Ren'Py - The Headmaster [v0.16.3] [Altos and Herdone]

Let me start with saying that I very rarely write any reviews, so this is the first time I write a review of a game at all, of any sort. But I feel I have to, the game is that good and it has given me so much satisfaction… Of the 100+ adult games I have played hitherto, this certainly belongs to the top five, perhaps even in the very top. And I don’t even like spanking (well perhaps a little smack on a bare bottom for educational purposes would be fun) or pain... That is how good the game is.

So what is to like? Very sexy young (and some older) girls of course. All very cute and good looking but otherwise not the boring all supersize breasted shaved, superhorny stereotypes that are so common in adult games. The variety in bodies and characters is very exciting. I don’t care very much how they are done, but the result is certainly great.

The school setting is great with the natural abundance of girls, and so is the rational for the girls to behave the way they do. The settings, being school games, classroom events, school performances, the magazine…, they are all so greatly done with a lot of sexy details and super-exciting twists.

The protagonist, who is driven not (primarily) to fuck all the girls but to train and develop them for their own good. And who is NOT a young boy with a supersized penis living together with his (step- of course) sisters and -mother).

The gameplay is great, with very little grinding, and what I especially like is that one really doesn’t need a guide, the dialogues are in most cases entirely sufficient to guide you. It is just to play along. Surely there are some blind alleys, but with the proper saves, those mistakes can be corrected or otherwise just play it again from the beginning. Actually, this is one of very few adult games that can be played again from the start with the same excitement kicking in right from the beginning. The spanking minigames that sets you in control are very sexy (even if don’t like spanking as I already stated above).

The story that takes so many unexpected, and very sexy, turns. The humor that in my view reveals the intelligence and imaginatory capacity of the developers. It is really a world the have created to immerse in.

The developers, that are so very friendly on this site, patreon and Discord, The contribution also of a female developer (Herdone) and their unique collaboration has resulted in an extraordinary adult game. Thank you very much, both of you! And that they give out the game for free after the beta versions is an extra plus.

I hope they will continue with this game for many years to come.

Creative writing, interesting and beautiful characters, all set in a believable world. I really enjoy this game. With the game having enough random events to keep you entertained for quite some time. Keep up the good work!

I don`t play much yet.but this is one of the game that you can actually play using hs engine.
interesting plot but intro is little annoying.
that the only negative.
I can`t judge much but try this i hope you will not regret this.I saw this game for a long time and i ignore it to grow more updates now it was really time to test.

A game unlike the other adult games; amazingly unique.

+ Has a great setting and a story promising almost unlimited potential
+ Nice, reasonable pace where being patient is rewarding but never boring
+ Excellent range of realistically written interesting women, a plethora of personalities
+ Likeable graphics and also animated sex with sounds
+ Unique gameplay mechanics (managing the college & punishing the girls)

My personal favorite, 5 out of 5

Review for game played until v0.13.2: Despite at first I had some doubts when the game began (I almost left it at the very beginning, the intro was a bit too long and not that engaging, and sadly the very first playable part is not that good), but after the first effort I was absolutely surprised about how interesting the story is, fun, engaging, complex, the way the characters in the game are portrayed, the quality of the pictures and designs, the erotism in the stories and the porn itself. As a game you feel some challenge there too. The progression is very nicely executed. The UI could be better and some playing aspects could be a bit better explained, but once you get used to it it's not a big deal.

I just finished my first play through of this game. (v0.8.2.1) Though I have to say that the main plot and story line devices borrow VERY heavily off of a certain other game in the genre, the authors have managed to rewrap it lovingly in a new way and perspective that works and becomes something that stands on its own.

Overall gameplay is not TOO grindy, though I felt that towards the end of this update that you were grinding days just to try and get certain events to fire because there was no further content to explore and were just chasing one certain girl's storyline. Since it is more or less a sandbox though, that can be sort of expected.

Render wise, not sure what to say. I am just constantly amazed that authors are able to create visual novels out of the Honey Select Neo Studio engine. I know some people don't like the render style, but they work for me and carry the story along well. The characters don't seem generic and seem to have been fairly well crafted and customized. From personal experience I know it is hard as hell to get a decent looking male character out of that engine, so I am overall impressed at how well they turned out.

The only feedback I would really give to the authors are that some of the game action boxes (like in the water gun fight mini-game) could be a little larger or maybe not moved to the edge of the screen. If you are using a large monitor for example, it would have been nice to have them grouped closer together in a menu or something instead of having to look from one edge of the screen to another to find the target actions. There was at least once I had to do a rollback because I simply didn't notice - "oh, they put a dodge way over there" sort of thing on the screen. There were a few times too where some actions might not have been noticed or become aware to the player simply because there are no obvious call outs (eg: target-able items on screen look like any other object, so could be overlooked. For instance the bookshelf and wall safe in the Headmaster's office you only notice if you mouse over the entire screen looking for things you may be able to click on and may miss if you don't spend time running your mouse all over the screen).

Overall though, it is a decent game. I look forward to playing more updates as they are released.

This is one of my favorite games on the site. There are plenty of girls which you can pursue with a great progression line for each of them. The teacher student trope is a great one, and this game brings it to life.

Good game.
Excellent story pacing.
I don't care much for Honey Select, but this is an example of how it can be done right! There are only 2 or 3 other HS devs that I like, now it's one more.

Only 4 instead of 5 stars, because the setting is super ridiculous. A society thatembraces slavery of young adults?! Hrmpf. I hope the dev/author will make another game in the future that has a more realistic setting, because the writing style is reallynice!

Nice work so far, please more =)
I am not enjoying S&M usually so this is an unexpected find for me. If the mind "control" or "brainwash" is done well it can be quite entertaining and somewhat beliavable but this is very hard imo. This game does it well enough.

Wow... Just... Wow... I can't freaking wait to see how well and thorough this game ends up playing out, amazing job! One of my top favorites for sure. I love the point system, the gradual escalation of events, the pervertedness! I love 'hot/pervert-teacher-rules-them-all' games, and this is a very clear explanation as to why!

It's a realy good game with a lot of fun while playing it.

Good animations and graphic. No question, seen better but here it would be nice but no need for. Works very well just like it is.

Good and even functional menu for stats and tasks. No walkthough needet, you get all informations you need.

Grinding is part of the game, but in a very good way. Not too easy, no messy grind - thats very well done.

And the story? Funny, sexy with lots of believable characters you have to discipline most of the time.

This is a game where i don't miss anything.

I really like how the protagonist isn't overly perverted like it's very often the case in other Ren'Py games.
I think graphics could be improved, although its cool that the game works on weaker computers too. Overall it's a great game. I'm looking forward to new updates!

Good:
- Very unique and different from others with punishment system aswell as MC perspective. Not your usual MC. Has his justifications and thoughts for his actions.
- Slow burn of finding out the world and characters and there is a clear character progression. Not just straight jump on dick.
-Very psychological rather than visual.


Cons:
-Abit clunky
-Poor graphics.
- Poorly designed girls.
-Much more can be done even with honey select engine.

But of course, the gameplay and story can make up for bad graphics. Definitely not asking too much from honey select mods but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Wonderful game, will great graphics and animation. The story line is one of the best I've come across looking forward to how the story line will continue from here on out. Love the fact that there is twin REDHEADs in this hope they will be in it more!!!

Really good game. The story is funny and interesting, sex scenes are hot. Some things can get a bit buggy but nothing too bad. Can wait for new updates of the game, there is so much that could be added on.

This is a web page turner. Good story and plenty of action to keep one hooked. I love the creativity and art. I can't wait to see what updates Altos and Herdone are cooking up. I will support them where it counts with donation.

Pros:
- lots of characters
- a nice progression system for the main "romance" characters
- also a sense of school-wise progression
- great art
Cons:
- a bit grindy
- easy to mess up the start if not careful , but once you're past this part and built you stock of stats, no real challenge except making the right choices

This game is great. If several months ago, when I discovered this site, someone had told me that I would become Patreon of one of these porno games, I would have laugh at them.
This game is truly a gem, which changes my opinion about paying for content of this type. What does it have that other games don't?

+ Very slow pacing. Yes, I know, to many people this is a flaw, especially for these who expect sex in first 10 minutes of game, but for me slow pacing adds a believability to story progression and when you get to a certain point, you feel much more satisfied.
This problem is not restricted to the games from this site. In almost all games you have to be a hero, capable of defeating an army almost from a start, or else majority of today's players would say a game is dull. There is very few games like Gothic where for a very long time a simple wolf can kick your ass.

+ Believable characters reactions within borders of some unbelievable assumptions (like existence of this kind of school)
+ Dialogs
+ Plot
+ Humor
+ Lack of the usual disadvantage of this type of games, in which you can learn that 90% women have ZZZ cup and want almost immediately have sex with you.
+ Lack of incest (I don't understand why it is so popular)
+ And of course spanking, if you have fetish for that (but this is requirement to play this game).

One of the games where the realism - or more accurately, the possibility that the methods preached by the MC it can actually be implemented with real results in real life - actually made the game so much more interesting that it should've been. There are some segments that in other games I would've skipped, but here I carefully examined them because I sincerely want to understand the mad but logical methods the MC employed to train his students. It also helps that he's both incredibly charismatic and confident in himself, a trait that every person would like to pretend they have and thus wouldn't mind their MC to have at all.

I give it a 4 star because I ran into a bug that was probably a year old, which seriously annoyed me. It the one where you're tasked to discover Amy's pleasure/humiliation/pain source, and the one where you're supposed to conduct a web search to find the porn magazine she mentioned just wouldn't trigger for me. As a result I was locked out of one of the most promising characters in the game unless I redo the game exactly the dev wanted so that the bug won't repeat itself, or unlock the gallery scenes to watch it, which completely misses the point of playing the game. And even then my save file is useless because it's bugged and, assuming this game reaches completion, I'll almost certainly be locked out of a true/harem ending or something. This is A YEAR OLD, it should've been fixed a long time ago.

Besides that, there are some continuity errors where certain events were implied to have happened, but not really I did them the other way around. I'd rather the dev impose a hard lock on certain content if that's the case, because it would be REALLY confusing when the rest of the cast gets their individual scenes.

All in all it's a great game, and despite how I made it sound halfway through the review there are barely any bugs at all, much less gamebreaking ones. But the dev definitely needs to pay attention to the continuity problem or similar bugs will definitely happen in the future.

Sincerely impressed with this. I remember playing Harem Hotel a few months ago and thinking it had potential, but that there were issues with the mechanics and the premise that was holding it back. The Headmaster improves on all of Harem Hotel's weaknesses. The replay menu alone would have been a massive improvement, but the writing of both the subplots and the overarching plot are greatly improved as well.

The headmaster and Ruth in particular are great characters. The problem I have with most games on here, especially corruption-based games, is that they're kind of soulless, with main characters who immediately start manipulating the women around them the minute they get any sort of power. And the game always cheers them on blithely for being terrible people. Here, you have a protagonist who's in denial about the nature of his actions, working against a woman whom the game admits is a good person with good intentions, in the service of powerful people who are using him to his own ends. It's a nice change from games that correlate any amount of prudishness from a character to being the spawn of Satan. It also means that doing assholish things, like blackmailing Ruth into your service or accusing Priti falsely of a crime, actually has ramifications for the protagonist. It's just refreshing.