Ren'Py - School Game [v0.952] [Sloths Command]

School Game, Intriguing bunch of mechanics is on the game, quite pointless nonetheless.

I keep coming back for this game hoping that the game had improvement in general mechanics, simply because the possibility for the game offer. But after so long, it still not improved much, rather I found myself getting punished for trying stuff or simply go to places.

I found whole random NPC in game are actually pointless, why would I interact at all, excluding for quests and that's what I do then I found myself just grinding stats for no reasons. Then I turnover trying quest, felt dull. Then, I try to explore, welcomed with bugs or un-escapeable screen.

Certainly not a fan about UI navigation and interaction. But, main girl in occult quests actually had simplified version of interaction, I really wonder why.

So I come to conclusion, if it wasn't enjoyable at all, why bother play.


School Game [v0.939]

Loved it a lot. The game is pretty unique imo and has a lot of content and stuff. the only problem is that the dev is focusing more on the plot rather than the game. Please fix the bugs. A bugfree game with less content is always better than a game with plenty of content but also a lot of bugs.

First of all, I hope that these developers will pay attention to fixing bugs cuz it affects experience. When I first saw pictures here, I immediately wanted to play. Eventually I ran into a lot of bugs and had to close game after several hours. Then I returned to it and finished playing.

The visuals of School Game are excellent, here 100/10. The artists have separate respect from me. The plot seemed boring. Too much grind for me personally. Would like to see more characters.
I will leave a rating of 3/5, but if developers fix most of bugs, then I can rate 4/5.

*Edited Oct. 1, 2023

In the year 2033, the world was shocked by the emergence of NEXT, A genome virus that began to imbue newly born infants with superhuman speed, strength, intelligence and hyper regeneration capable of bringing them back from the brink of death in a matter of minutes. The NEXT children quickly proved their usefulness, establishing themselves as young hopefuls in every field, but all of that changed with the Demigod incident. 15 NEXTS across the globe, under the banner of the NEXT organization OLYPMUS, began to indiscriminately slaughter their way across their nations and towards their seats of power; and while they stopped, it was only after 7 days and 100000 dead.

Puberty for NEXTs is just as enhanced as the rest of their body's; as they began to undergo massive mood swings, bouts of rage, and the loss of their inhibitions. United by shared grief and tragedy, drastic action was taken. NEXTs from across the world would be shipped to a single location, Prison Colony SCHOOL. A complete functioning town, equipped with new, state of the arc facilities; with the only supervision being the few adult NEXTs who owned property and did business on the island.

You play as a next so pathetic that nobody even realized until you got hit by car and began to regenerate. So here you are, shipped over the no mans land of School. Everything's expensive , criminals and gangs roam freely, and your 'free' apartment has been taken over by a crazy land lord demanding rent. So wake the fuck up Samuri, you have a city to burn.

Overview: I've played quite a few versions of school, and this is the first time its ever really worked. Bugs are still present, but never soft locked me; the AI still freaks out, but it will fix itself; and the [BUSY] events are still broken, but workable. Its still not a good game, but as a RP sandbox its not bad. Brad PussySmasher's rise from a homeless bum into the don of the town was a nice 5 hour time killer.

Ren'py was still an awful choice for this game though, it was not built for this kind of abuse.

good game with alot of potential. the world building and some characters are really well done and have their own distinct personalities, my favourite part thus far is deffo the club . there is lots to do and room for more to be added, also the women who convinces you to join ( im bad with names) is my favourite so far

I want to like this game, but it's hard when I got few crashes even in the first 15 minutes of playing, when I was still trying to understand the mechanics and exploring places. This game has good potential, imo, but sadly has a lot of bugs.

Update (Version 934)
Mechanics has seen a lot of improvemnt and enhancement which is always good. However, other point still stands, especially the last point. We seriously need a walkthrough or guide on how to get all cg. I am willing to give 3 star as of 934. It still has a even higher ceiling though, and I can't wait to see the game finally reaches it.

As of version 931 (Android)

Oof, how do I say this? It pains me to give such a low rating for this game. This game has such a great amount of strengths in it that this game can be very good down the line. But as of right now, I just can't give a higher score.

Let's start with the good first.

1. Game interpretation on school life
This game actually simulates and protray quite a real school life when compared to other game in this genre. You need to go to classes, manages club business, manages personal relationship, manages relationship with npc, fight some dude. I would say this is quite a strong point in this game.

2. The plot is interesting, well at least for me, can't say for anyone else, but give it a try.

3. Random NPC, this game put quite some focus on random NPC, the world no longer belongs to only you and your targets.

4. This game has a lot of mechanics that is quite fun, the fights, club business, and some spoilers. This game actually has quite a lot of depth in it.

Now, let's get into the bad.

1. Game stability
The amount of time Ren'py crashes when I am playing is quite substantial, there is a lot of mini-crashes, especially when going further into the plot. The grey screen of Ren'py jumping and telling you the game has crashed has scared me quite a few times. I somehow got a missing texture problem with one of the side events too! At this stage, the game is very buggy. Yes, I know that this game is still in EA, but at least not missing graphic...

2. Localisation/language issue
Why as I am playing in EN, in the phone, does the main character have their name displayed in RU? And there is RU in the middle of EN sentence too.

3. Mechanics issue
You can't sleep overnight. Time goes wrong when crossing day. You sometimes get teleported because of an interaction. Random NPC can have their name displayed wrongly. You work at mall, and you are asked to leave the school by security gurads because it's pass the closing time for school but you are at the mall. It maybe just my game, but something can definitely use some fixes.

4. Lack of clear task guidance
"There is no task assigned by this character". This sentence is the single most infuriating thing for me in this game. Because this game is still in EA, there hasn't been a complete walkthrough or guide that help players get up to speed and not waste additional time. I understand that. But, when the game itself is not providing enough hints to the player, the player is just aimlessly walking in circle hoping to bump into the plot. This game's plot is quite long and interesting, but all of it is hidden if we don't know how to access them. I have wasted hours because I don't know how to "wait for the student council meeting to start", I don't even know when and where. Please dev, add more clear hints and publish a walkthrough on how to experience the whole game and get all the cg.

Now, is this game worth your time, yes, absolutely, the game is very fun to play. But, you need to be warned about some of the things you may encounter that may worsen your experience. The game at this stage, is very much not ready to be played. The plot is still being actively developed, but the underlying code is something I am worried about. All in all, this game have a ceiling as high as the sky, but to achieve that, the game still needs quite some time to reach it. If the stability of the game and some of the problems (especially number 4) are addressed, I may even be interested to buy this game on steam in the near future.

I've been playing since version 931 and when I went to the reviews of this game, I was surprised. I was surprised first of all by their attitude to this game... However, in fact it is not so important. First of all, I came here to write my review of the game.

Pluses:

1) A huge number of hidden mechanics and systems. This creates a certain feeling that the game is still not fully explored. Various fights, relationship losses, independent school deductions from the NPCs and numerous other mechanics that dilute the gameplay. Despite some dryness of the system of relations with the NPC, at the moment it is quite interesting. So there are also quite a lot of sex scenes with them, which may differ from each other not only in visual.

2) The plot is an insignificant thing in this kind of games, but it is quite interesting. Especially for a game of this genre.

3) Unusual leveling system and levels. It is simple, transparent and increases interest in the game.

4) Character and location design. This includes the design of the NPCs with whom you interact not according to the plot. It is simple, but at the same time pleasant to the eye. At the same time, the backgrounds go well enough with them, despite the fact that they are not hand-drawn.

5) Sandbox is the best part of the game. A huge number of events, classes and what you can really occupy yourself with.

Minuses:

1) English translation, but i am from Lithuania, so it is not a special problem for me because I know the original language of the game.

2) Bugs, but to be honest, complaining about them is at least strange. The game is in development, so a lot of content is added every month. Not even a lot, but a huge amount. I have never seen this in other games from developers.


As a result, my score is 4.

[As of ver. [v0.931]
A horrible buggy mess
Starting with the positives, the idea of the game is really unique and thats pretty neat! The dateable characters look pretty cool (although I only played for an 1 hour) and the RNPCs are ok.
How ever if you randomly click somewhere... you get an error Error Screen, and if your really unlucky you get stuck as click out means... a error screen. If you dont save often, all that work goes down the drain. The amount of rigidity in the game baffles me. For someone receiving almost 4k a month in Patron Funds, the amount of bugs and lack of flavor is Unacceptable.
Save often! Hours of work will go down the drain!

Rating for version 0.931

There are a lot of games like this one floating around, however, there are 2 major differences in these types:

1) It's a game that's fresh and assets are commissioned.
2) It's a game that's not fresh and assets are "borrowed" and regurgitated.

This game falls under the second one. While it has a lot of elements some other simulators don't, I just find it really hard to respect a game where the majority of its assets are borrowed. Obviously, as a new developer, you're going to be borrowing. Yet this game has been out for several years, making money for several years, and not correcting the fact he's borrowing. I know look at me complaining about borrowing as an uploader of F95Zone .

This is not the true point of it though. Most games get tiresome fast when you see the same assets used over and over again across many developers.

The same can be said of the actual story/concept of the game. It's reused and regurgitated so much with no real variance. The number of games I have seen that is school related in a simulator format is just astronomical. The only thing this game adds that others seem not to is extra options to "customize" your experience. That's pretty much it. The characters are bland and not unique either.

All in all, if you're into school simulators this might be for you, but really there are better ones out there that use their own assets and at least attempt to be unique.

Some cool ideas here. Great art. Interesting core gameplay loop.
But it lacks oh so much for a release that's close to v1:
Character design variety.
Sex scene variety.
Technical polish (a lot of the content in the game currently can not be finished due to constant errors).
A proper engine - this game stretches Ren'Py past it's limits it would seem, and quite a lot of the functions in the game appear to be hacks to get around the engine limitations.
Content - the game is quite thin.

Nevertheless, i look forward to the final version when it's done. Might buy it on steam if it is released there.

This game showed a little bit of promise...
- It has borrowed graphics,
- machine translated text into English, extremely badly translated, just barely playable,
- online verification (version 931+), which in this industry has been abused in the past to sell user data, for those that don't realize any reason for why that's bad,
- bugs... when four main quest starters give you an insurmountable error and you remember there were just as many errors years of updates ago...

v0.930b
This is a weird game to review because I like it to some extent but the shortcomings it has are very frustrating. The concept is fun, but it falls short on many other levels.
1) Crashes and bugs. I constantly ran into random crashes and occasionally I would also run into bugs/crashes that would essentially brick my save and force me to load a much earlier one. I'd either get stuck on some crash I can't get around or I'd be bugged into a menu I can't leave.
2) The art is taken from other games. I constantly felt that the scenes I'm looking at are probably much better accompanied in the context of their own games rather than what is presented in this game.
3) The translation is dog shit. For the most part I could get a general sense of what's going on but always felt like I was missing out on the specifics due to the translation. I get the feeling that there is a lot of details given in the conversation but they fail to be delivered in an understandable way at times.
4) There is an ultimate decision in the game where you essentially choose between keeping a developed character in the game or choosing the logical decision of usurping her which causes her to disappear entirely. Why is it logical? Because all the given evidence points to the character needing to be replaced, to such an extent that the character even had planned this entire affair for you to replace them. So if usurping her was a mutually beneficial goal and she has shown quite the interest in you, why does she just disappear from the game entirely? It makes either decision not sit right with me for the wrong reasons. Not only that, you are forced into being as bad or even worse than her. A lot of the game's events also revolve around this character so when you end up taking them out of it, it suddenly feels hollow. If you try to keep them in the game however, you essentially solved nothing.
5) A lot of things in this game just end up becoming click-chores. I got sick of trying to keep up with going to classes, going to work, going to the occult club, and going to the journalism club over and over that I really just wanted it to stop. At least some automation needs to be implemented for it even if it's a checkbox that just makes you automatically go to classes/work at such and such times everyday. Especially given that the journalism club tasks after usurping the president can take literal in-game months with not much else going on.

I will say, there is some fun to be had in this game in the interactions and story lines, but that's just about where it stops unfortunately.

I love the game concept, it reminds of Artificial Academy 2 but after trying it out for a few hours it feels so awkward to play, as in the characters don't act natural, heck they act so bizarre.

I'll chock it to translation problems but all this did was made me want to replay AA2.

This game still has a ways to go before it will truly start showing how good it truly is but the groundwork has been laid and with a few tweaks to the skills i would say the game will only lack more events, something that should be much easier to implement compared to the NPC generation that has been done.

[v0.927]
Legitimately a great game with huge potential. It may sounds pompous to say so, but I only briefly read the description, downloaded it just mostly out of curiosity.
And going into the game expecting nothing more than a couple of lewd scenes and maybe a barely working simulation of the school, I was fucking smitten.
Already at the character creation stage, I was impressed.
Then the impression scale continued to grow exponentially.
"Hey, is that a ton of randomized NPCs with a ton of parameters?" Wow.
"Hey, is this a ton of gameplay mechanics?" Wow x2
"Hey, wait, is this a pretty well-written(well-glued) story and working (from the point of narration) characters?" Wow x3
The only downside is the lack of their own art pieces of key characters and cg moments.(I mean, c'mon you guys, with all this funding?)
I'm not a fan of writing reviews, but here I decided to make an exception because it hurts to see such a low rating for a actually good game.
Prosperity to developers. They have gold on their hands.

comments for 946
I do not change my rating. a lot of new stuff that are really interesting with RNPC. But:
- too much bugs. I highly recommend to stop development of new feature for a while and to focus for the next version on the bugs that are really painfull. Reaction of RNPC in case you fight an hooligan attacking you is dealt in the same way you are yourself an hooligan. you will loose frienship and love and gain fear. it's not the good way. even if you deceide to help somebody who is victim of bullying, at the end, you are an hooligan. please change your way on this matter cause I avoid all fights and I miss some interesting parts of the game.
could you make difference between friendship and love, currently, it's just a question of time and I would appreciate that boys in my game stay friends and I am not interested in the next step. I really think you should implement the sexual orientation of the RNPC and adapt the mecanism to take that into account.
about the main NPC, story is interesting but too slow to get any result. still a shame that they are not original design and that they are censored... I don't understand your way on that. anyway good luck and I am waiting for the next version
my comments about 934 :
I keep the 4 stars for the following reasons :
- a lot of improvement with NPC. the game is still grindy, but mechanism is no so complex. you can reach the kiss in less than one day. animation are good enough except for the blowjob that should be redone: the POV view is clearly not the best option.
- the main characters are now properly defined and the main quest properly detailled to let you advance in the quest. unfortunately (that's why the game is not yet a 5 stars) the pictures with Ayano are not good, some of them clearly decensored. developpers should clearly hire a independant drwaer to replace them by something more original. the way to get some result with them is also a little bit to long (especilaly compared to NPC).
- way to improve : add the sexual orientation of the NPC and let the player choose the rate of each category. reaction to flirt could be adapted regarding this orientation. remove all censored picture, it's a shame. in the club management, skills and weakness of NPC were displayed in the previous version, it's no longer the case and it's less interesting. for the combat, some perks could be added to improve the fight skills.

I have tried this game a couple of month ago and I was disapointed : the main characters were not interesting, the plot was confused and the NPC without any interest. On top of that grinding was so important that the game even wasn't worth 2 stars.
with the new version (0.927), I have to admit that a lot of improvement have been acomplished. the main improvement is with the NPC. now you can really do some stuf with them and try to have all of them. the game is still gringy, but as soon as you have understood the mechanism, it's not so difficult. My main concern is still with the main plot. the part with the quest has to be improved as it's not clear what to do to advance in the story. some picture have also to be redone : it's a pity to have (limited) animations for NPC and nothing for main characters (some of the pictures are even censored...). So I think the game is on the good path, but a lot of improvement have to be done with the main story and the quest book. What was done for NPC is really good and I wish the developper will find a way to have even more involvement of them in the main story, so they would not just be random NPC without interest.

the grind is real, but the random npc interactions and the rpg mechanics makes this game a gem, the only thing that takes the shine of this game are the bugs and that there no consequence for unprotected sex.

Absolutely awful. The English is on the level of some the worst MTL you'll see on this site, occasionally I couldn't even guess what was meant to be conveyed. Gameplay is pretty typical of a game like this, grind for stats and cash to hook up with girls. The problem is the pay off because there isn't any. There are 3 or 4 static characters, the rest are random npcs. Exactly none of them are good, the static ones are horrible because the English indecipherable and even if I could understand it I doubt it would be groundbreaking. The random npcs are absolutely miserable because they are nothing. The dev expects you to get it up for something that in the majority of games I would gut to jump the line for a bad cannoli and their pocket change, and because of their nature as randomly generated npcs they have no story and no personality. Without that then all I have is a shitty anime pic to nut to and that does nothing for me by itself. If that does work for you then you still won't like this game because of the grind and shit UI. I've written enough so I won't go too deep into the game, just know the UI is on par with Vinfamy's Lifeplay, which is fucking incomprehensible.

Really grindy, but has interesting random characters mechanics, that are impressive.Sadly relationships with random characters are kinda shallow and grindy, but with improvements it would make this game stand out.That really isn't the main thing in this game right now, cause there are scripted characters that are fleshed out, and are quite interesting.
If there would be less grind, improved interactions with random characters, and overall more content this game would deserve 4 stars for sure, but for now(as of v0.923) it doesn't deserve it, treat it as if i rated 3,5 stars.Still, in future this game could be pretty great, so for now i'll rate it that.