VN - Ren'Py - The Keymaster [v1.3] [Ptypoe]

TL;DR V1.3
2 stars – only for the effort.
This game is the perfect example of “quantity ≠ quality” and that sometimes you just need to know when to stop. Bad story. Bad H-scenes. Horribly outdated visuals.

Story: 2/5
It’s a cheap B-grade fantasy about evil mages vs good mages, full of massive plot holes. For example, characters live 100+ years but talk about events from 200 years ago as if millennia have passed, and all details are conveniently vague or completely forgotten.
The writing is boring, incredibly repetitive and full of water. I managed to force myself through about ¾ of the main plot before giving up, then skipped ~80 % of the content and only read the most important parts just to understand what the hell was going on.
Dialogues feel completely unnatural.
The biggest problem: the actual main story ends somewhere around the 50 % mark of the current build, and everything after that is just endless filler about nothing. The author simply doesn’t know when it’s time to stop.
So if you really love fantasy, don’t mind multiple protagonists (the MC is just one of many POVs) and extremely bland writing – give it a try.

H-scenes: 1/5
You can clearly see the author tried to please literally everyone – there are tons of different kinks, but almost all of them are pretty vanilla and boring. Sex scenes are short, unexciting, consist of a few renders with a couple of badly written sentences and five “AAAAHH” / “OOOOHHHHH” lines.
The attempted build-up with the little sister looks ridiculous: every morning you get two “cuddling” renders and then it leads to sex… because of magic? With other girls it’s even worse – you meet them, spend one day together, and bang.
I’m not a fan of NTR, but I don’t even think it qualifies as NTR here: you don’t play as the MC, you just observe events from different POVs and occasionally make choices to skip certain kinks.
A huge amount of repeated renders in H-scenes, sometimes entire sequences are copied frame-by-frame. There are zero animations in the game – only slideshows.

Visuals: 1/5
Not much to say. The game is old and has aged terribly. Models float in front of backgrounds, lighting is awful, facial expressions and poses look weird and unnatural. All female models are basically identical – the usual perfectly shaped DAZ girls you’ve seen in hundreds of other games.

So far I've played up until the end of V 0.7 and I have to say I'm really enjoying it. The whole Null Stone plot is...fine, honestly I don't really care and I just see it as a tool to get the MC to travel a bunch and meet (and fuck) a bunch of girls. I mainly played through the Lucy branch and only a little bit into the Mallory one but honestly the part I enjoy the most is Ellie's development.

Lately I've been really getting into the whole "Corruption" genre and my favorite is this kind, not where said corrupted girl becomes a mega slut and fucks everyone, but rather an at first uptight and prudish girl that very gradually comes out of her shell and embraces her sexuality and explores new things. Seeing Ellie become comfortable developing her relationship with MC as well as with Rose and Lucy has been just incredible, culminating in her taking the lead with seducing Amber and then the futa threesome with Rose and Lucy, just fucking top tier character development.

Looking forward to playing the rest of what's out and then what's to come down the road, hoping to see Ellie and Jessica content sometime soon.

Just terrible. . Why even have a Male MC , he serves nothing and adds nothing to the story and has zero scenes with anyone anyway, is it just extra humiliation for the NTR Kink? But even then it does not work because the MC is written in such way that you can exchange him with a floor rug and nothing in the story would change.

Also there is no real choices in the game. This is a Kinetic game masquerading as a choice based VN.

I've split this game into two arcs - Null Stone and Elemental. The Null Stone Arc is 7.5/10 and the Elemental Arc is 6.5/10, combined for a total of 7/10. Since 7 isn't possible here, I'm downgrading to 6/10 because of the recent abandonment of story plots. For full reviews, check my site.

Null Stone
The first arc of The Keymaster is flawed, but also very promising. A big step up from The Carnaloreon in terms of characters, worldbuilding and visuals. Storywise the theme is handled well, but the pacing and climax ultimately fail to reach heights. You will enjoy The Keymaster if you like seeing different worlds, new races and a lot of dialogue with pleasantries in order to please high-placed people. In the end, it was a fun experience for me.

Elementals
The second arc of The Keymaster is mostly a chaotic mix of things Ptypoe wanted to throw together, hoping it would make a good story. It doesn't, but the saving grace of the game are the characters. Although some of them get butchered because there are so many people to interact with now, there is still fun in enjoying and exploring them. Just don't expect The Keymaster to make too much sense.

Good product.
There is a pretty decent story, that is - not just met and fucked.
Different characters with their own personalities, different relationships, different scenes - for almost every taste.
It's a pity that the story ended, and without the scenes that I personally wanted to see (yes, I'm talking again about Ellie never developing her active skills with Tom ), but, in my opinion, the author made a very decent, solid product that can be safely launched on the market.
I've been on Steam for many years, and there in the "Indie" section at least half of the products are not fit to hold a candle to this game.
In general, good luck to the author with the official release, the game is worth it.

NTR is one of the biggest themes of this game. If the girls aren't having sex with other guys, then they are telling the MC about it, or at least the reader. Considerable time is spent on discussing all the sex with other guys while at the same time not having relations with the MC.

It would really be nice if there were choices and you could avoid all of the parts and/or LI's that are so NTR based. I'm not a fan of forced LI's especially when I don't like the characters.


The graphics are pretty plain. I thought they would be better.
The characters look good though very dated. I think it's an older game.

The main character is a tool. He just goes along with everything like everyone having sex but him not being allowed to. He is too stupid to realize he's being used.... and so on. A real gomer.... NOW, I mention this not to say the developer did a terrible job. They wrote the MC this way and did a great job in making him like this.

I'm not sure, it's probably my fault, but I thought this would be a game and be a story about an MC learning about powers and solving a problem and it kind of is.....I just didn't realize that a LOT of it would be NTR and talking about all the sex the LI's have with other guys and not the MC.

It is one of the releases on this site that isn't totally AI which is nice. I'm glad they are sticking to their guns with the artwork. It may be dated but at least it's not the 'fakey' AI stuff.

I'll never try it again but if you like all the NTR story with multiple characters and such then give it a shot.

This game is a true Masterpiece!

Here is my review:

• The plot is amazing and there is no stress about making some decisions.
• The girls looks like goddesses and sex scenes look really good.
• And futa is optional!

This is one of the few game, which I really admire for the story and images.

I really wish this game would continue for the next ten years!

Bravo - @ptypoe !

Serious question...why even have an MC if most of the sex in the game is literally the girl who is supposed to be your "soul mate" a giant slut who fucks everyone but you and spends her free time actively cockblocking you?

Even worse, the MC's only purpose is a walking exposition machine. I don't know if the all the Lucy sex is here just to put sex in the game or because the dev has a cucking fetish, but its kinda just irritating. I can't even say the writing is bad, but every time it feels like the dev didn't know exactly what to do, we jump to LI #1 goes and fucks anyone but you AND boy do I mean anyone BUT YOU.

Also for the love of god, stop having choices in the game that aren't choices. Why even have a choice pop up if there is one option?

This could have been a great game but in it’s current form should definitely be skipped, Unless you like lots of ntr and cuckold content...Not because the MC is there being cucked, but because you the reader are forced to watch/read so much of it all the time. It really takes away from what could have been a great story.

Forced love interests (LI’s) really ruins things since some are so gross. It also doesn’t help that the MC is so pathetic.

Lucy, one of the ones you have to spend so much time with, is a real slut and we have to read about her having sex with lots of guys and gals...while the MC is thinking how he wants to have sex and a relationship with her. Pretty gross unless you like sloppy seconds or a worn out woman. She spends most of her time being pretty terrible to the MC which is partially from a spell but she still lies a lot to him and might even be worse afterward. He just goes along with everything and keeps sucking up to her. We keep reading how he thinks about having sex with her a lot.

In the same vein as Lucy, you learn pretty early on that Mallory, another primary female, is a real bitch by the way she treats the MC but he doesn’t care...he just thinks how pretty she is and wants sex with her. That’s his repeating thought we get to read over and over.

Same w the older sister...She treats the MC like an idiot but he doesn’t care...just the same thoughts….he thinks she’s pretty and wants to have sex with her.

It would be nice to tell Lucy or Mallory to piss off but you can’t...there’s no option for that.
It would be nice to have choices but you don’t..
It would be nice not to be forced to have sex with a sloppy slut...but you have to.
It would be super nice not to be told and shown all the time about everyone the LI’s are screwing…
Catching a theme? I mean ntr over and over and over is bad especially when you just have to keep going on since it’s just another part of the story.

As someone pointed out, you can Skip some sex stuff but it still happens, you just don’t see those scenes. The story keeps reminding you it happened.

Another bad design aspect is when you have to click on a button when there’s only 1 choice. This happens so many times and is a bit maddening.

It could be a terrific story to read but some of the other stuff gets in the way and ruins it. There is certainly quite a bit of content if you choose to read it. There are some ‘choices’ but they don’t really matter or seem to do anything. If you read some of the cons from the earlier reviews you’ll also notice that nothing has changed...sigh...

Reviewed v0.9, - Quit during v0.8 content, spoilers ahead.

I feel this review should be split in two parts, with the first being the Null Stone Saga, and the other the aftermath + continuation.

Part 1 "Null Stone"
It has enough to keep the player invested because of the worldbuilding, lore and story, even if the MC feels a bit forced and underused at times,
Visuals and character interactions are mediocre at best, but again, the story keeps the game afloat for now, but after a bit, the cracks start to appear.

By the time the reveal about Lucy's role happens, the game drops the pretense of being a game and falls down to a kinetic story where player input is reduced to manipulate the sisters and picking how "open" the sisters become (so what to see/lock you out from seeing things)

The "game" asks you if you allow some things, but after a point, the relationship shenanigans turn to hiding things from the MC, and eventually the MC is explicitly told this "My secrets are mine", implying things happen behind MC's back (of course we know they do happen because of the "need of energy for traveling" and other implications about Lucy and certain character's need/racial traits/whatever)

But MC just accepts things as is, just in time to end up railroaded to the end having more or less scenes depending on a few "key" choices that may end up locking you out of content.
Two and a half stars, mostly because of the world, lore and the concept, otherwise I would have to say 1 and a half stars.

Part 2 " The aftermath + Continuation"
I'll focus on story and character interactions; visuals are largely unchanged from part 1.

Now the MC is reduced even further, the game tells a linear uninteresting story beyond the conclusion of the Null Stone Story, with the MC acting as the Narrator/Errand boy,
The only inputs from the player being a repeat of what was done in part one to little sister, this time to the older sister (AKA: "Corrupting Jess")

A bit further I started to wonder that maybe I picked wrong, when we had choices, and I'm being punished for it? Even if it that is the case.... that shows bad design choices.

At this point I almost lost all interest in continuing, mainly because we start to see the other characters having meaningful interactions with others while the MC gets no interactions beyond going from point A to point B, talk, return to point A and "solve" something and move on to the next

Then the oddest story beat happens: Your LI leaves with the other LI (just a bit after seeing them "interacting" with each other, with MC out of the picture), leaving you behind to do .... what exactly?
Let's organize some beach volleyball! Yay! And do nothing while the others play....

Then other than "mandatory" sister scenes (are we forced to keep things in the family? Seems odd, given that little sister does have things outside the family)
After that we go back to.... go to point X, Y or Z, do some gaming at home, paperwork at magic town, talk to people about their problems while the sisters go traveling.... riveting "game"... But wait, let's watch the sisters DO something.

Then the final nail for me: surprise surprise.... "Jess: Ellie's leaving it up to me to decide".... So, MC becomes a background character, and the sisters take the main role?

I should have suspected this when earlier we were told that the Keystone can be controlled by Ellie and that she has magic.... So, is MC redundant now?

If there is doubt, when we return home, "MC" goes to sleep... what has he done in the last days? Walking, talking, gaming, college, taxes, more paperwork perhaps?

I had enough of this "game" at this point... my choices reduced to what others do with the MC becoming an errand boy when he is not narrating or having thoughts.

Dev, you should have stopped with the Null Stone Aftermath and leave the "continuation " for another game where you say up front who is the MC and keep it that way.

Half a star is what you deserve for the mess that the continuation is, for your next project you should plan ahead, and leave when you are still ahead.

Overall (up to v0.8 content) 1.5 stars...

I will split the review into Bad and Good sections, if you dont want to read all of that just know that overall I recommend the game.

The Bad - lets get the bad stuff out of the way first:
- The Render quality - yeah, the render quality is mid at best, not that detailed and quite noisy in the dark scenes. I would say its passable. There are no animations in the game, just a few frames "moving" sometimes.
- The elephant in the room for most - The NTR - thankfully its not the worst kind where a love interest gets stolen away and the MC suffers. 2 of the girls are fairies, fairies like to fuck a lot and they will fuck anyone ( male, female, futa) This is unavoidable ( you can choose to not see it ) but you have the option to not pursue these fairies as love interests and just ignore them. There is also the option for the sisters to have sex with characters besides the MC but this is fully YOUR choice, if you say NO the sisters only have sex with the MC.

The Good
- NO BLUEBALLS - I know games which started development at around the same time as this one and you get a BJ at most if they are not abandoned by now. I will take an average render of a pussy over a high quality face after years of development. There is a lot of sex in the game , with the fairy sluts, with mage main girl, with various fantastical girls, and especially with your 2 sisters ( multiple threesomes)
- The story is actually alright, nothing that will blow your mind but enough to keep you reading
- While the render quality is kinda poor the actual character design is good, the girls are sexy , the big tits are not comically large, and the sisters actually resemble each other, something which somehow totally escapes most incest devs.

I really like this one. Has an unusual story which adds some entertainment value over the usual 'fuck it because it's alive' thing we usually see in VN's.

I like the renders and some of the characters look really attractive. They're all different and have their own purpose.

It's not a typical harem game where you get a bunch of girls all happy to be a spare wheel as long as the mc glances in their direction once in a while. While the main story is fixed, choices actually take you down very different paths wrt the females.

I'm disappointed to see people complaining so bitterly about Lucy cockblocking the MC. That's actually explained as the story progresses and she quickly becomes friendly once the issue is resolved - guess some people have an incredibly low attention span and couldn't get past that point.

Actually disappointing game. Started of great with strong story and plot, but the character development and the MC is so lacking that it becomes frustrating.
Renders and CGs are outdated and not blended properly to the background. The variety of different characters are welcoming, but the choices make it - do you want to fuck this character yes or no. There is not a lot of meaningful choices to make in the game, most of it is skip scene.
With updated renders, some polishing on the choices and UX the game would be in much better place.

I guess this will be my first one star review on this site.

Why? Renders are more then outdated, many vn´s from 2017 have better renders and animations. Wait: animations? No this vn doesn´t have any animations.

This vn has netorare in it´s features. Well, i don´t think there is netorare at all considering the rules here, because the mc doesn´t know about it, but you, as the player have only the option to skip sex-scenes but they still happen in the game and you as player know it.

I tend to identify myself with the mc, therefore to the player (not the mc!) it feels like netorare.
Well the story itself is not too bad and the writing is ok i guess, so i decided to add another star but thats as far as i go.

A good game with a interesant storyline, the artwork is fine, a world of magic, travel between worlds , dragons, fairys ( i like Rose, lesbian content too ) and others different species. Eleanore, the sister from the MC had a good path with Rose and Lucy. Futa content too but you can decide which route you like with this storyline. The sexscenes are good imao and i think i like the Eleanore storyline , a innocent girl which have fun with her girlfriend Rose.

Hmm,i read a reviews about Lucy and i dont understand this. Lucy and the MC are cursed and if the MC cheatet Lucy it is not a problem , why ?( welcome in the 21century ) The game is a lot with realionship with other and so sex too so you can have sex with some, but it is a can, not must have sex, you decide.

The game is a perfect blend of fantasy and reality. The character designs are absolutely fantastic and the dev too gives regular updates. Ellie is my favourite character, and all the netorare fetishes are optional and yo wont find them mistakenly.T he story is already interesting and I hope it becomes great in the future. Good luck to the dev.

Jesus Christ Lucy has to be one of the most frustrating characters I have ever had the displeasure to come upon, constantly lying and trying to cockblock the MC but goes around fucking around like no tomorrow. Like I wouldn't give a fuck if she went around doing her own thing while leaving the MC to his vices but she acts like a selfish bitch constantly and cockblocks and the dumbass of an MC doesn't question the constant bullshit. I really tried to give this a chance but dammit I can't stop getting frustrated.

The Keymaster [v0.6] review -
Renders are grainy and female models doesn't look appauling like in other games , story is nothing extra ordinary and character and dialogues are boring and some of the choices feels kinetic atleast it doesn't have sandbox gameplay and sex scenes are not animated . So probably 1 to 2 stars not a great game and not worth playing, will check again once it gets completed to see if it gets improved and change my review accordingly .

Have recently come upon this game and played it more or less straight through to the end of v0.6 (on the Mallory path).

I'll certainly be watching out for the next update, because (after a slow start) it has the most important feature of any VN - you want to know what happens next.

Pros:
- Good story
- Characters you care about
- Literate text

Cons:
- Some of the female character models look as if they have had a bit too much cosmetic surgery around the mouths, especially the two sisters.
- The MC model does look a bit too moronically lustful. Appropriate in a way, I guess, but he is supposed to be developing a bit of depth through all of this. Isn't he?

But the pros definitely outweigh the cons. There are many VNs with better models than this, but I eventually stop playing them because I don't really care what happens next. Story is everything.

This one has become one of my favorites. The Dev does a great job of providing choices on how you want the story to progress,

It's nice when you get one where the models are realistically proportioned and the MC doesn't come off as a total creeper. I'm a romantic at heart so I like the relationship between Ellie and the MC particularly. Keeping my fingers crossed for a pregnancy option for the girls.