Ren'Py - Lust and Power [v0.70 Regular] [Lurking Hedgehog]

This game is a hard case to evaluate.
I was late to the party and discovered in only now, in 2023.

If you read the thread, you'll soon know that making of this game is a kind of "development hell" thing. The author does it for several years and at some moment he decided to rewrite it very radically. Unfortunately it meant that instead of new content being added, a lot of old content disappeared.

The best version was 0.37 and if you want to play this game I strongly advice you to play this old version, not the current one. Because it's actually really good.

The game is a mix of erotic, visual novel and RPG. Your stats matter a lot
and you need to build them up to advance the story and achieve anything with the ladies. It was a bit repetitive but for most time quite involving for me

The ladies are pretty. The graphics are pixelart style which I really like, maybe because I'm quite old and it's the style of my young days However it's a really good pixelart. Version .0.37 has a lot of erotic scenes included which unfortunately mostly disappeared in later versions.

The only letdown were demons with big, stiff boners. Come on, I don't want to watch demon dicks again and again. There should be an option to turn it off.

The story would be weak for a book but for a RPG game it was perfectly okay. There is nothing annoying in it and the style of wrting is actually good.

So if I was to evaluate version 0.37 I would just give 5 stars. Unfortunately
the author started to mess with the game later. As for now it made the game only worse but let's hope it isn't his final word as the game certainly had a lot of potential

The actual game is good fun smut, with a surprisingly decent combat system and a silly but fun plot. The art is hand drawn and is decent enough.

The biggest problem is the developer treats the game as a hobby, he keeps tearing stuff out and rewriting it, and clearly only spends a few hours a week on it. So releases are few and far between, and keep covering the same ground over and over. If he’d just stick with a build and actually move forward it‘d probably be a lot more popular, people don’t want to keep paying for the same content multiple times.

As you may already know, older version had more content, than new one. So I tried playing both.

[v0.52]

I have to say, that new one is better in terms of balance and UI. But its missing sex scenes, like almost all of them... there is bare minimum left, like naked dancing and groping + a few random encounters on the street.

Its boring to fight doors and farm random loot, most of the time I was hoping to meet any demon to just upgrade my skills while fighting him. Until I tried to play older version, and new one seems like a walk in the park after it.


[v0.37]

In this version demons are extremely common. Almost half of my raids end up in fighting with demons, while mom and sis are eating like black holes 3 meals every day. Sometimes I cant even get to raid another house, because of random cop-demon encounter. And after all that, I may be robbed by Jessica on my way home, since MC refuses to fight her using damaging spells. Its a struggle against RNG and food restrictions that leaves almost no time for talking or lewd scenes.


So why good rating?
Because I enjoyed playing both versions. And I hope some day they will merge somewhere in the middle with full sex scenes set and good balance.

It was fun to corrupt my pretty mother and younger sister and eat them. I wish there were more games with this incest cg style.

Unfortunately, however, there seem to be a lot of bugs. Especially in this 23-03-03 update version. Thanks for the great game though!

Fine game on early stage of development.

There are quite repetative gameplay of magic fights with only 3 types of enemies, early stage of sexual scenes with several women and rudimentary craft and trade systems.

Fun game, nice hunting around doing battle with creatures and obtaining item, balance between game play and naughty scenes. Good humor and varied female characters.

Quite fun, excited to watch it's development.

Pretty sure Dev is done with this game and is just trolling players at this point.
Unless it was some kind of experiment on how to blow up your game that has been in Dev 5 years by removing all the fun reasons to play the game?
If that is the case Dev wildly succeeded at cucking himself.
Only other reason that makes sense is he decided to turn it into a normal game and not bother with sexy time anymore, but as a normal game it is pretty horrible too.
It is a puzzlement but stay away unless you enjoy endless frustration.

You got tired of games being updated slowly and getting minuscule amount of sexual content with each update? Then you should look no further. You can now play a game that LOSES content with updates. Truly innovative.

Boring combat
No option to have sex with anyone who joins you
Renders are not good
You always do the same things eat fight get items food drinks etc drop them in the kitchen
try to seduce the woman who join you
Lot of thing are not implemented yet like sex
No bugs
Would not recommend it

I used to like this game, and as much I don't like following the crowd when it comes to "boo this game sucks" I must agree with this on honestly just principle, but I will start with what was the good , the art and the gameplay were pretty good, the concept was kinda cool and even funny at times , not many sexy scenes but hey , the game is in early development and that's fine!
Fast forward few months to find out that scenesare removed and the game is being reworked from the ground up , ok .... but why ? alright what about the sex scenes, somehow way less now and it's more of fighting doors...

ok ok but the dev will catch up , it's just going to take a bit of time. No it won't and here is more of the bad :

• layered endless grind, not the fun or fast type, you will be mostly doing this the entire time and for little reward and a lot of frustration , it's a joke now about how it's a door fighting simulator cause it feels like it
• sex scenes scraped and removed, what exists as version 0.46 is only fingering and naked scenes , it's a joke
• Dev is busy reworking fighting mechanics every other patch so dw about learning this shit, it's about to change soon most likely
• oh did I tell you about your saves having to reset cause they don't work with the new stuff ? cause that happens quite often ! super fun to go back to grind !

my advice is to stay the hell away from this game , I used to like it and now it's a sad vision of what happens when a dev doesn't wanna listen to their following

v0.46

Sorry but at this point in time I can't recommend playing this game, and here is why:
The game is very grindy for what it offers the player in return.
-Grind love/submission points
-grind food/quest items by bashing down doors and occasionally a demon (it's very RNG)
-grind "junk" (again rng) to make an armor
-now you are prepared to start grinding spells
-occasionally the game now spawns a tougher opponent that you can't kill or run from, leading to random game over

Scenes with landlady end at fingering, with sister at boob groping...

After hours of clicking the same 3-4 buttons (combat isn't exciting or challenging so far, either cakewalk or no chance of survival depending on rng) I am putting down the game. Might play again later with cheats (which the dev wants you to pay for, lol)

This is a worse grind and worse case of "frustrate player into paying" than War Thunder.

The only thing saving it from 1 star is the basic concepts that are in place. Speaking of which, placeholders everywhere that remind you the game isn't remotely finished.

The dev goes out of his way to block cheats and add them for 9dollar patreons only...
On a grinding game.... There are ways to cheat by editing the save files but still dick move and shows how much the dev cares to gain as much money there is...
He keeps reworking on stuff he made years ago but the game has issues even after the rework, so WTF?
There was no point removing the sex scenes even if they needed a rework it looks more and more that the dev wants to look like he is putting more effort when he actually doesn't do much.
But he basically removed everything added more options for ppl to become patreons and have easier time with the grind and added armor mechanic by removing ~97% of his content and adding the same 2-3 scenes each month

Cant wait for his 4rth(1st the dark prince, and this one counts as double ) attempt of making this game tho

This is nothing but a joke. More than 5 years into making and whatever you click on is under construction. you can give the girls items because it's under construction, you can't use magic because it's under construction, I played this 3 years ago and somehow it had more content than now. The fight animations are annoying and repetitive. I don't know if this is a way to scam people for money or not but I know I have been scammed out of my time.

I agree the readded content can be frustrating, but I honestly think the rebuilt systems are better. It honestly feels more polished. I hope in a few updates where everything gets re-added it is in a better state though. At least the new spells and armor mechanics are fun. Finding more girls running from demons and saving them was an amazing idea and random things like that show some progress. Though waiting for the old content to be updated takes away from that.

Overall, I am waiting for more, but it feels like a rough patch development.

Lust and Power 0.42, is a curious game, even when the developer tries hard to fix a problem, end up creating two or more problems later, every time is kind of a surprise, what the developer takes out, what is fixed or when the game crashes.

-This time, the game changed the fighting mechanic, added equipment and that is fine, I guess.
-The game took off the majority of sex content
-The game crashes if you talk to Kelly a second time (sister)
-the percentage of apparitions of food has increased, but everything else is kind of low. Taking down doors takes a lot of time.

Now, the story is not coherent or tries to be. Other games, like "A Zombie's Life", are similar. Both put you in a precarious situation where you have to scavenge for food and equipment. But where in "a zombie's life, succeeds in creating a dramatic situation where you go finding new girls to increase your harem and improve your situation little by little, Lust and Power fails to create that kind of world building. For example, i can't see any change or improvement in the MC, to achieve his goal of beating the one that created the world full of demons.

This game's future is uncertain. Lurking Hedgehog needs a good advisor and maybe someone to check the writing.

This game is super grindy and keeps rebooting (which forces you to grind again).

I discovered this game at its peak, where it had a decent amount of content in it. it was coincidentally just after the reboot to remove incest. (mom and sister were changed to random women who purchased your family ancestral house. you start the game breaking en entering to find some magic item in the house when the demon apocalypse hits. at which point you step up to become their protector).
It was a solid 3 star game, which I could rate a 4 due to personal preferences.

Since then the game was rebooted again to re-add incest. Redesign combat. And remove all the sex scenes (so they can be adjusted and readded later. not permanently)...
It admittedly improved somewhat compared to before. But that is not nearly enough to justify the constant reboots and the grind.

The game peaked at v0.37. Since v0.40 though the game is back to a pre-alpha demo. And the v0.41 did not bring any significant improvement.
Not much more to say, just filling with random gibberish to fill the mandadory 200 characters, way too much dor sure and which would explain why there aren't more reviews than a mere fifty (Notice how I wrote fidty and not 50, just to use more letters)

I find this game very interesting to play. There is RPG and combat part where player needs to survive and protect his girls, and there is seduction part. These things are connected and both are interesting. Seduction goes slowly and needs time and resources, and it feels like being the character and managing the situation.

The first time i gave 1 star.

After 2 days endless grinding, Kicking in doors, killing weird creatures over and over again i got stuck in the game not knowing what the hell to do next.
The game is filled with a lot of useless shit, cola, snacks, wine, beer, which have all no use whatsover, atleast not thatt i was able to figger out. You can o a few things with the girls, but soon you get those anooying signsunder cunstuction), which is the same result as al the stuff you collect kicking in doors.
At a certain point the game becomes a clicking game, clicking through the annoying conversation at the dining table you read by now a few hundreds times.
The graphics are fun the first hour or so, but after that they become annoying as heel as you will have seen them over and over and over and over and over and a few times more again..
one star? well its for the effort than i guess, the effort of making a game anoying as,fuck.

Played the game after 2 years of waiting for updates and it somehow has less content than before because the dev had the "great" idea of reworking mechanics that nobody gave a fuck in the first place. The "reworked" rpg elements still suck - you can use a broom now and trashy armor to kill shitty red monsters that are not implemented yet and that in the playable version, were easy as fuck to defeat.

1.5/5 (play the older version)