Ren'Py - Completed - Paprika Trainer [v1.2.0.0] [Exiscoming]

This Review is for version 1.0.2.1 played on a windows computer.

TL;DR: If you like training games and/or Totally Spies then this game is satisfactory. Good animations and above average story for a porn game. The gameplay loop is fairly standard but it won't bore anybody to death.
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Story (Plot, Dialogue, Characters)
The story is actually quite good in the context of a porn game. It's quick to start and interesting enough to keep the player intrigued. But it also does a good job on not overshadowing the actual porn. You don't even need to be familiar with "Totally Spies" to make sense of it either. The characters are well written as well with each one having some kind of personal arc throughout the game outside of the whole corruption/trainer aspect. I honestly found myself reading all of the character interactions because of how well they were written. I even felt really happy when each of the girls professed their admiration and thanks for helping them save the city.
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Gameplay Loop:
As with most Ren'Py trainer games, the gameplay loop involves managing resources to progress in the narrative; with this game using cash, intel, and a morale. Cash and morale are self explanatory but intel is used to conduct missions. Missions are sections where you get to control the spies through an enemy base defeating guards, looting valuables, and capturing villains'. Additionally, the spies are infected with these nanobots which need to be regulated by performing erotic acts; if the nanobot's control is too high then the girls will start acting against the players wishes.
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Erotic Scenes:
This is where the game starts lacking to me personally. The main sex scenes with the girls are animated, and is very well done I might add. However, with each girl having 5 scenes each which equals out to 15 animated scenes over the course of a 6-ish hour game the unlocking process is unbalanced. This wouldn't be so bad if the scenes were spread more evenly out or even unlocked for each girl separately. Three of the scenes are given to you within the first hour or so; after that you have almost 4-5 hours of game left with over half of the main girls CG's unlocked.
This could have been softened if there was dialogue during the sex scenes, with the girls acting more prudish at the start due to the fact they need to have sex to not be mind controlled rather for enjoyment; but as they get more corrupted we see their attitudes become more slutty. This would give us the incentive to actually engage with these well animated scenes and would have made the corruption aspect really shine.
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Bugs:
There are an unfortunate number of bugs in this game; luckily none of them outright break the game. Cameras and safes not appearing during spy missions causing me to miss loot or get spotted was way too common. I had a few error screens appear as well but that usually meant I just had to rollback to the previous scene and do a different action.
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This game does a good job at establishing a good plot and solid characters that are interesting to follow throughout the game. However, due to the shoddy pacing of sex scene unlocks and hands-off corruption system the gameplay loop feels unrewarding as a result. If the focus was more on each individual girl and their corruption rather than lumping each girls corruption together and only increasing their corruption level after a specific story beat rather than player interaction. Then, the game would have felt more satisfactory as a whole.

good parody game of totally spies, could say original material (tv-show) is well known since characters are like from cartoon, all spies are interesting characters and "training" them is fun, well made graphics, enough of spytoys to be used although only 1 is actually needed. money, parts and flowers/seeds are always scarce but 1st is solved by editing save by getting billions of cash and that solves 2nd and 3rd is solved also by editing save and adding amounts to 9999.

only drawbacks are that it's too easy to advance too early too far and that way locking out for things to do and also sometimes it's not that clear what to do to advance on story.

I'm avoiding this for so long. Now that it finally complete, I give it a try. So far, I love crazy MC adventure. Then you used usual Ren'py error screen as actual part of dialog. Now I need to write this. I enjoyed the journey so far.

Would it got repetitive ? Most likely. Which is one of reason I avoiding trainer game for a while now. But you bring character to this game. That, I could give credit. The game could have basic plot, simple gameplay or any other flaw, but if it managed to make me enjoyed it ? Into guilty pleasure hall you go.

All I can say, try it. You might not enjoy it. But who know ? This have something that you might like.

The game has quality sex animation but severly lacking in depth I for one wish to see dialogues to present interactiom between mc and ladies during such act with variations. the lore is good but it feels like it still has room for improvements. The characters that can be trained could have been more if the creator wish to expand the story amd lore i believe one can insert even the side characters as the story progresses. Lastly the grind, when I see trainer games I always like a significant level of grinding which is showcased by progress whether it is a change of dialogue and possible postures or variations in words you can day. Though this one seems to be doing it good the aforementioned problems above it made me feel that the rewards were terribly lacking. Overall I love that someone took it upom themselves to create a Totally Spies parody but I am quite saddened to see it as something as lackluster. It has the quality to become something like Witch Trainer which could be expanded a lot of times.

"$RandomFranchiseName Trainer (Parody, don't sue me senpai!)" are so 2016.

The biggest problem with this subgenre is that these games are not trainers (fuck you, Akabur, for that). Yes, you heard me. These are linear narrations of training, with bells and whistles attached. The narration of training can be good, the art can be good, fuck, even the bells and whistles can be good.

But it's not training. It's basically grinding some arbitrary resources and using them to unlock new chapters of a VN. And so this gameplay model gets no brownie points whatsoever.

So anyway, Paprika Trainer v1.0.

Very good CGs. Even better animations. Really, these are the best. The flipside is that there are very few of them and there were no accompanying text (there is some VA). Personally I think animations are a waste of time, the game would have been much better with zero animations in exchange for having twice the scenes + scenes having some text.

The overall story was... okay? I guess it was okay, despite having an "insane" protagonist it was fairly sane overall. Some typos here and there, but tolerable. The pacing was pretty bad, though. I got 9 scenes (3 scenes x3 girls) fairly quickly, basically grind-free. But then there's a HUGE stretch of grind with no rewards, and 4 more scenes closer to the end.

Some interesting mechanics, at least supposedly. The problem is, they don't really work. For instance, keeping high bot levels has never backfired on me. The missions were actually decent thanks to smooth implementation, even though at the base level they are merely procedurally generated resource management mini-sims. No training, by which I mean managing a girl's mood and balancing your push towards corruption. You DO need to manage morale in this game, but you don't do it in the context of corruption, you need morale to grind resources. This sucks.

So... slightly above average overall, but just not enough for 4 stars in my opinion. Maaaaaybe if this gets a DLC... (version 1.5?)

Reposting here as I didn't know you could review.

Having spent an afternoon completing the game, it honestly felt rather underwhelming, especially in comparison to orange trainer. The scenes were nice quality sure, but it's basically just the same 4 scenes repeated for each girl in different positions. Also doesn't really feel like a "trainer game" to be honest (will try to elaborate more on this later).

Sex Scenes:
-Art quality was very good, however the scene interactivity was really lacklustre. (click on girl's room, click unlocked sex act, watch animation) By interactivity I guess it's not so much about having to do QTE events/require player input, as such as a lack of dialog/character response.
-For the majority of the game there are basically only 3 scenes (dildo/foreplay/sex). Admittedly there are 3 girls so that's 9 scenes, but the scenes for the girls are more or less the same.
-A good way to pad this out would be to include character dialogue during sex scenes, and have it change over the course of the game as the girls get more corrupted (dirty talk is hot asf and there was basically none of it in the routine scenes). As it stands I basically looked at each scene once then went straight to bed every night instead of visiting them.

Story:
-don't really care much for the downfall of WHOOP etc (fair enough it's a porn game), but i do care about the girls I'm training.
-which is unfortunate because there isn't really much training to be done, just grind out the missions (click through rooms) until you unlock a new scene
-the chatting options with the girls was nice, but doesn't feel like it ties into the sex scenes in anyway
-maybe just focusing on one girl would have been better? a lot of the enjoyment stems from the relationship you develop through the course of the game (this was captured really well in OT, didn't feel it much at all here)

Gameplay:
-Very grindy, didn't really feel anything interesting/stimulating about clicking percentages and save scumming until you got lucky. I understand that there needs to be a grind of some kind to space out h content (which is sparse in and of itself), but did not enjoy the way it was delivered. Would have rather clicked through menus or something.
-Had a lot of features that could have been interesting but felt poorly fleshed out - for example the gadgets stuff, or controlling nanobot levels.
-All that milkshake diner content had 0 art/scenes, which was unfortunate.
-Strip club was also basically pay all this money and recruit girls etc to see one static scene of the girls naked.

Overall it doesn't really feel like a h-game to be honest. More like a regular 2012 point and click flash game with dress up and sex scene gallery mode. For example in a lot of rpg makers the incentive to play the game is to run around and try to collect all the CGs(grindy but fair enough). In witch trainer is was chatting to the girl/collecting enough house points or whatever until you could progress the current scene. Here the game I was playing (taking out gangs and shit) didn't really feel like it rewarded me with any h content apart from the one photo of you fugging the prisoner.

Sorry if this is long (and kind of harsh), but especially after Orange Trainer I was really looking forward to playing your next game, and it's a shame that, for me at least, this doesn't really live up to it.

Main positive;
-The art is pretty awesome, and the customisation options work pretty well.
-the CGs in particular are very good - and it's annoying post game that it just ends rather than having a gallery/going back to pre-end

Negatives now;
-the game is grindy. Punishingly so. It took roughly four hours for me to complete the game consoling money in and in that four hours only the last hour had any decent content
-its very easy to get lost in the game/know what to do next. Even with a quest assist box there's still tonnes of wrong directions.
-the game heavily leans on Witch Trainer inspiration but is no where near to its level in terms of wit unfortunately

It's great this creator has put out two games but much like with Orange trainer it's a lot of dead air with a couple of gems of content at the end. Honestly I wouldn't waste your time on it.

It says that the game is completed, but does it really feel this way?

'Say something crazy'. That's the real answer to anything. Playing as a nuts agent, it's always fun to have an option to do and say something crazy. It works. Great job.

Lore? Can't really judge, since I watched the show only because I like the main characters. But it's still surprising not to find Mandy in the game. She'd be a gem in it. Think what you could do to her, considering her character and the writer's talent.

I played the Orange Trainer as well. And it has the same problems. There are a lot of mechanics like karma, prison cells, milkshake bar, that feel more like as a placeholder. It doesn't really affect anything, and it doesn't reward for investing in it this way or another. You give players wrong signals by placing a booty burger in the menu like that.

Paprika Trainer feels a bit grindy because its gameplay is very repetitive and doesn't really reward the player with what you can expect from a porn game. Missions (minigames) are easy SFW, if you just ignore the V.I.B. button. They had the time to decor it, place knight statues and even put the Pennywise in it, but nothing remotely lewd. Later in the game, when you need to catch the spies again, MC decides to jerk off to Clover in the BDSM costume. Sam volunteers to help. So there must be a handjob scene, since it's going ingame. But there's no actual art and Clover gets her load the same way as Sam did before. And that's the main characters. Sidekicks got even less. There's no Mandy, but for some reason you have Kim to show you boobs on a regular basis. But again, no further. Lots of empty space for your imagination if you happened to have some. Nevertheless, it's better to find a modder and an artist to make the game actually complete.

Despite it's not really a trainer, it's a good game overall, and there are no many other Totally Spies games to compete. I'd give it 4 out of 5 if it wasn't the final version. It's relatively easy to fix the game just by making a mod for it. All you need is to fill the empty space with h-scenes and polish it a bit.

PROS:
- Gameplay. Nice and complex enough.
- Stability. Hard to crush or bug out.
- Writing. Say something crazy.
- Sound. Good voice acting.

CONS:
- Low resolution 2DCG pictures. Especially the photo album.
- Lack of the H-content overall.
- Current H-scenes have no variety.
- Mandy. Where the hell is she? Consider making a DLC.
- Outfit. It's a big chunk of the game. And I don't like how most of it suit the spies. Obviously, they're better nude. But even with the basic spandex I like the mission models more than the default ones.
- Transparency. Sometimes there's no clue what to do next. When a gang is maxed up, you send a spy there again and nothing happens. Make at least a warning why.

This is a tough one. There are parts of this game that are good, and parts of this game that suck ass. The overall experience sort of looks like:

• Hours and hours of grinding through non-sexual content
• Lots of tedious grinding to earn enough money, influence, or other resources
• Uncompelling story to read through that you will either tolerate or skip big pieces of
• Slow progress into the sexual content once it starts
• But good sexual content once you get it (ie the scenes are well drawn and animated, with audio, but there could stand to be some dialog too...).

What this game needs in order to be better:

• Cheats. Lol. Money. Skip "mission"s. Gain influence. Change nanobot influence. Add agents. Either it needs cheats to skip or dev should figure out how he can prune these cancerous concepts from his game.
  • Why are these mechanics in the game? And that's partially a serious question and partially me being an asshole. But, I seriously doubt the dev ever sat down and said "okay, what experience am I trying to provide, and what is the best way to do that?" because, if he did, this "mission" BS would not exist. I'm sure it was a fun idea, and flexed his coding muscles, but it's a horrible waste of time in implementation. Every mission is the same, you do the same exact actions, it's just created a series of clicks the user has to do for 10 minutes every once and a while. "Woo hoo" - no one. Similar comment on the other items. What was the goal of implementing them?
• More sexual variety.
  • The only place sexual content occurs is in each girls' bedroom. Like, imagine you're a dev, and you've gone through all the trouble of making this world map, and these boner-killing "missions" in other locations, in an H game, and you're not going to put any sexual content in those locations? And locations isn't the end of it but again, I dont think the dev ever decided what experience he wanted to provide was. Or, the experience in mind was "a totally-spies parody game that has sex in it". Mission accomplished, I guess.
• General polish

Honestly at this point in the review I'm wondering why I even gave it 3 stars. I guess, there is definitely a lot going on, the H content that exists is good and a lot of mechanics have been implemented, so I guess I feel obligated that it should at least receive an "Average" rating? But man I kinda want to rate it at 2 stars "poor".

Great Game!
Just like Orange Trainer, a solid trainer game.
Sometimes a bit grindy, but especially the clothing system looks good.

[As of v0.19.0.4] Lots of greatness here. I recall watching some bits of the show when I was younger and am glad to see this project. Plus there are some moments in-game that genuinely made me laugh instead of just being horny all the time. so that's a plus. Can't wait for more content!

I'm really enjoying the game. Great art. Bursts out laughing everytime New Guy says something crazy hahaha! I wish there are oral sex animations for Nanobot control and dance animations at the stripbar. Well, overall excellent game dev. Keep it up!

This is a good game but if you are not into story and just want to wack off then its not your game it takes a while to get to the good stuff and they are few bugs in the game but overhaul its a good game needs more inprovement tho

Bad game, few scenes that arent enough and more focused on buying clothes and endless grind with no reward. I tried a lot to play it but got tired of no scenes updates and only more and more and more new clothes.

I am not insane for the art but the story is really good esp Silvia's, even in its early phases you can see a lot of effort and care in this game from the creator this was the game that got me on F95 and im kinda glad it did

I have mixed feelings on the game, but going to keep this rating short as I don't really have much to say.

The art is great, but the h-scenes are just so small in comparison to the amount of content you need to play through just to get the scenes.

The map overview needs some refinement, as well as the menus. Updates are frequent, but little to nothing is added. Have never played Orange Trainer since didn't really click with me, so can't compare to his previous works.

Game needs work, but worth the play if you don't mind grinding for about 10 hours before hitting actual content.

Usually I don't like trainer games. Paprika Trainer has concept behind the trainer genre that is the reason why eceptional for me. The author knows the original series and characters that's why writing is good and funny. For the visuals artwork part is also pretty nice.

I've giving this game an average review because at the moment it takes too much grinding to get anywhere, and when you manage to finally get somewhere it doesn't feel warranted for the work put in. Even with cheats I felt that it was very slow and highly uninteresting.

Perhaps less grinding and a better tutorial would improve it further but for now the only thing it has going for it is the artwork and the premise.

updated review based on 1.2.0.0 version
RPO:
- good art
- good ui(exept bug when u click on spy cams and goto workbench)
- story presents (unusual for games mc)
- game fully finished- i mean not only elements like endings, i mean not only "completed" status, i mean- its full game.
- some not bad humor ig
NEUTRAL:
- i dnt like original fons
CONS:
- wrong ratio grind/adult_content, i recomend to use cheats
- some bugs present. like cucumber agent- sometimes in mission meny they unavailable w/o any reasons.
- for many players that grind amount unacceptable
- some things like karma mechanic r useles

if u have no fear for gring and like sandbox/management games- its good choice.

review based on version 0.11.1.2
PRO:
- not bad code
- readable eng
- not bad CG
- not bad UI
- some story present
NEUTRAL:
- by story/playthroyh game ready by ~70%+ , but by code- game ready by 30%...
CONS:
- minus 1 star cuz in setings white font on white background and main font unreadable- i wasted few minutes to change font.
- some game mechanics not work like karma etc
- during missions some objects not visible
- many times girl use "covering" hands while they have clothing
- unreasonable grindy gameplay- i mean ratio grinding and content amount wrong in that game.

game not bad, but ill wait much latest stages development.

The game is based in a great show, where the girls were already really sexies, and had a good story, the art is good, the gameplay not much, you have to do missions where you follow the spies and tell them what to do, at the start that don't bother much, but when you advance in the story those stages start to become more and more large and take more time, you have to travel like for 7 rooms until you get out or get to the target, and you have to do that a lot. There is a lot of clothes, and hair styles, I'm not seeing the point of why so many clothes when they don't affect the plot or the spies mood. There are moments that pictures shows incorrectly, like, you talk to Sam and the picture show her dressed but covering her tits and vagina like she was naked, some times the clothes they use don't fit with the body. The grind is so much that I lost the interest after 2 hours because I was tired of looking ways to win money, and buy the components for the gadgets, you have to do a lot of intelligence to advance in the story and that adds too. There are some animations, I only geted the masturbation scene and is good but I'm not convinced about the quality.
So, a lot of grind and story and almost no sexual content.