Ren'Py - The Regional Manager [v0.171] [Horizontical Studio]

Great game once I have the guide. The scenes and events are interesting, I read all the dialogues, they are just right. I hate games with walls of text just to artificially lengthen the gameplay.
The only thing that could be better is the graphics, but it's still decent.
I rate the game 4+ out of 5 and hopefully more like this.

Version Reviewed: v0.171

Overview: ASSistant to the regional manager

Story: You are a guy who is put in charge of a small office mostly filled with women. What you do is slightly vague and it doesn't actually matter much. What matters is that you're a real asshole that's willing to do whatever it takes to get your dick wet. Sleep sex? Sure. Blackmail? Of course. Just straight up domineering over drugged up people? You bet. The main character is a serial rapist. This mostly works out well for him because the town has a major leak of porno logic gas that keeps you out of trouble and makes your absolutely insane plans actually work out.

Gameplay: This is where the game loses a star. It's a sandbox with loads of locations and a zillion characters to track. The triggers for events are not always clearly marked and the in-game help is annoyingly vague in places, often leave you wondering why some event it talked about didn't trigger. Maybe the event is locked behind a different event? Maybe one of your stats is too low? Maybe it's just wrong (this happens sometimes) or misleading. At best it is incomplete and vague.

Speaking of stats you have a few. There is a hunger and energy mechanic, and the consequence for not watching them like a hawk is a game over. Sometimes you can even get locked into a sequence that's going to drain too much energy and force a game over, but also last so long that it blows out the rollback buffer. An example of this is at the pool, where you can opt not to swim and instead to talk with the people lounging around the pool, but once you talk to all of them you get railroaded into swimming which drains a large chunk of energy and can easily cause a game over. There is of course a money grind, but with the built-in minigames it's really not a problem. There is also a strength stat which is kind of a hassle but decays slowly enough to not be too much trouble. Each girl also has a "like" and "hate" stat that you can independently grind to unlock different actions.

One problem is just that it's really grindy at times. Making you click through multiple days and re-watching events over and over while waiting for hidden timers to tick down or stats to go up to the point where the next segment of the story to unlock. The lack of good player guidance compounds this problem, as you might think you need to grind up a reputation stat to progress when you really need to grind the reputation on a different girl to trigger her event to unlock the event on the character you're trying to work on.

My biggest complaint is that it encourages you to play as a total asshole in almost all cases (requiring it to advance story arcs), but in a handful of cases if you do that you'll be labled a pervert by the girl which locks them out of the story permanently.

Graphics: They're fine. Kinda dated by 2024 standards but I appreciate that most of the women are distinguishable and there are some rudimentary animations. This is always an issue with games that are in development for so long, they get upstaged by newer projects with nicer graphics.

Sex content: If you are into power play this is the game for you. Damn near every scene involves the MC domineering over the woman in one way or another. As far as actual fetish content it is fairly light. Don't expect kinky BDSM scenes or anything too extreme. Mostly you just use your will to break down the girl until she's showing her tits, then you molest her, she sucks your dick, and then you fuck her. Sometimes all in one go, like once you get her to take her top off she's won't say no to anything. The MC does rape a lot of unconcious women if that's your thing.

Conclusion: This game has a lot of content even if it is kind of a pain to unlock. There is a walkthrough you can use which is like 50 pages long to get an idea of how much you gotta go through to fully unlock all of the scenes in the game. It is compently put together even if it's not always that much fun to play. There is a built-in cheat mode that eliminates some of the annoyances like having to grind money and pay attention to your energy stat.

The TL;DR is that the game hovers around a 4 give or take a few .1 or .2. There's a lot of content here for sure, but even with the grind turned off, it's a BITCH to navigate things. Sure you have the hint journal and it shows you what you should be doing, but it's a complete pain in the ass to do the tasks. Also, it's not always up to date! Stuff happens that is not in the journal, and some stuff isn't in the journal at all and you have to figure it out from scratch! There are also time limits for some, and others you have to go through soooo many days in order to get to the next step. It's just so bloated. The walkthrough is 45, yes that's right, 45 pages long. That should tell you just how much grind there really is. Also, the writing is not good at all, sorry but it's the truth. That being said, the girls are kinda hot, though graphically its a bit dated. The games also mostly about being a pervy douche as that's where all the content is, so you should expect to do that. There aren't really any fetishes besides just being a huge pervert and asshole, so that's kinda a bummer. There's some light sharing stuff and a route to cuck somebodies husband but it's not done. There's also some other stuff that just seems to abrubtly end at certain lengths, like the dev just decided eh fuck this i'll do something else instead. Overall, it's a bit of a bloated mess and a pain in the ass if you want to actually "play" the game, but it does have a lot of content. Thankfully, the dev included a built in gallery and replay scene so you can skip the grindy bullshit and get to the action, though i wish the scenes were labeled better. PS: you should label the choices you can make as well, such as NICE route and EVIL route.

pros :

content- has almost all of the tags you would expect from a "dark" game . it has a lot of content. game will keep you busy for a while .

characters - has lots of characters

gameplay- has multiple different playstyles you can chose weather you want to play an actual game that also how much of it or if you just want to see the content .

sandbox- it has a decent sandbox not the best but better than most .

cons :

renders- some renders are not the best looking and need to be updated to be consistent with the game

in game guide is not too helpful .

verdict:

if you want a sandbox game with sleep sex blackmail and spying this is the game for you .

Pros: Targets an audience and goes for it, took a concept that has been done to death and breathed new life into it, characters are good looking...if a bit outdated.
Cons: Outdated graphics, random events make walkthrough use problematic, not all "important" scenes are animated.

Ok, so as of the latest version .171 things are looking generally good. First thng to know is that if you downloaded .17 that it's buggy around the quest log and the triggers, so be aware. Updating the version is highly recommended.

So, the biggest thing to be aware of is that this is not a visual novel. If that's what you're looking for then keep going. This is a game, not a VN. It's entirely sandbox and relies on problem solving to advance the story. I personally wish there were more games like this since I like the game aspects but I understand that many people don't think this way. You've been warned.

The story is great for those who like male protagonist domination and humiliation of women. There is supposed to be a good or evil approach but there's no content for the good approach and it's very heavily slanted to the evil side. If you're comfortable with that play on. If humiliation isn't your bag then this isn't the game for you.

The artwork is so-so, and some of the characters are unlikeable, but they fit within the framework of the story. The English is off in places, nothing that seriously impacts the story, but as you go along it's almost charming to read someone looking for "stuffs" etc. Some of the errors actually have an odd appeal and it's much less irritating than in some other games.

The relationships follow fairly predictable patterns. The MC meets girls, compromises them in some way, begins taking pictures of them, blackmails them, then dominates them. The series of events repeats itself a lot, in the same ways, and it would be nice to see some variety in te approaches, but t does cater well to the kink.

Where the game falls short for me is in the sex scenes. Given the theme of the game the sex is remarkably vanilla, especially given the mastery that the MC exerts over the girls. While he has them do humiliating things socially the sexual aspects aren't pursued with anywhere near the same vigor and honestly lack imagination. The dev does seem to be stretching a little more towards the end portion of the current game though , so perhaps it's coming.

So, long story short, ok if not great writing, fun premise, lots of gameplay but not a VN, fairly tame sex but oft repeated male domination. Not the best game but still fun.

Pros: it's a game, not a linear KN.
There is an option to disable grind.
Cons: The existing hint system does not help, but rather hinders the player. At least some of the triggers don't work.
Outdated graphics at the 2017-18 level.
The walkthrough doesn't help much - I started having discrepancies with the walkthrough on the second game day.
Player engagement is zero. The characters evoke neither sympathy nor antipathy, nor does the story.
Is it worth trying to play? At your discretion. But I would wait for the final version of the game - it is not hopeless, but the developer should work on it, so that in the end there would be a comprehensible product.
On aggregate - 2.5 out of 5, but I'm rounding the score down (graphics, walkthrough issues).

Renders are good
for now not much story
You can only be mean even when there friendly anwsers
trigger events can be annoying
there is a walktrough but it's bit confusing because it doesn't tell you just when you can start some events
There is a choice to disable resources like hunger and hygiene at the start of the game
Some minior bugs
Would wait until there's some being nice content added

I can’t believe that some people are wasting their money on The Regional Manager [v0.17], a so-called game by [Horizontical Studio]. It’s been more than three years since they started this project, and all they have to show for it is a buggy, boring, and bland demo. This is not a game, this is a scam. They should rename it The Regional Scammer. Just ignore it

v0.161

- The graphics are outdated and sometimes grainy
- The animations only consist of "in/out"
- Not much content -> There are ~20 girls but i could only fuck 3 so far after playing around 6 hours... and the sex is without consent (rape)
The rest of the content consists mostly of taking pictures of girls and spying on them
- Stat-system is useless. You can gamble right form the start on your pc and make a shit ton of money in like 10 minutes. Never had to work after that since you can "increase" your performance by simply giving away parts of your money to the company... The other stats are easy to maintain so idk... With this you dont even need to use the build in easy mode where you dont need your stats at all...

- There is a line between "not nice" and being an unreasonable asshole BUT the story indicates - as bad is it is - that there seems to be a reason why MC is like this
-> NO real spoiler since the story is just fabricated around the idea that MC is an ass and every girl does whatever he wants :

---------------

Some military experiment went wrong and gas which makes MC horny and and asshole while all the woman get more compliant...

I tried playing this and cant say i enjoyed it at all, the story is pretty bad and there is still no real nice content and wondering if there ever will be since game is 3 years old now, it dosent really feel like game was ever ment to have a nice route, so even after 3 years if you want any real content you have to play evil and thats just not my thing, i wasted alot of time getting some girls to 100+ being nice with little to no reward.

You can also get stuck with girls when you dont go evil route

Dident really enjoy the sandbox part either and the build-in hint system is pretty bad since it dosent really tell ya much in some cases, like go to this place at 8pm and when you do nothing happens.....sure you can just take the full cheat but then its no longer a game.

Then there is the hole NTR feeling in this game, not just MC sharing partners to be abused but when i had been working on the coffee girl and then saw someone lick her pussy in front of MC that sure did feel like NTR since ive been working to get with her and you can even tell her after that you have a thing for her....but its apprently not enough for the tag, but alot of people feel this way just check forums.

Dident really like 90% o the girls either mostly big tits which i am not a fan of but also just dident find any of them hot.

Animations are arent good either, they are pretty short and some has crazy speed like they MC fucks them going 200 mph....

Musis arent good either.

So there really isent all that much going for this game, if it ever gets a good route then maybe but somehow i dont think that will ever be the main thing or even close to whats already in when you go evil.

Well I gave it a 4, wanted 3,5 but that's not possible.

First of all I want to say that I like the game for the most part, although you sometimes need to be on a lot of places at the same time so that's a bit annoying might have been better to first finish some things before adding the next bit.

The good thing is that you have many lines to follow, the models are nice looking, the animations could be better but they are certainly not bad.
The music is nice sometimes.

The thing that is less positive for me is that you need to do certain things to progress, and can miss a lot of things not progressing a certain way for one, so you need to be almost the worst version of yourself to get most scenes.

For me the biggest downside is that I have found no way of getting in better graces with a lot of characters which I(you) alianated to get some things done, would be nice to have a way to get affinity back with characters that you provoked by demanding certain things.

[Review for v.012]

This is a very well built sandbox game. I consider it top notch, with some minor bugs/issues.

The version numbering is different than with most other games you see here. Usually a 0.12 game would be almost a demo. Here you get quite a long way into the storyline with loads of interactions with many characters.

Note also that I played TRM on EASY mode, with unlimited money/energy.

The premise is as usual some scifi element, which makes easier for MC to corrupt, blackmail and thus dominate women in his environment. Which he proceeds to do with enthusiasm. The way characters talk is mostly adult (a big plus compared to many games here), the story is a bit of a stretch, but, in terms of human motivation it is decent (ie. no evil overlords or whatever, just basically rather indecent humans).

It's very nice to see a game, where MC is not lying to himself about what he wants to do.

The good path exists, but as the dev and other reviewers have said, it's basically not implemented yet, so main content is for evil path, which can go quite evil. Think Friends in Need in worst mode for some interactions. As regards the evil path itself, it seems you can safely always choose to use the mean/bad/evil options, and in fact, if you don't choose them, you may miss most or all content for the character.

Might be one of the rare games, where, if good path is added, the MC doesn't automatically become a wet blanket, but we'll see.

Notable characteristics (PROs):

* What sets TRM apart, as far as I have noticied, is that the dev has spent quite some time in making many characters reflect their current attitude to the MC -- both in visuals, like facial expressions, and in dialogus. So, in many cases, you get slightly different dialogues if you repeatedly do the same actions, and, from sandbox elements, you frequently get further progression by doing things repeatedly. This is how it should be, but how it is very frequently ommited to do in games, so big + for that.

* LOADS of characters. You get 7+ coworkers, 2 relatives and various characters in the city, in total more than 20 at first glance. Almost all of those turn out into some sort of interaction. Some characters are there for most of the game as background interactions, with whom you can just speak a few words (temp receptionist at mayor's office, for example), and then at one point, there is event in which they take place, and where you can interact and get a H scene or something, due to something OTHER characters do with her. It's nice to feel that things are happening outside MC's view.

UPD.: Point in case. I restarted game because I got stuck with some characters in some routes, and discovered a TON of other content for a number characters, including some of those with whom I only had 1 dialogue previously (think, Whitney in major's office). Makes me eager to explore more.

* I looked a bit into console and every character has tons of status/flag options, which reaffirms the general feeling that this is a true sandbox, where you are not railroaded into main story, but events can happen at different times and different ways depending on your choices. I like sandboxes, so a big + for that too.

* Renders are very good. There is a tendency for many characters to have rather similar bodies, but there are some, which are markedly different.

CONs:

* Many H scenes are some 3-4 renders with 1 animated loop. Decent, but not very satisfying. This improves with some scenes and some characters.

* You can get stuck if you don't choose the mean path, without option to do anything about it. I have now currently 4 characters (trailer friends + Claire, and Miko), which I can't advance the story with, due to either making wrong choices or a bug. This can happen in sandbox games exactly due to the freedom of interaction with all chars, but it's annoying.

* The hint system is vague enough that sometimes quite frequently tells you things that either don't work, or work in a very specific way. For example, you can "summon Brenda at your office when her mother is away" -- but you can't actually call Brenda over your phone to do that. On phone your only option is to harass her. In order to trigger this particular event, you have to be at the office at the right time (5pm) and a popup will ask if you want to do the event.

Similarly, some characters and actions are not listed in hints at all (eg. the secret lab events)

Sometime the character paths reset each other and/or events. Not very often, but it sometimes happens.

Despite the cons, all in all a solid 5/5 corruption/blackmail game.

A very good sandbox game with lot of possibilities and paths. One of the best of my collection. I hope the best for the future of this game!
The story is quite gripping and the scenes very exciting. It's a perfect game if you like very mature content and playing bad boys. The game's lifespan is very good, with dozens of hours to complete all the storylines.

Wow where to start with this game.....In it's current form I give it a 2 out of 5. The game works, and I encountered zero glitches during my playthrough. The character models are good, not great I have seen better and worst..

So why 2 stars in it's current form? In a word STORY. This story as it stands now is rough the description of this game says

"You are an ambitious businessman in his mid twenties.
You are temporarily in charge of the regional branch of an important Electronics company.
Be nice or not... it's up to you "

it should say

"You are a Demonic Narcissist irredeemable Scumbag
businessman in his mid twenties.
You are temporarily in charge of the regional branch of an important Electronics company. Be Nice you get almost zero content. Be Bad EVIL to see content."

Why demonic? You all but sprout horns from your head when doing evil shit. His skin literally turns greyer and he get this demonic joker face when abusing people. Unlike most evil protagonist games the characters you are doing evil shit to rarely deserve it.

It starts off hella SLOW, and certain sequences make little sense, when and why they suddenly were activated. It takes a long time to get to any real content.

The dev was wise and included built in cheats you can activate to spare yourself the trouble of grinding for cash, food etc. The memory game is fun when your at work. When you get far enough into the story you unlock "BOBBY MODE" which allows you to unlock all the animated scenes if you want. Thank God.

Now I have played games like "The Tyrant" where you can have sex and pimp out your own mother and sister, and you still feel less scummy playing that than this.

This game has POTENTIAL if/when some Good or not evil content gets added. You literally play a demon who fucks over everyone that comes within his orbit , Friends, Family, coworkers I mean Everyone.

I will revisit this in the future to see if anything has changed but I don't have high hopes.

Good game in it's genre, unabashedly goes after the fets it's built around. Multiple game modes let you play it challenging or go fast to good stuff depending on your play style and that's something more games should aim for. The only reason it's 3.5-4 star not 5, the renders are generic and some almost bland. That said the fets and scenes are great and make the best use of the renders they can.

This is my second time jumping into the game. I downloaded it once before and played 10 min before uninstalling, not because I didn't enjoy it but because I had just completed another average sandbox and didn't have the strength to go through another one. I can say that I am glad I gave the game a second go. It became one of my very closely watched games on F95.

The sandbox

One awesome thing you notice straight away is the inbuilt cheatmode. It saves you the trouble of resource management (health, stamina, money and other commonities found in sandboxes. Can also skip hours and days). The option to turn it on is available on the get go, before the game even starts. That makes the game pretty much grindless. You will need it, as the game is already filled with a great amount of content that will take several hours to get to.
There's a good amount of places to go to. Some have more content than others, although a few of them (2-3 iirc) are still on a juvenile stage with nothing significant to do.
Finally, there is a hint system that keep tracks of quests and it proven extremely useful and well made. There was only one instance where I got stuck, but dev added more hints to that part on the last update.

Content and kinks

While you do have choices in regard of being good/evil, there is almost no content for being a nice guy. Be warned, the gist of the game is coercion. There is some head on rape as well, but the focus is on the former. There's also some light corruption but it's more of a story related element rather than something you/the MC directly contribute to.
If you are into other kinks (BDSM for example), you won't find much if none in this game. It's almost all coercion with some sleepsex/rape thrown in the mix.
Technically, everything is avoidable but there is no point playing this game as a nice guy as you'll miss all the sexual content. In my opinion, the game description should be more lucid to avoid any confusion. I have seen plenty of comments asking about "good path" content, and from what I gathered, dev doesn't seem to have immediate plans for it. Other than that, if you like blackmail/rapey games, you will be very pleased with this one. It's very well done imo and the buildup is laid at a decent pace.

Girls models and renders

Visually, the game isn't particularly impressive but it does the job more than enough. There is a good variety of women, and while some of it are a bit rough, especially around the beginning; it gets better halfway through. Same for the renders. There are some extremely hot scenes and some mid ones. Some of the scenes are a bit too short imo. I'm thinking about the army girl, or the girl that gets blackmailed by her husband for example. The buildup is excellent, but you get an average and short scenes at the end. However, I have no idea if they were early scenes or not as I just recently played the game, but I found some of the last scenes (Meredith for example) ages better.

The photoshoots. Amazing. One of my fav aspects of this game. I'd just hope there were more of them and if there was legit sex on all of em. I was also pleasently surprised to see NeonGhosts (dev of Friends In Need) hang out in this game thread and I can't help but think he took inspiration from The Regional Manager (for the Britanni photoshoot).

Game is mostly not animated. Think I seen 3 or 4 proper animations, rest is static images "animations". I'm personally fine with it.

Finally, while i'm generally advocating for "less girls, more content with each one of them" rather than spread the development effort to 500 girls, HorizonticalS is handling his many girls very well imo and is managing to produce great content overall.

From my attempt at playing it:
Horrible interface.
Unrealistic dialog.
And worst of all:
Trigger hunting.
You need to be here at time x and say thing y is horrible gameplay.
It also doesnt help that the only content there is require's you to be mean for the sake of being mean.
You can not be a polite villian.
You have to be a brutish thug.

A pity.
I like the idea of the game.
But not the exicution of it.

Normally I don't leave reviews, AAMOF this is my 1st one. But damn, this game deserves it. Where to start? The plot is great, no succubus, monsters, spells and all the other fantasy land BS. It's a real world with very believable setting. Sure, there is certain gas leak that helps with the corruption, but it's somehow in the background, so it's not your usual mind control tool that IMO ruins most of the games of this type (I read a spell from an ancient book and all of a sudden I can do to girls whatever I want).
Maledom/humiliation aspect is what I love most about this gem. HorizontalS manages like almost no other author on this site (at least to my knowledge) to get this right. There is this prevailing opinion that you can't have maledom/harem type of games mixed with ntr, which I find extremely annoying. For me, there is no stronger show of domination than exposing/sharing the girl with another she might or not like, only to satisfy you. And here it is done masterfully. There weren't any classical sharing scenes yet, but the way things are going, I sure hope there will be. However, even without them, the events with the other male characters are just great!
The graphics, although not overly sophisticated are still very sexy and the expressions girls make are right on the bat.
The grind is of course present, as it's unavoidable in any sandbox game, but here it's at acceptable level. Not sure if it's a feature that's in there by mistake, but later on it the game you can do a number of activities in 1 hour and repeat most dialogues, so that you don't have to wait the next day to come back and do the same, like you typically do in every other game.
I only have two complaints actually, and the first is related to this. It would be very helpful if the dialogues that don't open up new possibilities disappear from the options. Even better so, if the game would somehow point you in the direction of locations or characters that you can progress with. Often you get the old dialogues still open and you can repeat the conversation that leads to an event that already happened. This is, I guess a matter of polishing things at the end.
The other objection I have are the sex scenes. As great and imaginative as they are, you typically have one position per sex scene and that I believe is a shame or an opportunity missed. But it seems that in the later scenes this is also improving.
All in all, I cannot give it any less than 5 stars. And I will also be looking into donating.
Can't wait for the next update.

It's a great game. I like the art. The animations are passable.
I like the corruption theme. I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of girls (>30?) and the intricacy of the quest lines. I don't care too much about dialogue in game. I like the plots.
I didn't like so much that you can't really be a jerk/perv to everyone all the time. I think you lock yourself out of possible progression.

I have to dock a point because this game doesn't make it clear how to progress certain plot lines, or even where the plot lines are. Sometime you have to repeat the same dialogue option 4 days in a row, or you have to be at certain location at a specific hour. A walkthrough fixes that but also kind of ruins the sense of surprise.
There also seem to be some bugs, or at least strange interactions if you don't quite follow the intended route. For instance you can accuse Samuel of cheating without even knowing about it. The game does detect it as a '(lie)' option, but it's strange to even have it in the first place.
I don't really see the point of the money/stamina system. There is no upside, but there are many downsides. Such as soft-locking you out of one-chance progression. Money is ridiculously easy to obtain, but I also missed it on my first playthrough. Also, you just 'die' if you work out too much, that's not really how that works XD. There is potential for this system, but the current implementation is not great.