Ren'Py - Sovereign [v0.13.0] [Zinikis Production]

Since games that focus on mind control (as in the MC's main ability is mind control) seem to be few in number, I decided to check this out. I started the game and realized I had apparently played this already when it was version 0.4. The fact that I didn't remember anything about this game was already a pretty bad sign, but it's been multiple versions, and so I thought I'd give it another chance and started the game from the beginning.

I quickly realized why I didn't recall anything about the game. It's a boring, lazily written, forgettable, grind-fest. Even if you cheat and give yourself money, strength and intelligence, increasing stats for the LI's is repetitive and pointless. The 'corruption' progression is also silly with the first stage of corruption for all LI's being corrupted to ... wear makeup.

From a mind control story perspective, the basic premise is solid, but very predictable, MC's father is dead, MC stumbles upon something that leads to an acquaintance/friend that leads to them getting mind control powers. From there, they need to increase their power levels to fight some unknown big bad entity in support of getting revenge for the death of their father. Good enough to start, but from there, the actual story is non-existent and centers around increasing LI's stats and triggering poorly written events. This is further hurt by the introduction of a bunch more LI's.

I could go on about all the other bad stuff, like the 10 minute time increments (just make it hourly), the forced re-grinds for some characters (e.g., after an event, Jill gets -30 influence and you have to regrind her stats, wtf), the extremely clunky UI, but I'd be writing pages more.

For reference I progressed Emily to the third stage (based on the picture of her 6 stages), so I sunk in a couple of hours, at least, giving this another try.

I feel the game misrepresents itself by having six versions on the banner when the game only goes up to the 4th version at this time. On top of this the game is yet another one that has lost the main story and has started getting lost in its side content, if this is to milk potential supporters or genuinely just feature creep I dont know but it ruins the game.

The game itself has potential but the developer mess up by adding more than it could chew. I have played this game since its early release but back then there were only like 4-5 characters.

A year has passed and what do we get? 15 characters and what does that mean? It means the developer has to focus on multiple characters and this results in the negligence of the main character. The amount of content for each update ended up focusing only at 1-2 characters at a time while other was left pending for the next update, putting the story in a complete halt.

I don't even remember when the last time Emily content was add, was it updated 0.4 or 0.5? The game is currently at 0.13 and still no new content for Emily.

The grinding and lack of animation are already a huge drawback, but when the content focuses so much on the side character rather than the main. It kill any retention one have for the game. For the love of god, please focus on 1 character at a time.

The game isn't terrible, but it has made too little progress in a huge amount of time.

It's an older style presentation where you have rooms as backgrounds and people as cutouts over the room. Most interactions still dont work and what is there convoluted and grindy

Despite being cutouts the models are pretty well rendered

It's very difficult to figure out whats left todo, especially with dead ends and unnatural multiple menus rather than conversation

Review for Sovereign v0.12.0:

I first played Sovereign at v0.10.0. I didn't play through all of the content because it got tedious. I decided to try to get through all of the content with v0.12.0, but eventually hit a bug that prevents me from finishing one goal and one character event. Both are related to Olivia. I know how to work around it, but it would mean playing the update over again and it was painfully tedious, so that's not going to happen. If the next updated doesn't fix it, I won't bother playing.

General observations:

• It's an average sandbox, but the gameplay is too grindy and has overly-complicated stats for the MC and LIs, and some stats are hidden.
• There are some unnecessary goal/character dependencies that have tripped up a lot of players.
• Bugs I hit this time were: Tori's corruption > 5 crashes the game every time the MC travels to Tori's current location. Freelancing pays $144 when working 1 hour 8 times, compared to $60 working for 8 hours 1 time.
• The girls are pretty, but the visuals overall are below-average with no animations and most renders showing characters as sprites.
• The story is forgettable.

I would've rated this 3 stars if not for the game-breaking bug. I hit bugs last time, too. They really do make for a poor overall experience.

Absolutely horrible game. I don't think the devs realize that people play these games to have some fun. When you add so much crap into the game that it takes away from the fun, the game just gets really boring. No wonder this game has such a low rating.

For what it is - it is okey. And what it is - is a corruption harem sandbox. Go around, look at girls slowly becoming sluttier and sluttier, read simple dialogs and relax.

There is no pressure, gamplay is so easy that only idiots would get confused. Grinding is minimal and very easy. Really, quite a pleasant "game"

The only minus that it is as unoriginal, as it could be. But for couple hours - its fine.

The main idea is good: corruption, and the various outfits evolution during gameplay is the main asset.
Everything is dubious: no animation (I can live without them) but then also grinding, repeating gameplay days as in every uninspired sandbox game; also no interaction at all between girls, like if they were living in different subspaces, even in the same house/location.
Too bad that the author idea is not followed by very good execution.

Strong on corruption: using a combination of sleazy tactics to bend family, colleagues, every other female within range to the MC's will.
Weak on pretty much everything else: clunky gameplay, functional dialogue, basic use of character sprites and really poor, perfunctory so-called sex scenes.
Overall: another click-and-collect harem game. Fun for fans of the genre, but could be a lot better.

Gameplay is such a mess with pointless running around like a headless chicken. Disjointed, messy game were goals are not clear with lots of grind that by the time you achieve something you are already bored and wish to move on.

This game has the worst gameplay I have tried in this site,

Well the mainstory is not clear for now but I like the theme of corrupting the neighbour just like Urban Demon and some others. The art goes okay you can see the cloth of the characteres at different stages are well designed, with a few animations. And the game play, well I would say that's what this game lacks, it does not have much playable despite raising the corruption level. Just talk corrupt and go through the event. Looking forward to future updates, this can be a good one.

I really enjoyed the game, I wish we could get more choice for the physical change. Maybe even a plastic surgeon. To make the lips, tits and ass bigger. Also influence the style and behavior more..

It's also a little bit grindy, but that doesn't put me off.

The gameplay is loaded with all sorts of crap that is completely unnecessary, but prevents you from playing comfortably, the grind of different stats, a huge number of locations that make your eyes wide open. There is a walkthrough help log, but it can’t help in any way - it says to go talk to some character, but where is he on the map, doesn’t know what time you need to meet with him, it’s also not clear. Even hacking the game through the console didn’t help, the gameplay of the game is so dull and incomprehensible that I can’t even talk about the sex scenes and the animations in them, because it’s just I didn’t manage to get there. The mechanics of the game are disgusting. One star is another gift from me.

Update! After finishing all content in (v.011.0) Adding one more star from my first review.

This game is OK or Average but after finishing the current content and getting into the rhythm of the game I at least get a general sense of the direction the story is going.

Also to earn 3 stars I had to FIX it myself, my fixes were adding 1 million dollars to the MC's cash supply and adding a reasonable amount of work points to get promotions quicker. After making those changes I liked this VN a great deal more than the way the Dev has it set. A pain in the ass GRIND for cash is not satisfying to anyone.

The initial renders you see are not very attractive and the lighting is still poor in my opinion, however either they do get better the further the story progresses (or you get used to them and they cease to bother you as much).

This also has the Random event nonsense that is a bit of a pain in the ass BUT I have seen far worse. This is at least tolerable. The Dev does provide you with a fairly robust Goals section that is very welcome on figuring out most of the content which is good. The bad part however is it is still fairly random, for example I still have 2 more events that need to activate and I have gone days and days without the last 2 events activating (Emily and Reina's last corruption event). IT also NEEDS some animations!

This game (and it is a game not a Novel) has POTENTIAL, hence the 3 stars but it badly needs to be tweaked to make acquiring money much easier and to cutdown on other grindy elements.

It's a decent game that I think is OK and has potential but definitely could be better, If you like corruption and need a VN to play give it a try.


This is a very confusing game to play. There are loads of markers on the map that go nowhere. Why include the marker and title if they have no correlation to the current version of the story?

Advancing the story is convoluted and grindy, the same as making money, it's a slow grind to work and talk to each character day to day to get influence points and it gets old very fast.

My highest dislike is for the renders, ignore the gorgeous title screen render which is well done, and all the female characters look good. When you actually start the game a majority of the renders are poorly done and the lighting source washes out most of the detail. The eyes are disconcerting and robotic. I'm going to try and keep playing this a bit more hoping it gets better and if so I will update the review but as of today this title is extremely disappointing.

A sluggish, grind fest with washed out images and a so so story with poor UI integration.

A fun game with lots of potential.
I really like the originality of the story. I like the corruption mechanics.
The storyline with the mother is good but I'd like to see more corruption of the sisters.
.

Hands down one of the best corruption games I've ever played. Most of the characters look great and even the f I didn't care for get better as you corrupt them. My only nitpick is that the grammar could use some work but this is a porn game so I doubt most people care.

It´s just boring.

The concept is nothing new, but it could work, maybe a bit of grind some good scenes and it could be a three star game.

But the grind is just way too much, all the options and dialogue is for each girl almost exactly the same, the sex scenes are boring and no animations, the outfits are boring and way too tame I expected that each girl would look very slutty like in the cover but no most only look slightly more sexy, that´s just boring in such a mind/hypno game it should be over the top slutty or actually engaging and this game doesn´t try to be engaging so at least try to be extreme with the outfits.

The way the game is now it isn´t worth it. Too little content, too much grind, the rewards for the grind aren´t good, no interesting story, the models are meh, the UI is bad, the dialogue is repetitive and boring, and there isn´t even sound or music.


It is just a waste of time, maybe if the game is finished and the rewards feel better and hopefully the grind is reduced, maybeb then it will be okay.

This one is a terrible game. First of all, the story and characters have no interest at all, they are poorly developed and all the events flow in the same way for all girls. Boring. Add to that the fact that the game is a complete grind for money and points and it all goes worse.

Character models are decent, but there are no animations at all in the game and the sex scenes are rather poor. It has no sound either. At least it seems like it has no bugs.

But, in any case, you'd do best skipping this one. Not worth it.

"Then let's talk about gameplay. I kind of want to lump writing in with this because the two are tied to the hip. The main gameplay loop is a stat-grind sandbox style game. You have to repeat actions with characters over and over again to get a number in your phone to a high enough level. Some numbers are easier to raise than others. Often times you don't intuitively know what to do and have to rely on checking your phone (great that this exists but it should not be the expectation if dev wants gameplay to be average-quality or better). What this means, at least for me, is that I get in a flow of just skipping every line of text whether I've read it or not. I am spending so much time repeating mundane shit that even the new shit seems like barriers. The core writing fundamentals are probably average tier, but the gameplay loop completely dominates any positive or neutral opinions you might have about it. It's unfortunate as there are some interesting gameplay concepts, like the girls changing their appearance as you play (wearing makeup, then wearing cuter outfits, then sluttier outfits, etc). However, these minor details are suffocated by the annoying core loop.

So, yes, I don't intend to ever return to this title. These issues seem like core issues that would require significant investment to fix, investment that would probably be better spent on a fresh title, and so I don't expect the dev to take action to resolve (especially since they seem to have their hands tied with basic bugs). " -iron4doves

I second this sentiment, and will also be ignoring this awful game in perpetuity.

I'm going to MOSTLY ignore the topic of bugs and crashes in this review. I will at least say that, in v0.9.0, they are exceptionally plentiful. Fortunately you seem to be able to ignore MOST of them with no impact to overall game performance, but there are so many - takeaway here is that at v0.9.0 the developer does not care or have the capacity to play test their game fully, and I'm not sure which it is. Maybe this changes in future, it sounds like prior builds were less buggy.

However, the reason I am going to largely ignore this in my review is because even if these bugs were fixed, this is not a game I ever intend to revisit and update my rating on, and so I'd prefer to focus on topics that will presumably still be true even after the dev fixes these basic bugs.

The premise of this title is not particularly new, although there are some details that are a bit unique. To oversimplify, you are a man living in the near-distant future with a unique ability to influence the behaviors and inhibitions of women you interact with, and conveniently you emit bluetooth signals or something so this can be monitored on your cellphone... Honestly, I don't hate this! To me, porn games are only fap material, and I think this is enough meat on the bones to create a fappable experience around. I don't need thought provoking narrative concepts like The Matrix or Inception or something, and I don't really need anything completely revolutionary either.

So, let's talk about the next level: The characters. You live with a maternal woman and her two daughters. She's supposed to be your mom and will act as such if you tell the game to treat her that way. Yes, the classic archetypes are mostly in play - Loving mother, soft young sister, and harsh old sister (although the older sister isn't that harsh in this title). You also have a job in which you have a boss and a bitchy coworker and a timid coworker, and you know a few other women around town like your childhood friend and her mother, as well as a hot gym babe. Again, I don't hate this and think these are fine base concepts to build enjoyable characters around.

This leads us to where this game falls down: Art, and gameplay. Starting with art, the models in the art are pretty good honestly, but it's 2024 and I've come to expect animation in a title like this. Even just simple 1 second loops during sex are fine. Here we only have stills. It's a belabored topic but it has to be said that still images are insufficient for H scenes in 2024.

Then let's talk about gameplay. I kind of want to lump writing in with this because the two are tied to the hip. The main gameplay loop is a stat-grind sandbox style game. You have to repeat actions with characters over and over again to get a number in your phone to a high enough level. Some numbers are easier to raise than others. Often times you don't intuitively know what to do and have to rely on checking your phone (great that this exists but it should not be the expectation if dev wants gameplay to be average-quality or better). What this means, at least for me, is that I get in a flow of just skipping every line of text whether I've read it or not. I am spending so much time repeating mundane shit that even the new shit seems like barriers. The core writing fundamentals are probably average tier, but the gameplay loop completely dominates any positive or neutral opinions you might have about it. It's unfortunate as there are some interesting gameplay concepts, like the girls changing their appearance as you play (wearing makeup, then wearing cuter outfits, then sluttier outfits, etc). However, these minor details are suffocated by the annoying core loop.

So, yes, I don't intend to ever return to this title. These issues seem like core issues that would require significant investment to fix, investment that would probably be better spent on a fresh title, and so I don't expect the dev to take action to resolve (especially since they seem to have their hands tied with basic bugs). There a quite a few fun and workable ideas present in this title, but the lack of animations and, more importantly, the shitty gameplay loop drag all that down to a "poor" 2-star rating from me. If the bugs never get fixed, make that a 1 star.