Ren'Py - World's Crossing Academy [v1.3.0.4] [TeamEmberWings]

One of the better AVNs out there, good enough to get a patreon sub out of me.

For those who like monster girls and definitely for those who like girls of varying sizes. Also the story is a nice slow burn...but dont worry, you do get some early action.

Basically if you love monster girls, shortstacks or big girls this is the AVN for you

Adorable goblin girls. That is all you need to know.

Hahahaha!!!!! Just kidding! There is a lot more to love about this game! The script is great! The Dev is a native English speaker, so the story is NOT hard to understand. The story itself is great! Not some cookie-cutter yarn you usually see. And he has a way of giving ALL the girls a unique personality that is all their own.

The renders and characters are also great! He takes the time to hand-craft each character so they are all unique. He prides himself in making sure that his monster girls are one-of-a-kind and I can assure you, they are. Did I mention adorable goblin girls?

Overall, this is a well rounded and well balanced game. Most defiantly in the Gold Standard category.

Play the game. You will NOT regret it.

Reviewing 0.1.5.61.

So far, this game is excellent. Choice is a bit limited so far, but that's to be expected for the early part of the story, and it's an early release, at that. There's quite a bit of content already, and the writing is top-notch. Dialogue is natural and believable, and evades most of the usual porn game tropes (which, of course, will make some people hate it) without falling into some of the usual traps for people 'avoiding the mundane'.

There are a couple questionable elements, but they're very clearly warned about in-game, with the option to learn about them if one wants, and THEN make the decision of whether to have that event happen or not. This is an approach I wish more games would take. At this point, even for the story choices I initially felt dubious about, I trust that they will be resolved in a positive, enjoyable fashion eventually.

The H scene animations are quite good, and they keep getting better every update, while the dialogue during the H scenes both remains in character and enhances the scenes, making them much, much sexier.

While reviews aren't supposed to be about the developer, I do have to comment that the developer is very responsive and listens to feedback, even to the extent of eliminating an entire tedious mechanic from the game (phone messaging system), replacing it with a vastly improved, much faster method from a different game (with that game's dev's help) quite quickly.

tl;dr: Great game. Makes me impatient for more.

This is honestly pretty compelling and there's a lot to enjoy here if your interests are more in writing and character. It's a standard 3DCG anime style of graphics, although the character designs are often distinctive. There's a massive span of body types -- some quite underrepresented -- among the Love Interests too, which is really nice to see. The plot (fantasy mystery) is paced well and pretty interesting. And the dialogue is convincing and well-written, which is especially refreshing to see. The latter coming from someone who'd rather no dialogue at all in erotica than bad dialogue -- I don't enjoy the feeling of masturbating while a sock puppet talks at me.

I have a few minor qualms I have with the writing that I list only because this game is trying to do a little more in that domain than your average erotica bear:

• Not crazy about hearing the LIs' insecurities about their bodies so consistently. Particularly not in interior monologues. Personally just feel that you can show this rather than telling.
• The protagonist genuinely cares enough that I wouldn't pencil him as exclusively a white knight, but he opines about his beliefs regularly and lengthily enough that it can become a bit grating. Again, I think explicitly stating these at such length is detrimental to the final product and makes the character seem more annoying than intended. I don't think these are bad beliefs to hold, but they'd be more convincing if they were teased out via dialogues instead of monologues.
• The intro about how the school president convinced her students to hate all men is a little tiresome. Not that I disagree that some feminists go overboard. But beyond that I don't think they're all that representative of the majority, I've yet to meet the boss/teacher/headmaster with enough pull over their subordinates to convince all of them to hate ~50% of people in 1-3 years. Seems more consistent with the setting, characters, and narrative that:
  • a lot of the students are traumatized/awkward/rich to the point where they don't feel comfortable interacting with MC or men generally
  • some custodians might've given the others a bad name
  • Ms. Clements' distrust of her staff rubbed off on her students
  • students often don't have much direct personal interaction with janitors

Again, generally fantastic work, and I list these more out of hope that the constructive criticism is helpful to the dev.

P.S.: Really sad to hear about the dev's family. Hope they're okay and take time getting themselves together.

This is an absolute Masterclass.

So much, that i kinda struggle to keep this short and to the point. I literally deleted 3 different paragraphs detailing how great the writing is, how lovable the characters are, how the personal experience of the dev helping other people with their troubles shines through, and so on.
I struggle to keep this short, because this game does so much right.

It does have the most emotionally intelligent characters i've seen in recent memory, while still being grounded, human, with their struggles and their quirks. The small changes you see in them. All in all, exceptionally lovable, while still being somewhat mysterious, and open to change.

The strong writing makes me, first of all, read all of the dialogues, instead of skipping through. The jokes, the teasing, the wholesome moments in those dialogues... it's unbelievable.
The writing is even good enough to the point i am constantly trying to figure out the foreshadowing that's built in. Figuring out the world, because the characters care about different aspects of it.
It seems especially great due to so many other adult VNs not caring all that much about that story or development. How you can figure out the broad strokes nearly all of the time. Here, you get curveballs. You get unexpected developments. Characters can warp a development around them, which makes the world at large seem all the more alive.

The flipside of this writing style is that it reads a lot like a Novel, with limited choices, but damn if i'm not here for it regardless.

Leaving this side-note for last:
While the latest chapter was apparently due to RL events shipped without scenes, which was of course kinda sad, i still didn't want it to end while playing. I still enjoyed it immensely.
Because it is just that good.

Game version: 0.1.5.5

I would have never guessed, that the dialogs were so strong with this one!
It looked just like another generic, monster-harem-game, with a read-and-forget-story, scenes and overall presentation.

So I was positively suprised by the high quality of the writing, the decelerated pace of the character's development (just as the side-characters!)- I haven't had this in quite some time here on FN.
Another PLUS is, that the dev didn't waste time on immature or sore kinds of humor.

The visual quality is indeed mediocre, standard stuff. But it is just adequate enough to enjoy the rest of the game.

Bookmarked and followed!

this one got me curious because of the variety, and it delivered good story , plenty characters wich all have their own personality and feel to it and a good story that made me read it in one go . it has everything a darker touched yet somehow still colorfull and happy vibrant story needs, mistery antagonists, goals and twists just the right amount of them

There is so much to love about this game, holy shit. Game is up to chapter 5 as of writing this.

It's a slow burn, but the plot and the characters are so delightful that I couldn't care less. In fact, I think the slow burn does a great service to the game. The characters are so good. Absolutely love the goblin girls; easily my favorites, and that says something because I love all of the characters. The cliffhanger wounded my soul. I even like Cecilia; the yandere archetype is done very well here, and she makes for a creepy villain that keeps things a bit tense. Great backstory to her too. I thought Gillie was gonna be a boring character, but wound up having my full attention from the library onward. The dialogue is endearing and mysteries are set up really well to keep the player wondering about things. It's got a nice blend of adventure, romance, slice-of-life, paranormal, comedy, and horror interestingly enough. Almost got me with the jump scare if my volume had been louder, and laughed my ass off at the Dragonball Z Abridged reference. You can tell a great deal of thought and care went into making this. I also enjoy that the protagonist isn't a creeper or a biege wall.

If you're looking for a quick crank, then maybe hold off on this one. That's not to say that the lewd scenes aren't great too though. That birb scene, for example, and the follow-up was A++. Just that it actually has a plot that isn't an afterthought, so it's not just one porn scene to the next.

Honestly, I'm not really great at these so please give me a minute to get my thoughts together. I meant to do this forever ago. Just went to check the discord for updates and realized I never did. Now, here we go.

Writing: 55/5

Seriously, I don't hand out perfect writing scores well, ever. But this guy is actually a published author. He loves writing, and it shows. Every character is nuanced, beautiful, well wrote and unique. They're human, even if they're "monster girls". They have struggles, passions, and humanity in them and that's more than most game devs ever do. The worldbuilding is so compelling and well thought out. You understand the struggles of the world, and the characters. The immersion is honestly so wonderful it pulls you in like a nice warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. For example, you find out the things that happen to Ms.Clements, you learn about why the way she is and you as a person can't help but want justice for her. Not to mention you learn that humans ruined some interspecies relations, and you find yourself facepalming because that is indeed something believable and could really happen. Elements of the world that are very real in this day and age. Body shame, culture shame, sexuality shame, all of these things are very human and a core part of human society. They're real world topics integrated into a fantasy world masterfully. Only leaving me longing for more.

Sound/Music: 6/5

Yes, a 6/5. You see correctly. All the music fits the tone of the story as it progresses. When it wants to set the tone to serious, it doesn't just set it to serious.. It puts you in the moment. You're reading line for line, the music making you anxious. Then all of a sudden BOOOOOOOOOOOOM jump scare, and you jump 10 feet out of your skin. Which has happened to me multiple times now, I'm afraid to admit.

Renders: 10/5

Honestly, all these renders are gorgeous. None of them are your standard copy pasta barbies that you see get reused and rehashed in every other generic -insert x porn vn here- game on this site. He's taken pride in everything he's made and it shows. They're all amazing and I love it.

Communication: 100% 10/10

This isn't generally something people would normally rate but I will just because VictorSeven does an astounding job in this department. He takes criticism and is always active and is genuinely the most friendly and communicative dev I've had the pleasure of meeting and interacting with. If you haven't joined his discord you should. You'll find he's a really kindhearted dev. None of the bloated egos you're probably use to dealing with on here.

FURTHERMORE if you're up to date on the game and such, each update he has a popular character poll which is honestly probably nothing new, but here's the kicker... IT'S NOT PATREON EXCLUSIVE. I'm sure he does have his own separate section for them and I wouldn't fault him at that at all, and they probably even have more weight in the votes, who knows. But he still gives you the choice to vote as well. EVEN MORE SO, if you went past all that he even gifted us some renders this past update and they were incredibly lovely. Honestly, there's not much of anything to fault the dev on. He's new, I guess? If you wanna call that a fault. But from my position that means he can only get better moving forward. Anyway, that's my rant for this.

PROS

+ The sound design is pretty good, with nice background music that changes to deliver important tonal shifts.
+ Easy one of the best sex animations you will ever find in this kind of games. lots of positions and they are all incredibly smooth, seriously the quality is incredible.
+ The dev is very active here and takes a lot of community feedback to improve the game so nothing is set in stone, if you don't like something and present a reasonable argument it will probably be addressed in future updates.
+ The art is solid, the models are cute and there are plenty of interesting love interest to pursue.
+ The characters are all well written, all the girls are quite likable and the MC is not a self insert blank state, is an actual character with solid background and motivations , so by sacrificing agency from the player it delivers a more focused experience, also Aurum is cool as heck.
+ It has petite girls.
+ It has monster girls.
+ It has a believable yandere character to spice things up.
+ The game has a quite a few masterfully crafted scenes and sometimes knows how to caught you off guard.

CONS

- This is the very first game of this dev and is a learning process so you get to see the bumps in quality as the dev gets more experience with Renpy and other tools, in other words, it looks kinda bad at the beginning but it gets quite better after a while.

- It has tons of characters so there might be updates that won't focus on your waifu and that sucks, but is the price to pay for a nice variety of girls.


Overall I think the game is an amazing experience, I highly recommend you to give it a try.

I truly hope this game gains more notoriety. I have played a lot of erotic visual novels and am a fan of ren'py as an engine.

tl.dr: This is a great game with outstanding story and characters. If you are expecting a barrage of sex scenes then you might be out of luck, but if you are looking for a slow burner with enjoyable storie and lots of well made Monster Girl and Fantasy aspects then please support this game.

Gameplay: While it is true it is a Visual novel without much "game" aspects. I feel that is no problem at all here. While it is a little sad to see the other features diminished the story and characters easily make up for that.

Story: This is where the Game truly shines. When I started the game I was prepared to look past generic characters or not so great story but instead the game blew me away with the obvious care put into both story and characters. I don't want to get into every character because that would take too long and also might take away from getting to know them but some of my favourite are:
An actual, non fetishized and instead used as a threat, Yandere who genuinly disturbed me and who is a real threat throughout the story.
A duo of ridiciously cute goblins who use some stereotypes of goblins while also subverting others to make them rounded characters for all you goblin lovers out there.
A redheaded and redblooded Irish girl with an acual Gaelic name (Bonus for me since I studied the language a little ).
And finally a main character who neither comes across as a creep nor pathetic but instead as a likable and dependable guy who was simply caught in a bad place.
Going from story the game is one of the best erotic games I played period and one where I would play and read it regardless of the sexual content, even though the sexual content fits perfectly into the narrative and feeling of the story.

Animation and Art: The models are great. They look unique and not lik ethe usual stereotypic models you see in some other ren'py games. The monster girls are also made with care and are probably the best nonhuman characters I've ever seen in a pen'py game. There aren't that many animations yet, but what is there is high quality and very enjoyable.

So definitly play this game and consider supporting it if you have the chance.

Even from what little there is so far, the story-line is quite well laid out. The twist and turns added so far shows attention to detail without dragging on needlessly. It absolutely has potential, and the lewd bits woven in till now seems to occur 'naturally' within the premise of the story and genre.

Definitely looking forward to next 'instalment'.

Conclusion: So far - Would Recommend

I like the concept already and love that there arent only the super standard monster girls only. I mean who would have thought that goblins are what you need in your life. Looking forward to seeing how this story will develop. Also there are a lot of cute girls in this, so if you like that type of girls then give it a try