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

Very interested management style game. Even without much adult content so far, the pace is reasonable while you need to think about girls’ capability to match guests’ expectation. Unlock sexier costume is quite fun, and all girl or milf render are high quality, definitely will follow every update.

I really like this game, even if it's poor in sex content for now
I found the hotel gestion gameplay really good, it's not too complex but when you had many guests, you need to organize the staff planning if you want to be really efficient
So I'm really eager to play more

A thing that I found bad however is the fact that, during guest's activity, if you answer well to their expectations, they will be very happy, but right after, if you don't have the job level, they will damned you !
It's a little strange in my opinion, maybe it will be better if the job level requirement comes first and after you answer their request

Anyway, great job !

Great game IMO. I enjoy the pace and the variety of girls in this one.
- Great Graphics
- Render quality has improved from previous game.
-Models are all attractive

I like this one better than his previous game. I find the variety to be better here and the hotel aspect actually makes it an enjoyable game even without the lewd stuff.
Lastly, Amber is the best girl

The mom looks like a mix of a man and a gargoyle. The worst milf-model ever seen by under the sky.

The rest is ok, but god damn...that character model is terrible. Just the queen of ugly ducklings.
The rest is quite ok. I played like an hour, before I got tired of blocking the gargoyle monstrosity with my left hand, while clicking enter constantly.

i cannot Stress how good this game is. the only Problem is.
it is a Game First, and a porn game Second.

my suggestion is the Bookmark and Support it. and only play it once it is done.
you can play the intro to see what it is all about. and then save it for the full release.


there are no Quick Sex, you will have to Work for it. but the story makes Sens and i dit enjoy it and i want more.

so for me. the wait has started and i am looking forward to the Full release

Lots of fun, enjoyable management game which is a nice break from the norm. Very excited about future content, very well rendered characters that don't look like cookie cutter types (no purple haired undercut tattoo'd gal I've seen in 5 different games). Love the gypsy, look forward to exploration being fleshed out more along with some of the guests.

Let us soothe the Karen!

UPDATE March 2021:

Okay, now that we're almost halfway through, time for a review.

Enjoyable Management game. It's very relaxing without the porn, I often find myself skipping over the T&A just to get back to guest management. It's a lot of fun, and hope to see future titles like this. Refreshing change from VN/RPG/Dating Grinder.

The Girls are both fantastically rendered, have unique personalities, AND not the same "Obligatory Purple haired girl with shaved side of head" or "Bitchy Older Roommate who is Clone of 5 other popular 3D title models". They are unique in appearance, personality, and have some depth.

The story is great, and not at all a cliched plot.

Gameplay: 5/5
Model Appearance: 5/5
Story: 4/5
Overall: 9/10

Minor constructive criticism: I feel like one more employee that could fill a gap between Lobby/Kitchen/Bar would be great, or I fear a full house of guests would make selecting guests from the lobby a chore rather than a challenge. I haven't played past Level 3 in this game yet though, so... more feedback later.

Good models and renders. The mechanic of the game is slow and repetitive, the story doesnt develop much , there is no good scenes at the point and a lot of under development features. If the pace speeds up the game will improve considerably.

The game has great visuals, cute characters and curious situations. It also has an interesting and not primitive gameplay realized as a hotel management. The developer publsh regular updates on a monthly basis. It is the most promising game and fresh angle of view here.

Interesting game, mixing management with spicy scenes.

Played 2.2.9, and although it's still at an early stage, Faerin did a superb job with MotH and I really like where this one is going.

I have read some bad reviews stating lack of content, but as this is not your typical renpy visual novel the developer needs to invest time in the core mechanics. Once they are finished, I’m sure we will get more visual content.

[Unity] Mystwood Manor [v0.2.1.5] 16.10.2020

I startet this game at the mentioned version and i am surprised how much fun i had:

1. pretty grafics
2. interesting and funny story
3. Interface can be used without studying rocket sience
4. working progress system - reach a level, have more skin
5. enough mystery, enough management and some stuff to collect

Here are some things that can be done better in my opinion:

1. too much repairs, to much cleaning. It isn´t nessesary to rebuild 10 % for every change of daytime, just to stay at the current level. It´s not fun by definition either.
2. The guests could name their wishes after a couple of good or working orders - there is no need to train the knowledge of the player to succesfully serve a cocktail or beer multiple times especially if the worker hasn´t been succesful because of the joblevel.
3. Change a decision should be possible by simply going back as usual using a mousewheel. It is still a porn game and not roguelike adventure - It´s a pain to load an old save just because a worker is suddenly ill or the player misclicked anywhere, for example.

Comparing pros and cons : This game is very very ...very good. I have high expectations. There is space for so much story and the locations are still empty more or less right now.

Go Developer Go - you are on the right track !

- Great Graphics

- Beautiful Female Character Models

- Good interface

- Story is actually very interesting when you consider that this Game is relatively early in Development, I think it will be much better than ever.

what should get better...

1) Saving should be possible during an Event ( if you have to serve several Guests at the same Time, errors occur, unfortunately you have to repeat everything, which is a bit time-consuming and annoying I find )....

2) the Leveling Up should go faster both with the Hotel and with the Girls..


- Conclusion

if you take the Time and Play it sensibly, it's a great Game with huge Potential.



5/5 from me, thanks to the Dev. for a Fantastic Game......again.....

Excellent job, again, Faerin.
Your games have something that holds the attention with the plot and development of the characters. Although many find it too slow to get to the sexual content, which is evident, this can really make it exhausting if you search for sex scenes right in the first hours of the game. However, if you are looking for an intriguing, developed and coherent plot, it is very exciting to follow the story line.
Those who enjoy a good RPG of the old ones (FF III, Chrono Trigger, among many others) will understand that Faerin's games need to be appreciated little by little and exploring the story to the maximum.

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