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

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.

Fantastic story and excellent porn.
Combat system is basically "Slay the Spire" game, although not quite as good.

World lore is mostly "Lord of the Mysteries" web novel, which is best summed up as "Isekai Victorian Steampunk-ish SCP with some lovecraftian horror and a small dash of Cultivation". And is utterly amazing story and world. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in that setting.

The girls are quite cute and the sex is animated.

Extremely and excessively grindy. This game could have easily been a 5/5, but I am forced to drop stars because of the grind. Only reason I am not rating it lower than 4/5 is because there is a cheat mod you can download.

Renders are good
Combat with cards is not bad But it's really bad if you just started
There where some bugs in the latest version 2.1c Decided to restart
And i regreted it already even with cheat mod
When you start the game and you try combat you face enemies who poison you And no matter how much you try Outshielding the poison is not possible You just wake up in your bed lose items on your bag
Even if you have max stats combat is horrible near start of the game unless you have some good shield cards or manage to do big dmg in 1 turn
You can build vault and dungeons and you need material to do this another grind
Sadley you can't invite the girls in the dungeon
I wish there was a enery increase stats even if its not a big number energy
Catching a succubus is only good to have sex with

9/10 gameplay, collecting and battle cards are fun,
10/10 storyline, mysterious and well written story
8/10 characters, characters are unique and lovable
9/10 grind, pretty satisfied with the grinding time , not too easy

This one is one of the top of my list along with hh, ahitr and the likes, very good game and enjoyable

One of the most promising games on the site and definitely in my top 10, it already has a lot of content and the girls (mostly Mina and Grace) are great.

The story itself is very interesting and has a lot of potential for expansion.

The combat and grind aspects are really entertaining with a little bit of complexity, it's an actual game for a change, which is good!

I really hope the dev keep the project alive, it's a matter of time before he gets more patreons.

A RenPy game that actually has some long playtime value and it's definitely worth it.
I'm a big fan of the whole combat mechanic and if it's too difficult for you, you can somewhat cheat your way through by getting rather strong cards (and maxing your stats) via the cheat mod - if you deem it necessary.

Excited to see the future of this, the characters are also very unique and interesting, all in all a rather immersive experience.

Awesome game, but please please change the combat back to old format! Now you can't see the cards, enemies, or yourself making the fights a lot less engaging.! There was detail to the old format now just microscopic 2d atari like characters!?

Only issue with the game is not enough content yet. The atmosphere is fantastic and dark, it doe s the horror aspect really well. The characters too are really solid imo, with cute personalities and realistic-ish reactions to the situation.

Tbh the girls are not as pretty as the girls of other renpy games. But the game's battle system is Good as hell and the game is only version 0.2 so I really expect it to improve even more, and this game can also be played on android so I'll give u 5/5

Warning in that this game can be actually jarring. It's a very intense psychological type game. However, it is intriguing and that makes one keep playing. Cute-ish girls. The succubi are fantastic. Ahegao is a plus, but could be featured better. Consider V sign hand poses as well.

This game is very nice, combining a light novel with lord of the mysteries(something not so different from the cthulhu mythos), a healthy dose of sexual content and combat from the game slay the spire.

Pros:
Good combat
Interesting story
Good sex (pretty high quality), contains 3D animations
Interesting world, ties into the interesting story, but its a post apocalyptic fantasy world, space bubble, not so disimilar to "A house in the rift" or "Lust and Power"
Okay base building

Cons:
Some of the darker tones(this is often optional, either by save-scumming or just being a nice person)
It's Grindy - Getting enough lust and trust in girls sometimes takes quite some time, getting stats up, to the max level, which is basically necesary for fighting most enemies and worst of all, material collection often takes forever. Some items and many cards are completely useless.
A good chunk of the content feels unfinished(in its current stage 0.1.9.g) - for instance

If you like this game's feeling, the book 'Lord of the Mysteries' which feels VERY similar in some ways, might spoil you a good amount and might be worth a read - warning, basically no sex in that novel, also it's chinese.
All in all, this game is like a 9/10 for a game and that makes it a 5/5 for a porn game, maybe I'm just a sucker for slay the spire.

PS for the Dev: You really should consider changing some of the names for status effects to not be the same as Slay the spire

Hope this games will always been updated and keep up the good work. Even though sometime event are repeatable. I dont mind at all because this games has potential to be the best post apocalypse games and I love it

Story: 4/5

The game's ability to construct a fantasy world is quite something. Thrown into this microcosm there's layers and layers of complexity that slowly unravels. As far as story telling goes, it's good. Sometimes it loses it's footing and stumbles but always manages to find it's feet again.

Characters: 3/5

The game's biggest weakness is the rather bland characters thrown into the story. No one has any real depth to them, the LI's are ok but that's just it - everything's OK. Rarely it feels like they grasp the gravity of the situation they're in, going about their useless routines. The MC is a typical wimp, afraid to initiate sexual contact, doesn't stand for his feelings.

Sex scenes: 3/5

The renders are ok but nothing special, everything's rather vanilla apart from some femdom. The rape aspects are very vague. There's little to no passion. Having a submissive MC is fine but for everyone who's not into that it gets dull fast.

Dialogues: 3/5

The interactions with the LI's are pretty bland. Only scratching superficial topics even though the situation calls for more depth. The real interest is how the story is being communicated.

Conclusion:

The game is best enjoyed as a story mode sprinkled with sex scenes rather than the other way around. As I've said earlier - the story IS good if you like paranormal and mystical aspects. But as a sex game it fails to deliver.

this game is a rarity in the nsfw genre of games in which the worldbuilding and the storytelling that is going on is just as interesting if not more interesting than the characters and the relationships, on top of that the characters are still really well written and have great scenes, along with having a combat system from one of my favourite games out there. astral lust has a ton of potential and ill definitely keep a close eye on it

It is an okay game and it is an actual game for once, but after grinding the stats and cards I just felt completely uninterested in the girls. I think this game's less than stellar characters and less than stellar renders hurt it too much, card fighting and slave capturing are good premises but after a few hours in it all gets old quick.

Version Reviewed: v0.1.7b

Overview: Save everyone from the end of the world, and also bang a bunch of cuties in a hotel and around town.

Story: After a terrible auto accident during the apocalypse you wake up a month later in a strange room in a hotel populated entirely by young horny waifus. You learn that the world has turned totally survival horror in the meantime and its up to you to prevent the world from being eaten by an elder god or something.

The girls are all sadly pretty one dimensional porn game archetypes. There is the oversexed one, the shy naive one, and the sisters next door. The only character development is in how much they are willing to let you in their pants. The shy girl gets the most development, with a whole lot of backstory about her mentally abusive upbringing. There are a number of side characters as well, but except for the magic librarian they're basically there to be warm holes for you to stick your dick in or glorified vending machines.

Gameplay: It's one of those 4 time slot per day free roaming games. The grind is pretty bad. Not the worst I've ever seen but most stuff is obnoxiously expensive. Thankfully the dev didn't implement one of those annoying hunger/fatigue/blue balls systems where you constantly have to refresh stats to keep going. The big thing that sets this game apart from the competition is the card battling minigame. Despite clearly being a huge focus of the development in this game, it actually doesn't affect the rest of the game all that much. There are a few forced battles and collecting rare materials to craft rare cards is probably something the developer expects you to do, as of this version it doesn't matter that much if you neglect the card game stuff, especially if you're willing to rollback or load saves to avoid random battles. One thing I will note is that escaping from battles seems to be much harder than the "escape chance" would suggest. It might say 22%, but you'll fail that check time and time again.

For the rest of the game it's more typical Ren'Py "sandbox" stuff. Do an activity to increase some stat by +1 (up to 20) until the end of the day, then go to sleep. Luckily there is a map with girldar so navigation is easy. You have to track down girls in the right place in the right timeslot to trigger some interactions, and sometimes you'll have to try for several days before the RNG shines on you. There is a built-in help system that is pretty decent most of the time, I never had to go find a walkthrough or search the thread to figure out a clue. Mostly it was just waiting for a girl to happen to be in the shower that day or something. Protip: If a girl's event isn't triggering grind up her trust/lust values a bit.

You also have to collect crafting materials to upgrade your hotel and eventually your card deck. This is especially grindy as the upgrades are quite expensive and there is always the danger of dying and losing all but 25 of your items every time you go out. In one especially egegious instance I was very close to having enough saved to build the Sex Dungeon and had also gotten lucky a couple of times on rare materials so my vault was full and I had a lot in my bag. Then the game tossed me into an unwinnable unescapable fight because the RNG never blessed me with the correct item (I'm not even sure it is possible to get given how much of the rest of the story assumes you didn't get it) so I was sent back an hour or more.

Ultimately the RNG is god in this game, and it is a cruel god.

As for the card game, there are a lot of really high level cards, but I ended up kind of breaking the game by filling up my deck with a bunch of head butt cards (delay enemy 1 turn and do a bit of damage) and only allowing them to act on occasion.

There is also a pixel hunt minigame where you can click on small pictures in scenes to unlock them on your computer. Either this game is mostly unimplemented or I sucked really bad at it. I only unlocked a handful of the pictures by the time I had completed all of the story arcs.

Art: It's Honey select with only lightly customized models. The proportions are good and the models look nice. Somewhat unusually for a Honey Select game the MC is neither a Yakuza looking tough nor a 98 pound weakling with a baseball bat sized dick. He's still pretty terrible, but one notch up from most other pornogame MCs.

Sex: As you would expect it's a slow burn affair. Voyurism followed by HJs followed by BJs followed by PiV with the final unlock being some Anal. Side girls typically require you to spend some resource to get the scene. Some of the girls go hot and cold on you as is typical with this format of game. You can build a sex dungeon but barely gets used in this version. I'm sure the sex options will expand in later versions.

Overall: This is a well done sex grinder with a surprisingly good card battling minigame. It loses a point from being just way too grindy for me, but all of my other complaints are just nitpicks. I feel like a lot of the skill checks that require like Agility >= 15 could have just as easily been Agility >= 5 and capped the stats at 10 instead of 20. It also took me quite some time to discover the Rubik's Cube and Books in my room. I also think the construction costs were pretty obnoxious, with many things requiring like 30 stone, 15 metal, 15 wood, 20 cloth, and a lucky exploration run might net you like 4 rocks, a couple of metal, and 3 cloth. It took me over 100 in-game days to finish the mysterious chest/map quest because the RNG was so stingy with it. I'm still pretty sure I've missed some events due to bad rolls.

Game starts off pretty interesting and feels like a different concept compared to your average 'fuck everything' game, but it falls off the longer it goes. The hints are loose, so if you misread something then good luck clicking for the next 5-10 minutes. Some events only trigger at certain times of day, and are unlisted that they occur at a specified time. There is no map so you have to click each place to go where you want instead of instant teleport. Exploration and fighting events are 100% random so you may never see a scene or get a specific item, even after 2 hour. There is a dog and cat that currently serve no purpose. Some choices are just instant death and you lose everything. All items have a value, but if you trade them you end up losing money because there is no actual currency.

The sex scenes are mediocre and you wont get actual sex with main characters until far into the game. Only encountered 1 NTR event and it was a generic random character, more specifically netori.

BEWARE: EXTREME GRINDING even with the cheat menu

Hints could be more clear. Random Events could be less random the more you do them. Fast Travel map would be helpful. Actual Currency would be nice.

The game has a premise you've prob. seen a million times before, but it manages to actually be very unique in its execution. Still rough around the edges and clearly in active development, but already shines as a secret gem among this style of games. The girls are cute not just as renders, but as personalities too. I recommend it, even in this unfinished state it's a refreshing game to immerse yourself in.

If I was a random billionaire, I'd give the dev of this game a full time 50 person team of artists and coders without hesitation, so he can rapidly flesh out his great vision for what the game can be.