Ren'Py - Under Your Spell [v0.1.11p] [Shady Characters]

v0.1.8p

This sort of guide-less old-school dating sim is not for me. You get told the premise: you have to find a girlfriend within six months; and briefly introduced to two possible LIs. Then you're kicked straight into Day 1 and asked to just start going to classes and doing activities without even the barest hint of guidance like what stats to focus on for a particular girl or if you want to prepare for the wizard tournament or... anything.

This type of game worked better in the 90s when you'd buy one game every four months. In 2024, where everyone has unplayed games languishing in their Steam libraries, it's hard to justify playing and replaying and tinkering with a dating sim to try to find all the scenes and routes.

If you're into games like Story of Seasons or Rune Factory, you might have more patience for these type of games and enjoy this. The art is great and the UI is very clean. But I'll wait until there's a walkthrough available.

First time I've ever felt the need to leave a review because this game could be something special. The character design, artwork and character creation are all very promising.

But man this build should not have been released in the state it is in, it's insulting to even call this an alpha. RIGHT NOW, it's just a clicking simulator without any cool animations. There are like three interactions for like two characters that are all paper thin, which you have to mindlessly click around for to even get. The world doesn't feel alive and none of the "events" feel important. There's no real story, the relationship building feels hollow and despite the amount of choice for the schedule planner, every single place you can go is basically the same in terms of, you can do fuck all there.

For a game that already established a UI and its mechanic, it shouldn't be that hard to incorporate semi regular character based event that intertwine with a main storyline.

To the dev if you are going to continue the game please add a substantial story update and a decent amount of story events and character events to the next patch. There is so much potential here.

There is neither porn or even a game in this release. Just a menu that makes arbitrary stat changes. You're theoretically supposed to be managing the stats, but you have no clear guidance on what stats you are aiming for. Apparently my semi-even distribution managed to fail every single stat check that currently exists, so that's cool. Why tf would you release this? At one point the "game" even tells you to save on a screen from which you literally cannot save.

Seems like nothing but grind with no rollback and no guidance about what will make it possible to succeed in the long run. The look of the thing is fine, but it's a long slog with no rewards. I won't be following this game or playing any updates.

So far the art is promising and writing is decent; apart from lacking a tutorial in the beginning (especially with which classes improve which stat) I'm already looking forward to future updates!!!                                                                               

My experience getting to the current end of the demo is that it's just a grindfest with no real content.
Maybe I missed something, but if so it was incredibly easy to miss.
I'm assuming the plenty of missing art errors will be solved before too long, but this game needs a walkthrough and/or cheatmod to deliver on what its promising.

Good points:
Potentially interesting story, we will see how this goes
Great 2D art and unique (im sick of this AI s...)
Great characters and unique personalities.
machincs and overall feel of the game.

Its a bit difficult to orientate yourself and 'no rollback', but the game is still in early stages, so we will see for now.
Its difficult to rate but 5 stars i good for the good start. Lets see how this will develop and not take a wrong turn.

Ok, it is pretty early to say for sure, and many games that started like this did turn into a smutfest, but I really like what I see so far.
The art is great, the creators really care about game mechanics, and the updates have been regular so far. Don't want to give it 5 stars yet, before seeing where it ends up, but definitely worth checking out.

No rollback, can only save in one place, difficult to find characters, grindy, and it's buggy as well. Honestly, the theme and art is all it really has going for it. Barely two stars. Might be worth it after a few more updates but i don't really see the point if the dev can't even code well enough for rollback to not cause them issues.

I'm enjoying this game more then I thought I would, just needs a couple of more updates to really shine through.

Love the art style and the semblance to True Love 95, can't wait to see where the story takes us.

The game is in early stages and a lot of the art and place settings aren’t in yet. If you’re playing for titty this game’s development is way too early for that.

it’s a great display of concept as it is rn however and I look forward to playing it again when it’s more developed and closer to completion.