Ren'Py - Lessons in Love [v0.40.0] [Selebus]

It's not so much that this is a 3/5 game, more like it's a 5/5 story with 1/5 gameplay. The sandbox element is staggeringly bad and serves no good purpose. Imagine reading a nice book, except that at the end of every couple pages you are forced to go on a scavenger hunt with little to no direction, just to read the next couple pages. This game does NOT respect your time, and is only worth playing if, like me, you like the girls/plot, and if, like me, you have no life and so wasted time doesn't mean much.

Some other notes:

- The puzzles, particularly the first one in between chapters, is kind of ridiculously hard. I literally looked the answer up, and I STILL don't know how I was supposed to solve it.

- The sound design is excellent during events, with a nice selection of music being paired up to the right moments. But, just to hammer home how awful the sandbox portion of the game is, while you aren't in an event there is nothing but some background effects like cars driving; and, far worse is that EVERY MORNING your niece knocks on you door. BONK BONK BONK. You will hear this hundreds of times during the game. Truly awful.

- The UI in general is hideous, Sickly pink on white and, in the first chapter of the game, the background is this strange dim lit hazy pink setting that is equally gross. That part at least is fixed in chapter 2, with a much more pleasant and well-lit background image, but the pink/white buttons are permanent.

This game demands your time but damn does it reward you for it. Each character has a unique personality and chemistry with both the MC and various other characters.

The Horror genre mix is done brilliantly and it adds so much to the tension of many scenes when you begin to piece together the ramifications of what is going on.

If anything the early game is not quite as good before Selebus went full time but Sel's planning to fix that early 2022. Even then the early game is still better written than almost anything else on here and the 80% of the game that comes after is most certainly the best.

The truly remarkable thing about Lessons in Love is how at every turn it manages to be more than the sum of its parts. Looking at the tags, it really is what it advertises, but it's also so much more. I was not expecting to get attached to the characters or the world in the way that I have, nor was I really even expecting this type of game was something that COULD attach me. That's not why I'm here, and yet, it happened. The characters feel real in a way I don't often see in fully produced high budget media, let alone a porn game. The story is funny, inspiring, heartbreaking, horrifying, and mostly, beautiful. I can't recommend enough downloading the game and really giving it a fair shake.

There is a lot to like in this If you can get past the excessive writing and and if you don't mind b grade psychological horror

all the girls have good models and the sex scenes are fun, the game also does a pretty good job of removing some of the larger issues with sandbox games if you spread your time evenly between the girls there is not a whole lot of down time between events. the one downside to this is the fact that currently there are 32 characters to interact with and 35 planned but they all feel shallow and samey, i have never related more to people saying "quantity over quality"

the writing leaves a lot to be desired, there is a happy medium between writing 70k words and rambling, writing 20k words and being meaningful, and writing 1k words and being gibberish. This game usually falls into the first part. As for the "horror aspect" any story that references "good is dead" in the first major experience of its physiological horror should give you a fair indication of how that story is going to unfold.

Version: 0.19
Do you like games when you play as a nice guy, help every character, you're super dumb/smart, the worst problem of your waifu is 'what will I eat today' and litteraly every single character, which has sprite, jump on MC to ride on his banana? Then this game is not for you... well, probably :v

MC
Some people have problem with this guy cause he's a douch/asshole/terrible person and so on... Yes, he is. That's pretty much truth and that's part of plot. And, currently, it works excellent in this story. For me, he feels like more normal person than 3/4 of MCs in other games. Egoistic, self-centered bastard having good moments from time to time

Other characters
There are only girls. Ok, to be fair, there 'are' male 'characters' but they are only mentioned in story, so don't have hopes in seeing them. This is game about girls, their lives and problems... Yes, these characters have problems, just like real people! Some are small, some are hecking huge. Some are pretty understandable, some are... weird... On the other hand, every of them have different personality. At first I was like "Hey, most of them are pretty similar to each other, I can even guess personality cause these are pretty generic." I was corrected shortly. What you see at first is just a smoke screen. With every hour/minute/second you will discover how wrong you are...

Story
Honey. It so sweet that my eyes got diabetes. Is it that nice? Well... define nice :v It is extremely well built, huge (over 1million words, holy heck) and gives you emotional rollercoaster for nearly entire time. You will be happy/sad/angry/scared- basically you will feel every single possible emotion you can feel. There are beautiful moments. There are disturbing moments. There are dumb moments. There are funny moments. There are just cursed moments. Selebus is your therapist and at the same time... not... But! Remember! This is a happy game

H-scenes
To be fair, there are a lot of them. Like... A LOT! More than in most of h-games I ever played. But there's even more story, so much of it, that you will wait pretty long before seeing any of them (most of time). And why's that? Cause these are part of story - I know, shocking. So if you looking just for 'fun-material' then... that's not a game for you.

Puzzles/Riddles... you get it!
Yes, these are in game. Yes, these are part of gameplay. Yes, these are part of story. Yes, these are mandatory. Yes, you need to make through them. So, if you want to play this game then take it into account. I didn't like it at first, but got to love them later.
And don't cheat... It's lame...

Advantages
-> story
-> characters
-> updates (most of time once per around 2 weeks and 30-40k words... sooooooo bigggg)
-> interface (nice, clean and easy to use/learn)

Disadvantages
-> ?
-> you can have some problems if you focus on 1 or 2 girls - you need to progress all of them to advance story (but there's wiki, so you can see what you're lacking)

Neutral (can be disadvantage)
-> riddles
-> you will invest at least several dozen hours to catch up to current development

Additional
Download newest version from itchio... Support Sel at least in this way... Pretty please...

Honestly without the "Doki Doki" aspect of this game I would be giving it a big fat 1 star because the MC is so detestable amazing and caring. I'm a huge fans of games with a good story where you end up wanting to protect and care for the other character(s) so it's actually pretty hard great to play as the MC and I'll probably turn my rating into a 2 star if there isn't an eventual redemption arc play this game through endless cycles!

But that said, at this point I'm finding the variety of girls, the weirdness totally normal-ness and the general humour around VN cliches to be enjoyable enough that I'm willing to deal with the strangeness to see the exquisite beauty.

Oh and also.. Clocks are amazing.. I wish I had a room full of them!

Tons of content and constantly getting more. The cast is full of likable characters and they're well written and I find myself feeling for them a lot during certain moments even if they're not one of my favorites. The story is.... bizarre, no other way to describe it. It goes from cute and quirky to disturbing and creepy frequently (intentionally), I can't wait for each new update on it. Probably the first VN that I have been waiting to see what happens next on it.

Liked it at first, but those happy events are getting annoying.

Why is every person in this game broken inside? Why can't there be at least one normal person.

Guides are unclear or sometimes outdated. When the dev is asked a question he just responds with "learn to read", nice community management...

As someone who looks for the lengthy bad reviews to get a dissenting opinion on popular games, I hope this review will give others who read it a moment of pause.

There is a very good chance this game is not for you. It is a game about a gaslighting rapist manipulating girls into sex under false pretenses perfectly normal teacher and the love stories between his students. There is plot around why this is happening. It might even be an interesting plot. I’ll be honest; I couldn’t stomach enough of this game to really get to the meat of the story. I played it for two or three hours and there appears to be a lot of content, but it was just too rapey sweet for my taste.

It is possible that I simply have too low a tolerance for rape love porn, fake though it may be. If you believe that is so, have at it, I cannot stop you. Just be aware that this game is dark happy and not particularly good for fapping.

This is the most philosophically interesting game I've played - not just erotic game, but game in general. I've loved the discussion of the nature of self in The Talos Principle, the socio-political turn of discussion from the NPC's in Heat Signature, and the raw allegories of This War of Mine and Papers, Please...

Lessons in Love blows them away. In turns crass and coy, puerile and mature, trivial and profound, I've never had a game so thoroughly make me despise and empathize with a protagonist at once. And even though I thought I was playing this for the sex scenes - which are great, don't get me wrong - this is one of the only erotic titles where I've thought during such a scene: "Okay whatever, I want to get back to the mythos and narrative."

Strikingly, every character in the story feels like a real character, with their own motivations and relationships with the other 30+ women who form the cast. I care about them and want the best for them, even as I work through my avatar to manipulate them into loving him, or at least needing him.

I wasn't looking for this story, but by GodHOPE, I'm glad I found it. Give it a try.

I played this game without reading the thread/looking at the tags, so it took me a bit to realize what it was. I'm honestly still not sure what it is. This is a weird game, man.

But it's a good game, and it's well done. The dialogue is absolutely fantastic--- early game at least it's hilarious. Mid-lategame it starts getting more grindy and weird than funny. But it's still quality overall. There are a lot of other reviews, so I'm not going to get too in-depth. Mostly just wanted to leave a rating for the good experience.

And whoever writes Kaori's dialogue is either a literary genius, a psychopath, or has crippling autism. Maybe all of the above.

Easily my favourite game on here, I eagerly look forward to each update, each of which has a very generous amount of content for how quickly they come out.

The characters are interesting and varied, as are your relationships with them and the twists and turns they take. Some characters open up to you right away (if not sooner) while others are still not interested, which I personally think is great, rather than everyone throwing themselves at you as in most games like this.

One of the most important things to me is that the writing is GOOD, not just passable, not littered with mistakes and text that doesn't make sense, it's prose that wouldn't feel out of place in a good book. The writing supports a story that is certainly confusing, but also very interesting.

There's a real range of emotions here, some parts feel like a punch in the gut, some are disturbing, others are happy, sweet or funny, I don't feel like many games get such a good range and do it well, so that alone is worthy of praise.

Lessons in Love is well worth your time and support, and I'm very glad for Selebus's constant efforts and hard work in creating it and giving us high effort content.

Praise Be, Maya is a nerd.

Good: Great graphics, a lot of different girls. Dialog sounds natural and not like the author has never spoken to the opposite sex before as sometimes games on this site can sound like. Protag sounds like the smarmy rapist that he is.

Bad: Unrelatable setting and protagonist. The setting doesn't seem to work with any real-world rules, just an excuse to set up the fetish scenario. The women in the cast feel very samey in personality. I don't get the sense of different personalities, just the same girl in different situations. Terrible gameplay with tons of repetitive clicking that loves to waste your time. Game design has absolutely no respect for the player. The dev seems as low empathy as the protagonist, never considers how fun something is or how players would feel about it, just shoves stuff in to troll.

I don't like this game. Personal score is like... 3/5

I just know it's quality stuff, and deserves 5/5 for what it is.

Personally, I feel like to best experience this game, you probably want to engage in some of the harem/porn elements, and that's something I REALLY don't want to do in this game.

It doesn't feel right to me, and I can't shake it.

But that's just how I feel.

The characters the well written tropes that evolve overtime, the horror elements are awesome, the comedy is hilarious at times, and I can thoroughly recommend this game if you're into the initial concept of it and have an open mind about how the plots of these things should go.

It is... anything but ordinary.

I have very mixed opinions about this game. When I first picked it up roughly a year ago, I was hooked. The story ticks the right boxes for me, the writing is better than most. I didn't even care about the porn (which let's be honest, is mediocre at best). I liked it so much that this was actually the first game I became a patron for.

But after getting past that initial rush and playing the game on a release-to-release basis, the flaws start showing up. Biggest one by far is the cast is just too damn large. Results in the story progressing at an agonizingly slow pace, and some of the characters are just frankly more boring than others.

There's also a lot of QoL issues. The format of just clicking on rooms over and over again to maybe find an event is agonizing. The UX is amongst the worst I've seen on any game here and hasn't appreciably changed since I've started playing nearly a year ago.

Beyond that, the author makes some rather... interesting choices for the game, and has a very "my way or the highway" attitude to the whole thing. The puzzles that show up in the more recent reset events just plain suck for example. They're not fun, they're not engaging, and the game is very unforgiving about being able to discover the answers if you missed it your first time around. If you dare criticize this or seek a way around the puzzles, both he and his legion of followers harass you about how you're playing the game wrong. In fact, with the latest reset event, if you cheat in the wrong way, then you get locked out from progressing, just because you're not doing it the "right way".

And sometimes those puzzles involve looking in unprecedented places without any hint to guide you. For example, in the "There is Nothing" event, you need to be able to hear a voice in the background to get the answer to the port number (which is 1024 for anyone bothering to read this far). The game never required anything like that beforehand. It doesn't give you any sort of warning or hint that something in the audio is important. If you play on mute? Go fuck yourself. Have trouble hearing? Well disabled people don't deserve to play games anyway.

All in all - the biggest draw to the the game is that it has an engaging story, especially if you binge it in nearly one shot. But it's not going anywhere any time soon, especially with the size of the cast. I don't think it's an exaggeration that the game still might not be done a decade from today (if it hasn't been abandoned by then). The porn is mediocre at best (and it'd be better if it just wasn't there at all honestly). The UX is awful. And the gameplay can be very unforgiving.

I'm giving it 2 stars because that story really is engaging and will probably still have me coming back every now and then. But it's not really worth playing on a release basis, and it's not really worth being a patron continuously.

My review of Lessons in Love

The game starts pretty good for a sandbox with regular story events and plenty of cute characters.

The huge problem is it can't really be played without a guide unless you plan to grind your relationship with every single girl.
I focused on the 3-4 girls I'm interested in, grinding the others only a little.

Eventually I no longer kept getting any story events, nor any new events for the girls I cared about.
After mindlessly grinding the other girls for 1-2 hours and still not getting any progress I gave up.

A game that is unplayable without an external 3rd party guide doesn't deserve more than 3 stars.

So this game is something else, it starts off where some folks will probably be confused or maybe even lost with the story but then the deeper you dig the more it all comes together. It is one filled with theory-crafting left and right and it leaves you with eerie renders and things that drive the player to ironically want to see more. Like I'm at 19.0 right now and hyped af for the next. I say give this game a chance if you haven't played it yet, especially if you're into psychological horror and deep stories.

Where to begin...

"Came for the porn, stayed for the plot" is an oft-used expression, and it is incredibly apt here.

I think that Selebus has, quite frankly, a gift. I'm not going to sit here and claim that they are the new Tolkien or Sir Terry Pratchett, but their characters are...alive. Plenty of porn-y tropes, but a lot of it is used exactly to juxtapose it with how an actual person would think or behave, without making it some meta "haha tropes are weird" joke.

Quite frankly, the way the characters interact with the story, the way the story interacts with the player, the way Selebus interacts with us and the game...it is an experience. They have managed to make me smile with little character in-jokes, made me think based on certain comments or events, made me tear up due to character interactions or merely by expanding upon character arcs.

This is by no means a happy game, there are a lot of darker moods and plenty to think about, but neither it is a sad or purely a game with horror for laughs...in many ways this game is a bit of all parts of life. With happiness and sadness, hope and despair, with jokes and tears, and I feel richer for having experienced the story so far.

[Review written as of 19p1, patron]
Lessons in Love is possibly the best adult visual novel I've played period, and it achieves that almost entirely through having phenomenal and evocative writing that elevate it above any other. Even the earliest "hook" scene, with some admittedly more edgy writing in general, still hits remarkably hard with the imagery delivered. The visuals for the game itself have also been steadily improving, going from sprites(that will likely be removed entirely in the future) to detailed in-engine renders with creative shots or chilling closeups, mixing surreal and grounded visuals to create a singularly impressive work. Past minute to minute writing or visuals, though, is an expansive and complicated web of relationships between the girls, the world, and Sensei, which we can currently only speculate on the true complexity of. The only situation in which I would not wholeheartedly recommend Lessons in Love is if you are intending to use it more explicitly as an erotic piece, as that is neither the intent or a particularly usable element of it. Either way, please do read it and experience all the joys Lessons in Love has to offer.

The writing is simply brilliant!

It's a mirracle, how Selebus manages to fill these girls with so much personality, that I really care deeply about all of them.

I came in search of a nice incest-loli-wank and found so much more. I often don't even care about the sexual content anymore (LIE!), at least this isn't the reason I'm still playing this game. I'm supporting on on patreon and have payed more than I have for any other game in my life. And I will continue to do so.

This game has touched me so many times, I even cried a few times. No other creator has managed to achieve similar effects on me.

PRAISE BE!