VN - Ren'Py - Innocent Witches [v0.11 Alpha] [Sad Crab]

Alright so my review at this time is based upon v0.4b, as a result it is not a final score but it is based on the content of the game and my current thoughts on its development and my overall enjoyment of it. If I were to rate this game based solely on the context of its art style then it would easily be on par with some of the best games on this forum and art direction is easily it's strongest feature and I can and will commend that. However, that's where my praise has to end because by the blood of Odin is this game botched in so many other ways. The story is confusing and poorly paced at the best of times, and almost laughably incoherent at the worst. I would chalk this up to possibly a poor translation but given the exchanges between characters it's clear that something needs to be done to improve the overall narrative. The content which everyone is here for feels so painfully sparse that I would liken it to having a fingernail pulled from me with a pair of pliers. I've had to look up a guide to make sure when I finished this version that I hadn't missed anything because the scenes that which they were left such little impact that I didn't even care. The player character feels so obnoxiously cocky that I would rather place my face in a greased cast iron skillet over a fire than listen to inane drivel about how bloody amazing or great he is, that kind of attitude doesn't draw me in and empathize with a character it annoys and detracts from possibly strong moments. Which leads into my next point the dialogue between the PC and NPCs the dialogue as I mentioned earlier feels clunky at the best of times which isn't often while the rest of the game's dialogue feels like someone trying to turn in a twenty page short story last minute. Now from a techincal perspective the game is once again a mess. The UI is rather obtuse and nonsensical in some other or jump plain asinine in other. All in all the game is absolutely amazing in terms of visuals but it is quickly buried by problems in the foundation. If it were to get a major revamp that fixed a lot of the issues facing it I'd have no problem looking into, but as it stands right now I can't say that this game has managed to inspire much confidence.

Art is realy good, minigames are realy good, riddles are solid.

Too much text and options in way that u just lost your sellf in walls of useles texts and then repet and repet, so mostly u skipp text because u read it hundred times over. Too much content that are hidden and easy to miss it, same as achievements because u cant solve then later it game, no way to grind achievements (like repet something 100 times or similar) no hints for achievements and some are insane to find unless devs says how to do it

Pros:
1: I really like the setting of the game.
2: I love the art. It is incredible. Considered giving two stars because of the quality alone.

Cons:
1: I've played for 4+ hours and have only had one very clunky and unintuitive H-scene to play.
2: The UI is unintuitive.
3: The tasks you have to complete in order to progress are impossible to figure out without a walkthrough.
4: The in-game walkthrough is laggy and hard to understand.
5: The dialogue and plot is HORRIBLE.
6: The writing is a mess. Like it was translated with Google translate or something.
7: Your character almost never say what you ask him to say in the dialogue options. It feels bugged.
8: You get locked in the tower, even though there is a lot of Hogwarts to discover.


The artist should fire everyone else on the team and get a proper game designer on board and a proper writer on board. Cut 75% of the writing away.

Make the game mechanics easier to understand and use. I hated the time system. Insanely annoying.

Game is very grindy too. Can't skip the animations for the stat increases. Super time consuming stuff. I hate grinds in games like this.

Everything is boring, unintuitive and frustrating to play. Only saving grace about this game is the stunning art. It is so gorgeous.

TL;DR
10/10 art.
Worst everything else I've ever tried on this website. And I've played 20+ games from this site.
It is so bad that I had to write this review to warn everyone else to not touch this.
Download the CG rip and leave the game alone.

Review for version 0.4:
I've always wanted to give this game a try, but assumed that it was abandoned. However, saw that a new version was out, and gave it a try - the game is brilliant with an incredible art and a cool story, I really enjoyed what was done in terms of game mechanics, especially for a VN engine.

Nonetheless, got to warn you folks, if you are just looking for some quick H-scenes, might be better off playing something like Wands and Witches, this is a slow-burn game with a nice story and great character art.

This game is very conflicting for me... The artwork is beautiful and i want more and more of it but the game itself is way too much of a grind. There is barely any nsfw content or if there is I have not gotten to it yet after hours of playing. The game is too boring and grindy and it is a waste that the artwork is so good. Maybe if there was a way to just see all the scenes in the games without having to actually play it lol.

Correct me if I'm wrong, this is the type of lewd game that you will get some common sex scenes when you're one step next to the end of the game, if that's the case, next time, don't make a fucking H-game then waste peoples time on some fucking petty nudity, besides that, everything else is fine.

AMAZING gorgeous artwork completely and utterly ruined by uninteresting dialogue and clunky unintuitive gameplay. This game has the best 2d art I've ever seen in an adult game, with amazing eye for detail, and seeing it squandered like this makes me just want to strangle the game designer. Like how the FUCK am I supposed to figure out that I need to use the canvas on the fire to get a drinking buddy? Any reasonable person would assume that I was trying to burn the canvas. Why would I even need a drinking buddy to progress the story forward?
This game tries to be Monkey Island but the designer has absolutely 0 clue what makes a monkey island game good. Hint: It sure as fuck isn't walls of text and multiple choice guesses to progress the story forward. It also isn't "Use the owl on the notice board then tell it to "work" to remove the couple blocking the view". It's impossible to guess this. It's downright impossible to figure anything out at all by yourself and without a walkthrough. Don't ever try to use logic or deduction to figure anything in this game out, it's just a colossal waste of time.

This entire thing just makes me so sad and angry. The art is so amazingly good but the game design and writing is so unbelievably fucking shit that it completely distracts from all the good bits. I cannot stress enough how fucking awful the game design is. The art is held hostage by some sadistic piece of shit who wants me to read every line of his shitty fucking dialogues and goes all-in on wasting my time on pointless stupid impossible to figure out shit quests that makes no sense. Even the walkthrough is some impossible riddle. I feel like the game is just taking a piss when it starts filling up my inventory with random panties making scrolling through my inventory a mini game in itself. If you happen to do something on a Tuesday when you should have done it on a Monday, then fuck you, you're fucked and have to skip time again to the beginning of next week. This takes several minutes in real time.

This game makes me feel like I'm part of some experiment trying to figure out how long I will put up with retarded time wasting bullshit in the hope of some lewds. Answer: Not fucking long enough. I have never before felt the urge to punch a game designer in the face for being a trolling piece of shit, but this game actually got me there.

Seriously fuck this shit. I give up. No amount of lewds, no matter how good, can make me jump through this many pointless hoops. Congratulations you successfully trolled me into not wanting to spend another second in your game. The terrorists win.

If this game was just a point-and-click with no dialogue at all it would have been way better. Hire a real writer and a real game designer please, because whoever is doing that job has a serious case of assburgers and has no clue how to create interesting gameplay. Just fucking stop doing everything in your power to waste everyone's time and being in the way of what otherwise has potential.

Dont use the official walkthrough, that is just another attempt at trolling. The ONLY way to play this is with a youtube walkthrough playing on a separate screen. But honestly don't bother, you will only get trolled and end up like me, angry and sad and wanting your wasted time back.

Game is fun and I enjoy the graphic design. Love me some Susan Bones. In general it takes a while to get the H scenes or some nudity but a good nut is always worth the wait Looking forward to the day when we can have multiple types of sex scenes with the girls.

This game definitely has a LONG way too go in terms of H content. Still, the game is an enjoyable experience to be had in it's current state. Awesome artwork, good indepth backstories of all the characters (except for a few) and baller character development, that for the most part feels beleivable to the original IP it's based off..

This game is addicting! Absolute must play for every fan of Witch Trainer games. Art is lovely, development of erotic and porn stuff is slow but every scene is worth clicking and waiting like almost none of other game there. When its finished it will be surely one of my favs and I cant wait for it. I rate it 5/5 cause its very close to a perfect game and 4/5 would be not fair. Cheers

The dialogue is terribly long and boring. The official walkthrough's lack of detailed instruction makes it even worse with unnecessary riddles/quizzes when you need to spend more time trying to understand the dialogue which seems to be badly translated from Russian. Also the mechanics is grindy which looks like it simply just want to increase you game hours. For example, a X-RAY skill requires you 7 days in game to cool down, while the reward is hardly called a reward. The story is terrible as well. I see the game wants those girls to be conquered steps by steps, but the transition never makes sense. It can be summed up as : The girl is actually the "easy-girl"/horny type from the start who tried to play innocent. As the story progresses and after the interaction with MC, you suddenly find that they're really just open-minded to the shameless stuff like changing themselves behind the curtain or dressing up the swimsuit that can expose the tits, yet the game still tries to give the impression that there's story for slow corruption in harem genre which proves to be either contradictory or hypocritical. It could've cut to the chase as a porn game or made the pace faster rather then setting various restrictions for you to break through which also slows down the story progress . Finally, I also want to stress that the characters in game also give me the feeling of frustration like how they treated the MC with schemes and bad attitudes which reminds me of those NPCs in Skyrim whose existence is merely just to troll the player with rude words like Nazeem and Balgruuf 's kids.

Way too much grind for little reward. Not much at all by way of sexual content, would be nice if it was filled out a bit. It could go in many directions but sadly not the case.

Good in alot of ways though, wish there was more saucy stuff

From the very start, the artwork is amazingly high quality and absolutely gourgeous throughout. Every character and area of the map is detailed and drawn beautifully. The artwork alone makes the game a great play.
However, the game is quite difficult to figure out, and progression can get almost impossible at times without access to a guide. The game is text-heavy at times, but it can be skipped.

A tad to much text, but it is not a problem since you can skip most of it without problems, once you played through it once or twice. It has great potential and as much as like the akabur style, with fast sexy times, I also like the slow start. I would like some more sexy, but I know, that the game is still in development and that there will come more, so I am not deducting a star only for that - the other reason is bugs, at least in 3.0F. I believe, and hope, that once the game is far further into development, or finished. Keep up the good work and give us more.

I think at some point the developer forgot that this is a porn game. After a few hours and only one sex scene I gave up. It's a shame because there clearly was a lot of work put into this, but it's just really bad.

The Game:
no sexual content yet (except.. 1 rape, which does not fit in the story. At all). Superb quality of drawings, funny story, and a new set of developers which seem to be determined to right the wrongs of the past. I hope they will succeed, this game has a lot of promise an potential.


The Thread:
very active thread with the actual developers of the game participating and helping out. Answers are usually received fast. Keep it up, y'll!

WTF, why are they making such a great scene with Minerva (Missing ANAL Scene here) and than loosing this game into a wall of text to read, bad written and surely to much of it instead of continuing on getting sex with the witches that EVERYONE expected playing that game?? Teasing is great but at the current state of the game, you can finish playing it after Sex with Minerva. Normally if the whole game would be like the beginning I would give 5 stars, because the art is exceptional good! @Devs: Pls rewrite story (less text PLEASE) and put in much more H-content and you'll get my money, I promise!

Joe Banks is a great guy, and it has great artwork, but it's still a long long way from being a good game; forget calling it great. There is just not nearly enough content to warrant playing this game in its current form. Will probably need 6 months to be legitimately worth your time, and that is if everything goes to plan.

EDIT: I wrote this last May, it probably still needs an additional 6 months starting from today. I still like Joe Banks btw.

Waiting for updates and more content! Perfect arts and unique adaptation but main questline is too hard for masturbating simultaneously but still gorgeous work! Good job, keep going but much more faster please

The interface and mechanics are excellent, and the art is very good, but the writing and narrative are unbearable. And, unfortunately, what the writing lacks for in quality is made up for in quantity. Personally, I would rather masturbate to a telenovela during the commercial break.