It has some definite plus points, but there are some things to improve on.
the good: the girls are hot, and have decent personalities. (And Riley and Sasha are obscenely cute.) The sex scenes are good*.
It's great that it has an in game walkthrough. Same for the "unlock everything" option at the end.
I'm really bad about writing about good things, but there are definitely a lot of positives here. I'd probably give this game about 3 stars, except that that would lower its rating because everything is rating inflated here. This game is early enough that I'll hold off on rating it. It has a lot of potential, so I'll keep an eye on it and hope it gets even better in the future.
On to the bad stuff (which I'm much better at writing about.) I tried to sort by importance.
The sub route is abusive. The "sub" route is way beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior in any normal relationship. GATDAM or not, the things he says to the girls about "having to punish them" or whatever are straight out of the abusers' textbook (I assume, I haven't read it.) At the very least, there needs to be more awareness of this, because this is very far from normal and even farther from acceptable behavior. Nobody should be encouraged to think that this kind of discipline is OK. If girls are screaming in pain, and you're saying "I don't want to hurt you," that's abusive, regardless of the other factors. Nobody is holding a gun to her head and saying "hit her harder or I'll kill her." There's a way to punish without instantly resorting to serious pain. Like with Hikari the first time. I'm not sure if I mind unethical options in these games, (which some of the sub seems to be, and probably all of the slave routes) (I'm unsure if unethical options lead to more or less awful stuff happening to actual people) but they need to be labelled as such, or else risk normalizing horrible behavior. This game is FAR from the worst at this, but it still should do better.
There's too much creepy shit for my taste. I get that the GATDAM system is supposed to be fundamentally creepy, but I feel like it sort of infects other shit maybe? And I have the suspicion that it's really about training sex slaves, in which case it's fundamentally evil, and wrong to take part in. Being told you "have" to put the collars on girls is fucked up. Loophole: since the girls specifically consented to the magistrate dictating things to them in the GATDAM system, the creepy bosses wouldn't actually have the ability to replace the magistrate if he refuses to collar them. That would put the control in the hands of people that the girls didn't consent to controlling them, and thus make the whole thing super illegal.
The party is pretty fucking disturbing. I really don't want Riley to have to spend an hour(?) behind a door getting screamed at by rapists. Especially since it actually is the protagonist's fault since he didn't arrive to scope the place out before she showed up. (And afterwards, I don't think Riley would be ready to be fucked that night.)
Bad things don't happen to bad people. The would-be-rapists get away with that shit? Even if they're protected by a complete lack of law, couldn't the protagonist come back the next day and then use ghosthands to burn their house down while sitting in a nearby cafe in plain view of a dozen witnesses? I know not everyone is huge on revenge, but letting them just get away with it feels super bad.
Similarly, the super-douchebag (I forget his name) is stalking the sister of a super powerful girl whose father runs the place, and he's still around the next day? Akemi could get him expelled in less than 2 minutes. The protagonist doesn't even get to tell him "Stay away from my friends, because you're a misogynistic super-creep, and like 96% of your communication is harassment, and if you harass my friends at all I'll make you regret it 1000 times over." And you don't get to tell the stupid cashier that he was not her boyfriend but a stalker? "Mind your own business" (especially after he's already ignored it) is far less effective than "You just aided a stalker dipship. Go get your manager so I can get you fired."
I really don't like the sleeping blowjob thing with Sasha. Even though they're naked in bed together, it's still sexual assault however you frame it. It would be better if the protagonist hinted at it, and she had something that she could interpret as consent. Maybe when she gets naked and he's surprised she says "Don't think I'm doing naked for sexing with you. Just cold." And the protagonist could say something like "I really wouldn't mind if you were..." That would make the blowjob sort of slightly vaguely justifiable. Or she could just wake him up.
I don't like the sexual directions of the routes; the romance route is still dom/sub in bed, the submission route is way too creepy, and I'm not even going to try the slave route. I would like it if the romance route had more romantic sex, and the submission route had the dom/sub stuff in bed and less intense punishment.
The girls' personalities are a bit underdeveloped outside of their sexual stuff. Here's a question: what do the girls want to do, long term? Hikari might want to cook? Olivia wants to be a super bitch. Maybe Sasha wants to be a ghost hunter? (But she already is, so then why is she at the academy? A ghost researcher?) I get that this game is about sex, but there's plenty of room for more developed characters. (All the games I've given 4 or 5 stars [ok, I've yet to give a game 4 stars] have more developed girls, with hopes and dreams that don't revolve around cock.) But there's still plenty of room to expand them in future updates (even Cassie must have plans, even if they're just to start a sex toy company.)
Too much bodily fluids. I've never seen a girl leaking that much fluid, and I've watched a LOT of porn. And for men, precum is just a little clear fluid that leaks out, not a glob of semen. I don't mind if the narrator is a non binary gender and doesn't have either body part, or is an alien, or a colony of really smart octopuses (that was a joke, not an insult), but it's a little weird to get basic sex anatomy wrong.
There are bugs and crashes. They don't ruin it, but there are far more than normal for these games.
Riley doesn't say it's OK to be with other girls when made your GF. Maybe right when you tell her that she is your girlfriend is not a great time to bring up the fact that the GATDAM system may mean that you can't be exclusive right now, but you should at least wait until after that conversation before fucking anyone else. Generally, in harem options, the protagonist starts casual things with multiple girls at once, and is in too deep to declare any one his girlfriend without telling them that he's not exclusive. I think you have to get locked out of Hikari's romance route if you don't eat her out before getting permission from Riley.
Too many of the protagonist's thoughts are shown. Sometimes I'm like "no shit dude..."
Sasha doesn't warn you about the dangers of ghost hunting, which is kinda' awful. (Protagonist could just think "sure, whatever, hunting imaginary beings is *super* dangerous..."), she also doesn't point out that your ghost hands are proof not everything is what it seems. She doesn't tell you to keep the repulsive torch thing in one hand at all times, which would be really good advice. (Would save your life it not for ghosthands.)
You should be able to tell Sasha about the ghosts' actions to help figure out which type it is. 4b? It acts like a 2, but appears to have employed psychological manipulation. Does that make it a 4? I think it's mischievous, since its manipulations don't directly harm, but it seems to try to kill the protagonist, so does that make it malicious? Sasha should know these things, so why wouldn't you ask?
I'm also worried that the assessment will be like a public group sex thing, where you fuck all the girls in sequence while creepy men watch. I feel like that's where it's heading, so I hope that can be averted.
Anyway, overall it's a solid start with a lot of potential, despite my inability to write about positive things.
I debated with myself about whether I should respond to this because it's really quite long, but I've decided to do so, mostly because I'm chatty.
The sub route is abusive. The "sub" route is way beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior in any normal relationship.
Yes, it is. It's not there to present a normal relationship. People like to roleplay the sorts of situations it presents, but they do just that, they roleplay it. The thing I'm presenting here is not roleplay, it's real discipline. If you did the same thing in the real world, it would be abusive for sure. However, that doesn't stop some people being into the idea of it, so this is there to provide that fantasy. Since this is a game, why roleplay a situation when you can actually just create it? Sure, the girls are uncomfortable with it at first, because I felt it would be a bit boring if it turned out all the girls secretly love being disciplined. They're of course a bit more accepting of it than you'd expect in real life, but I do need them to actually accept it for the game to progress. For people who specifically do just want bdsm roleplay stuff, some of the girls who are into that stuff will have options for in game roleplay on their romance routes.
Nobody should be encouraged to think that this kind of discipline is OK
This is again true in real life, but if someone is unable to seperate what is being presented as acceptable in the game, and what is acceptable in real life, I would argue that they shouldn't be playing porn games. These games, especially in the harem genre, especially in the school setting genre, especially when they have the male domination, BDSM and spanking tags are definitely not the place to come for sex education. The content is designed for people who are quite aware that these things are not acceptable in real life.
Due to the setup of the game itself, there is no reality where the kind of content I want to feature on the sub and slave routes could be featured without MC either being abusive by real world standards, or having all the content just being fake. I think the sub route currently being the most popular route for most girls (According to my discord) is evidence enough of the popularity of this type of content, and I'm fully confident that the vast majority of players who opt in to those types of routes are quite aware that the things they can do in game are unacceptable in real life.
The party is pretty fucking disturbing
Yes, it is. It's a shitty situation, but unfortunately not one that doesn't happen in real life. Perhaps not in quite such dramatic fashion, but shitty situations like this do unfortunately happen to girls. The point of this scene is for MC to show up and save her. Be the hero, the shoulder to cry on, be Riley's safe place. For a lot of men, being the thing that makes a girl feel safe is like the best thing ever. The whole point is to pull Riley out of what would otherwise be probably the worst night of her life. For that, I had to make it a seriously bad situation. Of course nobody wants Riley to have to go through it, but she goes through it anyway because neither she nor MC knew it was gonna happen. Sometimes shitty things happen to good people.
Bad things don't happen to bad people.
Well no, not yet. The game is still under development. There are many situations that may not be resolved in the same update in which they're introduced. Considering there are less than 24 hours between MC and Riley returning from the party, and the end of the current content, it would be pretty rushed for MC to somehow formulate and execute a revenge plan during that time. Plotlines that are immediately resolved aren't generally received well. Just because he hasn't immediately tried to burn their house down or something similarly short-sighted doesn't mean they've gotten away with it.
Similarly, the super-douchebag (I forget his name) is stalking the sister of a super powerful girl whose father runs the place, and he's still around the next day? Akemi could get him expelled in less than 2 minutes.
Well, assuming Akemi actually knew it was happening, yes, she probably could if she wanted to. Or maybe not. Perhaps there's a reason she hasn't decided to. It's possible that the characters may be developed further as development of the game progresses, and you learn more about their motivations for certain things. There are all sorts of potential reasons that she hasn't decided to get Logan expelled. Me forgetting that Akemi is rich isn't one of them though.
I really don't like the sleeping blowjob thing with Sasha. Even though they're naked in bed together, it's still sexual assault however you frame it.
Luckily, it
is framed as sexual assault. Unless you tell Sasha you don't mind afterwards, MC directly calls her out for it. That's the entire bases of Sasha's punishment, she's being punished for sexually assaulting you. You can choose to forgive her if you want, but it's not brushed off unless you choose to brush it off. I suppose I could have put an option in the game to have her arrested and removed from the game, but I can't imagine that would be worth the time it would take to develop.
The girls' personalities are a bit underdeveloped outside of their sexual stuff. Here's a question: what do the girls want to do, long term? Hikari might want to cook? Olivia wants to be a super bitch. Maybe Sasha wants to be a ghost hunter? (But she already is, so then why is she at the academy? A ghost researcher?) I get that this game is about sex, but there's plenty of room for more developed characters.
I would agree that there's plenty of room for the characters to be developed, but that's because I'd specifically chosen not to front-load their stories by giving the player all the info they could ever want as soon as you meet them. Part of the process of getting to know the girls is getting to know them. The reason their motivations and aspirations haven't been fully explored yet isn't because they lack them, it's because exploring the characters is the game, and the game is still in development.
This is a mix of personal creative choice, and engine limitation. I do it because I think it's hot. That's it. Realism in porn games (Or porn in general) is definitely not the norm, and it's done that way often because presenting realism just isn't as hot. It's not due to a lack of knowledge about sexual anatomy, it's because realistic sexual stuff just doesn't look good on camera, and isn't really that interesting to most people. It's a matter of opinion of course. I do think though that it's a bit of a leap to assume that me using a white blob of cum in place of the proper colour, consistency and volume of real life precum is due to a misunderstanding of sexual anatomy, rather than just me not actually having a precum model available.
There are bugs and crashes. They don't ruin it, but there are far more than normal for these games.
Do you have examples of these? I try to fix them when I can. I haven't had any reports of crashes though, so I'd be interested to see any errors relating to that.
Riley doesn't say it's OK to be with other girls when made your GF.
True, she doesn't. She also doesn't know about the other girls. MC is playing with fire. At its core, this is a fuckfest game, so real world logic comes second to enabling the sex stuff. Romance route Riley will of course find out at some point but not yet. I've specifically chosen not to have MC handle the whole harem thing in what an AVN player might call the optimal manner because he's 22 and has no idea how to build a harem. He's gonna make mistakes.
Too many of the protagonist's thoughts are shown. Sometimes I'm like "no shit dude..."
This is usually done to give the player something to read, or at least give some context as to why certain things are happening. Many of them will be obvious, because perhaps you were thinking the same thing, but I found that just removing them made a lot of stuff jarring. Some people dislike reading the thoughts of characters entirely. I'm not one of those people.
Sasha doesn't warn you about the dangers of ghost hunting, which is kinda' awful.
You're right, she doesn't. It's possible that getting to know Sasha better in future updates could help to explain why she doesn't necessarily think too hard about her actions, which could lead to things like her leaving out key information, or potentially sexually assaulting MC without really realising quite what she's doing.
I'm also worried that the assessment will be like a public group sex thing, where you fuck all the girls in sequence while creepy men watch. I feel like that's where it's heading, so I hope that can be averted.
As with most of the game, this assessment is likely to take many forms. One of them may be similar to what you describe, but you'd only end up with that one if you were pushing for it. It's quite far in the future though, so I wouldn't really worry about that for now.
Ultimately I think the subject matter of the game and the story itself is probably a bit darker than what you're looking for, but also isn't as dark as you seem to think it will get. I apologise if any of this came across as rude, but it is sometimes frustrating to see critique based on assumptions rather than observations. Not saying all of your points were like that, but a fair few of them were based the fact that you don't know what's going to happen yet, or just kinda misunderstanding the point of the content.
