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A bunch of fixes make the game much more pleasant to play (now characters out on missions come back, crying characters with low blue bar don't stay that way forever). There're still some issues with the core gameplay but for the content, that's largely admissible so don't take this as me complaining, I like this game and am just giving suggestions and critiques.

TL;DR: I really like this game and went on a brainstorming tirade to think about how to make it better.

To offset the critiques I will first note some things I love:

• I love the race system, it's not rigid and has tonnes of variation in possibilities (at least as far as I can tell). my dungeon master was a black-furred wolf lady and one of the people who she impregnated gave birth to a red-furred wolf since her mother was a red-headed elf. That was really cool and I'd love to see more of that sorta stuff.
• The AI Shojou Ai like inventory and systems sound really cool with having a bunch of items to equip and use in crafting
• There's so much variation in character creation possibilities (I love character creators so this is automatically a huge huge plus)
• As someone who loved both dungeon management games like Dungeon Keeper and colony sims like Dwarf Fortress, the idea here is really cool: capture and buy minions, have children with them, or do lewd stuff, it's your dungeon; that's super cool

Noted Bugs

• If you continually ask someone how they are it will restart the animation they make when they are spoken to, this will mean they will slowly move towards the camera (if done long enough go through the camera)
• The rotate bar will rotate only the main person, instead of both characters while in an interaction with two people
• Seemingly randomly my futa keeper became pregnant, this could have been because of an interaction where she took the place of the sub but all other characters at the time were female
• If you start alchemising then back out the selected ingredients are still there when you return but aren't visible so I had no idea why I wasn't able to select ingredients until I hit the button to craft and was given the result of the previously added ingredients

Gameplay Notes

The alchemy system feels awful to use, you have to buy ingredients then use them blindly to get things you likely don't want and won't use, I used it more in my first playthrough on 0.16.1 but now I just don't care to mess with it when the act itself isn't fun and the reward is minimal

• Maybe have the ingredients imply the result instead of ambiguous flowers (an ingredient that means "grow" plus an ingredient that means "body" gives you a random potion of growth for some part of the body)
• Have ingredients be given by gameplay or a buildable room as well (like killing invaders giving you red flowers, raising the dead giving black flowers, some missions giving flowers, the farm giving green flowers randomly, or a flower garden which gives x amount of random flowers every y time

The fact that you can't interact with characters who hate you while they are prisoners is silly given that this is a game about dungeons (where you can buy and keep slaves) and all characters consent

• If it's an issue of balancing then perhaps have a reverse relationship metre: at the moment you can only have a good relationship with someone, maybe add a submissive bar which when increased will allow the player to force interactions (maybe balance it with having a chance of retaliation, a negative event, or a mind-break style mechanic where their personality can change)
• Perhaps have it so that a character's relation only matters if they're not a prisoner but otherwise is ignored

The "spam 'how are you'" exploit is still in the game and I'm not sure about an easy solution: as it stands it takes forever to relations up with a person if you don't spam 'how are you'

• I have the feeling this will be remedied once the "tell me about yourself" option is implemented but I can't be sure
• Perhaps having small "get me an X" quests to increase relations

Currently, Dungeon: Keep Her is stuck in a genre divide between a dungeon management game like it's namesake and colony sims like Rim World, and in a way also just management games in general. It has the absolute minimum to be both and does neither very well, that's not to say it can't do both or do both well, just that as it stands it's in a weird place. There's no real reason to kill invaders unless you don't like them or want their clothing but don't want them as a prisoner (though you can always sell them so no biggy there). There's also little reason to tend to any individual's needs as their needs feel largely inconsequential (just ask them "how are you" twice to fill up their social, pack them with veggies if they're hungry, pay for a wash if they're dirty, etc). In terms of management games, it gives you resources and events but events are just "oh no someone got near the dungeon, wanna fight them?" and resources are mostly 

• Work more on the dungeon management elements:
  • Give dungeon management better incentives such as rewards for killing invaders, quests to kill or imprison certain invaders
  • Have different races or different attributes mean better work for certain jobs such as wolfies being worse at crafting or elfs being better at researching (akin to Dungeon Keeper)
  • Introduce party combat: just adding the ability for a 2v2 or 1v3 would greatly increase the fun factor of the dungeon management especially if different races have different combat abilities ala Dungeon Keeper
  • Add more personalization with layout (this is harder as how the game currently works but would help with all elements overall), just the ability to have rooms and corridors or differently sized rooms but keep how character navigation and positioning (per room positioning that is) how it is or a more thorough rework of the room system, either way will make the game more fun to play
  • There's currently a rough outline of layout mattering with the existence of spike and barbs rooms but both are so minor that they only matter before you have a good fighter (at which point every single invasion is a cake-walk), maybe add more interesting tactical options for rooms or change how invader AI works rather than just straight forward (which again would indicate a larger rework of how rooms work unfortunately). Imagine a treasure room that stores gold for the player but if reached by a raider will have them book it for the entrance with some of the gold, maybe allowing the player to trap the room at cost of money to rearm it after every time it's triggered, or a room which administers poison on dark brambles then it's activated by entering any ritual room which makes them woozy or somehow injured.
• Work more on the colony sim elements:
  • Allow for more personalisation of the dungeon rooms such as needing non-prisoners to have their own rooms or barracks, allowing the player to furnish them to each character
  • Make characters have traits and needs that make management of them more interesting (there's already the basis of this but all characters sound and act nearly identically as it stands) 
  • Give more activity to characters, maybe make excavation an action instead of instant, and have characters need to do more than just bathe and eat and even then there's stuff to add, for example, imagine having a dining hall where characters are set to eat at set times every day (either a random midday/afternoon/night/morning per character or something else) or barracks where character have to take turns sleeping maybe with varying levels of quality so the player can favour some minions over others or something
• Work on the management game elements:
  • Add more events with decisions and rewards or penalties for maneuvering them
  • Add effects such as topside issues that influence the dungeon (like an X race surge which means they cost and sell for less and there are more invaders of that race, or a fertility increase/estrus period for all of X beast race, blight on all food production)

The UI is pretty all over the place. It starts with the character creator of entirely dropdown menus in one large scroll box which sometimes resets unrelated fields when a field is changed, and ends with the oddities of the character menu or inventory screen. This is kinda expected from an indie game, especially one trying to do so much, but it'd still be really great to have better-designed UI overall.

There is a severe issue with quantity of people pushed upon the player. The game can only really handle around ten before it begins to have issues and logically you really only need around four to six to handle operations of the dungeon (example: food production is so fast with one fertile or fully upgraded farm that any more is just going to be excess no matter how many people you have). The game is constantly throwing new people at you with invaders, people offering to join, slaves, and potentially children. This is both cool and awful: cool because I love seeing new characters and especially new crosses through pregnancy but it's awful because there's no need for any of them and they'll just wander around doing nothing save for lowering the framerate and performance.

• Add new ways to use people: there's already the capability to scrap a body for meat to eat or sell an imprisoned minion, so why not add ways to have perpetual trade routes or minions with jobs outside the dungeon (this would need lots of thought as currently there's not much someone could do outside the dungeon), or even once factions are added, a way to trade people from a faction (prisoners who want to return or criminals who the faction is looking for) to the faction to gain affinity or something of the like
• Balance resources: food needs to be worth less or produced less, currently there's a really really low upper limit to the use there
• It's a bit out there but maybe allow the player to open a second dungeon in a harder location where they have to content with worse conditions and stats, they would be able to send characters from dungeon to dungeon and be able to have more people without effecting the fps too much (just have the unloaded dungeon not running and run a quick estimation of what it's resources would be once it's reloaded or something)

Balance is all over the place in general. Whether it's combat or resources: it's always slanted in the player's favour. That's not necessarily a bad thing in a sandbox lewd game like this, most people aren't looking for a challenge while "enjoying themselves", but the fact that it's so easy to do everything is kinda sad for those who do.

• Change the balance of combat by randomizing who gets the first turn unless it's the dungeon master (player character/"you")
• Change the balance of combat by making the use of an item end the turn or just cost an energy or something
• Change the balance of combat by making it so that you can't redraw your hand if you have no blue bar
• Change the balance of resources by making gold less prevalent mid to late game and make food less useful or more hard to get
•  Allow things like "fertile", "rich minerals" and similar either able to be depleted or change randomly or something 

The itch.io formatting has stopped allowing me to make lists so I'll stop it here, plus I don't wanna write any more of a novel and potentially annoy anyone. Thank you for reading.

Thank you KeepHer Dev for all the hard work! I'm excited to see where this game goes in the future!

This game made me go and watch the LiSpeaks videos and these two are adorable, the og designs and these designs are great, and the art here is lovely. The one issue I see is that you don't actually need to stop holding down the mouse, even on the highest level it only removes a heart, no timeout, no loss of progress, no failure. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely makes the game a non-challenge. I first played it through playing normally then got curious as I had noticed there was no immediate loss upon getting caught.

Anyways, lovely game; a wonderful tribute to some great character designs and an unfortunately missed ship.

Absolutely lovely so far! The art is wonderful, the music--while repetitive--is decent (at least it's not droning or annoying), the writing is good, just general kudos really! This doesn't feel like a parody/fan/inspired (or whatever you would call it) game, and I mean that in the best way possible. Without the spell names or name-dropping WW stuff, this is pretty much its own thing. I'm loving the characters so far, Audrey being my favourite (gotta love the catgirls and sciency types), so I can't wait for whatever comes with her and the rest next. 

My only qualms would be some weird UI stuff, like the navigation around the school being rather wack right now: there is no back-to-map button on the furthest-out view. I ran into the Grace soft-lock on my first run without having saved before the bug so I had to restart, at least that's only a few minutes of waiting through dialogue. The match mini-games are really cool but have an issue where the tiles take up an entire space so it's very difficult (since you have to move the mouse very quickly and precisely) to get certain diagonals where there is an adjacent tile either way from the diagonal. Lastly, as someone who only vaguely remembers the books and movies from my childhood: maybe describe what an "unbreakable vow" is and what it means to take one (especially in this case). I clicked the option during the bartender confrontation thinking it was a sort of show of goodwill on my part: "I will get you the resources, you have my word" sort of thing; instead bro turns around to do the reverse of that and instead does it so that bartender-man won't go back on his word. Why would he even go back on his word, and it's some sort of curse thing? At least you can repair your relationship with bartender-guy easily enough (seemingly a vow that will punish you if you go against it as a sign of mistrust isn't that big a' deal).

The biggest issue as I see it is the journey thing; it is so ludicrously punishing and doesn't really help the player much. It's a good prototype but there needs to be rebalancing and better map generation. I went back to play it again in order to write this comment but even then I felt that while it's a solid prototype, it needs polish and more work to be fun. The lack of animations (as in spell particle effects, one-frame attack animations, anything) and feedback (sound effects, particle effects (again)) really makes it feel like I'm playing a student project. The loot feels like you're getting nothing since it's just churned up into dust for spells. Seemingly there's a "crafting" system but I can only get to it by what seems to be a glitch, if you click the normal attack/stick button in combat it has a chance to bring up the crafting menu, which I never tinkered with unfortunately but it is there. Moving around the realm map is janky and needs some pathing so that you can move more than one tile at a time. The map generation not-irregularly will generate unwinnable maps, mountains in between the player and all the portals and the blue ore/crystals. If you scroll while in the map view, you may either zoom in or zoom out and bring up the log, this is likely just a bug or oversight but is annoying since the scroll/zoom increment is so small.

That may sound like a bunch of complaining but I'm serious when I say this game is good and doesn't have many issues; it's just I'm a neat-picky freak who has been a game-dev since they were a child so now sees the flaws in everything: my bad. 

I'll indulge myself a moment and say that I hate the MC, I've seen Magic Academy a few times but only started playing HGames with male MCs recently, and I was right about this guy: he looks pompous and acts douchy, that is initially grating but gets better when you get to make decisions which better shape him as a person (i.e. make him less of a stuck-up douche). As a character, I like that idea, as a person, he's the worst. But that's meant in good faith as while there's only a little of it so far, he seems to be at least reprehensible in the long run even if most of what's running is his mouth. I'm always harsher towards male characters though (as a lesbian who writes things with mostly female characters, shame on me), so if MC was a lady, I'd find it less bad on the onset. If there ever is an option to add a futa or female MC I'd be glad but with how much that would require more art and animation work, I'm fine with just the male MC, I'd rather have more meaningful content personally :P

My dearest apologies for such a long and droning comment, I do that sometimes when I like something ;^v^. I mean the best. Thanks for your work team Wild Pear Games!

TL;DR: great game, good characters, cool idea, some weird UI, the battle/realm hopping whatever is a cool idea with much need for development. Amazing job devs, keep up the amazing work!

This game is fascinating and fun. While I initially played it a while back after having found it, I've since played it iirc three times, one of these times being with some friends whom I played the series up to chapter four with. It's horny but also just fun, interestingly enough. The game does tip toe into both horror and horny while keeping it interesting all the way through. I started playing because it has le lesbians but stayed because it was so wacky and fun.
Big recommend from me as long as you're okay with the odd fetishes discovered and weird horror segments, and even if you are unsure; it's free so try it out as long as you're comfortable with it. Either way, it's fun and I can't wait for the next chapter!
Cheers Bondco dev!

I saw the work you posted on the cosmos and such to Twitter and YT, it's looking really good! As a dev myself I understand wanting to put out a good product (as seen by me never uploading anything ever :P) so I get why you've not posted an update in a while; you've been very good about giving updates all things considered. I didn't play around with the male options personally but the option to have masculine characters is really nice, especially in such a dynamic fashion (looking at you Ai Shoujo AI which has two different models for male/female characters). I always strive to have super modular systems in my games as well so that adding things is super easy and fun so I like seeing all the stuff you've been up to with the animation system and such.

Other than cruddy M&F games on Newgrounds, SDT was probably the first hgame I played as well; though I watched stuff people posted before I played it. That was before I found out I was gay but sadly there's no clit-licking version of SDT ;v;. The mechanics I've seen so far are reminiscent of SDT where you move your mouse and such instead of clicking buttons, it's a really nice feeling and that's probably what garnered so much adoption from fans, especially since there was a sort of resistance and such which made it feel a lot more real. 

AI is a passion of mine and I understand that simple but real feeling desire. One of my favourites in that respect (and one that I probably bring it up too much) is Ai Shoujo AI which has a desire system where all desires go up based on their corresponding stat and when a desire reaches max the AI goes to do an action related to that desire (go talk to someone for social, sleep for sleep, eat for hunger, so on so forth), that system could easily include an activity desire where they go do what they're told when all other desires are taken care of or vis-versa and have the desires come second. I don't know exactly how the AC AI works, I only played one of the games but as far as I can tell each character has different activities they do during different times of day and there's a little gap where they move from one activity to another then just have it figure out where they should be based on the current system time. That's more a theory though since I'm more used to simulative AI ;-v-, stardew valley does something adjacent to that.

I totally agree in that UI should be more visceral than digestive (ala dead-space health bar or red vignette instead of a metre), it's always hard to do that though, you did a great job making it seem less software-y, the sex menu with the deform shader or whatever that was and the aura looking overlay to that looked really good and felt a lot better than just a metre or such. I understand the switch though and if you just crank up the intensity of the orgasm and in general visual and audio reactions, I imagine it will work really well.

It's nice to hear that the system is so modular; I've seen plenty of systems that are built for one sound for one thing (given those were a bit more amateurish than something this built). I don't expect you to have spectacular VA atm, this is more of a pre-alpha build than what I'd expect from the final game, it's good that--given the budget--you could populate the game with VAs. Amusing but logical that it's just you and your GF XD, low-budget squad! It's not bad VA btw, I don't notice much difference in EroVA stuff in the first place but it's very much suitable and fitting for the state of the game.

Orgasms in humans are interesting I find :P so much in the act and the reaction of it that can be played with, both from the giver and the taker. I'm interested to see what sorts of things you'll be implementing as time goes on.

By the way: is the game going to have any built-in modding support? It would be really cool to be able to add hairs, VA packs, whatever and whatnot if possible; I'm sure it'll get fan support anyways with time if it gets popular enough ala-any big modular hgame, still would be interesting to know if that's a plan or too far in the future to think about atm.

No problem! On another account as well I put massive novel of comments in the sections below games I really like or projects I'm interested in; I fear I usually come off as a blabber-mouth with this 800+ word comment... It was nice to get a reply! If it means anything, you're work is a bit of an inspiration for me to get off my rear and buckle down on a single project, seeing all the cool stuff you're doing is really neat! Anyways, that's for the reply and keep up the good work! Cheers!

NOTE: I only played with a female character w/o futa because I'm gay and would rather not, so I haven't seen male responses to things and am only commenting on that female side.

Quite interesting; I've seen a few sandboxy porn games likely thanks to the success of games like Ai Shoujo AI and SDT, but also because it's a fantasy thing :P. I think this project has so much potential! Currently, it's super barebones, you can practically do nothing, and the character rig sometimes bugs, but even so it's really promising. Being someone who does a lot of sim stuff, I know how hard doing animation stuff like this is (unless I'm mistaken; I don't work with 3D much sadly). The characters have systems that are there but not implemented (again unless I'm mistaken), examples being the needs: hunger, thirst, social, and so on. It feels a lot like it's trying to be a survival colony style game but one where you do sexy stuff, akin to Ai Shoujo AI, but currently there's no AI, which may be intentional, I can't tell; if this is trying to be a full sandbox-like people playground than that's perfectly fine, it's just too early for me to tell :P. I've seen some of the stuff on Twitter and it's looking pretty good. I hope this one isn't abandoned like I've seen so many before.

As for the actual game: the UI is nice but sometimes gets right in the way, specifically, the sex menu zips around the screen, it would be nice to be able to pin it akin to how you can pin the dialogue. The sounds are fine at the moment; it's barebones like I said but I imagine this will get so much better with more variants and selectable sets (the variants are more important; and by that I mean having more sounds for the same things, if I'm correct on how the orgasms work, the sound is always the same--a slightly more intense moan--but it's hard to tell). Which brings me to the next thing; the feedback isn't great: the quivering is great, the moaning is nice (could do with some more types, maybe muffled as if the character is trying to restrain themself which I've found is common), the orgasms are my main gripe: they seem to last a single tiny moment and then the character is back to horny. There are no extended orgasms, there's no refractory period, and there's no visceral reaction to orgasms. At the bare minimum make the sex menu pulse blue or something when an orgasm is achieved, at the better end it could do with the character falling over or slumping if standing and it's a multi-orgasm, the character biting their lip, lots of people exclaim when orgasming, I don't think that'd work in this game but at least a more intense vocal moan or grunt would to wonders, additionally heavy and rapid breaths are pretty common. I'm not sure what assets the dev is working with but if they have a VA and the money, getting additional takes that're more intense will really help sell it.

Lastly, the mention of the octo-head guy was interesting; never showed up, I imagine because that system isn't implemented as of this version but it feels they will serve as a shop character or travel of some sort (I'm referring to the second island a little off from the main one). The lore bit is strange but that's something that'll have to be expanded or implemented at all before I can comment on it.

Okay; it may have sounded like I was bashing the game but really: it's a great base for something that could turn out great. 

TL;DR: this is an unfinished but ultimately very promising demo of what could be with some more dev time and resources. I can't say I recommend this as a game yet but as a demo, it really works and I'll be on the lookout for updates. Also; apologies for the novel of a comment; I do this a lot ( ; -v-)y it's because I like stuff a lot, please don't think I'm trying to be mean or anything.

Good luck octolex! I hope this project works out and can get more updates in time: I promise you it's bound to turn out at least good with the baseline you've set! Cheers!

Holy fuck, this is crazy good. I'm more for cute hard stories ala Scrub Diving but this fucking nails what it's reaching for. The art style is grade A, a few oddities in the ankles but otherwise spectacular (and even then it's barely noticeable as you get used to the style), it's a great mix of realism and caricature, all the characters are sexy and good looking. One note that really sells them feeling more real is that they actually change clothing, seemingly such a small thing but it adds so much even so since so few games (at least that I play) have characters change clothes. The audio was... jarring? It was strange to have menu music but nothing in the way of audio period during the actual vn; that's no minus, just odd. The characters are so well written, I relate so hard to Clem, being an SM degen lesbian (not so much on the penetration thing but still), and Shizue feels like such a real character with her conflictions and feelings through and through. The two of them are adorable together and while I want to see more safe SM with these two, the ending is really well placed; it could do with a tad more graduality or epilogue sorta thing but still magnificent. I have to admit that I had a horrified look on my face when that one crucial near-end scene happened but it's such a good moment and I love its conclusion (even if it was scary in the moment). Only gripe (a minor one but still) is the random het scene with Vanessa; it's not bad I don't think, honestly I rapidly clicked through it because... I just don't like that stuff, it adds to her character but she's hardly utilized later on, just forgotten. 

All in all absolutely amazing and one I really like; if more lesbian SM stuff is made by this author, I'll definitely read it! And even if the author goes on to het or elsewise, this quality is great and will shine no matter the subject matter. Serious recommendation from me! I'm putting this one on my favourites list for sure. Thank you Gaerax for making this amazing experience! Here's to your work in the future! Cheers!