Ren'Py - Maeve's Academy [v0.7.1] [Hatchet Games]

I don't usually review games but I can't not recommend something of this quality.

The story is really well written and the art is amazing. I genuinely spent maybe an hour or so just clicking through menus and walking around because I wanted more art.

The sandbox nature of the VN isn't apparent in the current demo berceuse there isn't anything to do besides the main story, but that still was incredibly engaging on its own.

Honestly as long as the direction of the game isn't changed drastically for the worse this will be one I keep coming back to. I'm most exited for the character individual quests!

This is one of those games with a great foundation that will be good eventually should the devs maintain their current trajectory. It has great art and design theory, the story is perfectly fine for an H game where nothing feels totally out of place, and the character designs are well done with good variety.

It just isn't overflowing with content yet but if and when the devs flesh out a large amount in the future, it will be a great game should they continue as they have.

[0.4.2 Review]

Only flaw is the poor story. It's nonsensical at times and could be a lot better when selling the characters and the world. Intro was fine but as it progressed, it was easy to address plot holes or flaws in character's thinking outside of H-Game logic. The other reviews go more in-depth.

My review is just to state everything about this game, except for writing, is great. Writing is a 3/5 at best. I'm impressed with the developers and wish them success with their creative talent. They use 3D models well and have great design sense.

v0.4.2
Rating: 4/5
Playtime: 1.5 Hours

Pros:
- wonderful art, its a breath of fresh air from what I usually see from H-games

- i truly appreciate the animations/movements in lewd/non-lewd scenes it really does leave a strong positive effect similar to enhancing food with a pinch of salt to enhance the flavor a little cliche but that is how I would describe it. The subtle animations/movements giving the characters more life than what most 2dcgs usually do with the bare minimum heavily relying on vfx, sfx, and scene transitions.

Cons:

Story - feels convoluted I'd say from what the overview explains and the subtle world building monologue/dialogue while progressing. It is NOT bad, but I don't want to force myself to say it is good either. It is fair with what the plot would/could become as the foundation already been laid.

Pacing - feels like its pretty fast, while its understandable to pump out lewd scenes for the updates it felt unexpected. The matter in question being the 2nd H-scene w/ Jade. It caught me off guard completely. It feels as if it is so out of place and not needed for that point in time. Will there be worth-while build up connection with the story and its characters? Or just a User posting their full save solely for the degens who just want to see the H-scenes?

Plot - hand in hand with Pacing. The only progression so far I've seen are the character statistics. Sure it has Sandbox/VN elements, but for right now it feels like a KN with sprinkles of choices that don't really matter or hold any weight to them just for the engagement of the player with humorous post dialogue options. Not every choice dialogue has to matter obviously in the grand scheme of things as engagement with the player is always a good laugh/sexy option to come by when playing through VNs. It just feels as if the build-up is TOO easy and could be better.

VFX/SFX - ol' reliable with 2dcg h-scenes. While this game in particular can probably do w/out it. its rarely ever bad to add them unless devs just choose crap effects or not to.

BGM - while playing some scenes such as the wand shop and dahlia's shop felt empty w/ no BGM probably fixed in future updates. Also BGM bugged out while during the hallway hearing two BGMs overlapping w/ one another. Overall not bad choice of BGMs though could be better the BGM that played for Angelica felt off.


Conclusion:

Good art, animation. Lovable characters. H-scenes decent gets the job done.
Story not bad, plot progression could be better.

The Animations are simple but they're still good, good story and a wholesome one, the art style is very pleasant to see, and I love every single character, especially Maeves, absolute mommy. I really hope to see just how far this gets, this game is in a very early stage, but it's already amazing

[0.3.0] - overall rating: 6.5/10

An adorably cute but incomplete magic-infused story.

THE GOOD
First of all, I am a sucker for eye candy and Maeve's Academy scratches all the good spots for me. Reminiscent of Paper Mario, the "sticker-like" character design is sleek, adorable and clean. Contrary to some other reviewers, I do not think it is "too cute for porn".
My Pig Princess has a similar (albeit a much different art style) fidelity, yet it does not get criticized for that. Audio-visual SFX are also on point, adding to the well-crafted atmosphere.

My only critique in the visual department goes to the backgrounds that simply look... bad. Right as they are blurred in front of our eyes we can see the low quality over-processed renders used for that "filler" part. I hope they get replaced at some point given the fidelity of the characters.

THE NEUTRAL
Now let's switch to the "neutral" gear and talk about the "bobbing" animation. While I appreciate the added motion, it is at the very least distracting, and at worst nauseating to see the talking head almost entering a state of seizure with how often they bob. Also, the effect itself is used rather inconsistently, as sometimes the characters will change their stance and not bob and other times they will just hop around like teenagers on adderall when articulating any sentence longer than one "click".

On the topic of "neutral" we have somewhat uninspiring character writing (the only exception being Jade and Maeve). The game also uses the well-known tropes for the main LI's[?] (the female childhood friend/lover[?], the extremely shy girl, the yandere, the chuunibyou), which is usually not explored in any meaningful way, but given the game's active development we can be pleasantly surprised.

THE BAD
Onto the negatives: The world-building kinda... sucks.

You start the game, get an intro scene, you learn there's magic and wands, and some sort of Academy you get accepted into. You are supposed to not be a man for some reason (to some it's a big deal, but others seem to not care?). There's other races too, apparently. You meet a demon for a very first time in your life only to mention exactly the type of the creature later during one scene (who told us that?).
I could go on with more examples, but you get the picture. Some choose the path of "show, don't tell" when expressing themselves in a medium, but this is just "show" and nothing else. I was confused on what exactly is going on and why.

And the last, but not least: The writing is just bad.

It is perfectly fine to not speak or write English as your first (or even second) language, and grammatical errors could be excused where other parts carry the flow. Not here, unfortunately. As one reviewer put it "the game right now looooves to hear itself talk".

The most egregious example is the "cake quest" where we are almost spammed with MC's thoughts and remarks on: the cake, how he cannot make said cake, how his friend is good at making cakes, and how someone eats that cake. Please, shut up - we know, we can see it.
The dialogue is fine at the start, but during and after the "cake quest" it just falls off really quickly (perhaps there was no proofreading done there yet? I dunno).

On the topic of MC - what exactly is he from the personality standpoint? Curious? Sure. But other than that, he seems oblivious to what's going on around him. He's sometimes eager to do things, other times he acts as if he has never spoken to a woman before.

Also, when presenting MC's thoughts put them in parenthesis or something (like you do for other characters), it's hard to distinguish when stuff is spoken and when it's not.

Overall, this game has a ton of potential, so I hope devs (who read those reviews) take my criticism and apply it where needed the most ^^

Extremely cute and wholesome
The game right now is mostly a demo with very few scenes, but the characters are adorable and charming
Right now the game is very linear, hopefully it will become more sandboxy once there is more content.
The strongest point of the game is the art, but the story is not bad, I just hope it has less harry potter-ish stuff in following updates, the wall piranha was a bit too silly.

Annie is love Annie is life

3.5/5 - v0.3.0

The game obviously has a quality artist behind it, both in terms of character design and UI design, however there's a few things that worry me:

1. Story pacing feels off in terms of world build-up and lewd scenes - one time you're getting a great in-depth explanation about the world and its workings, the other moment you have a dream about when you had sex with your ex-girlfriend (who's the friend that joined the academy alongside you?, that came out of left field).

2. Repetitive and mundane dialogue - this is a critique of one character in particular, but in general I found the dialogue to be needlessly wordy and repetitive at times as well. There's only so many times you can hear a character's self-deluded intro until it gets grating.

3. The artstyle is almost too cute to the point it's difficult to get into the mood. This is of course entirely subjective but it's not an issue I've had with any of the other games on this website thus far so it stood out to me. Artstyle wasn't the sole contributor to this feeling, the character's behaviors also felt too naively childlike. Even though it does make sense considering the story being told, it still felt odd.

I would prefer to give this game a 3/5 but the underlying quality of the game does deserve a rounded up 4/5. It's got potential but maybe wait a few updates before you try this one out.

Honestly, probably one of the best games on this site when it comes to quality, the art is great and so is the writing. I love the little animations. Everything about this game is incredible and I highly recommend it

I'm rating this 5/5, with the caveat that the game is new and there aren't many scenes, and the scenes that do exist aren't particularly "sexy." There are two blowjobs, 1 handjob, 1 defloration, and 1 titjob. The static POV and animations aren't amazing, although for 2d animations they are technically good.

How can I justify 5/5 with that in mind? The art is amazing and unique. All characters have idle animations that are cute. The writing is clearly well thought out. The setting is reasonably interesting and consistent.

This isn't a derivative copy of another game - It is a labor of creativity and quality. One that ought to be supported, even with flaws, to allow it the opportunity to blossom.

beautiful and fun little game that i for one can not wait to see more of, its still in its earlier stages at the moment but you can tell this'll be a real beut once its done. always love to stumble upon things like this

really love the art style and the premise of the story. the variety of characters if there but didn't felt like made to fill the "list" of a usual harem troop. not much at the moment so looking forward to more.

Version: v0.2.2

This game is cute. Very cute. Maybe a little too cute to be a porn game.

The aesthetics of this game is probably its main driving force. It looks and feels like no other VN game right now, and that makes me very excited to see how it develops. The character designs are great, the animations are nice, and it has all these little flourishes that make the game so charming. I love how the characters bounce from expression to expression giving the illusion of animation and making them feel so lively. Also the UI looks phenomenal.

In a way, it all feels too cutesy. While I like the art style, I have an issue with how the rest of the game tries to play up the western-anime style. All the characters are extremely quirky, too much so for me. The cast lives and dies by how much you enjoy very common, tropey archetypes. You have an extremely shy girl, a cringey chuunibyou, an absent-minded narcoleptic teacher, and a mega bitch. Now to be fair, the game is still in extremely early stages, and I am sure these characters will get more fleshed out arcs.

The problem is, the game right now looooves to hear itself talk. The dialogue goes on and on with little to no interaction from the player. It will never even prompt you for a choice outside of asking you some personal fetish preferences at the beginning. After that, the MC will make all the choices for you. So you end up just sitting there watching these characters banter with each other. Again, the enjoyment you get out of this really depends on how well you like the characters, and I did not (Except for Jade and Maeve). At times, I feel like this game would be better as a web comic. That way the we could get more interesting and dynamic art showing what's happening rather than reading it.

I won't comment on the actual story right now since it is so early on in development, other than to say it is extremely rushed. Everything is so far is just set-up for a bog-standard fantasy world. However, it quickly brushes through the MCs backstory and handwaves a lot of the details of the world that it makes it confusing to try to follow along. Many times I was lost and had to reread the dialogue history to try and piece together what just happened. There is some mystery here that got me intrigued, but it's very clearly trying to rush you to the classroom, where the bulk of the game takes place.

There is no gameplay in it other than walking from room to room the few times it actually lets you do so. During these "free roam" moments, you can't even talk to the girls not related to your current quest. There are no additional mini games, there are no stats to raise, there isn't even a currency system in place. I guess there were more gameplay elements in place in previous versions, however instead of trying to improve on them, the dev just cut them out entirely. I hope they get added back in at some point.

It wouldn't too bad if there was more H-content in the game, but there are a total of 4 brief scenes with any sexual content in the game. And those scenes really feel like they had to be forced in there. 3 of them are dream sequences that break up the already bad pacing, and the last one with the doctor is so cookie cutter, I feel like I've seen the exact same scene in 20 other western VN games. It feels like it spends so much time on the cute slice of life elements that it forgets its an H game. It's also very short. Extremely short. For all the dialogue in it, this is still effectively a demo. Only 2-3 hours at most. Thankfully, there are no bugs to report.

I've read a lot of praise for this game, and it's not without merit. There is a lot here to like. And while I have my reservations, I ultimately enjoyed my experience. It's just not on the level of amazing I was expecting. It still has a ton of potential, 3/5 stars. I am looking forward to see how the game progresses.

The game is short in it's current form, but it makes up for its quantity with quality. The entire game, especially the characters, are incredible cute, charming and intriguing.

One thing many Renpy games fumble is thinking a story needs to be incredible contrived and complicated in order to be satisfying... it doesn't. You just need good writing and worldbuilding. This game has both of those things, and I'm sure future updates will only improve on them.

And I absolutely love the art style. It's so charming and expressive. I can't get enough of it.

Can't wait to see what this game will do in future updates.

I can see the potential in this one, it can be one of the best games already

The characters Have excellent designs and their personalities are cute and lewd, all I wish for is more precise goals and more intriguing scenes, I really love this game already and hope the devs do not abandon it.

Story: nothing new but it lands solidly.
Art: Cutesy and perfect for the lewding.
Sex scenes: *chefs kiss*
Gameplay: it's just point and click and very linear but I didn't care because everything else is so good.

All in all: this is really good game, not gameplay but character and story wise. So please keep working on this.

Incredible game.
Currently the game only has 4 chapter, each one of which is fun and unique. The game is pretty linear, but I assume that it due to it still being in development. Great art and is fun. Can't wait to see it develop

v0.2.2 ~ 3.5/5
Very good artistic style with a Great mix of personalities and designs for the heroines, an excellent start to a relatively new game.

My only current gripes which I could see changing as development continues is the rather linear nature of the current content, and the MC's strangely meek personality which I think could use some fine-tuning.

Overall a ~3.5 that I would round up to 4 due to only being able to give full stars.

Very cute and distinct art style as others have mentioned, with lots of potential for more dynamic character poses to match it

With what little there is so far, you get a lot of personality from the cast, a good sense of the plot and what's in store, and fair bit of comedic beats peppered in (IMO).

Some more SFX would certainly help for the comedic beats and sexy moments, as well as more dialogue choices even if just for flavor text and more character personality, but it wouldn't be right to complain about missing features so early in development.

All-in-all definitely worth handing out a fiver on itch or patreon

(v0.2.2 at time of writing)

I love the art style but it's pretty non-sexy so far. There are some (dream) sex scenes, but the sexiness isn't very well integrated with the rest of the content (unlike cuteness which is pretty well integrated). Hopefully this game will continue to improve in this regard as it progresses.