Ren'Py - The Null Hypothesis [v0.5a] [Ron Chon]

Rogue Llike Evolution with more modern artstyle, just finished main story for this version (0.3c) and hopefully in the future dev would add more content, a lot of potential in this one. Small suggestion, it would be more interesting and open many possibilities if dev add 3 variables regarding pc relationship and not just 2 (love and trust), theres should also lewdness/corruption factor in this game, but for the current state i think with such content this game is more than enough to be considered playable, which is great.

A technically really well made game. Very pretty and well crafted characters with lots of work put into them to make them each different. Writing is solid and the setting is interesting. My main issue is that the sex scenes just kinda suck.. Its sort of a like a sandbox sex scene like you would find in the Koikatsu games and its just not my cup of tea. I think most people will really enjoy this if you can put up with the awkward sex scenes.

one of my favourite games I've played on this site, imagine rouge-like evolution but more polished and modern, with better art and a slight focus on plot and staying true to the X-men comics. thoroughly enjoyed the 4 or so hours i put in. only real critic is that i wish it had the same amount of focus on all the girls and their outfit options and that it had more content in total.

Art is great
Writing is good
Content is where it lacks has tons of content but there is no as much freedom as i would like and some events and scenes are forced to the player and I'm not talking about story events but sub events and sex scenes

I will return to give more stars when these issues are fixed

I don't usually rate unless i enjoy the game and this game is, even in early access as it is, one of the best games on this platform with the potential to be the best.
The blend of gameplay to story is just right while staying faithful to x-men lore and an accurate portrayal of the heroines. the sandbox attribute is similar to rogue-like but that was also a very enjoyable game and this games direct predecessor, which is another game i highly enjoy.
I am biased as shit as i love x-men, but even without that, this game has the bones to be a real competitor on the most liked page

Edit: also, a massive, massive plus is that the devs are highly active and responsive to questions on this site

Has a lot of potential, could become one of the best games on here.

There is a lot unimplemented, but it's done in a way that doesn't get in the way.

The art is super fucked. Pretty early on there is a scene with Rouge crossing her arms, and she just doesn't have any hands. Storm looks super low res, like almost ms-paint. There are certainly a few select images that are great, but a lot of them look really poorly done. Makes me worry since it's so inconsistent.

- 2 stars cause when the art is bad, it's really bad.

When I first booted up this game, I thought to myself: "The art is way too good, the outfits system is too ambitious, it's overall way too high-quality - so this is deffo another one of those 'front-end great content and then milk the fans' projects.

But I delved deeper and, no, this is the real deal.

Only at 0.3 so far, but it already has enough content to warrant 5 stars, imo:
-A legit interesting story with clear reverence to the source material that promises to develop and one day end (Unlike the game that inspired this one)
-Beautiful art and fitting music
-Neat animations (Idle and sex ones) that are soon to improve even more
-Really good presentation and relationships that develop at a realistic rate (Seriously)

I don't know how far this project will make it, but it's honestly amazing that they've made it this far already.

It's really the cat's pyjamas. Maybe a bit of a slow burn at first, but so worth it in the long run.

Without a doubt, this is a 5 star game. But I believe it is very important to understand why it is so and what to expect from it.

To give context, this game never compelled me to masturbate while I played it. It has some sexual scenes for sure, and the body art of the women along with most of the art are very well drawn and extremely good, but I was more preoccupied with trying to spend time with the women rather than just dick them.

This leads me to the writing. This game has excellent writing, and the women are extremely well written. One unique thing I've found in this game (and I've played a lot of erotic games) is how women behave. They take the lead, they do things you would expect a man to do in relationships. They want to protect you. I cannot stress how good it makes you feel while playing the game, and I prefer to be the dominant person in relationships. That's how good it is.

Another good part is how consent plays into it. They may do these things, but you always have the choice to tell them not to do it. They ask for consent, and your character can also ask for consent. It isn't forced, it is just there as a choice. This is top notch stuff.

Another great thing the game does is differentiate the women. All of the women feel different, they have different characters and behave in different ways. Again, top notch, more of the same please!

This game feels like a real game as opposed to just an excuse to masturbate. You have classes, training, and you can work to earn money. The more you do these things, the more xp you gain. Get enough xp and you gain a level, which unlocks new features for your character. Again, writing it here is one thing, but playing it feels really good and fun, trust me on this.

There are systems in place to change the clothes of the women. There is a rudimentary system where you can gift them stuff they can put in their room. If these were fleshed out more (I hope it will) it will be that much better.

I only have 2 complaints, but this is nitpicking at this point. First, I wish there were more corruption options for the player to choose. I understand the setting, but I wish the main character could become evil or perverted and corrupt the women. Not 'destroy the institute and then the world' type, or 'make them fail their classes' type, but just sluttier in general, stuff like making them friends, then making them kiss each other, then threesomes/foursomes type. Being able to influence them in those ways seems very hot, I don't know.

Secondly, I understand how much of a major role the setting plays into it, but I wish this wasn't the setting chosen for this game. I fear that at some point, this game will be hit with a lawsuit, because it is clear that it will become a major hit in the next few months a la 'Being a Dik'. A unique setting from these devs would be incredibly fun, and also open the road to official releases (like Steam). After Nitrolith, this is another dev team that should be supported in my opinion.

While the game itself is pretty entertaining the rating I give is much more reflective of the comparison between The Null Hypothesis and Rogue-like: Evolution.

My first experience with Null is 0.3b so I don't know what it was like in its earlier iterations, but comparing to what Rogue-like is now I have to say that Null feels quite a bit more polished.

I'm sure a lot of that is lessons learned from Oni's development progression over time, but I just find Null's aesthetics to be more pleasing.

The UI looks crisp, though I do wish we'll eventually get more slots for quick travel locations. The smartphone messages also leave some aspects to be desired such as being able to scroll to older messages, and there are times when new messages don't appear on the screen until you back out of texting and then opening it again for the contacts. It usually means blindly moving the dialogue forward and then coming back to it to see what was actually said.

The real important differences--to me anyway--between Null and Rogue-like is the art and the story/dialogue.

Going back to the UI being more aesthetically pleasing to me, I found the overall art direction and quality to be more attractive in comparison to Rogue-like. I understand the charm of the art Oni chose, especially for those of us who grew up watching X-Men Evolution and its related/similar X-Men shows, and this is not to say that the art in Rogue-like is bad or unattractive. This is more of just a personal opinion.

The colors, tone, animation and backgrounds just seem more smooth and attractive to me. I particularly like the Jean Grey art/model used in Null.

The story also is a bit more engaging. There's a real honest attempt at replicating the experience and discussion of bigotry and discrimination from the comics. There's a weight to decisions and to events that is not present in Oni's work. The heaviness of some of the material (such as the mob scene) mirrors recent events around the world over the past few years as well as the stories in the comics lending a certain amount of seriousness in the game. This seriousness also made me feel more invested in the characters. There's a feeling of real stakes and a need to progress and become stronger for the sake of something bigger than just getting tail (which, I know, ironic cause I'm comparing two NSFW sex games in a forum that caters to games of that genre).

Speaking of the characters, I really like the decision to take them more seriously. In Rogue-like there's no attempt at hiding the parody; the dialogue and characterization are all meant to be cheesy, goofy and lewd. It definitely succeeds in evoking a sense of raunchiness in seeing characters we grew up being unabashedly debauched, much like Something Unlimited. But in doing so the characters end up becoming much less familiar than the cartoons or comics.

With Null, the stated effort to steer closer to source material is clearly seen. While I'm not up to date with current comics over the past decade and a half, I can see and appreciate how the characters are portrayed as something more than potential/actual sex partners. There's a bit more depth to them: their history, their behavior, and their decisions; things that engage or even arouse them; and things that make them uncomfortable.

Not that Oni's game does not have a similar mechanic, but Null is a bit more nuanced about it and makes you want to pay more attention to the dialogue.

The characters are also much more distinct compared to each other, at least that's how I felt. And, again, the depth and variance to how each character feels is a welcome touch as opposed to the 'sex addicted' mechanic used in Rogue-like.

All in all, I applaud the direction Ron Chon is going in with the story and the relationships of the characters. I feel more invested in the plot and drama than I ever was with Rogue-like. And while it's obvious (and upfront) about lifting a lot of the mechanics/ideas from Oni's work I do feel there's just enough of a difference between the two that both can stand on their own as proper parodies of the X-Men universe.

Can't wait to continue my adventures in this version of Xavier's School for the Gifted!

A game with the potential to become one of the best. At the time of its release, I saw this as simply an upgraded visual version of the Rogue-like game. But in a later update, it was rebuilt with a much better quality, especially in terms of images. The female characters are all very beautiful, and I especially love the appearance building, from hair to costumes, if expanded in the future it will be even better. Kurt's appearance is also noteworthy, it could open up a few ideas like the appearance of Wolverine, Scott. And cuckold them while we make love to Jean and Laura. And there are many other beautiful female characters. If refined and invested in time, it is not surprising that this will become the most unique game. Great job, Dev, Keep up the good work.

Great game, a good break from the lacklustre releases of Rogue-like Evolution. It's a fun game with nice mechanics, fleshed out characters, good events and an actual story among other things, it's a little bit of a grind at times and working out how to get the optional events can be somewhat confusing but easy enough to figure out eventually, overall a great game and I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses in the future.

So after a thorough playthrough, I feel like i compiled enough info to make a fair review of this game. First of all I would like to put in here that if you are looking for a quick fap, this is not the game for you. However, if you are looking for quality, beautiful graphics with intriguing story, then I recommend you check this out, you will not be dissapointed. On to the review.

First of all, the graphics are stunning. The attention to detail is impressive and I love it, 10/10.

Story is around a 7/10 simply because through all the available content, it seems as if there is not really any character growth with your heroines. They all have the same problems they started with, and regardless of your help, they dont seem to get any closer to solving them. They just keep repeating their frustration at not being able to figure out how they tick and that's pretty much the running theme. (except for Laura who knows exactly who she is and has a 100% grasp on her own powers).

Interface and UI are professional and nice looking. The map is not too clunky and it offers the ability to register up to 3 locaions as "quickspots" where you can go directly there without opening the maps at all.

The Heroines all have their own unique characters and back stories and its done well.

The only drawback that i can see at all is the BALANCE of the mechanics system. For every interaction or choice that you make you recieve "love" and/or "trust" points. These points are required to "level up" your relationship with the heroines, and while the game does not punish you for dating more than one at a time, (in fact you can establish a polyamorous relationship in the beggining), The grind gets exponentially larger as the game goes on. For example, part 1 is fairly quick to max gir's stats, part 2 is double that, and part 3 is just... painful. This definitely needs to be addressed by the developers to make it a more comfortable and playable game.

The other Complaint i had off the bat is that if the stat grind wasnt tedious enough, the actual "sexy time" interaction mechanics are clunky and also unbalanced. Also confusing. As you progess your relationships with the girls, they will open up more sexual options to you, but the positions and actions combinations as well as the tedius "next" click... It might be better if it was simplified quite a lot. Also, you if you are wondering when you actually get any serious action its not gonna be until around the 2nd half of the current content so expect maybe 4-5 hours before anything really interesting.

My advice would be to use the console to edit the stats to minimize the current grind.

Overall i would definitely recommend this game, I absolutely love it and hope the dev comes out with frequent updates. Its rare to find a game this good, especially on this site.

I've been playing various offerings here for like 3 years?

This is the first time I've felt compelled to rate a game.

I understand the inspiration from RE but this game is distinct and more my style in all ways.

Positives:
-Cool setting
-Cool plot
-Cool characters (including the protag)
-Great art
-Great UI
-Great scenes
-Great interactivity
-Great character progression
-Great writing

Negatives:
-Could do with being less grindy and being able to get around to events with less clicking through menus.

Things I hope to see as the game develops:
-Expand on the character progression options of the player
-Complete the story
-Expand the side quests and ability to interact with non-LI's or friend-zoneable LI's outside of the hot content
-Expanded stable of LI's (even if that means some become mutually exclusive or if some characters are more like flings that can only develop so much)
-Expand on the dialogues and interactions available

Already a great game, interested to see what actually comes of it by the end of development!

Tedious game (as of 0.3b) with little to offer other than excellent graphics.

• Graphics are pretty good. There is no point to argue about it. It is the only reason it is getting the second star.
• Gameplay is boring. There is not much to do other than train, go to class, and try to shag a girl after some progression in the story. Even the shagging is pretty boring. This game needs a QoL improvement over anything else.
• Story is well.... Unoriginal? What can you say when at the start of the game the development team says that "it is heavily inspired by..." . I am not gonna enter in the discussion of which one is better, but it has been done before. Even the original story the game has borrowed is not such a great premise, so all in all there is not much to go on storywise.

If you want some Xmen porn, there are better places to look for it. When I play porn games I like the game part WITH the porn... if the Game is painful, I have better ways to find the "fun" part

Only rating 4 stars as I know this game is going to get better, so gotta leave room for improving the rating.

I've tried Rogue Like so many times, and it just never clicked, but this game, despite being almost a copy paste but with (imo) better art, is just so much better.

Rogue Like walked, so this game could run.

The one down side I would say is that the customization is a bit lacking for some of the girls. Jean's only "sexy" outfit is wearing her underwear, which is... fine, but ya know.

Truly a fantastic game. The story you are telling is interesting and evocative. The art is great and the premise if fantastic. You even made me care about a non-sexual relationship. Nightcrawler is my brudder from another mutter. lol

Keep the story tight.. Have a ending planed. And this will stay and be a 10/10 experience.

Game is incredibly tedious. Navigating the mansion and the menus feels like it takes several steps more than it should. The art and the music are absolutely incredible but I don't want to actually play the game bc it isn't fluid.

Solve the navigation issues and make the user experience better and this game is unbeatable, until then it will just frustrate you quickly

as a huge fan of rogue-like this is right up my alley, amazing art style and a good amount of content for an early release, highly recommend trying this out. excited to see where this game goes as it evolves

Really enjoyed the atmosphere and having a Rogue Like based game that focus on the lore of X-Men and, possibly, the Marvel universe is way better. The images are to my liking and I enjoyed the relationship progression. Although I still have to test if actually developing a relationship with the heroines is optional or not and how that would affect the storyline.

8/8, bretty good.

I really don't understand all the 5 star reviews for this game... Including from people who manage to list more cons than pros in their reviews but will still give it a perfect score...

I used to play RLE for a while but eventually stopped because it just became so repetitive with no real meaningful content added to it. I am fully aware this is not meant to be a remake of RLE but a completely separate game, but the basic premise and so much of the base gameplay are so similar at this point that the devs cannot blame the players for wanting to compare the two.

There's no discussion that the strongest point of the game is it's art, characters are beautiful and I really appreciate the variety of pubic hair that can be selected even if it doesn't seem completely implemented into the sex scenes at this stage. I just wish we had a little bit more variety in the character's body shapes.
The art also works a lot better in the sex minigame than in RLE.

But the gameplay quickly becomes extremely painful after a while. The menus and the map are horrible to navigate, we end up spending most of our time clicking several times to get to a different location, or to trigger an action or a dialogue, including in the sex minigame.
And of course you have to endlessly rince and repeat just in order to get a handful of points or cash. Even using the console to cheat the stats and money it feels like the game takes ages to make any meaningful progress.

The story pacing feels excruciatingly slow, this update added more character events in order to flesh out the character stories but they seem to trigger completely randomly (some took several days to appear for me and I did keep an eye for them on the map) but in the end they just add to the grind and are not that interesting to me... If at least they included some degree of lewd events to show some kind of progression in the relationships. I'm all for slow burn games, many VNs execute it well but here it's just a drag.

The outfit system has a lot of potential, but at the moment it's just terribly implemented, hard to understand how to properly save outfits, half the time the shame stat doesn't appear (EDIT : finally figured it shows on the top left corner...), and there's a lot of nonsense with the different clothes stat values. I know they had to remove some of the outfits for this particular update, hopefully once they are re implemented the outfit system will also get a rework to make it easier to use and understand).

It seems that the characters won't be as keen for nudity or lewd activities in public, compared to RLE. While I appreciate that the devs wanted to be a bit more realistic and didn't want to turn the LIs into addicted sex slaves, I also find it slightly disappointing because I think a middle ground could be found in that aspect that would not be as extreme as in RLE, but still have a degree of exhibitionism which was still one aspect I appreciated from the original game.

At the end of the day this game is no better or worse than RLE, it does have more story than the original but most of it doesn't really add much to the game and feels like a way to artificially boost the game content and it just ends up adding a lot of grind. It still gets super repetitive and the sex content ends up being just the same scene we have to replay over and over again with the same characters.

I had only played the previous version of this game and I feel like I had enjoyed it more, probably because it was my first time playing it. Now that I had to replay it all from the start it just felt like a massive pain and a massive grind to complete this update and it just became as repetitive and boring as the original...

It seems there is a lot of potential here and the devs seem to be quite ambitious judging from their posts on the thread, but I also fear they might just be over promising features and future content, especially if they already had to go back and "flesh out" the game and having to temporarily remove some content and features...
I'll be curious about the next update but I really hope we won't have to replay the whole thing from the start again because I don't think I'll want to bother.