Femdom Academy

Game Version 0.02: Writing: Pretty readable and clever, though slightly amateurish in places, sex scenes cringe-free. Potential & Concept: The core idea of "reward-based" femdom (instead of punishment) is highly appreciated. The setting and characters have great potential. I can hardly wait to see what happens next. I'm even considering changing my Patreon subscriptions to support the developer.

Coming into this as someone who likes Koikatsu graphics, and likes dramatic femdom plots like this game's. Pros - The writing is very readable. Amateurish, but succinct and slightly clever in the way it phrases things, smooth to read for the most part, with just a handful of awkward phrases here and there. This is all I hope for in an erotic VN. - Characters aren't unlikable. I've dropped so many Ren'Py VNs because the characters felt insufferable or egocentric, so I'm happy to report that's not the case here. The male lead has a fairly bland personality, but he at least has fairly normal way of viewing things (when he takes the time to mentally form a viewpoint) and interacting with people. The heroines are generally flirty and sociable. - The sex scenes have a fairly good sexy atmosphere, they aren't cringe. - It feels like there's probably potential with these characters and plot. It just depends on what the dev does with it. Cons - Every sex scene so far is basically a handjob. Some with the male lead bound, some not. The game's story follows Japan's femdom logic of "edging clouds the male lead's thoughts and makes him complaint". It's essentially a soft femdom game with a slight BDSM aesthetic, at least in the first version which I played. I'm just putting this as a con because for a game that clearly markets itself as "femdom" people usually want something slightly more exciting than this. - The heroines are overly cryptic in every conversation, and say stuff out of the blue about how you just need to follow the rules and be obedient, or they're going to have fun with you soon, or referencing "something bigger" behind the scenes. I start to wonder whether they would have any hobbies or personality if they didn't have secrets to hint at. - The male lead has the curiosity of a brick. All this weird behavior and he is never thinking about how unusual it is or questioning it at all. Girls saying all sorts of surreal things to him and it doesn't make him think much at all. To elaborate: Spoiler The first time he ever reacts with suspicion, it's when a teacher says "Men are vital for the hope of the next generation. But since our country is... let's call it unique, we can't just let men arrive and let wherever they please" and then in reaction he thnks "This all sounds kinda shady." Like, WTF, after receiving a mysterious plane ticket slipped under your door to a foreign country, being flown out, being basically ordered into a car and brought some kind of school with zero explanation of what kind of school it is, and the first thing that triggered your sense of caution is "men can't just do whatever they please"? At least later on, when women are suddenly pulling down his pants, his reactions are more realistic as he thinks things like "I can't believe this is happening" which made it easy to self-insert there. Another example, a woman says, "A lone man on the streets of Veridia? Trust me, the women here.. they don't always hold back. Especially with a handsome guy like you." And all he mentally reacts to is that she called him handsome. I just can't self-insert as a guy like this when there's no explanation or justification for why he's so mentally disconnected. Oh, and this one line from him when he wakes up late on the second day is an instant classic: "This is bad. Like, really bad. Nobody told me anything yesterday, and I didn't even think to ask. Now what?" - The way the heroines talk is just a little too weird, to the point it never feels like the male lead is having a two-way conversation with *anyone*. The only things they know how to say are cryptic comments or subtle flirting with a possessive tone, and it feels like their words sometimes make little sense in the context. I'll give an extended example based on the first scene with a heroine. Spoiler I felt like I didn't have a clear grasp of Naomi's character and what her overall feeling or mood was when she first met the MC. She starts off blunt and seemingly annoyed by his slow responses, just telling him to get in the car if he doesn't want to walk the whole way himself. That much is clear. But then when he says thank you, she says "Don't thank me yet" which I don't understand, because that would imply that as long as he behaves in a certain way then the ride she gives him will have been indeed a favor to him, but in that case should he have just declined it and walked to the academy, which she mocked the idea of? The line "She shoots me a quick glance, her eyes saying, 'Do you even get where you've landed?'" also threw me off because I'm not sure what kind of emotion that's supposed to be... annoyance, bemusement, surprise, mockery? Then she launches into a mini-lecture warning him about Veridia, about how he needs to follow the rules to survive, and it feels slightly odd of her to emphasize this because he hasn't even been slightly disobedient to her yet, and it's a sudden topic shift. Right after that she says he's cute, I guess because he "squirmed" nervously and she found that endearing. But the way she says it is odd: "It's kinda cute. Nervous types usually pay better attention." She's being subtly flirting or dominant toward him, yet at the same time I don't know how to interpret her sudden comment about nervous types, because the implications of paying better attention and its connection to cuteness aren't apparent to me. After thinking about it for a little while, my best guess is that this means that paying better attention means learning the rules and remembering them better and being more obedient, and highly obedient boys are cute to her based on her aesthetics. But the way it's phrased seemed kind of vague in intent. After that, more sudden comments about the importance of discipline. A car ride feels like a strange place to deliver vague yet apparently crucial advice about how to behave in his new life, contrasting with the crazy efficiency of booking his plane flight within a day. Also, instead of having the car ride be silent most of the way because he feels some kind of pressure from Naomi, it would have made more sense for them to at least talk a little bit about Veridia, the place where he just chose to emigrate and knows nothing about. Again, nothing stands out as obviously completely impossible or crazy, it's just all these little details that don't feel natural and make it hard for me to immerse myself or take the story seriously. My verdict: I'd rate it a 3/5 for a first version, but lowered it a star just because my personal opinion is that this game probably won't develop in the direction that people hope. Spoiler Maybe the dev won't like that I'm saying this, but I think that this game is probably created by a fairly normie person who isn't much of a femdom fetishist but probably enjoys soft femdom elements in sex scenes, and probably plans to just throw in some more niche femdom fetishes that patrons request in a disjointed way. But the Koikatsu graphics are slightly below average anyway I'd say, making it hard to compete with more vanilla Koikatsu games, and I'm not confident that the dev will be able to write good erotic prose for any of the popular subfetishes of femdom that could attract a loyal fanbase. Maybe I'm wrong, but the writing so far feels highly vanilla, designed to appeal to as broad a base as possible, and I'm skeptical this game will continue long.

So far so good! I loved what I saw (for a v0.01). I love the direction that the dev is going with this. Too often, femdom is portrayed as 'no pleasure allowed!', but this opinion fails to note the fact that pleasure itself can be used as an incredibly powerful controlling factor in S&M, and the dev leans into this, which I love! You just don't see it enough. The only thing I would point out is that in one of the scenes, there was an additional participant (side character) being dominated. This in itself is totally fine, I felt that it helped to add foil and explanations to the current situation. My only caution for the dev is to not fall into the trap where the MC becomes an observer of kink content instead of its recipient. Some games fall into this trap, where we get to view a side character having an H-scene while we (the MC) get to... watch. Again, I'm not accusing the dev of doing this, since the MC was also having a mirrored experience, but I just wanted to point it out so as to potentially avoid that pitfall in the future. Overall, I was sad when I got to the end (which is hard to say lately)! I can't wait to see more! Bookmarked!

Update x0.02 ...And the dev ruined it. Its no longer a novel. Its just endless grind of 3 choices of the same repeated scenes to build your score with each girl to maybe reach a scene at some unknown point. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz 4 stars down to 2. Review at v0.011. I really enjoyed the story so far. The tone is perfect with reward over punishment, creating the perfect environment for willing compliance. I hope this concept continues in the story; punishment is only when doing something wrong, reward for being good. Most femdom AVN's are only about punishment and often are just cruel, brutal and not fun. The story has a light touch and you feel yourself there with the MC taken along by everything. The downsides: I am surprised at the beginning when applying to Veridia, that you only have to click on the link an enter your name. I would have thought that you would have to provide some pictures and answer a personality questionnaire. I think they would only want certain types of malleable males with an accepting personality. I could see lots of guys with different personalities rejecting everything straight away and demanding their million dollars, to the point of violence. Therefore on a practical level, they would have to pay for lots of flights back for those that didn't comply, instead of doing a simple online check beforehand. Also why do we always have to have the same cliché of missing your alarm so being late on the first day. We have already seen it in countless VN's! Why can't he just wake with his alarm and go to the Academy, he still wouldn't know where to go and need help. Being late is completely unnecessary. It is early in the VN's development but the text also keeps referring to the MC as Nick even after you have changed it so hopefully this will be changed (meeting Minami for the first time and Minami first day at the Academy). The name is correct in the scene with Yumiko. I would also appreciate the option to change the opacity of the text box. I am disappointed with the look of the VN. It's done in my least favourite visual style for an AVN, being anime/cartoony. It just doesn't fit an adult visual novel to me. Basically, visually it isn't sexy, so you only have the words. I appreciate many will disagree with me but the vast majority of real looking femdom games don't have as good a story as this and go too far in violence and tone. This has the story but the look doesn't back it up. I'm just thinking how good this could be. I have so far only found one femdom game that looks amazing and had a great story and it was abandoned. So many try and just disappoint. If this one looked more realistic and real world, it would be 5 stars.