VN - Ren'Py - Stray Incubus [Season 1] [Flynn974]

My first review on here!
This was a phenomenal game to play through and I'm super hyped for season 2 whenever that launches.

i'll start with the bad/neutral.
-the art is pretty standard
-the story gets quite wordy sometimes
-every line of dialogue is separated by a small <1 second transition that can be a little annoying if you're trying to read through fast. and if spamclicking you might miss the larger animations because of this. (and those are always worth watching, short and long alike)
-not all the gallery scenes unlocked for me.
-Quite linear, not many choices outside of getting to choose to not pursue some of the girls, but as far as i can see theres no reason not to go full harem. so this did not detract much if at all.

The good
-EXTREMELY likeable, loveable and diverse cast of characters. there are some archetypes but none of the girls can be reduced to just a _____-dere.
-Very funny, I genuinely laughed out loud many times during my playthrough. very varied humor as well, jokes are not repeated or done to death. Meme references are sprinkled in very sparingly and used to great effect, i probably missed a lot of them.
-the limited animations used in dialogue are used to great effect especially in the elven city where one of the animations had me rolling on the floor.
-Good sex scenes, the animation is fine++, did not blow me away, but they are good and varied. the type of sex is also well matched to the girls personalities and it feels quite organic, seldom feels forced(in a narrative sense), if at all.
-Good pacing of sex scenes for the most part. some longer gaps for plot reasons but no extreme droughts, occationaly you'll get a spree of near-concecutive sex scenes but they are usually woven together elequently.
-Decently good story, B+, not sweeping me off my feet but not bad either.
-Cute spider girl
-Game really finds a good mix of feeling like you're a corrupting influence but also all the girls really enjoy it as well. So you get the powerfantasy of the corruption subgenre without the morally grey and black content that usually follows. I really enjoyed this.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this game, especially if you enjoyed games like Harem hotel. And if you enjoyed this I think you should already have played Harem hotel or it should be next on your list.

I've been playing this game for a long time, but only now decided to leave a review. The game is very cool. High-quality renderings, high-quality animations, high-quality storytelling. I liked it very much.

Excellent game if a bit hard at start, but once you're past the start it gets better and better.

(Imo), story is really good, even tho a bit weird at start with ninja in a medieval/fantasy setting, but you get used to it really quick.

LIs are really beautiful, h-scenes are great (not enough for me but that's because i'm greedy).

I've read you had choice between sandbox/no sandbox : haven't played in a while, but I don't remember you had a sandbox mod, which is an awesome point, as sandbox are mostly sh*t (but that's only what I think), so if you're like me, you'll enjoy it (think of it as more of a kinetic novel, as even the choices, iirc, are easy and pretty straightforward).

If you haven't, play this game, you'll not regret it, it's one of the best AVN's you can have here.

Definitely a well-deserved 5/5

I really have a hard time getting over the initial setup. You have Greek mythology, a clan of Ninjas (wut?), Jarls, medieval towns, modern swimming pools, Goblins, Succubi and a group of people that are called like your average American High School Class.

A ninja named Candy? Seriously? That's the best you can come up with?

The world building comes across as lazy and really rubs me the wrong way. Now, as others mentioned, it comes together a bit better after the first mission, but at that point I really couldn't get over the stupidity of it all.

The humor is on point though now and then. The Skeever Shadow on the girl was grand.

So, leaving all these points behind and looking past the silliness of the world building, the Dev does have strength in his writing. The personal story archs are interesting, diverse and empathic. Also the missions certainly have tension and a certain appeal as noire detective stories.

I suggest giving it a go, but it won't get decent until after the first hour or so and so far, I'd say it is all uphill from then. Certainly more like a guilty pleasure for me.

Edit: Also let me add that I really appreciate the different looks for the LI's. They change all the time, hairstyle, dress etc. It's really nice to see so much effort put into this. It's rare to see someone do this.

Review of season 1

There's a lot of boring, trope-filled, anime-inspired AVNs. Stray Incubus certainly starts as one. Ninjas in a bog-standard fantasy setting isn't exactly anything new. The plot, characters, sex, and visuals all start off pretty subpar (and there are these frequent intermission cards which feel a bit hacky). But it overcomes these trappings (I think after maybe 30 minutes?) to evolve into something worth playing. The turning point is when you go on your first "mission" with your team of hot girls. These mission are actually really good self-contained stories, in which you get to do some investigating, fighting, fucking, and learn about the characters and lore along the way. They're like good episodes of a TV show. And even in the interludes when you return to your base, the game maintains your interest by shifting gears to focus on character development (and sex).

The visual quality doesn't start amazing but improves significantly, as does the art direction; eventually most scenes take place in well detailed environments. The girls are cute and hot (though one of them does look extremely similar to a certain Dalia), and the mc having a slightly less overtly ripped physique actually works quite well to suit his character. Don't worry though, he isn't a wet blanket, he's still a powerful, confident and smart guy (though he expresses these qualities more as his character develops). He also has a huge cock which is a big plus for me.

The audio design is good, so keep the sound turned on.

It's not all sunshine and roses though. His relationship with his adopted mother figure isn't great: it seems like the dev wants them to have both a parent-child relationship (though he never calls her mom) and an equal friend-friend relationship, but it ends up with them just seeming distant.

There's a sequence where someone has an ability that would make an investigation infinitely easier, but for some reason they never use it.


But the most damning problem with the game surprisingly starts towards the end of season 1. There are renders in action scenes where poor lighting, too much stuff on the screen and way too fast animations make it difficult to see what's happening. And then at the very end of the season things seem to happen in such a disconnected way that it felt like a TV show where half of the shots had been randomly removed. It felt more like a dream sequence than reality (and I thought it might be, seeing as this game has quite a lot of those). This problem is so bad that it singlehandedly brings my rating down from 5 to 4.

Overall, this is a good game. You need to push past the opening till it gets good, and I really hope season 2 starts at a more manageable pace to make up for the lackluster quality at the end of season 1. If it does, I can definitely see this becoming a 5 star.

At first I was pretty sceptical about this game, but the more I played the more I enjoyed it!
Great story with great pacing!
Developer actually wants to create AVN that people would enjoy playing, respects players that don't want sandbox in their VN game by allowing players to "turn off" sandbox segments which is a HUGE green flag in my book.
The negatives is that there are a bit too many choices for my liking, but the "notification" of getting "+" in any girls stat is a "+" in my review stat. Overall turning it into a 5/5, would wait for more.

v12a

I was a bit conflicted about reviewing this because I doubt I can do the game justice, but I still wanted to give it a good rating. I think it's really well written with great visuals and interesting characters. So it deserves 5 stars in my opinion. The one thing that would make me want to subtract half a star if I could is that in the latest few chapters the buildup to the sex-scenes is basically gone. The MC is getting horny for whatever reason and in stumble one or two bitches who are down to fuck. It's kind of in the nature of the story with the MC being an incubus and having had enough time to wrap the girls around his dick, but it still makes these moments feel somewhat pointless.

When I sat through the first 5 chapters, I pretty much just thought this was Naruto but dipped in a vat of fantasy elements. My impression still holds pretty well.

The story amounts to:
- MC is last of his race, an incubus.
- Saved by random person who took pity on him being labeled a monster
- Joins training to become a ninja
- Goes around completing missions
- Has a shady organization/people from his past following him around and monitoring his ass
- Has the deus ex machina power of insanely strong dark magic, allowing him to teleport everywhere like he's walmart Vergil.

I'll stop there to avoid any big spoilers. But to me, the resemblance is uncanny...to the point that he has two teammates in his squad that are always bickering at each other, he has dark, evil-looking powers with curse marks all over his body (okay Sasuke), and so on.

Not that that's bad, I think the game's story and premise is relatively decent. It suffers from pretty bad pacing and a little bit of character bloat. The start of the game takes somewhat of a while to get you situated with the whole setting and how your ninja group operates and such. Keep in mind, you won't be doing anything dirty with any of the main girls for a couple of chapters AT LEAST. Once you hit chapter 4 or 5, the game starts to fall into its routine and the pacing improves drastically. Now, there are 4 character pages in this game, 2 whole pages of which you have countless sex scenes with. Hell, you even dip into the third page from time to time. My issue with this is that it feels like so much time is dedicated to each of the girls trying to get into MCs pants, that there's almost no time for any emotional weight or anything. It's kind of like fuck and run, fuck and run, fuck and run. Not that I mind it, it's just not something I'd expect in this VN, since it seems to dedicate a good portion of storytelling to its characters personalities.

MC looks silly. I hated how he looked at first. Then I was like, okay whatever. He starts out with the boyband bangs, then moves on to combed back slick hair like he's Patrick Bateman or something. Also, his incubus transformation with all the curse tattoos looks funny as hell. You can desensitize yourself to an extent, but yeah - I've seen better.

The renders are nice. I can't fault the dev too much, since the quality just got better with time. The animations are plentiful for each chapter, and look really well done.

There's the odd choice of having so many sound effects and music choices in nearly every scenario, but then going completely mute for most, if not all the sex scenes. Pretty head-scratching decision to me, but I guess I can understand it.

Also, my personal gripe is that there are MANY horror segments throughout this game. It's pretty frequent, as nearly every mission you go on has one. There's not much variation imo, which kind of sucks because it pigeonholes the game's scenario into always being horror-related. It interrupts the flow of the overlying story and the more light-hearted tone of the romances for some episodic horror that has a very average payoff.

Solid game, but the later chapters have a few issues. Slow start, solid middle but is getting a bit shaky as of the end of season 1/start of season 2.

The good:

• World is an interesting blend of different mythologies, cool enough without leaving you scratching your head about how things work, honestly, as a fan of a lot of fantasy, the world building itself holds water compared to, you know, actual professional stuff out there.
• The characters are varied and interesting both in personalities and body types (Not everyone has their booba slider turned up to max, thank god)
• The story is actually good, not high literature, but it doesn't get in the way of letting the characters be themselves and is, for the most part, pretty cool. After the start of the story, it becomes a bit formulaic (Mission --> Rest/practice/drill --> Mission etc), but I think that's fine honestly. The story is about the MC progressing through the ranks and the structure reflects that.

The bad:

• The pacing. So there have been a couple of other reviews that have mentioned this and I think this kinda deserves two sub points
  • Story pacing: I get that this is a story about a cool chosen one and the point is to see him do cool chosen one things, but a bit of time to chill with no stakes in between missions would be nice, it would help develop the characters more in scenarios that aren't sex-related.
  • Sexy Time Pacing: And speaking of sex-related character development, the story has a tendency to rapid fire sex scenes at you one after another. In the later chapters every time the MC is in the village you know it's just him jumping from sex scene to sex scene with very little in between. I think, personally, it would be nice to just have a few more non-sexual scenes with the characters during these in between sections. And you know, buddy, give us some time to rest
• This one is kind of related to the pacing as well, but I think it's distinct enough to deserve it's own point -- In the latest chapters, the developer seems to be using the smash cut to sex quite a bit -- 3 times in the latest chapter that I remember, more elsewhere. Maybe some people like it and this is just me shaking my fist at clouds, but it kinda takes me out of it. It works in movies because the sex isn't the focus (Yeah, unless it's porn) and it's more the fact that they're having as part of the plot, but in an adult VN where the sex is the focus in these scenes, the buildup and foreplay are very important too.

All in all I definitely have enjoyed what's out already and hope that there will be more, but there are a few issues that, in my opinion, will eventually sour the game if left unchecked.

The game is okay, it has a lot of good things but also a lot of average ones, but nothing really bad.

The story is the biggest problem, the pacing is inconsistent, a lot feels like filler, and I think it´s just really boring.

The characters are okay some are boring others are a bit better like Torr for example, some really get too little screentime. And I really don´t like the MC.

The models are mostly good, some look a bit too similar or too bland but it isn´t that big a problem none look really bad. Except the MC I think he looks kinda bad.

The sex scenes have good animations, but not amazing.

The music is okay some are really annoying others are better.


I would recommend it, it isn´t anything special but it really isn´t bad at all.

Why hasn’t this game achieved 4.9 stars yet? This game is worthy of being compared to Eternum, or even exceeding it. It is unjust to give it a low rating just because you are only interested in the sex scenes and the rest of the story bores you . It is called a visual novel, after all. VN's should be rated in relation to thier writting and story, and this game displays some of the most brilliant writing on this site, with amazing humor, captivating characters, and an intriguing plot. It should undoubtedly be in the top 5 or even top 3 best VN's on this site

I played the game through Ch. 12a in a few evenings. There is a lot to like: good story, characters, sex scenes, humor. The look of the MC was a bit off-putting at first, but it grew on me. The graphics are mid-tier Honey Select, which I find quite acceptable.

There is one glaring con that keeps this from being a five-star game: the forced pacing. There are numerous short scenes with some animated element that proceed at their own pace, before allowing one to see some additional dialog. As there really isn’t any indication that this is happening, I would always end up clicking past them, see a flash of some dialog on the screen without time to read it, and have to rewind. Then I would drum my fingers on my desk impatiently while I waited the scene out, so I could read what I had missed. There are also a couple of times where an extended animation could not be escaped by clicking at all. This is retarded: it is the reader who sets the pace, and decides when to turn the page; not the author.

If being forced to dance to the dev’s beat doesn’t sound too off-putting, then there is a lot to like here, and I recommend you give it a shot.

-has many "choices" ((trust me bro))
-Lets mix ninjas with greek pantheon making a fucking mess= good narrative!
-Cant judge the graphics its the everyone looks the same engine(high fantasy setting with IKEA furniture!!!!)
-mucho texto cut the text in half and you still have acess to the same information
-usually i dont rate just rating this one cuz im so sick of the stupid 5 stars ratings if you think this is 5 stars work im sorry but you have poor taste for sure
typical 5 star f95 dumb rating game
3 stars for the effort to create something

I'm usually not into this genre of game.....but the story is actually VERY good! There are still some spelling mistakes that I caught in the script, but the story itself is very good.

Like a good book that you don't want to put down.....plus the sex scenes with all the extremely well animated chicks. Very few games can compare to the overall excellence this game delivers in pretty much every facet of what you'd expect a game like this to deliver!

Really good game.The art and animations are really good,The plot is very interesting.Only reason its not 5/5 its because of grammar(not many so dont focus on it too much) and during animated fighting etc it would be much more realistic if that animations were faster a bit but that is just my preference,the main reason its les than 5/5 is because you as MC dont really have much choice in anything except how you want to proceed when a girl is hitting on ya,but regardless its a game worth playing no question about it

Admittedly the AVN is not perfect that being said its really fun and I was really upset when I got to the end of the current version because I just wanted more!

Great job by the developer for creating a truly enjoyable AVN!
The story is really getting juicy now and the wait for the next update is going to be a drag!

5/5 easy!

Ultimately, it’s a rewarding game, which I recommend (with a caveat), and would have given 5 stars but for one problem:
The sex scenes don’t always have full-would-hold-up-in-any-court affirmative consent. They’re not, like, rape, but the women around the protagonist often take an erection as consent. It isn’t. Oh, right, that protagonist is sexually assaulted twice. There’s a possible scene with Torr, that could be sexual assault, depending on whether he’s licking her thigh or vulva. It’s not clear from the image where he starts. I think I’ll knock a star off. So enjoy, and remember that you can't do all that stuff in real life.
Otherwise, it’s a very good game; I enjoyed it, and wanted to keep playing, and was disappointed when I got to the end of the current version. A good plot (mostly), good writing (mostly)(when they aren’t making typos [of which there are a LOT, like one character who says "limps" instead of "limbs"]), good characters, and (nearly) all the girls are people, not just sexuality.
I’m not good at writing about things I like. So here are some things I don’t like:
As usual/always, there aren’t enough POV views in the sex scenes.
You get to choose whether you call some older women “mommy” and shit, which is good, I guess, ‘cuz I’m super not into that.
There are sex scenes that cannot be avoided, which I don't like.
The gallery doesn’t let you choose your name.
The protagonist is scrawny, and has a preposterously large dick (alright, he is an incubus), a weird abdominal marking (alright, he is an incubus), and has impossibly large eyes (alright, he is an incubus). Several of the girls have breasts that are comically large, which doesn’t do it for me. Still, they don’t pretend like that’s normal, and most of the girls have reasonable sizes, so it’s just a visual problem, not an ethical one.
The MILFs look a little too old for my taste.
There are a lot of times that it almost seems like the game files lost a few screens, and they decided not to recreate them. That’s just the most recent, but there are others.
The protagonist only ever gets sent on missions that turn out MUCH harder than expected. And there isn't talk about other missions where nothing interesting happens, so it feels a bit forced.
One of the sex scenes was too much for the laptop I play on The creator loves to end chapters with plot cliffhangers, but that’s unnecessary and annoying in a game that’s good. I don’t need to be coerced into continuing. Also, the post-game-credits thingy wasn't removed from the previous chapter, which is confusing and annoying.
Also, what the fuck was Elf-Cassie’s (hyper-cockney?) accent? She doesn’ talk li’ tha’, thankfully. Her accent is slightly british.

Got a lot of tags and optional tags that I like. Its cool to see some characters make appearances in other games. Its also got interesting story witch is always appreciated. This is definitely one to watch for more updates.

Amazing story, get through the first couple of chapters then it gets absolutely amazing, especially the visuals omg. Also also, I love the overall feel and comedy, my only thing is that Torr is almost always there, and she is defo my least favourite, mostly cause I know too many people like her and I try to get away my actual life when playing games... not a fault of the game, but rather of my own funky feelings

The story can drag at times, but the humor prevails and the characters are very likeable! Minor typos here and there but nothing to affect the overall flow of the game. Also, I'm a sucker for tsunderes