Unity - Completed - Mystwood Manor [v1.1.2] [Faerin]

For .2.1

It's been a year in development and the game feels really empty to me. It's a management game so your day consists of assigning staff to do tasks for guests and an option to explore, but most of the time this just ends up being "there's nothing to do here." "I found nothing of interest" <--- Sums up the whole game.
Didn't get to any sex scenes because I was bored to death by the actual gameplay, it's not interesting or fun.
Renders look pretty good but nothing special.
Maybe I'll give it another try in 3 years but for now this just really isn't fun.

At its most basic, Mystwood Manor is the marriage of a porny visual novel and a decently robust hotel management simulator. In terms of gameplay style it resembles Hentai High School somewhat (granted that you're running a hotel in this game and not a school), though it's closer to Westane's game The Company in terms of difficulty and complexity.

As a visual novel, the closest comparison to make is Faerin's (the dev's) previous game: Man of the House. Both games have a fairly similar art style, though I think it can be reasonably argued that the graphics are somewhat 'better' and more realistic in Mystwood Manor. The characters are also fairly common harem story archeypes in both games, but that works perfectly fine for me. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," as the adage goes. It's still mostly a modern day-themed game, albeit set in a magic forest with some spooky goings-on throughout the game. If you've played a reasonable number of hentai games over the years, this theme should feel familiar.
(I will admit, the setting is fine but not amazing. Again, a similar issue with Man of the House, where the setting was just okay. Still, that served Faerin well enough in that game and I don't see it really hurting this game. That, and a certain 'visitor' related to that setting definitely helps the porn part of the plot move along.)

However, those hentai games probably didn't have the hotel management part! As far as I'm concerned, the hotel management gameplay was the biggest seller for me in terms of my initial interest in the game, beyond the bare fact that the game was from Faerin and promised to be similar to his also-excellent game Man of the House that finished development last year (yes, really! Faerin actually finished a big game and released it before moving on to this game, rather than just switching topics when he got bored!), with a bigger emphasis on gameplay. But I understand that this can also be divisive for some players, so this caveat is important: progress through the story of Mystwood Manor requires engagement with gameplay. Personally, I think that's a great thing and that this part of the game is really well done (and still being improved upon!), especially given that so few porn games can really compete in this regard. Almost every aspect of the hotel management game has the potential to open up some parts or scenes of the visual novel section of the game, including new characters, new outfits, and new sexy interactions. Further, it's actually fun on its own. That being said, things can be a little grindy in the parts where the gameplay extends past scenes it's intended to unlock (as of the current update, you can technically train the staff members to the skill level needed for the 3rd hotel level, which takes a while, but that hotel level isn't actually here yet and training them that hard doesn't unlock anything). But that feels much more like an unavoidable issue of alternating development between focusing on gameplay and focusing on scenes than a problem with what the final product will be. And believe it or not, the updates since about April of this year have all felt satisfying in some way. The gameplay gets better, new girls get unlocked, and/or you make more progress with some girls.

That last part is why Faerin is one of my favorite porn game developers these days: he's very good at making sure the game makes progress on a regular basis, and that every update has something worth checking out. I can't guarantee that you won't at some point lose interest in the update cycle, as I think that's a danger with most porn games in the Patreon era that release monthly-or-so updates, but from experience it's generally safe to take a few months off, check back in, and expect that you'll find some new stuff you'll like (assuming you're into any of it, of course) released in the intervening time.

All told, I'm jazzed about this game and it's one of the real highlights of my month when an update drops. I can't say that every aspect of the game has been fleshed out yet, in particular the magic part of the story and interactions with the guests beyond their use as a gameplay device are still pretty basic (there's every reason to expect sexy scenes with the guests at some point). But for what it is, Mystwood Manor is unique, ambitious, sexy, and a very strong game (as compared to most porn games) in its own right. It's also important to note that, since the game has been made in Unity, if an update doesn't break save compatibility it's very likely that you'll be able to move a save into a new version when an update drops rather than starting over, and you can review unlocked images and scenes, hopefully decreasing the risk of burnout that often comes with ren'py games you need to entirely replay to see later scenes in updates.

With an eye toward the fact that it's still comparatively early in the development process and that things can change, I feel confident in rating this game five stars. I like it, I love it, I want more of it!

Very good story. In contrast to the "logs", which simply change the pictures - there is a good balance between playing and management.
It \"s also interesting - how the history of the Taro card will develop.
And as (it seems to me) correctly said Faerin-the main thing is that the main platform is made. And you can add a lot of women, sex and drugs to it - it will be easie))
I'm just hung up on this game. I play daily.
The only drawback is the translation into Russian.
In version 1, it was fine. But in update 2.0.3 - all new dialogs are in English.
It's good that I know the language.
But I also find it difficult to understand the meaning of the dialogue about Mr. Movo.

Hotel management simulator with a paranormal/fantasy twist. Currently, the game is very focused on the hotel management aspect and less on the story/animations/etc. Very much an expansion of the game mechanics for the Gym in his previous game, Man of the House.

To repeat what Faerin has directly said, don't play this game if you're here for the sexy times yet. Play it if you want to play a hotel game with only the lightest of teasing, in fact, it's new enough to where I'd only recommend playing this if you truly want to either get a head start or you want to help with beta testing.

The framework and planning are great though and will clearly allow for him to churn out animations/story nonstop pretty soon, unlike most games where they have to overhaul the game multiple times throughout the creation process. I've had a lot of fun playing it in its current state and looking forward to it's development.

draws and graffics: amazing.

story: happy and kinda sugarcoated.

gameplay: is well done but also kinda slow.

characters: they are lovely and with a nice design but...

music and sounds: really well done.

conlcussion: the quality in this game is superb. there is a lot of tough on it.
but needs some serious upgrades on the speed, it feels so slow mostly of times, and the grinding becomes really tedious sooner than later. the story also feels odd, bad things happens but you CANT feel them because all this happy atmosfere and graffics, BUT AT THE SAME TIME it feels that it got the right pace, and noting is rushing, and all is going acording to the story so you feell right about it.

this game TOTTALLY deserve your time and money.

psdt: "ctrl" boton is your best friend.

Horrible and really slow mechanics. When a new update is out you can't use your old save files so you need to replay that slow and frustrating farming mechanics.

And the most important: it actually has zero content.

Maybe it will be interesting at 2022.

Original rating: 1 star

=========

UPDATE: 1/1/2022

I'm here and it's already 2022 and I must update my review.

Mystwood manor has became one of my favourite currently-under-development game. It's true that is grindy but it has nice quality content.

Congrats, Faerin, great job.

Mystwood Manor, so far.

Pros: The story is good, as expected from Faerin.
The characters are good and believable.
The dialogues and language is good.
Great art as usual.
The summary that shows the activites and progress of the staff and guests.


Cons: Game mechanics, I don't mind some grind to get further in the game but I don't understand some of the things you have to do to just finish a task. F.ex. Julia is in the kitchen with a guest, as shown on the overwiew screen, Why do I have to first click on Julia, then on Julia again in the staff screen and then getting a cut scene where she is busy doing something else before finally the guest shows up with a request for food.Why not click on Julia, go to the kitchen where she AND the guest is and just go from there. Boring and annoying.
The reward/satisfaction meter. As others have said it's Annoying after a few times. Just put up there like " I say, good food, thank you". and then the score as a number.
The transitions in time. Same as over, gets boring after a while.
Don't understand why Julia is so tired that she can't work when she still has 50% energy left while Amber works on barely nothing.

But as others have said, it's still early days and things will hopefully improve over time. I'm not giving up yet.

So for now I give it a 2 star rating, because of the game mechanics

Usually I like tearing games like this appart, because you can basically write a horrid review even for the best of the ones in this medium. Having said that, this particular dev actually finished a pretty big, if not all that great game completly before starting a new one and having the first one abandoned after 3 months, so this review will be full constructive criticism:

Story: 5/10

The story in this is very generic and overused. Your character becomes the "man of the house " when his father disappears from his life. Literally 95% of all games on this site and jp VN's have this type of plot line, but I will give props that father-guy actually dies in this (not a spoiler, it happens in the prologue) closing that particular inevitable plothole (just to then take all props away, because that guy appears in this more than the main character to "give advice". I'd like to die like that and then just appear everywhere after, seems cool). Then you have the fantasy element, which right now has no effect on the gameplay what-so-ever, tho there are little forshadowings of what it's gonna be about in the characters events.

Un-requested adivce: due away with the dad all-together after his death, having him just appear every scene giving you advice about who you should be fucking next is just weird (and the ghost mentor character is also a cliche). It also kills all the impact his death had in the first place and thus some of the motivation to keep his business going.

Characters 7/10:

I'm gonna start with the good. Pretty much all the women are okay. And by okay I mean generic stereoptypes. You got the supportive not-mom woman that's sexually repressed, the no-nonsense and sassy not-sister that just likes being abused. The c-razy bisexual sis's best friend, that would fuck anything with a soft but firm long pole attached to it and the hot tomboy that likes wearing baggy clothes (for now).
All this is fine, stick to what works, but the characters have to maintain that personality throughout the game. So many games (including this dev's previous work) have all characters lose all personality as they become more "corrupted" or whatever.

But the giant gut punch to this section is the main character and the male characters in general. The repair-man guy is bad, the joke is maybe funny, once or twice (to 12 year olds), having him show up and interrupt gameplay every time you upgrade is insane and stupid. Stop it. The dad is annoying too, more-so after his timely demise. Kill him faster and exorcise that shit. His face is very punchable.

But the prize on the punchable ass-face o-meter is the main character. That guy is the most unlikeable thing to have ever existed. Nobody likes people who look like that and with that shit-eating grin. I honestly have to look away from the screen whenever he shows up, and he's everywhere. You're supposed to relate to main character in these types of games, but how can you when he's such a tool (personality-wise) as well as looks like every douchebag frat-boy boot-rag. This might sound like personal prefference, but if anybody can look at thos faces he makes on the difficulty screen and not have second hand embarassment, they're not human.

Un-requested adivce: Invest some time and take the main character's face out completly from the game. If not that then make a morre generic, normal face. There's a reason JVN's have all generic black-hair black-eyes no facial expression characters, when they do have them. Most of the time you never actually see the main character's face if he's supposed to be an extension of the player. Just being able to name the character does not make him relatable. Having my name attached to that "thing" actually ruins immersion, reason why I named him adsffa.

Gameplay 5/10

This is your tipical hotel management sim, except with around 10% of the features and 5 times the grind.
It's admirable that dev-guy decided to finish the gameplay loop first and then go on to make the story, that's how it should be done. But this has a way to go to be good.

There are basically no differences between the rooms. All of them need to have somebody assigned to them and all imply a quiz-type minigame to increase customer satisafaction. All rooms could have been the kitchen and it would have changed nothing.
You can get customers that require a large satisfaction % to be satisifed by the sevice. Which is fine until you get the later rooms like the bar and the restaurant. Most of the first customers only use the kitchen. so you don't get to level up the other stats untill your kitchen staff is already high level. Then you start getting high level customers that you can't satisfy, so you need to skip. But getting a customer that you can level stats on is rng, so it all adds to the insane grind this game already has.
Next is stamina and specialization. Every employee can do 3 types of rooms and they can do 4 tasks a day. They regenerate 2 actions while resting and 3 over-night. But then you have tasks like cleaning and maintanance, which have to be done pretty much constantly. In the beggining it's fine, because you only have to do cleaning and both can be assigned to it, but when you get all 4 characters, and unlock maintanence, only one of them can do it, and you lose 10% maintanance points / phase, so that character is basically locked doing that every other action they take. So you gotta rest them that much more frequent. There's also a game-breaking bug here, where you can get a room that requires maintanence before you get the maintanance room. I had the option of building one of gym or sauna, and the first customer that came in needed sauna so it was an obvious choice. Only to build it and then get the maintenance announcement. So i grinded it out, and the guy gave me just enough money to build the maintanance room. But I couldn't assign anybody to it. Had to read the forum to find out, you only get the character that can be assigned to maintanence, after you get both maintanance room and the GYM. So at some point everything was too broken to run the kitchen, and at that point i had to restart.
But going back to the management aspect, right now it's fine, you can just barely have everything running and your employees rested. But just adding one more customer room will destroy all this balance with just 4 characters. You'd need another 2 maybe 3 employees todeal with just one more client, but then you can have 6 rooms for them. I'm not gonna get into the math, but how many characters does this game have planned ? 20 ? Not sustainable, I can already smell the grind.

Some ideas:
- make the characters be able to do anything, but have prefferences and things they're good at, and then you can have 3 of those to each character.
So I can now assign Julia to sauna, but she doesn't like doing that, so she does a shit job, and you get less customer-satisafaction. Then you can have the events trigger only when the character does something she likes, maybe don't even say what they preffer doing, let the player find that out by experimenting and unlocking the events.
- make all the rooms self-sufficient at the very least. Needing 2 employees to run the restaurant makes sense, but it's just not reasonable in the long run.

Having all this said, and knowing that Faerin actually did finish one game before this, I can see the potential and would not have bothered writing so much otherwise. But as I've also said before, there's potential in everyone and everything, so that shit don's sell. Hope this review gives someone some ideas. Best of luck

In a word, boring.

It's too much clicking and management for no reward. To be fair it is still early stages and considering Faerins last game I still have high hopes but it's a long way off.

Characters look nice, writing so far is good and it is being updated at a good pace so it's likely to improve.

I´ll admit the game has very little content so far. However, both female characters look great and the writing is very good. I will be closely following the development of this game hoping that updates would be frequent.

I giving it a full five star rating as it shows a lot of potential.

If you're missing a room type expect 9/10 guests to want that room type. Beyond that frustration, it takes hours to progress at all in the game. The grind may be the slowest since Everquest in terms of making progress. Either implement a cheat mode, or make the game significantly faster. There's no enjoyment in grinding especially when the current amount of content is near zero.

What really impresses me is the actual gameplay. This is not your average F95 management game, it far outshines the norm.

Pros: Superslick UI, Great models, interesting storyline (thus far) and most of all the actual management gameplay.
Cons: There is a bit of clicky grind to it (especially when serving room service, bar, ets.) The wait for the satisfaction bar is irritating after the thousandth time. And the biggest con is that it is nowhere near finished. I know, I know... that is not much of a con as it is a whine because this game makes me want to see more! Oh, and another minor con - there is no sex implemented as of yet that I have seen. BUT, I can definitely tell it is coming. (No pun intended)


If you enjoy Management games and/or light corruption (it's not so much corruption as it is... just progression), then check this out for sure. I for one am looking forward to when the Destiny Point system is added, as well as the next level to the hotel and girls. Well done!

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is v0.1.1c...

For the moment, this one is basically the infrastructure for a slightly grindy hotel management game...

Visuals are top notch for both the 3D characters, backgrounds, as well as user interface... Looks very professional thus far, for being so early in development...

The script is perfect thus far, as I don't remember running into any spelling/grammar errors... The plot revolves around a male protagonist who's family and next door neighbor move into a slightly run down hotel purchased by his father... The plan is to refurbish it and run a hotel business... There is also an air of mystery and magic involved with it all as well... After a tragedy the protagonist along with his fathers girlfriend and the young neighbor who came along, are left to run the place themselves...

After the story based introduction, you go through a well made tutorial of sorts, that teaches you the basic mechanics of the user interface and general game play... From there you manage the hotel through refurbishments, upgrades, managing the staff, exploring the small list of current locations, and so on... There is even some micro-managing (sort of in the form of a multiple choice mini-game) you have to do as your staff (currently just the 2 women living with the protagonist) is selected to perform their various duties to meet the needs of the hotel guests...

One warning about the mini-game, which is pretty much the only qualm I have thus far, is that it comes in the form of paying attention to what the guest requests and then selecting from the choices as to what to serve the guest... Which means you have to know things like the originating country of various beer brands, what types of foods are what... Such as what types of food are fast food or spicy or healthy (those are much easier then the beers especially if you don't drink beer or have experience with beer too much)... And more then likely the same thing will apply with other various hotel accommodations as you unlock them... Choosing the wrong thing too many times can lead to a guest leaving the hotel without gaining anything from them, as far as money, destiny points, etc... I'm normally not a fan of mini-games much, although this one is a very simple mini-game, yet if you don't know how to best answer a demand from a guest, you will be left having to look it up, or guess and hope your right... Good thing, is that so far the requests each time are pretty much the same, depending on the level of the guest and level of the staff member,,,

In the very beginning you are offered a choice of how difficult of a game experience you want... This primarily, from what I could tell, involves how many save slots you get and how much starting money you begin with... I personally went with Normal...

I played the game for several hours, trying various things, learning about giving found items to staff members to boost their skills, and on some rare occasions experiencing some short bits of new content when visiting staff members as they worked... But for the moment, it doesn't really feel like there is much content, post Intro/Tutorial... Even when my destiny bar was full, I could not visit the Fortune Teller... But, this VN/Game is very early in it's production... And the fact that the game play mechanics, thus far, appear completely flawless and mostly bug free (I'll mention the one bug below)... There are also some place holder visuals for the exploration function, but all in all it all looks very professionally done...

I didn't bother continuing after a few hours, as the money required for some of the renovations and upgrades is rather high, and money takes a while to accumulate... Which kind of makes the current game play a bit grindy, especially when you don't seem to be able to skip the mini-games, and just let them play out as a success automatically, after the first several times you deal with them... There are also some minor delays with daytime progression fades that add to the game play time, and so on... Perhaps once far more content gets added, it will not feel as empty and there fore as grindy, as it currently does...

Do not expect, at least from my play through, to see any current erotic content... There was some light checking out of some characters by the protagonist, and some minor relationship building (perhaps a kiss), but not much else beyond that... But again, this is very early in development... And I kind of find it nice that they didn't have erotic content right out the gate, as it tends to feel like a cheep ploy sometimes when these new projects just start out by throwing sexual content right at the start (probably in order to hook some unsuspecting donors)...

The one bug I ran into, and it's not really that serious of a bug, is that sometimes pressing space bar no longer pushes the text to the next step, and you have to left click with the mouse at least once, before the space bar seems to move things forward again (which doesn't happen that often thankfully)... Not sure what caused that, but I was happy that I didn't always have to use my mouse to move the game along, like many other Unity based VN/Games tend to force you into doing... The addition of the space bar pressing was a nice quality of life feature adopted from most other Visual Novel based engines...

Overall, this management grinder VN/Game looks highly promising, and is one of the few Unity based games in this genre that so far I don't mind... The game mechanics all seem to be working as intended, and the story/plot seems very interesting, thus far... As this product is very early into it's development, I didn't expect to see much actual content beyond the intro and game play tutorial, so I'm not really disappointed... I will definitely have to check back on this one, some time down the line as development continues... I'll see then if the current promise it shows is worthy of the high score, and continues to impress...

Version: 0.1.0c
Good management game. Quite green but promising. Game as is, is still playable. Not many lewd content so far but seems to be in the right path. Transitions between scenes can be upgraded, and also would be nice to add random events to help cope with repetitive actions.
Visual novel/Script: 5
Gaming experience: 5
Graphic quality: 5
Character development: 4
Xcitement: 3
Considering the status of the game, at an early stage, i give 5 stars.
Good work!!

The current state of the game is unplayable due to the scene switching animations taking too long, especially when the time of the day change. The bar that display the guess satisfaction rises stupidly slowing. Since the game ask you to do these actions repetitively, which isn't necessarily a bad things, all these waiting moments make the pacing terribly slow and the game unfun. I've read similar comments.

I suggest the devs to reduce the delays and/or remove some animations that might not be necessary.

Excellent work...great graphics...sexy loocking characters...good storyline..the best game I have played ever and incest patch adds the spice to it...well done DEV...now waiting for the update

A promising game, good renders and an ambitious management system that can give us hours of entertainment. The logical thing if you know his previous creations, I just hope that this one gets more juice. The only problem is that the Spanish translation is literally in diapers, texts passed by google translator with four touch-ups, meaningless phrases and words that don't even seem in the dictionary, even so the game is highly recommended despite being in such a phase early development.

Updated review on v0.6.0

Now that the game has developed fairly well, I feel it's time to update my review to reflect my current thoughts on the game, even though pretty much nobody is going to come back and read these year-old reviews.

Mostly, my expectations were met with this game. The game mechanics developed very well in my opinion and I really like the way the hotel management system is handled.

I'd hoped that the dev would have spent his time with the game so far developing more of the story whereas they have gone in the direction of firstly developing all of the mechanics and introducing all of the characters; that's just a choice, after the game has been completed, it won't matter which of these things were introduced first.
But it does mean that the main story is very thin so far and most of the gameplay so far revolves around grinding towards developing your hotel and advancing your relationship with the girls.

The graphics have remained top-notch throughout and the girls are all very attractive; I sort of bemoan the fact that all of the girls are white (except for one Japanese character that doesn't really look Japanese but still manages to be a walking stereotype) which makes the line-up look pretty uniform and sort of boring, even with the different body types.

My main complaint with the game so far is the way sexual content is handled.

First of all, I never really like when the build-up to the sex scenes is this agonizingly slow with all of the characters; for one, it makes it feel less real and realistic and more like just a gameplay mechanic—just going through these steps one by one to unlock the sex scenes one by one—but for another, it also means that you have to play a long time before any sort of actual sex scenes come up which can be slightly frustrating.

Second of all, and most importantly, I really really dislike the attitude that the MC has towards sex and relationships. It all sounds extremely childish and like a teenager wrote it or at the very least, like the MC is supposed to be an inexperienced teenager which he clearly is not (at least in age and appearance).
He freaks out whenever he sees a woman in a bikini, stumbles over all of his words, you constantly get an inner monologue running commentary of his very childish thoughts about the situation and the extent to which he's freaking out, he's constantly perving and creeping on all of the women even when they're fully dressed and yet—all of the women are still magically drawn to him and find him just oh so charming and sexy.
Women flying towards the MC's dick is sort of an unavoidable piece of suspension of disbelief for these sorts of games but I'd hope that developers would at least try and make that a bit more believable by not writing their MC's as bumbling, inexperienced, creepy buffoons.
And at least so far, this inexperience and shyness around sex also limits the sexual content to extremely vanilla, boring sex scenes. I say "so far" to give the dev the benefit of the doubt but I don't really expect there to ever be a lot of exciting sexual content which always seems like such a waste to me in these animated games where the only limit is often just the dev's imagination.

So yeah, those are my final thoughts on the game so far and thanks to anybody who actually went back to read this updated review.

I'll probably still play the updates when they come out because now I feel like I have to finish the game (sunk cost fallacy, I know), but I'd advise only people who are fine with teenage-minded MCs and boring, slow sexual content try this out.

Playing Man of The House, I had high hopes for this game. So far the hotel management is very grindy and not much content. Faerin should have changed the code since Diane isn't in the game. All you get is a white screen that covers up part of the screen in the kitchen. It's a very long intro to the game with no sexual content. If there is I didn't play long enough to see it. After playing for 20 or so minutes I quit playing.

I would wait at least 3 to 4 updates when the game play and more content get added. Maybe in another 3 to 4 months I might upgrade the rating, but in the current state of the game I can't bring myself to give it more than 2 stars.

A lot of the reviews for this game are based around expectations that it will get better. I think its only fair to review it in its current form. It's the fifth or sixth update of this game and there's virtually no content. Its also pretty buggy and each update is centered around the management gameplay which is honestly the least interesting aspect of the game. All of this will hopefully change but right now its a poor game and not worth your time.