Ren'Py - Astral Lust [v0.3.1c] [Victorius]

Maybe this just isn't my game but I am usually much easier on games than most people are, I don't see how so many people are calling this a masterpiece. It's dull, it's very long, drawn out, and a lot of grinding and going nowhere with story. I like slow burners but not when every day you pass in game feels like filler. Nothing happens, everything is inconsequential, it's just grind grind grind, sleep away the game days doing nothing but getting better cards and hoping that you get lucky. Once you get past the first wall of interesting content it's an extremely long drought. The girls are interesting but it's just not worth it. This game would probably be a couple hours worth of content tops without all of the grinding and just useless days.

This is an unbelievable game. Apart from the renders. which are not exeptional, but they absolutely do their job, The game is simply great. The story line it's awesome, and while the mc's story is not that interesting in my opinion, the other character are well thought, even though they sometimes start a bit clichè. I love the card fighting style, very unique and well managed (And also well balanced). The corruption of the characters is great, the sex scenes are awesome, the pace is good. What can I say? 5/5

I'm really enjoying Astral Lust! The story has me hooked, The animation is smooth and adds to the overall experience.

Renders 5/5
Characters 5/5
Story 5/5
Gameplay 5/5
Animations 5/5

Overall, this is a fantastic game! It easily gets 10 out of 10 from me. The characters are engaging, the story is interesting, Definitely worth checking out!

Review for Astra Lust v0.3.0:

The graphics/renders are from 2015, so it's off to a bad start. I learned the gameplay with 0.2.4, which was already poor, but now it's changing on the fly, and it's not any better. Events are dependent on a random number generator just to drag out gameplay for no reason. I'm sure the developer is "learning a lot", but I'm not going to be a guinea pig. The dev is really just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Halfway through the 0.3.0 update, I started getting tracebacks when trying to save my game, so now I can't save anymore (I'm playing on a PC without any cheats or mods). It's clear that I would have to start over at some point, but this game isn't worth it. I don't think I'd bother playing this game again if it had the completed tag.

Lets just get into it,
Game play is downright amazing, the deck system is refreshingly fun and the enemies all seem to have a unique set of abilites that makes each encounter interesting. 10/10
Story is unexpectedly good. At first I had expected something generic such as the world ended and now youre in a grim struggle to survive and everything sucks. While this is true it has a unique twist and super interesting lore (not well defined lore yet but I love it) 8/10
NSFW content is well... its okay. All of the characters have time in the lime light and their fair share of sexy times. But it feels a little generic. All in all not good not bad 7/10

7+8+10= 25/30 so roughly 4 stars and change.

Very buggy almost unplayble. Android version is crashing after 15 day when you want to sleep. Second thing is random bug ocuring after battle that you can't save game becouse of code error in app. Overall its look like good game but I can't play it with this bugs.

Serious potential on this one.

The good:

• The combat is interesting
• The choices are meaningful without being too obvious what the results will be
• The storyline does not revolve around "My rich and powerful dad doesn't understand me," "I have a magic dick that every human wants immediately," or "I'm Johnny Badass, the biggest badass the world has ever known and I work for a paramilitary organization and/or the mafia despite living at home with my mom and having no money or skills."
• The renders are solid if not spectacular

The fixable:

• I quickly found myself just killing time because I was waiting for events to trigger
• Too easy to hit an instant Game Over screen (this is actually a part of the story so I don't mind it happening but it was just a touch too common for my tastes)
• The models are a bit too same-y. With this many characters I would have liked to have seen more variety in body types, skin color, etc.
• Mina's storyline.

I have faith that the dev could have had a real gem here if they had finished it.

Very good game, nice atmosphere and worldbuilding. I liked the eldritch and cryptic horror theme although horror isn't really something I usually look for, as well as the card turn based combat, which was a first for me but still enjoyed it.

The characters are pretty good but Alice definitely takes the cake so far when it comes to writing and I genuinely felt bad for her at the end of the current update (v.0.2.4a). Lexi is good but not as good as Alice and Mina is so-so. Grace is the least interesting of the main girls to me and I dislike Kiara.

3.5 out of 5 if possible.

The pros:
- World building is very good, cool post apocalyptic modern fantasy vibe with a good amount of horror and mystery mixed in
- Dialogue is strong
- Characters are all very interesting
- Dream sequences and exploration events are all very cool
- Some people have complained about the grind/combat. I didn't find this too bad. The stat grind you can finish in 10 mins or so if you just focus on it, the combat grind to get a good deck is harder because you rely a lot on luck, but I got my 'final' deck within the first couple hours of playtime and never needed to update it to complete the story.

The cons:
- Character design is very average. Alice is the only interestingly designed Main Girl. Main girls all have very similar body types, which may not be your thing.
- Animations are average to subpar for a modern game
- No option to remain loyal to one girl, harem is mandatory (this is only an issue because the girls don't want to be a harem and want 1-on-1 relationships and the MC has to go out of his way to guilt/convince them to be a harem, if it was written different it would be fine).
- Mina's whole storyline makes me feel kind of gross about the MC

Overall it's definitely worth your time to play, I just wouldn't go around recommending it to people as an intro to the western VN genre, especially with games like Once in a Lifetime, which occupy a very similar space but surpass Astral Lust almost across the board.

Yea, so despite my previous thoughts of it being mediocre renpy it is actually one of the fucking best games in it's category.

Story beats every other renpy bullshit to the point I actually read most of this shit (I mean like 60%, I really don't like to read most of the bullshit).

The dialogues between characters are great, sometimes it made me recall similar situations or talks from my life.

Sex scenes were great for me, but that's just mine taste.

There are so many events that it feels like there is always something new, even in repeatable events minimal changes in dialogue or 1 new scene make so much difference!

Cool card battle system mechanics, don't make the same mistake as me and set difficulty on hard, you'll enjoy it much more this way.

Overall 10/10

Good game. Cute girls, hot scenes, decent gameplay loop and even a somewhat interesting story.
Not 5 stars simply because animations are kind of below average, but it's a game I've thoroughly enjoyed and will probably play again when it's finished

If I had to ask for something, it would be more focus on non-vanilla kinks

edit: abandoned, I'm in shambles. I gave it 4/5 but in retrospective it was one of my favorite games

I tried v 0.2.3a

Cool game. The art and writing are good. This is one of the few porn games I've played that actually have a somewhat engaging storyline. The gameplay is solid. It gets a little repetitive, but I didn't mind. There's definitely some weird kinks going on in this; one character has the mind of a child, and another gets off on calling you daddy. If you're into it, then fine; if not, then you may have some trouble. Overrall, tho, very enjoyable.

I really wanted to like this game and give it a higher score, but I can't. The amount of grind required not only for the MC, but for the main girls, is horrendous. The only way to get around the countless clicking for resources is to use a cheat.

The animations aren't bad, but they aren't the greatest either. I'm sure HS has it's limits, but some of the angles the dev uses makes the girls look really stretched out in a lot of the scenes.

Storywise it's not bad for a sandbox game, but needs a lot of work. A lot of the storylines haven't progressed at all since the last time I played the game more than a year ago. I'm not really sure what the dev is waiting for especailly with Grace. She doesn't have any new storyline or events since I played last. I'm not even really sure what the point is of having the dog or cat in the game. No main storylines are connected to them at all. They just seem they are used for fluff in the game.

I'm not really sure how this game is getting a bunch of five star ratings, but in it's current form, it's not really above a 3.5 star rating at this point. With a lot of work for the animations and way more storyline progression this game could get a lot more higher ratings.

Maybe in another year or two this could be one of the better if not best sandbox games that I've played. Good luck to the dev.

EDIT: Just played the newest version and I have to say it's very disappointing. No new developments with the dog or cat storylines. Nothing new with Grace or most of the main girls. This game used to be really good. Maybe in 5 or 6 years you might see some progession with the main story and the main LI's. I'm not really sure how this game is getting 5 stars with the amount of grind and little storyline progression.

Really like this one, the story is great, all of the main and side girls are really well thought out with their own unique personality's, the random encounters of NPCs and other things is a good way of providing more extreme stuff, the dreams where good and bad but mostly insignificant (a few I think have important meaning for the later) I'm hooked on it

No sharing/swinging (pretty obvious, your the only guy, there was one dream I didn't like but it was that far from meaning anything it didn't matter)
No ntr now or in the future, your main and side girls are with you so don't worry about sharing with another guy

Can't wait for more content

(I'm currently a sub on patreon and the Dev is really nice so that's a bonus

v0.2.2b

tl;dr If you dont cheat, there isnt much porn you get with all the resources farming/combat and stat grinding.
You play it for an hour, then you take it out for 2 minutes and put it back in unsatisfied. Then you play it for an hour again... BUT it has a nice story!


Pro:

• Interesting story with a lot of info about it
• Nice girls with a good personality
• Fun and engaging combat

Con:

• Honey select is ugly af and just has its standard movements for sex
  • At least Dev didnt used these seizure like orgasm moves
• One hell of a grind for stats
  • There are 6 stats for MC (physical and mental) which if you dont "cheat" can only raise both categories by one at a day and you get encounter where you can trade them for powerful items and an extra stat (luck).
    • Then the grind beginns again...
  • There are 3-4 stats for the girls which again, you have to grind...
  • Resources, resources, resources!

Overall a very nice game, I liked the gameplay and the story behind it, the girls are very cute and the models are well animated and gorgeous.
It is sometimes a bit grindy, especially during the beginning, but then you are rewarded with some nice story, nice characters and sex scenes.

I will give it 5 stars to encourage the dev to keep on working on it and add even more content.
Good job!

I have never tried playing the game before, but after trying it, I think the game is very good and suitable for me, the game concept is interesting, so it's highly recommended for you to play the game

Great games deserve an evaluation, even if simple so that, above all, it brings joy and inspiration to developers to keep doing an excellent job. This game contains aspects that will make anyone excited and eager to keep playing. Congratulations.

TL/DR Reminded me a bit of Harem-hotel except with worse quality graphics and writing but better quality game-play. Decent game if you like card battlers and gals with cute-hime haircuts.

+ Nice game-play features like the card-battle mini-game and the robust stat sheet that tracks stats / sex acts
+ Some really cute gals with tons of Hime style haircuts
+ Somewhat unique plot- like a really budget Lovecraftian setting.
+ RPG elements that felt like good character growth.

- MC is built like a piece of string
- Really difficult to acquire good cards without insane grind
- Scenes really short and not very creative. With the exception of some of the stuff with the main cast.
-Not enough outlets to spend resources on

Woah, this game is incredible! I was not expecting much since the v0.2.1.e seemed to be at an early stage but oh boy there is content here!

Lots of great unique stories in this apocalyptic world. Lots of random rescue missions that end up blackmailing the women and I love it.

I honestly was expecting around 4 girls in the game , but there are a good dozen. Sex scenes were great to have during random encounters as the Relationship build up took some time. Love the card building combat too.

Highly recommend this to anyone who likes relationship build-up, randomly generated events, blackmailing/raping and card game battles.