniqueness to your blind runs. Currently missing from the recent updates, very present at the start, however.
+Story starts off incredibly well, there's a point at the game when it takes a freefall, it's pretty clear when.
+Some characters are interesting despite many others being one-note, could probably flesh them out a little more in future versions.

-Not every route is well developed, the game was clearly made with the Submissive route in mind, and even then it doesn't deliver that well. The concept of Submissive/Dominant is understood at a very surface level, rookie stuff.
-Dom route is very weak, offering almost no femdom aspects and merely being a glorified submissive.
-The 'neutral' route is extremely weak, further reducing potential routes for the player to take if they want to actually play the game. It might as well not exist at certain points.
-While each version change carries a significant amount of content with it, the game has been in development for over FIVE YEARS, regardless of quality, this is quite slow. However, recent updates have been getting smaller and with less variety.
-This is more recent, but the devs have been adding these 'modular' scenes where there's a base image of Sabia getting fucked/groped, and they will use that ad infinitum to rehash content, there are also plenty of repeated CGs in the more 'recent' updates, it's very annoying to see the same CG but for different situations with different text.

2/5 down from the original 3/5 because this game is showing no signs of improvement. In fact, it's becoming substantially worse with each update, while the devs have had a Patreon for this game for over five years, it's still in 0.14 with bi-annual updates and constant excuses.

Not really good as an erotic game: It's sometimes ridiculous how platonic everything remains if you choose to stay a normal warrior. The atmosphere is dense but doesn't build up to anything. Even in an announced event where you might plan to now convince them erotically, even lightly or with dignity for all I care, the erotic option seems completely denied. I'm just flabbergasted by what the purpose of this game is. The average plot makes you care enough for a time, yet a still image as a short scene isn't worth the wait, at all.

If you go for open world, make sure to know how to tell a streamlined story first. And pick a genre, please.

It is very fun for being a visual novel. The games has a whole bunch of endings, a nice artstyle, good plot and you get to make choices which have an effect on your walkthrough.
However it is a shame that you can't unlock all of the scenes from just one playthrough and the start will become quite repetitive after you have done it so many times and the scenes are not animated but simply still images.

In conclusion, I would seriously recommend that people give this game a try unless you are not into playing as a female protagonist of course.

The fact that this has been in development for over 5 years should tell you everything.

Its lazy, poorly written and absolutely boring the majority of time. It's also one of those patreon projects that makes a walkthrough mandatory because otherwise you'd be spending hours doing jack shit, lots of reused art coupled with the abyssal game play just makes the whole thing a mess.

And that's not to start with the overly slow progression, the updates and story is snails pace with zero interesting elements.

Game Design is ugly, it starts from 4 different routes (3 leaders or go by yourself) + sub/dom. It does not add to replayability, it just locks content out.
There is a lot of key content and quests, and scenes you can miss, just if you are careless for a second and don't have walkthrough glued on a wall infront of you.

The art is not great but it is repetetive, and recycling same images over and over again. I give it 2/5 only because of rpg moments and initial world building that makes it worth trying once.

What once was one of the top games here became a terribly boring game that shifted its focus from what people loved to something nobody cares about with an uninteresting art. The departure of Sierra turned a highly praised game into a famous article for jokes and and laughter...

*spoiler alert*
Game is excellent until the chief gets kidnnaped, worth playing. After that, well... it moved this from my list from top to somewhere near bottom...
Its not that it would be badly written or had terrible graphics, its just boring, made by someone without an imagination or original ideas.

When it started, there were orcs, hellhounds, cats, chimera, tentacles, and many more. Now there are just... humans.

Incredibly convoluted, the interactions get more and more unbelievable the further one progresses in the game, horrible decision making on the Devs end in regards to structure and change of art style. This maybe could be a 3 star title but to be perfectly honest I think the game has no direction, not enough of a fleshed out story and really lacks in regards to player control. It's rare to find Visual Novels this tedious, grindy and off-putting despite in theory making the decisions for the character.

Also said character, in my opinion, doesn't have a proper, coherent personality even if 1 sticks with 1 type of choices (dominant/submissive). Also many of the NPCs are extremely unlikable and dumb.

Edit: The main thing, which I forgot to include at either the start or end, is the fact one can basically not play this without a guide, and that makes this game a 1.5 to 2 star game. It means the game fails as a story because it's not written well enough / too inconsistent to make apparent which choices are the appropriate ones.

v0.12.4
Played about 2.5 hours (through Barrin and the catgirl raid) and I can't really get into it. As you would expect from a game/show/book based around political intrigue, there's a lot of talking with the payoff coming at some indeterminate time in the future. There's lore about people you haven't met, places you haven't been, and things which happened to them in the past. Betrayals because ???. Outlanders hanging around for reasons they're not saying. All this can be good, but I didn't find it particularly engaging here. The game seems to offer a choice between dom/sub and freedom/slavery, but -- as is often the case -- it's clear which direction the devs are leaning (in this case: sub-slavery). Again, not a bad thing, but you'll get more out of this if you're leaning the same way.

Speaking of unengaging: the sex scenes. While the orc rape shown in the preview screens has actually been removed from the game, the general tone of most of the scenes will likely appeal to people who are here for stuff like that. If you're not here for that you'll have to put in more work to get scenes, assuming you can even find them since certain scenes are locked behind certain choices.

A genuinely good game that has lost its way. Unfortunate too because everything about this game deserves to make it one of the GOATs but unfortunately the update cycle is way too slow. I'm hopeful that it'll be a good game when it gets finished. And when it does, I'll update this review to be a four star.

The earliest build played: 0.7.5
The latest build played: Public 0.12.4

How I came across:
I found this game somewhere in 2017 while browsing the VN section. Back then, I was intrigued by the art and the story and decided to have a go with this. Some of the earlier reviews are somewhere between 3 to 4 stars, so that helps in making me play this game too, I suppose.

The story (so far):
The VN Kingdom of Deception started after the long conquest of the Lundaris to stand on top of the racial food chain and the story started surrounding one of the Lundari forces' commanders, Commander Sabia Dufuor. Cmdr. Sabia Dufuor, along with a squad of her troops were on the search of an ancient ruin, however, the search was cut short after a rag-tag band of rogue Orcs from Grok og Dar, a nearby Orcish settlement, ambushed and completely annihilates them leaving Sabia to either surrender or face a duel with one of the Orcs. Her duel was short and she was knocked unconscious and brought to the settlement by the Orcs -- leaving her with nothing but rags. From here, she swore to eliminate both Tyra, her mother, and Lynn, her sister as revenge for what happened to her and the reason why she is now in the custody of the Orcs.

To reach that goal, she has to use whatever means necessary to ensure her position and make sure that her progress was not in vain, even if she had to fuck everyone (and to an extent, everything) - both literally and figuratively.

My experience (so far):
The VN Kingdom of Deception is a very decently made game, at first. The story intrigues me and a part of me wants to see where this will be going forward and another part of me wanted to see optional stories available for the players to... "enjoy."

However, nowadays, the game has taken a bit of a nose-dive in terms of quality and everything remained the same as it was in 0.7.5 but with miscellaneous quests given by NPCs or one-time events (such as Prison Break, Betting at the Bar, etc.) and of course, some of these scenes are repeatable with lesser quality control than previous builds.

As much as I like listening to the soundtracks, there weren't any significant changes after (more or less) four years of development. No moaning, no slapping cheeks sounds, no spanking, and of course "the money shot" noises after the dirty deed is done dirt cheap.

The gameplay is pretty basic as you only need to click choices and point to where you want to go on the map and on the locations available to you (as per Public build 0.12.4, Avarton and Whitecrest are two of the new locations that you can visit). And of course, the Sub and Dom values will alter how people perceive you as the former Cmdr. Sabia and how many scenes you can obtain throughout the game. While there are romance scenes, I think it is still an undervalued and underdeveloped aspect of the game, which could be a very interesting missed opportunity that the devs overlook.

But!
Even with all its weaknesses, the game gives you nothing but clues as to how you will proceed towards your destination -- which could be everywhere...

and bearing pretty heavy consequences.

Verdict:
Wanna have a go? Give it some thought. 3/5.
As a game, the VN Kingdom of Deception outweighs the positives with the negatives and there are quite a lot of it, which you can find throughout the comment section. However, after playing the game again from the start, I came to appreciate the game for what it is now and what it was then.