Others - Completed - Strive for Power [v1.0d] [Maverik]

Abandoned not completed as the developer is remaking the game from scratch but still a good prototype that make me look forward to the remake.

A trainer game with good system, recommand trying it out to get hyped for the remake !

I know this game since (I think it was) 5.12 and did support it on patreon for some time (sorry but I am a poor part-time working student and it isn't an AAA game).

1. The game is slave management based. It offers a decent story based campaign, which after you end are free to continue playing it as a sandbox. You can also start a sandbox campaign.
2. While there are other slave management games this is imo the best one, since it has the most polished gameplay.
3. There is a ton of mods/picture packs on itch.io so the game doesn't get that repetitive. Every slave has passive traits and other stats and including the pictures it gives a good replay value.
4. It isn't machine translated.

Cons:
1. There are NO Animations. Which can be a minus for some players. It is purely text based.
2. There is NO Voice Acting.



Verdict: The modding and all the ways you can interact with the slaves definitely outweigh the cons, but I'm sure some players won't find a text-based game appealing.
I would have liked a way to get more quests or reset them. Since I keep mostly female slaves having 3-4 quests for male really slows me down. The start feels a little slow since bandits are strong and you have to cherry pick weaker ones.

It pains me a lot to give this game a 4, because it really deserves a 5, if only some of the problems were fixed.

The premise is really fun - you are basically what amounts to a slave hunter, you hunt for people on the streets to be trained and sold into slavery, and you dabble in magic on the side. You can be as nice or as cruel about it as you want.

The story is almost non-existant, but the game doesn't really require a story. It just kind of builds itself as you play. Because of that, there is no real character to the random people you encounter and capture, they don't really DO anything on their own, there is only a set of numbers that determines their abilities, whether they will allow you to fuck them (if they don't you can always just rape them), and whether they will try running away (they will if you badly mistreat the slaves that aren't in jail).

The game is text-based, and not graphics-based, and while I would love to see actual animations for the naughty things we get to do, I can totally understand the artistic direction and limitations with the engine. However, this ties into a problem that I see with the game, which is...

There are no procedurally generated portraits/models. The only people that get a face are you, the main character, and the main story girls. To everyone else, well you can add a portrait, I believe there's a Patreon reward to get more portraits, but by default they won't have one. That... I think is actually a problem. The procedural generation doesn't have to be fancy, you don't have to go full-on machine learning, but it just kinda has to be there, hell SimBro has managed it, so can this game. 10 bodily features to modify and 2 options for each feature would already create 1024 unique portraits.

The sound is kinda fucked and hissy. It feels like an old, badly used vinyl record, not in a good way. I have no idea why that is, it's not game-breaking, it's just kinda annoying. I am even thinking it's a problem with my hardware, because surely the author would have noticed that?

Mechanics of sex (which is, let's admit it, why we're here) are very primitive. It is very nice that the author has tied a lot of things into the sex system, so it feels actually connected to the world instead of being thrown on top of things, like in so many other games, but the amount of things to do is still very limited (e.g. for a game that's all about slavery and with rich rape options, facefucking as an option to do to a girl has kinda been forgotten - you even have a ring gag for forced mouth options, but there are no such options). There are also some nitpicks, e.g. how you do things one by one (you can't spank a girl while fucking her, you have to fuck her, then spank her, then fuck her), and so on.

The start of the game feels a little... Too luck-based. Here I have to go on a tangent.

The start of a human in a human city is kind of as follows: after starting the game, you save, so it's easy to restart. You go to the guild of mages, you receive an order for a slave, you go to the guild of slaves, to see if there are any slaves you could just buy to pass this mission, you go to the brothel and find a girl there, you give her food and bring her home, give her attributes so she can do foraging (she has high wit for that).

Now, I'm assuming you want to be nice to your companion, and to this new girl, because they are both kinda decent. And after all, this new girl is one of the very few that have portraits!!!

If there was a girl in the slave guild, you're in luck! Now you just train her and give her away for the quest.

If there wasn't, you go to the market, you get rope, a dagger and leather armor, you throw a point into strength and a point into endurance, you get whichever girl you prefer to get, you give her your rusty dagger, you put armor and dagger on yourself, and you go outside. You keep walking around the outside until you either see bandits assaulting a bystander, or a human girl walking around, in which case you attack.

You may be caught out in the open by bandits - you should run away and hope they don't take too much HP from you. You may lose the fight you have picked, in which case, you restart. And restart. And keep restarting until you win a fight and receive a girl with high enough beauty. Then you train her.

It took me about 10 restarts to figure out this strategy, and 5 more to get a girl. That I then had to give away for 250 gold. This is WAY too many restarts.

I would really love to give the game a 5, but sadly... I just can't. It's not a 5, it's not "as close to perfection as you get". If I could give it a 4.5, I would, the game is great and I really recommend it. But man... All these things seem so obvious to me. I have no idea why they weren't to the author.

i rated four star since i know this game is both orginal,detailed and amazing but i had encountered a few problems such as surviving since there was no way to change the difficulty it made it really exicting but it was so intense and fustrating to survive longer than a week tbh if not for the pic upload thing i wouldve rated 2 but even i admire you for your diverse game it made me realize just how difficult it can probably be to manage people under you i look forward to more games ( im sure im getting another warning for this message but oh well )

Most of the game is about management, and the management just SUCKS.

You need to tread an extremely specific line or you will find yourself with no money, no food, and slaves who hate you and who you can't discipline AT ALL or they just run away.

Just go play something else.

Really overall well made and interesting game. The gameplay isn't tedious and allows you to explore your options, plus there is story progression to keep you moving forward with a clear objective. It isn't overall punishing and allows you to take your time doing things. There's no time limit or anything. It's overall really well made and I look forward to seeing what else the developer does.

Reviewing v.0.5.25 (which seems to be the final version)

I found it pretty lacking as far as management aspect is concerned. Slave training process is pretty much a cookie cutter, and you can't screw it up. This is mostly because training methods can be spammed, and permanent psychological damage is non-existent. Spam fear to reduce rebelliousness to zero, then be nice to them for a couple of "dates", fuck them consensually, ta-daa! Training is basically complete. The upside, though, is that you don't have to grind too much and the game is very forgiving, unlike many others from this genre. Suitable for beginners.

The game has some interesting ideas like perk system, alchemy system, sex scene system and others, but they aren't integrated or balanced with each other and slave training too much.

The same goes for the story mode, it's kinda disconnected from the management aspect. The story revolves mostly around navigating the map and fighting. It features 9 recruit-able characters with unique art, and some CGs (1-2 per character), which is nice, but not really groundbreaking.

As for the plot itself... To be honest, it's quite bland. Act as a goody two shoes and you'll get the best reward (unique slaves and spells) 8 out of 9 times. So... you're a lawful good slaver? Makes no sense to me, but that's the 'optimal' way to play the game.

Another flaw of the story mode is that you get a lot of girls at the end of the story line, so these acquisitions aren't really meaningful to you. As it is common with this type of games, the start is the hardest point of the game. The story does offer you 3 characters basically 'for free' and these 3 characters will be more than enough to form a combat party for the rest of the game, even though they don't have the best stats or perks.

And the worst offense, there seems to be no meaningful difference between characters that have joined you willfully and those who have not. I would expect that 'free' characters would not allow you to sell or brand them, but apparently they don't care. Not that selling a unique character is a good idea, but still.

6/10, mostly for the story mode, if it wasn't for that it'd be lower.

Awesome training game!

- Much better combat mechanics than Slave Maker. You can fight as a team with your girls. Some combat areas of the game are actually quite challenging if you don't know what you're doing.
- There is actually a plot.
- Grinding at certain points in the game but not annoying.
- Beautiful custom art.
- Option to customize images.
- Randomized client requirements for selling slaves making it not as tedious as other games that require you to do the same thing over and over and over.
- Fantastically small saved game files. You can save as many times as you want. You can even edit them.
- You will find violence and NSFW stuff but this is nowhere near some of the stuff in other games that can make you puke.
- I rate it 9/10 because it can still be improved.

Had a ton of fun with this!
Excellent management with plenty of customizations to tailor to your kinks.
The story and gameplay is pretty solid, combat is decent and makes for a fun distraction from managing your slaves.

Rewiev of v0.5.23c

This game is one of my most favored management games. It is text based with option to add images to slaves through imagepacks along with a mod that randomly assigns images based on tags in names.

Gameplay is the meat and focus of this game. You start with creating your character and have a big array of different races to choose from.
A few different backgrounds that add small gameplay changes or boost your start. You also create your first slave along this process and you can customise detailed things as what eye color, tail shape, size of body parts etc. There is a sandbox and story mode for you to choose aswell. Once in the game you are free to do as you please. You could go outside and try your luck in the wilds and hope to find good loot or a good captive. You could also go to the slave guild and take a special contract where you must deliver a slave with certain stats, gender or look. Go to the mage guild and learn spells which can help both in and out of combat.

The way to train you slaves is done by pressing interaction and you can choose two modes meet and sex. Meet is where most of the training will occur to increase obedience, loyalty and/or fear. Sex is important because the only way you gain mana is if you or your slave orgasm. You could if you are impatien force yourself on your slaves and gain a bit of mana or try and improve loyalty and obedience to the point of where they are willing and i believe gain more mana through more total orgasms. Your slaves also get desires during sex you can fulfill to increase their lewdness.

Once a slave get enough experience through combat or work you need to talk to them and fulfill their request. Their request is randomly chosen and can therefore in the early game screw you a bit when your resources are scarce. When a level is completed you are rewarded with 2 attribute points to put into different attributes until they have reach their max. There is also secondary stats on your slaves which require learning points to increase and this is gained by training them during a meet interaction or having them spend their time in the library.

Final note on gameplay is that to upgrade your mansion you require gold and uppgrade points which can be aquired on different ways. You can spend a slaves attribute points to get 2 for 1, sell a captured slave and get a certain amount based on grade. Lastly you can get them by completing quests too.

There are also a good amount of keyboard shortcuts which makes this game much less click heavy and is worth a mention. I would have liked to see more shortcuts so it could be played with only keyboard.

The story is interesting enough to keep wanting to explore but nothing special, if you play story mode that is. There are also a decent amount of side quests to find and complete. All of the side quests have one girl which depending on your choices can become your slave.

I like the art one the few characters that have their own art in the base game. Most of these characters also have their own special sex scenes that you can achieve.

Biggest downside for me when playing this is peformance during combat. After a few or more hours the combat get low fps which makes it frustrating but not gamebreaking. This could be on the games side or mine but something to be aware of going in. There may also be bugs here and there but none that come to mind.

I recommend this game wholeheartedly because it is a good game in the current state.

EDIT: one thing i forgot to mention is that if you dont like futa, furry or wish to have only men or only futa you can change it in option on the main menu.

Strive for Power is text-based RPG with pictures in which you play slaver in fantasy world.
You play in sandbox world, but there is a main quest which you can do at your own pace. There are also some side & repeatable quests.
There is lot of things you can do, you can play to finish story, build harem, train & sell slaves or fight bandits for example.
Game comes with some graphics, but for better experience, I recommend portrait pack.
Game is quite complex, there are many races, but writing in game is often a bit uninspired in my opinion.
Sex is text-based, but becomes very repeating & boring quite soon, especially when you have many slaves. Slave taming is quite undeveloped at the moment in my opinion and slaves often behave like spoiled brats.
Fighting is the worst part of game in my opinion (like console RPGs, so some might like it), there is ton of it, and it is extremely repeating.
There is wiki & ingame tutorial/help, but game mechanics are not explained in many cases.
Although this is early version (v0.5.23c in my play-through), game can offer many hours of play (depending how much you like it).
Game is also not too difficult to cheat in CE (but I couldn't find pointers) or save edit, which is always plus for those with little time/patience.

At moment, I would say that this is a good game with potential to become really excellent.
I would recommend this game to anyone who can read and like fantasy and is not turned down with slavery genre (it's not quite grim, most slaves behave more like quests than slaves anyway).

This game...

basically it is a honeypot. It promotes itself on its own homepage and here on F95 with nice western graphics. The background of the slavor guild and the start-menu screen... and that is everything. Everything else is pure Anime and Hentai style.

As a person like me, that hates everything that has to do with Anime/Manga/Hentai etc.. it was a pretty hefty slap in the face when I met the first NPC .. especially when she drops her clothes.

But i got a catch on this game. It is by far one of the best in this sector while we speak about Technics, Complexity and HUD/GUI graphics.

Anime/Hentai is a pure matter of taste. So, not my taste.. which means it wont affect my rating.

The Sex.. aside from the sex-pictures that you can unlock with certain NPC in this game. And we talk about ONE picture for each.. ok, two on some.
Everything else is text based. But you have a lot of options and whatever is your taste, you'll find it in here.

At the current state (0.5.23c) there has not much balancing being done by the developers. Sometimes a slave require an item to hop from level 1 to level 2, that is impossible to aquire before going level 4 with a full equipped battle group. Just sell this slave then (your bad if he/she is your starting slave, just start a new game then ^^). Most battles are waaay to easy, you NEVER need to use the "Block" function if you have a hammer and a chainmail. Some of the good stuff just pop in in the very end of the game.
And some NPC as well show at the far end of the game. An entire City, a very anticipated alchemist is so far away in the game, that it becomes useless on aquire. (for example, there is an Elf NPC wich can join your household. She is level 1 if you get her. But you just can get her, so far in the endgame, that even your worst slave is already level 7-12. What makes the NPC useless and just one mouth more to feed. Same for other NPC.. if you not run down the main story like mad, you will enconter them when it is useless.). But as far as I know, the devs working on the game balance. So I am happy if they are done and I can try it out.

All in all, this game has some very addictive style to me. I really enjoy playing it. Even with my stance against hentai stuff. The mechanics, the GUI graphics, the music/sound, the freedom to do what I want catches me.

So from my point: This is what i call a very good slave-simulator game where I wish more of. ... and maybe. ... with the graphic style that they advertise.. not a hughe honey pot.

Game has pretty good amount of content and is story-rich. Location styling is good. Combat is actually not so good and i find it being either too challenging (at he beginning with no cheats) or boring to the late game (I would suggest more fast forward for enemy turns).
Modding option is great. Hope the game will be updating =)

This is a great game! It's a fun slave trainer game with a good system for using, training, and profiting of off your slaves. The racial variety is fun and the new zones are cool but we never got to explore all of them.

While I like this game quite a bit, I think it lacks in some places.

Story is simple. Good, in mine opinion, but too short. It's just a few quests for the guild, a plot to discover and choice to stay loyal or betray the mage order. And that's it. While it could be expanded quite a little bit more. On the loyal path, after becoming the headmaster of the Wimborn order, to find those two siblings with thier associates, stop thier plans to make civil war and bring them to justice. Or, on the traitors path, to take down the rest of the loyalists in the area fast enough before they make powerful resistance and prepare for arriving of the royal army.

The game have very nice system of managing your manor with, of crouse, your slaves. But there is, in mine opinion, poor choice of jobs they can do. No option for making supplies, which are simply dried food, forging weapons and armor in forge which you could build near your manor, or making building materials in your lumberjack camp near forest. There is plenty ideas of jobs. And, which is funny, MC can't do any of them. Just fight and explore.

And about the fight. The game is easy, in mine opinion. While the start is quite harsh, mostly because of poor agility, low armor and bad weapon, after a hour you can easily fight one battle after another almost without losing single point of health. And if you ran out of energy you can just use spell to restore it and continue your jurney. I shouldn't complain about that, MC is in mage order after all. Mages are powerful, right? Well...

Most of those spells is not that useful. Not even single one is multiple targets. All are single target. In the end you will forget about them, because good old warhammer is better in smashing your enemies.

Also with few spells there is actually no point to manage your manor anymore, because you can just defeat some bandits or elves, make them the perfect slaves and sell them on the market to make a lot of money, and I mean a lot of them.

And as I mentione amove bulding materials. Player have to obtain points to upgrade the manor. I think it is quite stupid, because it is easy to obtain them, while it is also quite anoying.
I think building materials obtained for gold is better idea than points. They can't be cheap, and of course player have to make or buy them a lot to upgade manor and obtain them even more to build new building. This could easily make better balance, because amount of gold you can recive from selling slaves is quit large.

This game have an great potential. I would give it 6,5/10.

Hook:
Manage a fantasy brothel/harem and explore and do quests in the well-realized world around you.

Best:
Many customization options for PC and NPCs.
Lots of sexy activities to participate in and send your slaves to.
Can load your own images for the generated NPCs.
Pretty good mod ecosystem. (But can only load one mod concurrently, atm).
Active and responsive Developer.
Completed main quest line and repeatable semi-random sub-quests.
Very erotic sex-system with a mix-and-match "infinite combinations" style of sexual iteration with anywhere from 1:1 relations to 8 person (or creature) orgies.

Worst:
UI is functional but plain. Sometimes too much clicking to get from A to B.
Learning curve is steep in default difficulty. Progression is slow in the beginning.
Generated NPC girls have no images by default. Must DL an image pack or make your own.
Game is 'feature complete', so don't expect any feature updates besides minor bug fixes.

Score: 8.7 / 10

ver: 5.20a modded + image packs
date played: 12/30/18

Quick review:

This is a slave management game in the vein of Slave Maker and Jack-O-Nine-Tails. It's got beautiful art and you can add more with image packs. It puts you in the driver's seat as a (potentially) rapey male dom, which I appreciate. It's loaded with quests, character storylines, and personal slave training.

It needs a little more content, and a small amount of grind creeps into the game. It's not perfect, but it's good. Love it. This is now the bar for slave management games as far as I'm concerned.

The Management part of the game is near flawless.
The performance could be better but the author is working on it so that wont be an issue anymore.
I really like the written characters in the story, I just wish there were more of them, or at least art for the existing ones' scenes. No blue-balling in the game eighter, the leveling system works for me, it seems well thought out, I never felt as if i was too powerful, I always had to think if i wanted to engage in a major fight or not. THe art style is really charming and semi-realistic as well, it fits the whole dark middle ages fantasy setting pretty well. Some polishing might be warrented though, some of the scenes seemeed rushed.

Some grinding, mostly can be avoided with the cheats. Not really a fan of games where you have slaves you need to seduce (I tend to think a game should be either a slavery game or a seduction game) but this game has enough content for me to be willing to put up with that. Lots of stuff to do.

Based on ver 0.5.19c. Strive currently has the skeleton of a solid slave manager/brothel type game. It is of the "buy slave, train slave, sell for profit" genre similar to Jack o Nine Tails (but without the creepy cannibalism fixation). The UI and basic mechanics are workmanlike and in very playable condition. However, the "household management" functions are slightly limited and a little tiresome to actually manage.

Strive is text-based, and so non-unique slaves are largely ciphers of names, descriptions, and statistics--and there are lots of sex-related and not-sex-related numbers to juggle with no consistent or integrated way to see them all. Slaves have health, energy, stress, obedience, and a short list of more static physical and mental stats. You will have to swap screens to manage them all, and the presentations are very different between, say, the slave detail screen in the brothel, the "capture-a-slave-after-combat" interface, and the "equip-a-slave" screen. It's understandable, I guess, that some of the stats are hidden behind the "mind-reading spell" mechanic. That's a legitimate design choice. But it doesn't have to mean that managing those stats needs to be tedious--mind-reading is well integrated into the buy-a-slave screen, for instance, but shoddily done in its after-combat incarnation. The UI is otherwise functional, and you do get a slave spreadsheet that summarizes some of the important statistics for your whole contingent.

To make the game a little more visual, custom portraits and body images are supported--but you have to provide the images yourself. The Strive community is small but despite this there are a few image packs and even some mods floating around.

The quest content of the game appears to be either totally or nearly complete--unusual for this genre when still in development. The main quest appears to be playable from one end to the other, but it doesn't have a lot of depth in my opinion, and the first half feels like tutorial content. There are several side-quests that are mostly for obtaining NPCs as sorta-unique slaves. The "sandbox" mode is playable, but you do lose unique quest content by not playing the "story" mode.

***It also does appear that sandbox mode prevents you from discovering one merchant who sells critical alchemy items. You have to find them as exploration rewards, and that slows progression down to an enormous degree. This is a critical oversight.***

As for porn, though, the porny parts are almost completely isolated from the rest of the game. First, you have a handful of one-off events: text-and-image scenes with specific town NPCs and NPC slaves, some of which are only available in story mode. Like most games in this genre, you slaves can do night jobs, some of which are pornographic. Disappointingly, though, sexy night jobs (whore, exotic whore, etc.) are not described in the kind of detail that other slave management games provide. This is a porn failure for this game and takes away from the "brothel management" part of the game: when you assign a slave to whore herself, you're just doing it so that you get 50 more gold or whatever that evening, and not for any text porn you might have been hoping to read. You can rape defeated enemies in combat, but again this isn't fleshed out in the way one would expect in this genre.

The real bulk of the sex in the game is the "sex interaction" mode, where 100% of the text-based sex takes place. You pick a willing slave or three or ten, maybe add an assistant and some livestock (seriously), and then there are a wide variety of individual actions in the "interaction" screen that each produce one or two lines of fairly generic (but not badly written) text. A good imagination is recommended. However, I must commend the game on allowing you to have an orgy with, for instance, seven slaves and a dog and three horses, even if there isn't a whole lot for everyone to be doing at once. There is a credible attempt at allowing simultaneous interactions.

Even with a brothel management engine, combat engine, map exploration, a dozen or so races, unique enchantments, and the other RPG features that are already in the game's framework, the game still cries out for more content. The amount of work that the devs have done so for does show, but it feels as if there was much more intended to be included. I understand, though, that the game's main quest is complete, and that does not bode well for the prospects of further content. It would be a shame not to add more unique NPCs, more quests, and better-fleshed-out sex interactions. With the understanding that the game is still in active development, my final message is this: the skeleton is here, and it's nice to work with and look at, but we all know how much nicer it would be with meat on its bones.