How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess Review

How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess is one of those Ren'Py titles that people keep recommending in threads without ever explaining why. This page is the explanation: what it is, how it plays, what it actually contains, and who should skip it.

What is How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess?

How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess is an adult dating simulator built in Ren'Py. You play through a branching story where the choices that matter are the ones about people — who you trust, who you pursue, and who you quietly stop replying to. The adult content is gated behind those choices rather than sprinkled evenly across the runtime, which is the single biggest thing separating this from the fill-the-gallery school of design.

The build reviewed here is v0.8.1 Public. How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess is developed episodically, so the chapter count moves; the systems described below have been stable across the last several releases.

Story and setting

The opening hands you a problem and a deadline, then steps back. What makes How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess work is that the supporting cast has motives that continue running whether or not you are in the room; characters you ignore for a chapter come back having made decisions of their own. That is rare in this genre and it is most of why the second playthrough holds up.

Dialogue carries most of the load, and it is written with a specific ear: characters interrupt each other, change the subject, and occasionally say something they clearly regret. That is unusual in this genre, where dialogue is often a delivery mechanism for exposition and nothing else. How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess does have exposition problems in its later chapters, but the character writing holds.

Gameplay and progression

What you actually do, minute to minute, breaks down like this. Time is the resource. Each segment lets you spend it in one place, and spending it somewhere means not spending it elsewhere. Affection with each character rises only when you are present for the right beats, so the optimisation puzzle is really a scheduling puzzle. Save often — How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess has choice points that lock routes without warning you first.

• Engine: Ren'Py
• Format: adult dating simulator
• Typical route length: around 8 hours
• Saves: cloud-synced across devices

Visuals, art style and sound

The art direction favours mood over resolution. Interiors are lit warm and low, exteriors are washed out, and the effect is a game that looks composed rather than merely rendered. Where it stumbles is in crowd scenes, where the asset reuse becomes visible, but those are rare.

There is no voice acting, which is standard for the format and probably for the best given how badly it usually goes in this genre.

What content does How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess include?

If you have hard lines, read this section before downloading.

Also worth a look: Lewd Town Adventures

How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess covers Anal, Dating Sim, Handjob, Harem, Taboo Family, Mind Control, Oral, Romance, Sex Simulator, Vaginal.

The breadth here is unusual for the category, and it means the game is worth checking against your own list before starting rather than after.

Platforms — how to play How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess

Getting How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess running is straightforward on every platform it supports.

• Interactive Porn Games — Branching routes, real fail states, endings you can miss.
• Ren'Py Porn Games — The engine behind most of the genre's best writing.
• Adult Visual Novels — Branching stories where the writing carries the game.
• Cloud Save Games — Start on desktop, finish on your phone.
• 3D Porn Games — Rendered scenes, posed lighting, real depth.
• HTML Porn Games — Pure HTML and JavaScript — nothing to install.

Who should play How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess?

The right audience here is the patient one. How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess rewards a slow read and punishes a fast one — the choices that matter are buried in ordinary conversations, and clicking through them will lock routes you did not know were open. If you play with the skip key held down, this is not your game.

Before you start

Some setup advice, because a bad first run is hard to recover from.

• Saving: progress syncs to the cloud, so a device swap mid-route is safe.
• Route planning: keep a save before each major choice. How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess branches early and converges late, which is the arrangement that punishes a single overwrite slot the most.
• Version: start on v0.8.1 Public or later — earlier builds are missing route content the review above describes.
• Best platform: the Browser build is the one to use; the others trail it by a release or two.
• Content check: read the tag list above before starting. Several of these are route-locked and not signalled in-game before you are already in.

Our verdict on How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess

This one rewards a second playthrough more than most, which is our main argument for it. The first run shows you the story; the second shows you how much of it you missed. If you only ever play a game once, discount the score below by half a point.

Scores below are editorial and comparative — they rank this title against the rest of the Ren'Py Porn Games catalogue on four axes, not against games in general.

• Story and writing: 9.3 / 10
• Visuals and art: 6.8 / 10
• Gameplay and progression: 7.8 / 10
• Content breadth: 7.3 / 10

How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess FAQ

Is How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess free to play?

Yes. How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess is distributed free by its developer, with optional support tiers that typically unlock early builds rather than extra content. Everything in the review above was reached on the free build.

Is How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess safe to download?

Stick to the developer's own distribution page or a reputable mirror. The Ren'Py builds are unsigned by nature, so a browser or antivirus warning is expected and not in itself a red flag — but a reupload from an unknown host is.

Is How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess still being updated?

The build covered here is v0.8.1 Public. Development is episodic — new chapters land in batches rather than on a schedule, so the version you install today may be several chapters behind the latest supporter build.

Does How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess have cloud saves?

Yes — How I Became the Bodyguard of the Saintess keeps progress server-side, so you can start on desktop and finish on a phone without exporting anything.