Review: Wartribe Academy

 Ed's H Game Review!

Wartribe Academy

Game Type: Ren'py Point and Click Sandbox

Creator: Mr. Rooster

Version Played: 0.9.6

Fantasy as a genre is so, so easy to get wrong in porn. For every success story, there are a hundred failures. Wartribe Academy so far feels like a success, though I get the feeling it is at serious risk of falling off a cliff.

It does a lot I like. The protagonist is actually skilled, the prince of the titular wartribe, and not some 19 year old kid. What's more, he actually has a major goal other than the usual "bang everyone in sight" (though there's no shortage of that, it's still a harem game after all), in the form of finding who is responsible for a military ambush that killed his mother fifteen years prior. The worldbuilding and cosmology are excellent, and I found myself drawn into the political machinations. It makes good use of Honey Select for visuals, an engine which I am increasingly tired of. The main girls range from the stereotypical fantasy and porn cliches like the bookish nerd and the Ninja, but most have some very interesting things going on (the nerd's mother is a mad scientist, and her story possesses my favorite plot twist of any route, and the Shinobi girl comes from a blacksmith family so her focus is different than you'd expect). Even the otherwise stereotypical Childhood Friend character has a few very appreciated twists on the formula, being the daughter of an admiral and harboring at least one very dark secret. The game itself does some cool things with Ren'py including optional minigames that somehow DON'T take up a ton of time or get tedious, and actual turn-based combat. Heck, even the music feels fresh and different compared to other porn games.

The basic gameplay is your usual "Click to go somewhere and see an event" you get from Mythic Manor and its clones. That said, the author did include a "fast travel" option available from the menu that lets you just Click-To-See-Event. Occasionally there are on-screen item hunts. Nothing new, but nothing overly complicated either.  The writing is largely on point, but there is very little interaction between routes at this point in time. Though Childhood Friend Cleo - easily my least favorite character - is a problem that needs solving, between her comparitively weak story, and her constantly using weird nautical nicknames, which is 10% endearing and 90% the most obnoxious character trait I've seen from a porn game girl. 

By all rights, in its current form it's an absolute winner. But I'm scared.

As I played the game, I got very scared of Feature Creep, which seems to be worming its ugly head into the game. Nearly every route has some choices which threaten to basically double the writer's workload. Massive, plot changing decisions. I mentioned Priscilla the nerd above, her plot twist and the decisions can make after it are... a level of deviation that we don't even see in BioWare's best games. For a one-person development studio, this sort of overreach is largely a death sentence, and I say that from experience, having made that exact mistake myself. Now maybe I'm projecting, but with the added workload, I don't know how this creator will manage to get this done. These aren't likely to be the only major decisions, and this is already an exponential increase in writing. You can get away with two or three choices like that, but I counted at least five, and there's probably a lot more.

I'm trying to have realistic expectations, but this is a game I can't help but root for. It's really trying something interesting, and I really hope this creator can pull off their vision. 

Pros: Good use of Ren'py and Honey Select. Very solid worldbuilding, dialogue, and plotting. Good sound and gameplay.

Cons: Feature creep seems likely. Little interaction between plotlines. If Cleo calls the MC a Guppy ONE MORE TIME I swear I will beg the writer to add a "choke a bitch" button.

Overall: 9/10

https://www.patreon.com/wartribeacademy