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

One of the best games I've played in a long time. The sex scenes are fantastic, the women are diverse, and the hotel management aspect is crazily addicting. There's also a plot that makes you want to see what happens next, rather than just stuff happening between the sex scenes.

Review update for the 1.0.2 [Completed] release:

Comparing this game to all of the adult games that are available on F95Zone, this game is easily 5 stars. There are only two things that hold it back from being a masterpiece. First, the hotel management gameplay is likely not appealing to a sizeable percentage of players. Second, the renders/animations for the lewd scenes aren't as crisp in detail as they should be. I would guess this is to reduce either the game size or the development time. Don't misunderstand me, the scenes are still good quality, I just don't think they're where they could/should be.

I've playing the game since the 0.5.0 release. The game is quite unique. There are three components to the game: the story, the gameplay (hotel management), and the relationships (lewd scenes). These three components are mostly independent, with the dependencies being that sometimes, you can't progress in one until you level-up another.

The main story is missing a lot of details, but it's engaging, entertaining, and the writing is very good. There is intrigue based on greed as well as a supernatural aspect. I'd give it a 4.5/5.

The gameplay is all about resource management of time, money, personnel, and skillsets. The developer put a lot of work into balancing chance and skill and levelling-up difficulty with the skill, etc. However, once a player understands all of the cards, special items, and perk points, assigning them correctly to the staff makes the game almost as easy as just assigning the correct staff member to the correct position. There are cases where you can't satisfy 3 or more guests while also keeping up with maintenance, health, security, and cleaning. Players can move around inventory items for each staff member to increase the success rate of guest interactions when there are more guests, but it's tedious and not really necessary. Players can simply never allow more than 2 guests to check-in at once. This will still allow the hotel to earn more than enough money to pay for hotel upgrades, the staff's wages, and pay off the loan.

I like the gameplay, but unfortunately, I doubt this type of resource management is enjoyable for a lot of players and I'm sure that's why the automatic resource assignment became available after the game was about half-finished. For the gameplay, I give it 4.5/5.

The lewd scenes are good. The relationships just happen as the story and gameplay progresses. The scenes are sexy/erotic. The girls are beautiful. The scenes have smooth animations. Some of the scenes give the impression that the girls are being controlled by a supernatural force, which might either be a turn-on or a turn-off for some players. I'd give the relationships/scenes a 4/5.

From a technical perspective, the game has been really solid. There were some UI glitches back in earlier releases, but they were minor, not game breaking. There is really only one technical issue I still have in the completed game, which is that occasionally, the game has an artificial delay that sometimes makes the player wait longer than necessary to click the UI (e.g., after choosing to spend time in the office, the user's clicks to don't register for some time after the screen is updated). Still, from a technical standpoint, the game is both unique and robust. It's a 5/5.

This game has the look of a quality porn game, but the gameplay of an incremental management game. The grind is so intense that the porn aspect of the game is buried in the tedious, non-stop management aspects. I was under the impression that this was a porn game, but it's just a management game that grinds on for 10 hours before you see any booba. If you want Booba this is not your game.

A great game but emphasis on GAME. Its mechanics are simplistic but deep, its grindy but rewarding and the characters and storyline are easily interesting enough to keep you invested in putting the hours in. Graphically the game looks great, the sex scenes are varied and animated (with sliders as well no less). On the whole a really really really good game.

As for the negatives though its conceptually a game first and a fappers wet dream a very far distant second. This means itll either frustrate you to high hell often hitting ceilings trying to level up the girls, answer the same mundane questions night after night to appease annoying guests and probably not even have access to the name you really want to till long after youve aquired the girls as you simply cannot affort to keep all your staff and yet save up for all the more expensive expansions in a rapid pace at least.

Im reviewing it now and giving it a full 5 stars as in this current build you can pretty much bang everyone if you put the time in and i felt it was worth it. It does what it does to the very best standards ive seen on the site and whilst itll blue ball anyone who dives in expecting more Man of the House sexcapades on demand its pretty faultless in doing what it sets out to do. Its also got a very clear guide in what you need to do to unlock the content and its all accessible at anytime once unlocked as a pseudo gallery.

Finally an actual game with active engagement that isn't clicking through images.
Also animations where they matter the most.
Watching the development it seems pretty leveled across all characters, probably the best approach.
I love this game!

Super-interesting game from the creator of the excellent Man of The House.
The skills on display - rendering, gameplay, story, GUI - are top-notch, combining management and RPG in a game with a sexy storyline filled with mistery and surprises.
One of the few developers here that I support through Patreon.
Oh, BTW, I can't wait to see the girl in the lingerie shop coming to the Manor!

This is a tricky game to review. It falls into the very unfortunate category "Quite a bit better than the competition, but nowhere near as good as I expected from this developer."

The writing is very good, characters are distinct and (relatively) reasonable people, and the story has a good sense of flow and progression, overall. I did find the story progress too slow, though, and would have liked to see more of it at an earlier stage.
Graphics are fantastic, and the all-important girls are both varied and beautiful, each in their own way. There's really very little to complain about here.

However. The gameplay is interesting for the first week or so, but has little to no challenge or agency. It's a question of dropping people into the appropriate slots, and for the most part you really don't have much choice in the matter. They can either do the job or they can't, and most of the time there's zero strategy to consider. It's just drag, drag, drag, click next, repeat. Add to this that the story progress (not just romance progress) is locked behind this samey grind, and it sort of turns into a kinetic novel with a bunch of clicking between each scene. What little decision making there is gets swept to the side by a deluge of repetitive clicking, and I find that the lack of gameplay development almost makes me lose sight of the good parts. Even thinking about it now, I remember decisions I made, certainly, but the main thing that comes to mind is how every day is exactly the same, and how the characters seemed to develop as if they were 3-4 steps ahead of the story.

Make no mistake, this is "better" than most games here. Heck, compared to the average "alpha 0.03 prologue chapter 1 first 3 hours of day 1"-effort, I'd rate this 8 out of 5. But this is a game from a proven developer, and the grievances and quality of life-problems drag it down all the harder due to the otherwise high quality. This could be amazing. Right now, unfortunately, it isn't.

Girls are nice, very beautiful models, poses and animations. Story and dialogues are amazing in its unpretentiousness.
Sill 5 stars despite this disgusting grindfest-management.
Use the CheatEngine, Luke.

v0.7.2 Full

The suit maybe doesn't make a man, but it sure as hell makes a woman! Hot damn!
All models are drop dead gorgeous, but what really makes them super irresistible are the outfits.
Additionally, every girl has a different personality and background which makes them AND the game a hell of a lot more interesting.

Renders are really good, animations are amazing (did not see that one coming), game UI and mechanics are nice and smooth. Writing and dialogues are on point, which is super important!

It's a unique game, unlike any other I've seen around. Yes, there's "grind", but not in an annoying and irritating kind of way. It makes good gameplay, honestly.

Hope this dev catches the eye of more people and starts getting more serious funding, as they obviously have both the talent and consistency to produce top notch content.

I'm super impressed and can't wait to see what the future brings us.

Cheers

Tried this game for the first time. As someone who absolutely loved the man of the house, this doesn't feel like the same dev at all. No repeatable events and the rewards are not even one percent of the grind. There is no real story. You grind then get a scene. The story is buried so deep within the grind that I just skipped past them just to get it over with. I didn't play the game till now thinking Faerin's game would be worth waiting for, but this wasn't the case for this game. I will wait for his next game. Good luck to the dev.

0.7.1 reviews
Gameplay 8/10
I think the idea of running a hotel was well chosen, being able to improve it to build new rooms, the tarot card system is also original. (too bad the witch is not a little more slutty) I hope that will be the case later.
Graphics 8/10
Renders of great quality, the women are all sexy, there is something for everyone. The HUD is cool, and so is the hotel. Sound level is quite successful too.

My expectations for the future: More sex content, sex with customers and the end of this story

This is one of the games I come back to every month, the moment I find some cash to spare I will join Faerin's subscribers, while people find it grindy I actually like it, the management of the hotel is nice, I never accept a 5 star guest especially if they are VIP, and I like it, maybe because I am here since the beginning, if you don't like the management of the hotel you will find this game problematic, because it is not helpful, but other than that you can get the hang of it in 1st month in game or so.

the story is intriguing, I expect some twists and turns and I find it fantastic to play, if you want sex heavy game, maybe you will be tired by the grind, otherwise give this a try and you won't be disappointed.

v0.7.1 Full
-Gameplay:
Grind, grind and more grind.
If you want to waste your time and develop carpal tunnel syndrome, play this game.

-Story:
Almost nonexistence, it's the typical 'I saw you naked once, now let's have a baby' but with clicking a lot, like a lot a lot, like 10+ hour a lot and most of the scenes that you unlock by grinding like a mad man contain no nudity, just awkward interactions.

-Renders and graphics:
There are not many of them, but they look really good when you finally get to see them, after hours of grind for each.
-Final words:
I do not recommend this game at all, just find a play trough of it and watch that, now that I'm thinking about it their first game was the same ' Man of the House ', I remember that I've got annoyed and extracted the renders and skipped the grind of that game.
This was the last time, I'll never play another game by this developer, no more suffering.

I can't believe how much peeps are simping here for the grind here. Like, personally I love management games, and also all in favour for slow burning game, but Daaaaaamn boi, seriously?

Like I've been playing this game for 4-5 hours straight, and I've just got basicly just a mere introduction cg/event's from 7 heroine so far. Othervise it's just been 99% gameplay repeat day after day. Which gameplay itself is pretty damn basic, which honestly I ain't expecting much from games porn game, but since there's nothing but wee bit of a bread crumbs of unique events/dialogue, it just get mind numbingly boring and fast.

Still gonna push it through though, since renders are superb, and there obviously is genuine production values here. But still, can't stop wondering what's the whole point of this grind is. Cutting it half should be more enough to get immersed for the whole management part, or 3/4 atleast imo.

So yeah, if you wanna try this, don't be like me and use the cheats instead. I always take the stance on not using cheat on any games, since I have obsessive need to experience the game as a whole, but in this case it's just making me hate myself and my life choices.

Great game!

An important thing to realize is that there's a grind element in this game. It's usually present in games that Faerin creates, but I like it. You have to put in some effort to get the rewards. For me, the gameplay was very fun and rewarding. I was sceptical at first about the whole hotel management thing, but I actually really like it. For those who really don't want to do the whole grind, you can cheat.

The renders and characters are very good in terms of personality, and visually they are just stunning. The story has some mysteries in it and I can't wait for the next update. This is just a really fun and solid game with the potential for so much more. I hope Faerin continues to release updates even after v1.0 . This is just the type of game you want to keep playing to get more rewards.

Couldn't stop playing, it was that amazing.
Great story, even more amazing characters and a good albeit little grindy gameplay loop (thank god for cheats)
Version still has some bugs , but its still in development, and its turning out to be an amazing gem, great hotel management sim, and progression isn't sudden which I really appreciate.
Looking forward to this getting even more features and content, Loved this!

Can't rate it as bad as it kept me in it for a bit, but one more adding to the problem of grinding. Adding to that the need to always keep full attention on maintenance and cleaning is not that pleasant. Why would the things get locked at 60% operational?

The number of early employees is not that high so between resting, serving the guests and babysitting cleaning and maintenance it takes forever to advance. I believe from the skills some might get better as they get experience easier or take longer without resting. But don't know how many people can get to that point.
For example in the beginning only one of the staff members can do maintenance only two can do cleaning and two can do cooking. Now as it is one of the possible options for kitchen can't be there often cause it is needed in the maintenance every couple of turns or things start to shut down, and there is also the need to rest. and as it leaves just one option for the kitchen and as such just one cleaning, so to fulfil the requirements of levelling up it takes too long making micromanagement

I will keep an eye on this hoping for a bit of less grinding. Maybe decrease energy dropping or the cleaning/maintenance levels, or even make it only inoperational at lower levels (30% or something). while keeping it just with the one time to put it back at 100%. this alone would make the advancement in-game a bit faster, as you wouldn't have to micromanage everything.
Oh and an option to skip the tutorial if you had already done it is another thing that would be nice to have.

I would guess I didn't point nothing that new or didn't make any amazing recommendation. but I still think that correcting the grinding can make this game an interesting one

Listen, I like grindy sandbox games. I want to click on things for a while before the lewds show up. But even after a significant time in development the balance in this game is way off.

I tried to give it a fair shake for a long time by ignoring the cheat menu but I wish I hadn't. To anyone reading this, please feel free to use the cheat menu.

The puzzle elements of trying to match the girls to the right job and whatnot are a little bit interesting but there's almost always a "right" solution and it's pretty boring to click everyone into place the 50th time.

I think the game elements would be much better if all the gold costs were cut in half (or all the income was doubled). As it is, there are times when you jump up a Hotel level and there's a ton to do, buffered by long stretches where you're just waiting for the gold to unlock the next thing.

I've played three or four hours and gotten maybe one thing that I would call a sex scene. Lots of little visits and some occasional nudity but a real slow burn. I wouldn't mind this most of the time but the excessive padding in the gameplay makes it a lot worse.

I do really like how the girls outfits get skimpier over time and this shows up both in their portraits and in the mid-day renders.

Held off on reviewing until we were significantly into the game/development. This game is superb. For a game on this site, it is excellently built with a simple and easy UI. The design of scenes and story is great and is only getting better. All 8 women involved are different and attractive and all now have H-scenes. Feel the next few updates will be great. Hoping for some longer scenes as well as some 3,4,5 person scenes.

OK,

I’ve completed about 90% of the current content I believe, and I just have a few events with Catalina to unlock so I want to update my review now.

Over-all, I think the game is 4 ½ stars out of 5 (I rounded up for ya)

To be honest, I think this game stands well above a lot of other 4 and 5 star games here. Specifically because it has a decent “lewd” side tale but, more importantly, because it’s a real full fledged game - not just some VN pretending to be one. If Faerin is doing this game solo, then hats off to him.

Pros:

• Gameplay – It’s a fun game. Reminds me a lot of those silly mobile games you can sit in bed and play for hours. There’s enough little details to please any micro-manager’s heart, lol. The UI is also very slick
• Renders – Top notch. You forget that sometimes when playing. There is some really nice lewd content. So when it happens, it’s a nice change of pace.
• Characters - I like them all, but I thought Amber was a little vanilla. Reminded me of too many other sister characters on here, I think. The mother is gorgeous and so is the little Finnish darling
• Animations – Very well done
• Story – Again, very well done. I enjoyed the history updates by the old guest and look forward to seeing more of this story
• Replayability – You can easily start over and try different goals, like fastest levelling or cheapest operating costs, etc. The card and item drops are also random so you do get some variation.

Cons:

• Game Balance - My biggest gripe. If I didn’t have access to the cheats, I might have stopped playing this game just because I think the balance is a little off with what the girls satisfaction results are when compared to her Tier and Boosts. It’s particularly noticeable when you level up the hotel and Julia raises her level of guests she’s taking. For example, when I hit Tier 5 and I started accepting T5 guests, I put Amber in the restaurant. She was maxed out T5 and she had 20% of boosts (one 10% one and two cards worth 5% each) and she still only hit 57-58% on a successful interaction. And yes, the restaurant had the extra upgrades. I think that is excessive. You shouldn’t have to load every card and item on a girl just to break 70% when you are at that Tier. This is basically where the half star got taken off.

Suggestions:

• Rebalance the game so that when you are lower Tier then the guest, you need all the extra boosts, but when you are same Tier, you should only need boosts for the really difficult guests, like Sophia.
• Interactions with the guests! I really, really hope you go there. I want to corrupt Sister Nora so bad! Haha
• A Little thing – It would be nice to have a sort of “safe mouse zone” to advance the game. A place to click the mouse to advance dialogue and events. I know you can use the standard space bar and also mouse-click anywhere already, but I find that because you have choices that pop up all over (in the text box/in the middle of the screen/right-side of the screen) I sometimes pick a wrong option just ‘cause I am clicking a little ahead of the screen loading. That’s because I tend to use my mouse for almost everything and rarely do I use the keyboard. So having a box that is clearly marked to click on would be nice, so you don’t click into a choice.

I am definitely going to start from scratch when your next update comes. I want to do a few things differently.