Ren'Py - Reya the Elf [v0.7.0b SE] [Yooshi]

Ren’Py — Reya the Elf [v0.7.0b SE] – Yooshi
Rating: 2/5

“Reya the Elf” is a clear example of wasted potential. Behind its competent visuals — arguably its only solid strength — lies a game that collapses under shallow design, relentless repetition, and a complete lack of meaningful narrative. Instead of offering an engaging sandbox or a compelling visual novel, it delivers the worst traits of both.

Gameplay: An Exercise in Futility

The core issue is straightforward: there is no real progression, only artificial padding.
The vast majority of the gameplay consists of watching the same scenes over and over again, sometimes more than a dozen times, just to earn enough corruption points to unlock a tiny sliver of new content.

A typical loop looks like this:

1. Repeat an identical scene 10+ times
2. Unlock a trivial “variation” (such as not pulling away from a client’s touch)
3. Repeat the same scene another 20 times to continue progressing
4. Receive another microscopic advancement

This isn’t progression — it’s busywork disguised as gameplay.

RNG: The Final Twist of the Knife

As if the repetition weren’t punishing enough, major events are also tied to RNG. Even when you meet all requirements, scenes may simply refuse to appear. The game forces players to cycle through days or reload repeatedly until the system arbitrarily allows them to move forward.

Randomness isn’t the problem — bad use of randomness is.

A Self-Sabotaging System

In a design choice that borders on self-parody, certain character routes become unplayable if your corruption level gets too high — the very stat the game constantly pushes you to grind.
It’s difficult to overstate how counterproductive this is: the core mechanic actively locks you out of content.

Story: Barely a Skeleton

The narrative is so thin it’s almost nonexistent. The protagonist is visually appealing — even if her body type won’t appeal to everyone — but she’s given no depth, no emotional arc, and virtually no context.

There is no real plot to follow, no character development, and no meaningful interactions. The game relies entirely on its erotic content, but even that is buried beneath endless repetition that smothers any sense of pacing or build-up.

Visuals: The Only Thing Holding It Together

The art and animations are solid for Honey Select standards, but that alone can’t carry a 15 GB title with almost no substance beneath the surface. When you’ve seen the same sequence for the 20th time, even impressive visuals lose their charm.

Identity Crisis: Sandbox? Visual Novel? Neither.

“Reya the Elf” attempts to blend sandbox freedom with VN storytelling, but fails to commit to or execute either side properly.

• As a sandbox, it lacks depth, variety, and meaningful choice.
• As a visual novel, it lacks narrative, characters, motivation, or emotional engagement.

Instead of combining the strengths of both genres, it amplifies their weaknesses.

⚖ Conclusion

“Reya the Elf” is visually competent, yet completely sabotaged by shallow design, repetitive structure, and a nonexistent narrative. It’s a prime example of how good art and animation can be squandered within a mechanical loop devoid of creativity.

When the game tries to be sensual, it becomes exhausting; when it attempts depth, it feels empty; when it aims to be a game, it devolves into pure irritation. The entire experience is a tedious cycle with no real sense of progression or purpose.

It is neither an effective sandbox nor a compelling visual novel — merely the worst of both worlds.
And still, somehow, it manages to gather near-perfect ratings. How this happens defies any reasonable critical logic; to me, it remains an enigma of the human condition.

My honest rating: 2/5 — solely for the visuals and animations.
Everything else is a needless grind no player should willingly endure.

Pretty decent, as long as you're prepared for slow grinding.

The MC is attractive, a rarity in 3D games.

I'd say the main problem right now is that the main job (masseuse) is actually the most boring one. If they expect us to repeat it 1000 time it should be either fun or simple and skippable.

I played the game many month ago and I forgot to do my homework and didn't rank this game at the time, I'm here to correct my mistake.

I really enjoy this game, a simple story, with really nice animation and a cute FMC.
The corruption of Reya feel nicely paced and you always want to discover the next scene.
Keep the good work

Really good game, love the corruption elements and watching Reya slowly become more lewd. I will say that the game is a tad bit grindy, but the scenes more then make up for it, especially the animations. I loved the exhibitionist path, I just wish there was more content. I also wish there were more outfits, but other than that great game.

For me, this is actually the best game on this site. It's incredibly good.
Here you'll find all the kinks I love, some I don't care about, and none I hate. For me, it's the perfect mix and incredibly well executed.

Yes, the grind is tough at the beginning; 0.1 to 0.3 points per action is really low. And it takes a while for anything to get going. But that changes drastically once you reach around 50 corruption, and then it goes almost too fast.
I like sandboxes, and that's why I think the grind it's a good thing. All things are poisonous, and nothing is without poison. Only the dose determines whether a thing is not a poison (*Paracelsus 1538).
I think the dosage is right here.
Sandbox (usually) means that you can replay scenes over and over again. However, there's also an in-game cheat system for the savegame faction.

The renders are beautiful, and the animations are absolutely top-notch, present in every corner. In the bar, there's just a kerosene lamp with a beautiful flame dancing inside it. It's completely useless but an eye-catcher. The apartment is actually just a simple menu, but it's filled with cute little fmc animations that look worlds better than the sex animations in 90% of the games here.

Almost all of the characters look good. It's Honey Select, but the girls are all super pretty, and almost all of the guys are too. I think every game needs one or two ugly bastards these days, and they're hanging around here too. Not the usual fatso or smelly hobo, though; some of the normal characters just look uglier compared to the others. Just like in real life. On the other hand, Annabelle, damn, she looks good! I think she's the hottest Honey Select character of all time. And I love her character.

Where there's light, there's also shadow, and unfortunately, Annabell is a prime example of this. Some scenes are contradictory. For example, Annabell flits around without pantyhose in one scene, and in the next scene she's wearing them. I'd prefer the version with them, by the way.
During the massage, the images constantly alternate between those with and without underwear.
These are minor details, but they're annoying. Especially since the rest of the game is of such a high standard.
The quest line in the library is partly...well...stupid. If you score over 60 Corruption points, one quest line fails automatically, but the other requires significantly more points to continue. Of course, I messed it up on my first playthrough, like almost everyone else. But thanks to the in-game cheat system, even that's only temporarily annoying.

What I particularly like about this game is that I have complete control. Even with extremely high levels of corruption, I always have the final say: what, with whom, when, and how far. The FMC never becomes a mindless sex toy, free to use for everyone. No blackmail that she's too stupid to defend herself against, no rape. Even if she's being groped, she can ALWAYS stop it—or not, just as I want.
A small detail that might not be immediately noticeable, even the music in the game is way above average.

I often wish F95 would give me the option to give zero stars. I want more stars for Reya the Elf—damn it, let me give it more than 5.

Such potential being completely wasted and buried underneath this obnoxiously grindy excuse of a game. How this managed to get such a high rating is honestly beyond me...

This is a bit of long one, but let this review stand as a warning for those who have even the slightest dislike towards grindy sandbox style games. If that's you, don't get fooled by the high ratings. Do yourself a favor and STAY AWAY!

The majority of this game is literally just rewatching the same uneventful shit you've already seen a million times... Want to progress with this customer at the massage parlor? Okay sure, but first sit through this same scene where fuck all happens 10 times over.
Once you've done that, surely something satisfying will happen right? Wrong.. Now you get the exact same scene, except now you get to choose to not move away when said customer touches her leg. That's it, that's all you get. After that, it's right back to watching the same scene over and over to grind more corruption points. This has to be a joke, right....?

The entire damn game is like this... Done grinding 10 more corruption points? Great, you get one more click of "progress" for this scene at the bar, now fuck off and watch the same scene 20 more times to earn another 10 corruption points, maybe you'll get another click of "progress" for your trouble.
Not to mention that half the game is governed by RNG, and even if you have the required amount of corruption to "progress" the scene, it might not even happen regardless, because why wouldn't you make it even more difficult to progress on top of the ridiculous grind. Try again the next day, or reload until the scene does show up, good luck!

Oh and as a cherry on top this developer has the audacity to implement a character (to my knowledge there's only one, but I'm not 100% sure) you actually can't progress with after a certain point, should your CORRUPTION GET TOO HIGH.
Not even joking here, this game that is all about grinding corruption points for hours and hours on end, has a character that straight up refuses to talk to you anymore should your corruption points exceed a certain amount.

Normally I'd say "Hey, fair enough, to each their own". But nearly 5 stars for this..? Come on people, have some damn standards. Sure it looks nice as far as Honey Select games go, but there's barely even a game here, all you do is spend hours clicking through recycled crap just to unlock that sliver of a scene only to then do it all over again for another sliver.
Designing it this way adds nothing of value, and I'll never understand why some developers are so willing to turn their game into a huge chore. It quite literally benefits no one, unless you're a masochist I guess...

The game has some hot scenes sure but I'm rating the game as a whole here, and what an absolutely horrible experience this was... Since you can't go lower than 1 star, let's pretend the game earns that star because the main character is cute and it has some decent scenes once you've spent hours unlocking them bit by tiny bit.

might not be a fan of 3D games and lean more toward the stylized 2D artstyle, but...
1. The renders are high quality
2. There are multiple renders that have been REDONE by the original author that change the clothing, so it's super high quality in regards to that
3. The models used aren't, that bad, and I can see how someone that prefers 3D would love them
So all in all, it's quite impressive and if you like 3D art this is definitely something you would enjoy.

This is feels like the worst parts of old-school dating sims mixed with generic modern VNs. It is impossible to progress without referencing the built-in guide, which is not even accurate, for example, it says talk to Laura when you actually need to talk to Nadia. This may be due to updates, but it highlights the major issues of the game. It wants to be a sandbox and a VN at the same time without committing to either. While there might be a way this could be done well, it isn't here. Everything is a grind of clicking the same buttons and skipping through the same dialogue in order to unlock the next part. The grind mixed with poor writing (your dad is referred to as "her" in the prologue among other myriad typos) makes for a snooze fest. If you suffer long enough you get some decent scenes, but they aren't worth it. There is also a lot of clipping with the models which is put front and center for you to see, whether it be a ballsack poking out of pants or ears jutting through locks of hair. The premise isn't terrible. The story (if you can withstand the grind) isn't that bad. Are there choices? No. Well, yes. The choice to progress the story or not. There also ought to be another time frame available between afternoon and night (i.e. evening) but there just isn't enough content to warrant it despite the game itself implying events taking place during such time.

TL;DR: Not quiet a Sandbox, not quiet a VN. Worst of both worlds. The grind holds back the story/scenes, the story has no real player input.

Really enjoyable pace of corruption that's not too fast or too slow. My only complaint is that I want more of it. Not that it's particularly sparse on content, but some areas I think could do with fleshing out, like unlocking more lewd massage options as corruption increases (instead of just unlocking a sex scene), assuming those expansions aren't planned already.

Reya the Elf is a time management game about a cute elf girl who goes to the city and becomes a complete slut in about two months.

I jest, but only a little. After all, Reya the Elf is a corruption game. You start the game giving very tame massages and end up a naked exhibitionist on the streets, fucking cocks in a glory hole. The corruption slide is annoyingly slow and repetitive in the early game but accelerates (maybe too much) as the game progresses. I suppose the game scaffold itself is fairly decent, but the numbers could use some tweaking or at least some event diversity in the early game.

Unfortunately, the corruption is very free-form as there's little in the way of milestones such as a first blowjob, first time seen naked, etc. I feel like these types of events offer a more granular corruption that lends itself well to an overarching plot. As is, the corruption feels haphazard instead, where Reya's firsts aren't very significant and can happen any number of places.

On some level, I don't think I have too much of an issue with this fast and loose style of corruption, but when it goes hand in hand with an almost complete lack of a story it causes problems. In order for a corruption game to feel corruption-y I feel like the person being corrupted needs some kind of a push. It could be a need for money, it could be a person trying to nudge them down the road to depravity, it could be drugs, hell, it could just be an inner slut finally let free after a lifetime of being a good girl. Reya has very little of this.

There are side characters who want to see Reya being corrupted, but they interact with her infrequently and mostly insignificantly. Reya does need money, but there's no time crunch or risk to her if she doesn't get it. Neither of these things are enough to launch Reya into the spiral of corruption found in the game in my opinion.

Regardless, I complain about the story and progression because of how otherwise good the appearance of the game is. Reya is gorgeous and features in a lot of sexy scenarios all over the city. I (naturally) have a strong love for the exhibition scenes, though there's sadly only two locations as of now (0.6.1). I have no complaints about the game's appearance and look forward to future patches.

Overall, Reya the Elf is a great looking game hampered by a lack of a story. As is there's maybe three events that might be part of a bigger story, but the rest of the game is just general lewdness and grinding. I think the game will be good if it continues in its current direction, but really needs an overarching story or a more concrete corruption arc if it wants to be incredible.

Really enjoying this game and looking forward to the next update. A bit repetitive on the massage tasks in order to complete them all as well as the bar orders but men will always get more hands on as time passes by.

Good game, a bit grindy and once you're at high corruption every scenes is great. Beside, dev kinda kind and friendly. Looking forward to seeing how this develops further. A bit wonder how this game gonna end

This is a good game with room for improvement.

Pros:

• Slow corruption, decent pacing. A lot of people mentioned the grind, but honestly, without it, a game of this type would suffer.
• The scenes, visuals and animations are good. MC is cute.

Cons:

• Story is mostly weak, cheesy, short and pretty vanilla. The idea of a shared world between different races isn't fleshed out.
• Corruption at some point feels rushed and unnatural. In my opinion at the end of the grind phase should be more story to push Reya to try something new. There are no specific milestones for corruption at the moment, it just happens at some point between grind.
• The side characters in this game are pretty basic and don't add anything interesting to the story. In my opinion, it's not important for a game of this type to have unique side characters, but the inner thoughts and motivations of the main character should be the compensation, but they aren't.
• The illusion of player agency and bugs.

In my opinion, the visuals and the pace of corruption are the main selling points of the game.

The worst part is that some parts of the story and events feel completely disconnected from each other, and corruption is mainly just a grind stat. As for my taste, I would mention the lack of the MC's inner thoughts and also the lack of "random" story events like the one with her uncle barging into her apartment.

-- Review updated to version [v0.5.4 SE] --

Pros:

- Watching Reya slowly give in to her desires is very satisfying.
- The main character (Reya) is very lovable.
- Animations: They are all over the place and are of superior quality (Seriously, it's very well animated).
- The scenes are very hot, and hand in hand with the previous point, they take them to another level

Cons:

- The gallery only shows the animations, but not the full scenes.

Despite having an anime style (not my style) I gave it a chance, and thank goodness I did. RTE is a very good game with a very lovable (but very sexy when she wants to be) protagonist.
The idea of a shared world between different races is interesting, but maybe Reya's story itself is not its strongest point. Even so, in version 5.2 a new mission was added: “Undercover” which opens a very interesting new plot, and that's what I think the game needs the most. That's why I would like that in future updates this plot is given importance, because it's the first time that the story left me really interested in knowing how it continues.

The corruption is slow at the beginning, but as we progress, it increases faster. Now comes the critical point: the grind. Yes, it's heavy, and more so at the beginning. But just like the corruption system, as we advance, the grind becomes lighter and lighter. And seeing how Reya is gradually leaving aside her shyness, makes the player feel well rewarded.

Maybe some revisions would be needed in the dialogues regarding Reya's virginity, since in my game, she lost it twice, haha (once in the massage parlor and once working in the spa). Anyway, this is not something I consider urgent.

What I do find annoying is that in the gallery you can't play the full scenes, only the animations. This means that if you want to see a scene again, you have to save it at the exact moment and load it later when you want to see it again...

Now the animations, they are EXCELLENT! Very good quality, and smoothness. I understand that some people don't care about animations in games, but personally, I think they add a lot of life to it. What do you prefer, Quality or Quantity? In Reya the Elf, you don't have to choose, as there is Quantity and Quality.

The scenes are great and very hot, and make it a very pleasurable experience to see how Reya is opening up to new experiences (sex... I'm talking about sex). It is also appreciated that in the help menu and missions, the requirements to access them are clarified, so that the user knows what to do and not get stuck without knowing what to do.

In summary RTE is a very good game, it's not perfect I know, but personally I found it a very pleasant experience. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4,5/5 (With potential to be 5/5)

Fun game, a bit grindy and once you're at high corruption the reused assets from the low corruption state are incongruent with the MCs willingness to be lewd.

Understand why the assets are reused, just something I noted. Looking forward to seeing how this develops further.

Didn't bother getting very far in the game. The pacing at the beginning of the game moves at a snail's pace. I genuinely looked up the renpy skip text hotkey after seeing the same massage work text 10 times. Quality wise however, still would make this bearable to some people though. The animations are smooth, and I was surprised to see idles for main characters I came across. So that's a plus.

Personaly, too much grinding in this game. The charater design is great, that's the main reason I give it 2 stars. But spending days and days clicking every morning on feet, back and neck massage, with almost no content after that (at least after 30 minutes of game time, with skipping repetitive messages thanks to ctrl key ^^). It's really frustrating, the grind is not rewarding enough IMO.

Reya is very hot and sexy, and if you only see her, this game passes five stars,great body and face.Τhe animated sex scenes are amazing,the best I've seen, this game has become my favorite and I look forward to updates more than anything else.Please keep this up.

One of the (if not the) most pleasant surprises of 2023 for me when it comes to adult games.

MC is fantastic. Great, unique, innocent-looking, shy girl with a really enjoyable corruption arc. By 4.2 she's giving in to temptation and engaging in hot encounters at home, workplaces and in public.

I particularly enjoyed how she gets new (hot) lines of dialogue once past a certain threshold, reflecting her level of corruption. You'll notice how, at first, she struggles to let go of inhibitions and makes up excuses in her mind to do sexy stuff but repeating the same event later she's comfortable with it and welcoming any male(s) present in the room that can provide her with a fun time.

I'm normally annoyed by sandboxes but I think it works in this game. There's not much in the way of hints but you'll eventually find your way. There are only a few locations as of now and you get to choose which activities to do and in which order to tackle them. You may keep grinding on one job only if you wish and not do the rest but I enjoyed all the activities. You'll also get to choose who you wish to be the MC's first, the game gives you plenty of opportunities to back out of a sexy encounter if you prefer another partner for her. The dialogue will also adjust to whether or not an encounter is her first time having sex.

Regarding the grind, I 'd possibly increase the corruption speed only by about 15-20%, which you can do through cheats, in order to achieve what I would consider a perfect pacing.

Reya is now on my top 3 on the fem protagonist-corruption games which is by far my favorite kind of games and I say that having at least tried most of the games on this site containing those 2 tags. My favorite among those being Downfall and Fashion Business. Can't think of a way to give it higher praise than that.

Pros:
-MC is a hawt Elf
-Scenes are decent

Meh:
-Corruption mechanic is very binary. You either have the corruption points to proceed with a lewd scene or you don't. There's no gradual in-between scenes or dialogue as she gets more corrupted.

Cons:
-Grindy grindy grind grind. This might have been fine if the corruption mechanic had more gradience but it doesn't. I strongly suggest using Universal Renpy Mod to modify corruption and relationship variables.
-Could use a unified hint system

Conclusion:
Quite fappable. Decent but nothing noteworthy.