Ren'Py - Completed - Lust Academy [S4 v4.10.2a DLCs] [Bear in the Night]

Great Game!
Clearly inspired by Harry Potter's world, but it keeps a unique style on the characters/interactions side. And of course, on the NSFW side.
Renders are very good, animations too even if there's not much content so far.
I hope the devs keep up the good work, I'll keep an eye on the project!

v0-2-1ab

(Warning: Broken english ahead )

So, I had to try this game, I'm a Harry Potter fan, and I was excited, but I have to be honest, it was a little disappointing.
Here we go:

It is very difficult to sympathize with this MC the guy is a creep, only think about sex (that's new huh?)e.g when it comes to choosing a house, what does he think? That he doesn't want to be away from the hot girls, and in the first test what he think to summon power? Ashley masturbating. LOL Come on man, he has a fucking world of magic that he never knew about, how the hell you don't give a damn about it? But ... The magic world also only thinks about sex e.g at the time of selection, how will the most powerful wizards convince you to join their houses? They will be on their knees sucking your dick.. Of course. How she will give you more power? Fucking. Of course. I'm afraid this is going to become a fuck fest, where all the girls will be bisexual just for the sake of a kink and threesomes, and they won't have a normal personality, or a good character development, just hot girls for a dumbass MC.

It seems to me that all the magic is just bait, when you are playing it does not mean too much, the game does not seem to be different from any other game that takes place in university or school, it is the same thing, with a hint of magic that makes little difference e.g Elijah's plot ... man, dealing drugs, come on bro, give me something big. Making it worse: maybe will have sleeping sex, AKA rape, really? After so many games, I thought we were over it. Is it really that hard to write a normal MC and normal girls? I had a certain expectation in a game focused on the HP universe, there is a lot that can be explored, JK left a huge world with many creatures and mysteries to explore, with a real focus and seriousness, its possible to make a huge and a good story. And all relationships can develop more slowly, sex should be a reward, not the main thing in my humble opinion.

It has some bugs too, but it doesn't bother me as much as the other things I said, I'm sure it can be fixed.

I just spoke badly about the game, but I liked some things, the renderings are fantastic, the characters are very beautiful. The scenario is also well prepared, some references are really cool to pick up, and the narrative to show some problems or future adventures are well done, like the advice of Director Arthur, and maybe a betrayal by Jacob. The animations are amazing too, man, we have some moves and some powers too. And congratulations to Haley (your Hermione), damn, she is very similar. The map is really cool too, and even the UI, although a little slow, I think it's done well in terms of design.

Well, I may be wrong, I'm just a casual player, and maybe all the things I complained about about the game is exactly what you wanted to present to the players, and I'm just not the target audience. Anyway, good luck to the dev.

Review as of version 0.2.1ab

This is one to keep your eye on for now. There isn't much by the way of meat yet but what is there is promising. Decent renders and animations and the writing is pretty good. A few interesting story lines and the hints of an overall story with some direction is encouraging.

The sandbox is fine, it makes sense for the setting but is limited in scope at the moment. The dev should be careful in how content is added, if everything becomes accessible after the prologue it'll quickly become messy and a chore to play. Don't be afraid to lock content/new characters behind progression in multiple story threads.

I suggest saving often and not relying on autosaves. As of the version being reviewed I ran into quite a few bugs and crashes. I can honestly say I've never seen a loading screen on a Ren'Py game before. To the Dev you should work on optimizing the coding or looking for outside help if it's feasible for you to do so. People are forgiving in early versions but will drop it if it doesn't improve, no matter how pretty the product looks in screenshots.

P.S when you reload a save a single rollback appears to fix the background loading issue, Dev you should fix this as a priority, very visible and jarring.

TL;DR Put it on your watch list, be patient and support the Dev with bug reports and on Patreon if it interests you. I look forward to updated/increasing the rating as the game develops.

Since last Update definetely one of my favourites. The renders looks great and the story is pretty much similar to an known movie but i like that

Not all things are good because it got a few wrong spells in the text but for an beta its ok. I think a proofreader will write a correction or my english is not that good and the text is good hahaha

This is a game which i will support and cant wait to play more

this game is very nice

renders/animations are awesome

a unique "whats-to-do-now" system with this book

the phones "lustagram" is very nice too

with one eye closed i can get over this harry-potter-style ,
but i think it will be great in the future

"Sabrina Spellman" - nice one , was cool at the time

im eager to see more of this game
and i hope it keeps those high standards

good job @Bear in the Night

Great start to a really interesting project. Love the "Potter" vibe! The characters so far are really interesting. (especially the "Hermione" looks awesome). The renders so far are really nice! Can't wait to see more of the whole story!

5/5 stars!

For [0.1.2], so not much content yet.

The art is fantastic, in the sense that it is of a quality which I have hardly seen in any other game, it also has surprising "production values". It gives a really professional impression; but I somehow had the feeling that the artist's heart is not in it too much. (Somehow the opposite of amateur fanfic with little technical skill but much enthusiasm and heart-blood...)

I feel similarly about the story, the LIs and the whole game: Well made, with professionalism and routine, but somewhat bland.
In particularly I found none of the LIs particularly endearing, and did not get any sense of the MC's character.

As far as I know there is no gameplay, it is a linear VN without meaningful choices, but this would not be a big problem.

(Victoria's anatomic monstrosity is off-putting, but she is only one of several LIs)

So in my purely internal, subjective rating this would be 3 stars, but given the really high "objective" quality (and lack of any real serious problems) I cannot give it less than 4...

I'm not going to rate this one lower as it's still fairly new and it has loads of potential. But just a heads up, as of 0.1.2, there's maybe a half hour or so of content. So I'd actually suggest you not bother with this one for... a year or two.

That aside, everything here is quality. Renders are probably amongst the best I've seen in a Ren'py title (though sometimes face animations look very weird), and the writing isn't Game of Thrones but it's more or less solid. Everything here, is a fantastic base to build a truly amazing game off of. But, again, as it is right now there's just not enough game to make even downloading it worth it.

This has to be one of the best games out here.. It's a classic Harry Potter story set in a world of modern culture & porn. The renders and animations are drop dead gorgeous. The characters are amazing and super hot. I really hope to see a lot more of this game in the future.

It is a candidate to be the best game on this site. The graphics, design, parody, the way the story is handled, and the characters are outstanding. This game is among my top 5 favorite games on the site. 9.3 / 10

The characters in this game are outstanding.

The worldbuilding in this game is very similar to harry potter if your a big fan of that your gonna love this game.

Even with it's lack of content now it looks like this game is going to updated well into the future hopefully and be well done.

TLDR: Game looks great / harry potter / give it a shot dang it

early on so not a ton to rate thus far. I am a huge harry potter fan so I am enjoying the plot and the way theyve changed it to fit the genre. Excited to see if they can stay close to the real plot while making it different enough to keep my attention and not be predictable. Will continue playing when more updates are out. 7/10 so far

I was very curious and excited about the history of the game, it has great potential, it's just incredible, the graphics and animations are really cool, I just think we should have more freedom to choose the path of the game, like choosing not to go to the lion house, also that the choices have weight in the history itself and can change the path we follow, however I believe that this will be implemented in the future, I am very excited and I look forward to the new updates.
I've played v0.1.2 E and had no problems with anything, everything was very clean and well done, all the characters look amazing,especially Haley.

Although the game is still getting worked on. I'm going to give it my best shot to review it in it's current form.

The first thing you'll notice when starting this game is that it's absolutely beautiful.
From character models to backgrounds the game is stunning to look at, couple this with a good usage of short animations during normal scenes
and it turns into great eye candy. The artist who worked on this definitely knew how to create a beautiful game.
If art alone made a great game though many other games on this website would not be able compete and I would rate this game 5 Stars.

Sadly this is not the case or rather luckily this is not the case, because when creating a game in the style of a visual novel one must not forget that the visual part is not alone in creating a memorable and high standing game.

This leads to the reason why I am currently only giving this game 3 stars,
Because although the art is beautiful the same cannot be said for the writing.
Plot wise the story is okay not particularly original, it's harry potter but for adults some names were changed and some hot looking characters were thrown in. Not bad not good just okay.
But the writing oh god the writing it's not the worst I have seen but it's pretty mediocre none the less, made even worse because of the look of the game just brings the writing in sharp contrast.
The dialogues are awful they feel stilted, robotic, empty, they lack any form of wit or character and come over as if the writer has never written a decent dialogue between people before.
Or that the writer is not a native English speaker and is therefore not wise to the nuances of native speech and dialogue. This is reinforced by the fact that many sentences feel wrong, there are some grammatical errors and the construction of the sentences feels iffy. It's the same for any written part in the game,It's not that it's confusingly written that's not the problem you can follow the story, it's just so boring to read and it feels like it was made out of plastic.
Our MC is also not the best, he's not very charming although the story acts like he is nor does he stand out in any way that makes him very likeable or interesting, same for the girls right now they feel like they don't have a single personalty amongst them.
This also hampers what few sex scenes we get. I mean they look good enough but any time someone opens there mouths it gets ruined.

Gameplay wise the game is a typical visual novel. Right now we don't get enough of a feeling on whether our choices have any impact on the story so it's more of a kinetic novel, but it's too early to tell. This will probably change during development.

So to sum up if the only thing you are looking for is some pretty pictures with a mediocre story to tie them together and you don't like reading then I would recommend this. If writing and dialogue are things you enjoy move along there are a dozen better written games some of witch can offer similar quality of renders but are at least fun to read and play.
Still this game is early in it's development giving the creators ample time to really make it great, Because even a mediocre story can become incredible in the hands of a good writer. And I hope that by investing in the writing I can come back and give this game a 5 star rating. But right now it's a 3.

Even though the game is in it's early stages, it already shows great promise.
The game has the potential to rise to the top and become one of the best in the genre.

The quality of the renders is awesome and the animations are smooth.
The character models all look very beautiful.

The modern Harry Potter vibes (excuse the comparison) make for a great setting.

Keep up the good work Dev, I'm looking forward to the next update.

Good game with a very interesting story so far, I'm absolutely loving the Harry Potter vibes. The graphics and characters in general are very good looking, especially Haley's character, which looks really unique.

I'm looking very much forward to future (hopefully bigger) updates.

TL;DR: The game is interesting and beautiful in some details, but in general it's poor (especially the 1st season) in terms of depth, feelings, choices, lewd content, bugs and inconsistencies.

I gave it 5 stars earlier (see below the review for v0.1.2), even though MC was a total wussy with Don and Olivia. Now I give Lust Academy just 3 stars. It was hard to even get through the 1st season in Novel mode.

Pro:

* The renders are very good, there is a lot of beauty and interesting details.
* Some of the female models look good.
* I don't mind mini-games, these are OK.
* I like that the developer created the "Novel" mode to choose instead of sandbox.
* The setting is interesting, as well as the story in general.

Con:

* However, the story often looks chopped into pieces, and often pieces don't properly correlate and contradict common sense. E.g. MC has some very urgent task, but for the sake of sandbox time, he slacks a lot and does other things instead. Another example: MC went to the Coffee Hut in the morning, got one cup of coffee and had brief exchange with friends. Then it's suddenly a late evening. How 5 minutes can turn into 14 hours?
* Since the start of the classes, the game went in the sandbox direction, and the dialogs were short and bland, mostly devoid of romance, depth or feelings - just some stepping stones to move to the next event.
* The characters of MC and others lack logic and consistency. E.g. a demon-possessed asshole is referred as universally loved nice guy.
* No choice which girls to pursue. I wanted Haley, Gabi and Sabrina - instead I had to waste time with dumber and uglier Naomi and Lily. Leona as a sex partner was not attractive at all.
* Poor lewd content, especially at the beginning. An unfinished meeting with Naomi, two uninteresting scenes with Leona, and only a bit of teasing at the spa and with Lily, etc. There was an enjoyable date with Hailey in the cafe, but it cut short and didn't lead even to a kiss. Maybe the lewd content was dispersed among events intentionally, to make it a sandbox with progression, but the pieces should be larger and juicier for the player to be satisfied.
* Bugs and inconsistencies. Examples: The Reflection Potion I made didn't go to my duels. The "torn ligament" event didn't continue for a very long time, as there was no evening meeting with Sam to tell you about Aubrey, and all the further events went as if I had no clue about them.
* Stupid actions. E.g., regarding Elija and Hans, MC should have asked Sabrina or someone else first.

----

(v0.1.2)
Excellent start.
The story is captivating, and the passion - the heart of magic - is there.
Renders are pretty.
Characters are interesting, though we don't know much about them yet.
A couple of really beautiful girls, Haley and Ashley; others are pretty too.
Sex scenes are not so bad.
So everything is done pretty well.
The setting is interesting, I'm hoping for more releases soon.
Thank you very much, Bear(s)!

It's still pretty early in development but the story so far sets up a lot of things that I would want in a game and the "What's Next" post on the developers patreon has only made me more excited about the future of it. There's mini games which I personally enjoy but there's also a skip button for those of you who find it difficult to play them with one hand. The renders look really good and the animations are great. My favorite girl is Haley (the Hermione look alike) and I imagine she's the favorite of a lot of other people but I hope the developer doesn't push all the other girls aside and make it entirely about Haley since the other girls all seem really interesting too.

There's not a lot of H scenes yet but I'm pretty hyped about what I've seen. So far my favorite scene is the one on the train with Haley so I hope we get more like that in the future. I've always wanted a game like this since the other ones that had similar concepts either had art styles I didn't like or a bad story so I'm really looking forward to the development of this game. I even subscribed to the patreon. At the risk of sounding like every good review on this website: this game has a lot of potential.

This game is in a really early stage of development but I absolutely had to give it a 5/5 review in hopes of it getting more recognition and support because these devs sure do deserve it. With the little amount of content in game right now, I can already confidently say that this is shaping up to be one of the best games on the website. The plot seems interesting and has enormous potential due to it following a fantasy HP-inspired theme; outstanding render quality with beautiful characters; the animations blew me away, I don't think I've seen 3dcg animations being this smooth and natural in a while. Can't wait for the next update, best of luck to the developers.

I hate rating something so early, but I think it's important so that the creators get more support early in.

Story -- Could be interesting, I have always been into superheroes and magic is just a subset of it. 4/5

Rendors -- Excellent, doesn't get much better than this 5/5

Animations -- Not at all choppy and thing look very realistic 5/5

Kinks -- Nothing too out there yet... nothing wrong with that either. 3/5

Worrisome -- Writing makes the MC seem like a complete moronic idiot. It says that it is going to be sandbox.... please for love of g.o.d. don't .... just don't. 2/5

Overall -- I can't give half stars so rounded up, but I would give it a 4.5/5

They could definitely use more supporters

-- Rannell