Ren'Py - Abandoned - Sensei Overnight [v0.19.0] [Pers0nas]

I love the variety of girls. I like the art style. I don't hate the attempts at comedy. These are the only nice things I can say about this game.

Even with a walkthrough, this is a frustrating exercise in clicking the same five options day in and day out and hoping that this time something different will happen. The hint system is worthless. There is no telegraphing of where to go or what to do. It is the absolutely worst sandbox I have ever encountered.

It's just fine. I do dislike when it's not really spelled out that a certain path is closing for any of the characters at any particular time. There isn't much to go off of on some of the shorter interactions and bam, Hana's events are all marked as missed? I'm not sure what I even did. I might come back to this in the future, but when I lose the immersion, I do fall out of it pretty quick.

Sensei Overnight pays homage to other popular AVN titles while forgetting the aspects of those titles that made them so popular. A near complete absence of drama coupled with the majority of scenes quickly outstaying their welcome and a free-roam interface that, even with the addition of a mod, is still frustrating to work through results in a game that is a chore to get through.


Sensei Overnight is what it says in the title. You’re a janitor who wakes up and finds out he’s now a teacher. You have a bird that talks through typing on your laptop and a host of high school girls to talk to, and boy o’ boy will you be talking to them, at length, repeatedly, until you’re ready to lobotomize yourself with the edge of your keyboard.


The game isn’t all doom and gloom. The backgrounds, while used in numerous other games, do fit the scenes they’re in, and the girls are cute and unique. Each girl speaks differently, whether it be an accent or a particular way they curse, making it easy to differentiate between them. They also react to the MC differently. Not everyone is immediately head over heels for their new sensei, with some of them downright openly disliking him (until you soften them up).


The adult content is minimal. There are only a handful of scenes and only 3 or 4 involving intercourse. I’ve played several titles with sparse (and in one case, zero) adult content that were still enjoyable due to the powerful storytelling. Unfortunately, this is not one of those titles since the scenes are a solid 10 hours apart each, which leads us to the writing.


The writing isn’t bad. Really it isn’t. If we’re talking about spelling and grammar, there are very few mistakes, and the sentences have a flow to them that make it feel like a conversation. The problem isn’t the medium but the content. There are countless conversations that go nowhere and do nothing. Talking about the weather is great and all, but after 20 or 30 lines you start wondering if anything interesting is going to happen. There are multiple scenes building up to you handing out fliers to help out a student… and that’s it. Talk about it, talk about it some more, then finally go out and hand out the fliers. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was five or ten minutes, but the total dialogue involved was closer to two hours! The current game needs to be trimmed of at least ¼ of the current dialogue in order to be tolerable. As it is, I was forced to space my playthrough out in one or two hour chunks because the dialogue is such a slog to get through. This went on for several months until I realized that there are other, better games out there that don’t make you suffer for no reward, which leads to my second major criticism:


Drama. Specifically, the lack of drama. Sensei Overnight pays homage to another popular title that is a mix of horror and a deconstruction of AVNs and is entertaining (if not a bit flawed). Sensei Overnight borrows the horror element but uses it so sparingly, filling the in-between moments with so much filler, that you forget why you’re supposed to be scared. There’s also no deconstruction, unless you include the author breaking the fourth wall every third conversation, alluding to the fact that this is a game, that the girls are characters in a game, and on and on. Fourth wall breaks are funny when they’re rare, not when they’re introduced every 20 minutes. I digress though: DRAMA! There’s no overarching plot. You go to school, teach nothing, tutor without tutoring in anything, talk to whichever girl has a quest available (yet another problem I’ll get to next), go home, rinse, repeat. Occasionally a girl is a little sad or a little jealous, or shares a personal story that is a little sad, but without a coherent narrative to tie it all together it’s just an empty dating sim without any real choices as the game, despite the free-roam format, is basically kinetic. None of your choices seem to have any real impact.


Finally there’s the interface. I quickly picked up the hints mod because the authors way of getting hints requires going through several menus to get a vague idea of what to do next, and if you don’t go by hints, you end up with repeated scenes that don’t continue the non-story. The free roam serves no purpose especially since the game is kinetic and none of the free roam stuff is optional unless you don’t want the non-story to progress to the next nothing-happens chapter. The dialogue is already a chore to get through, and the scenes repeating over and over until you check the hints/quest log to find out that you have to wait, sleep, wait, sleep wait, sleep, etc until you reach Saturday, at which point you wait, wait again, and then finally go to the hotel to unlock a scene with a character who is going to berate you for ten full minutes of dialogue, finally unlocking 5 more hints all of which you have to look up before doing anything, since the odds of you accidently bumping into the right scene is about 1 in 10.


I’m not sure why I waited so long to abandon the game. I got through at least 20 hours, finally reaching the first real sex scene. It’s with a student, and the dialogue made me yawn, “So I’m ready to have sex now.” “Okay”. “Want to do it here?” “Okay”. If you’ve checked out some of the other popular titles, you’ll find that the longer you wait, the better the scene. Several long-length animations, great dialogue, numerous renders in between to make the segway from animation to animation believable… not here. Single animation that you’ve seen from a dozen other titles. Missionary with a crappy camera angle. The end.


I could offer a list of ways that this game could be fixed, but I’m not the only one who has levied these criticisms (see reviews that preceded mine) and it has made no impact on the author who clearly has his own vision, and a handful of fans/contributors who, for whatever reason, consider the aspects of the game that I consider detrimental as beneficial. Oh well. To each their own. If you’re in the mood for a drama-free story with lengthy dialogue about nothing that eventually leads to, as of 0.18, about 3 total scenes, more power to you! You do you. For myself, I was tempted to try skipping through the dialogue to see if any more horror scenes occur which are at least mildly interesting, but yet again the interface makes that a slog as well, so I think I’m just done. I don’t see a way to save this one folks, which is lamentable as the author is clearly trying his best… or maybe he isn’t.

A great mystery horror story mixed with romance and comedy. The characters are well written and the horror is enough to keep me on my toes. The MC has his own personality, although it is hard to see it through his detached aloofness. Overall a enjoyable read.

Was really excited to try this one, but I don't get the hype. The story and writing is very weak, the pacing and characters feel strange, the art is inconsistent, and it overall just feels like a worse version of games you've probably played or seen on this website a million times before.
I don't usually mind the open world random event grind that people hate in Ren'Py games, but this game really makes me understand what people complain about.
I feel like I should rate this game 1 star, but I won't, because I honestly can't play this game past the first few hours because of the writing, and I feel bad that it might get better and I won't give it the credit it might deserve.

Best of luck to the developer and maybe (I hope) I will play it again when the game is complete someday, and enjoy it.

seriously,i havent ever spend so much time on vn since sensei,vn that i played before never give me an desire to figure out the background and what happened to their life before.probably the best charastic and dialoge .not best game but best life

a very good game, the characters for one reason I love them all for another, the story is captivating and even if there are not many sex scenes the few ones have a lot of sense and are not rushed, to conclude I can one hundred say that it is among my favorite games of the forum

Pretty good game, came to this website to relieve myself with 2D/3D art/animations, but this one made me do a 360. This is my first time playing a VN like this and I enjoyed it very much. After doing 3 routes so far i can say i've enjoyed it and hated it.

I liked the rewind time option very helpful if I accidentally clicked wrong.

I disliked the constant hassle of going through every event option just to make sure I'm not missing anything even if it its not time sensitive destroys my immersion.

Last thing I disliked is with certain OSTs just completely shutting/finishing off before I finish reading/going through an event lost my immersion in the awkward silence, I understand however it does stop at some points of reveals/news.

Maybe like add a hint/alert/reminders for event schedules to say that "Oki has been thinking about... ", "Mori wants to talk..." etc etc rather than forcing the event to happen. (understandably the domino effect of an event leading after another is an exception no issue for me imo)

I liked that the game what I was expecting to relieve myself on just made me want to play it and question my IRL actions so far rather than master**** to it.

OST is banging



EDIT:

I know it has the HINTS page but feels honestly feels vague and all over the place

The characters in this game are intriguing and somewhat compelling, but as I've played it over the months (years) it's been developing, it has become clear that either there is no story being told here beyond setting out the basics and having a few weird twists, or the pace of storytelling is so glacial that it's difficult to recognize the telling of the story. As I recall, nearer the beginning of development, it seemed like things had the potential to go somewhere, but for several months the changes in each update have been incremental and not telling any story I can recognize.

While it is light on actual porn, the impressive story telling more than makes up for it. The girls feel fleshed out and interesting, and the willingness to cover dark topics combined with the tact to not make them into jokes makes a powerful narrative that kept me binging the game for days.

This game is complete ass.

I don't understand these high ratings because this is one of the most boring games I've ever played.

Ridiculous grind, repeat events over and over and over and over and over and maybe something new will happen.

Holding ctrl, spamming click, and hoping something will happen pretty much sums up this game.

Played for about 30 minutes and felt like I wasn't getting anywhere.

Don't waste your time this shit sucks.

The game definitely begins as a Lessons in Love clone, and the characters personalities and motivations waver a bit in the early updates. Sometimes the MC is a renowned pervert all of a sudden, other times he's just a normal guy. A few relationships start off very suddenly, as if we already knew all the characters, and a few decisions that close paths are a bit obtuse/unclear that that's what will happen - I'm not even completely sure if I've incidentally closed off any paths, there's nothing that indicates it to my knoweldge.

It does make efforts to distance itself from a LiL clone, after a while - the author may just have been finding their stride at the beginning and finally started to work out how they want to tell their own story. Nothing wrong with heavy inspiration, if this is the case.

I like the game, would recommend it if people are fans of LiL (the writing in this game becomes stronger after the hazy characters flesh out a bit more).

16.0 P2 Edit:
I've gone back and forth on my thoughts on this game a lot. The character designs are fantastic, to start. Really like how they all look - the MC looks wayyyy better in CH3 as well, the hair makes his head look better lmao. My only real criticism remains with the writing. Sometimes it's excellent, but other times it just kind of sparks off into this difficult-to-follow chain of events that don't really get properly resolved until much later, when they're situations that should be addressed immediately if it was a real situation. (There are also a ton of spelling mistakes and some grammatical errors but I'm not really knocking a point off for that).

I'm extremely interested to see how the story will progress though, especially after these most recent updates. As far as the characters personalities do seem to waver in their motivations and how they act (90% like their established character, 10% kind of wildly different, imo), I think the MC really comes into himself in the last chapter.

Playing with a hints mod is a must to reduce the grind. I'd also recommend making individual saves at what might feel like key moments, because this game DOES have some meaningful choices.

I don't understand the hype around the story. It's so boring and nonsensical. I imagine it's suppose to be reminiscent of the Dagonganronpa or whatever game...which it might be, I found that game extremely boring as well. The conversations that happen with the characters are mindless drivel, and past the first hundred days I just skipped through them hoping for some nugget of smut. The conversations between the birds ( yes, birds ) especially are so dumb and drag on WAY too long. Even auto-tabbing through the conversation it took like 4 minutes. Holy crap, dude.

The girls are cute, though....which doesn't really matter as nothing happens with them. In fact, apart from like 2 scenes I've seen up to day 200+, I wouldn't even call this a porn game.

I'm sorry, it's just insanely boring for me.

Quite possibly the best written game on this site.

This isn't a game to fap to, it's a game to read.
It's got sex scenes but they're far from the focal point. And most can be avoided (and they give you good reason to do so, from a moral standpoint, with you feeling like you made the correct choice.)

Shares it's obvious similarities with games like Lessons In Love in the earlier updates, but it's definitely it's own thing by now.

I very much appreciate that the game isn't all doom and gloom constantly, and that the main character is a pervert, but not a bad person.

I wish the dev the best of luck with his endeavors, my man does good work.

Reviewed as of [v0.14.0]

I'd consider this a very well made psychological romance game with a small dash of horror that thankfully doesn't rely on screeching noises that make my ears bleed or strobe effects that make me feel like I might have a seizure.

The character arcs mostly take their time with building up the relationships between the MC and the characters. So it's a slow burn but I consider that a plus. I appreciate how the dev takes the time to build up the characters and make them more 3-dimensional rather than just making a bunch of characters that are essentially holes to fill.

The MC has an actual personality and developed backstory rather than just being a blank slate. He's obviously not a good person, and has some psychological issues, but he's also not just a complete sex obsessed sociopath without anything else to his character besides screwing people. I find him pretty interesting compared to a lot of MCs.

I also thought this game did have a really good soundtrack. The dev took time to pick songs that mostly fit the characters and scenes. I don't imagine that's easy when you're limited with what music you can use, so I appreciate the effort there. I actually did like some of the piano pieces enough to spend some time listening to them and trying to track them down. Shazam mostly failed me there but whatever.

Regarding visual design, I thought the dev did a pretty good job. The scenery was good for most of the game, great in some scenes, and I don't recall any that I thought were bad. The character design was likewise good, although none of them particularly jumped out at me.

The player choices in the game were a bit of a mixed bag for me. The choices that are present in the game seem to actually be meaningful and have an impact on the game, which is a huge plus for me. On the flip side, I disliked that there aren't choices present for some significant events. You're essentially forced to get with some characters to some degree despite having the option to turn down other characters. Is it weird that I might want to do a play through where I only romance one person or no one at all? Probably. I can understand that it's probably hard to have too many meaningful choices in a game with any significant number of characters and where the dev has a certain ending or series of endings in mind. It's not a huge deal to me, but I think it would be awesome if the dev could retroactively add some more choices in when or if time permits.

Anyway great game. There's a small weird part of me that wishes I could have seen an alternative version "Janitor Overnight" where his first wish never came true though haha.

Edit: Ah final comment. I played the game with the hint mod hints enabled, and I genuinely would recommend it to anyone else playing who has limited free time.

The sandbox system is horrible, it urgently needs a new content icon or removing the options that lead to already seen content because my god was my experience horrible.

Literally spent in-game weeks without new content until I started picking option A, and rolling back if it wasn't new and choosing another option for all the play-through.

Really like the characters (Mori, Tori, Aunty best girls) like really really even Spudge. Still I would say there is too much content? This is obviously subjective and it may just be due to having to do all the other girls content to advance with the one you are interested in, so the wait between what you looking for and it arriving feels looong.

Personally the direction of the paranormal activity is what finally made me drop this game. May give it a chance in the future again and knowing what is to come might help me not respond so strongly to it.

Review as of v0.13.0:

Chapter 1 plays very much as a love letter to Lessons in Love, down to the character archetypes used, fourth wall breaking references, obvious event analogues, and the structure of the AVN itself (strings of main events, and character events accessed by a menu-based week calendar sandbox locked behind other character events to progress more strings of main events).

Even the setup is the same: man wakes up from dream-like state as a teacher in a Japanese all-girls high school despite knowing nothing about teaching, "befriends" the students with questionable intentions, and begins to have strange mental episodes of a supernatural nature. The main differences, however, come down to the writing and tone.

While LiL is nihilistic and edgy, and throws Lynch-esque horror in your face, Sensei Overnight is more relaxed, more psychological, especially once it loses more of the LiL roots and finds its own identity in Chapter 2. It also treats its main character, Janu, with a bit more interest, being less of a terrible human being than Sensei but rather flawed, confused and mentally unwell. Even moreso than LiL, I would not recommend this AVN for those in a tough place.

The plot is a slow burn, and is much more of a romance story than fap material. As of this update, four of the LIs (two of which are side characters) can be penetrated. With one exception, where the character unfortunately feels like a throwaway to appease those complaining about lack of fap material, it feels earned, while having sex scenes with more characters now would ruin the romantic storylines with the LIs, which have thus far been paced very well for most of them.

Made in Koikatsu, the character faces look a bit too similar, relying more on body structure, skin tone, eye color and hair to distinguish characters. Within the scenes, the facial expressions are especially well done.

The one complaint I have is that, with the introduction of so many LIs, some characters, such as Oki, Kio and Tora, have fallen by the wayside and their relationships with Janu stagnated or not given as much detail as other LIs. It is always a writer's balancing act, especially while keeping the main plot moving.

If you prefer romance, emotional ups and downs, and a dash of supernatural world-bending to just kinky fap material, then highly recommended.

The story is amazing and very firmly in the psychological horror genre. It toys with you and reminds you that your choices have consequences. Unfortunately, as of v0.13.0, your choices in avoiding those consequences is pretty much nothing, the events will play out just the same, but will not give you later consequences. You'll still receive them in the main storyline, and many of the girls in game just do not have intimate scenes at all, slated for "the future." This would not usually bother me but in a game where your choices matter? What's the point in playing if I am being strung along with cliffhanger after cliffhanger with the only progress being a "future event" that more than likely delays payoff further? Its a good story but even your "good path" isn't worth it up to this update.

Sure this game's kinda similar to LiL. But it's not a copy and I'm waiting for every update(sorry APOM, you didn't have THIS fealing last time).
Also, IMHO, this is more mystery-game then denpa. Still fun enough.

An interesting game, with a cool premise using the multiverse making it quite unique among the several games that allows us to teach, really looking forward to where the story brings us Sensei's. Thank you Pers0nas for this amazing game!