Ren'Py - Completed - Callisto [v1.00] [Xavster Gaming]

First this is a top notch game. @Xavster has the best renders I have seen in any games I have played here. His attention to detail is amazing and has a great balance with the amount of animation not only in the number but the length of each one before it auto moves on to the next dialog screen.

This is my 3rd play through and have only the gideon event left to do. My 1st time through I missed 3 events while missing 2 events on the 2nd time. Those were done without the in-game mod.

I am using the mod this time and am not a fan of this one. It is fine for what it tries to do but the only real value is twofold since it has some replays on both the main and save menus while giving the ability to max the relationship with all girls.

callisto has a great story and is easy to figure out how to navigate your way through after 1 or 2 times through with what I consider the minimum amount of grind although there is some.

@Xavster has put together the most balanced game here on F95 that I have played while giving us a very very visually enjoyable journey. He or his team are extremely talented in coding, rendering and writing is unmatched as far as I can tell. Both the characters and story are very believable from a science fiction point of view. The women are to liking in the proportions that I like with breasts that are not overly small or large (I like B to small C cup breasts).

There is some language issues but are very few and easy to figure out.

I do recommend this game and look forward to upcoming updates.

The 5 stars is because I couldn't find and major flaws or bugs in this game.

One of the best I have played. Interesting, engaging and with a lot to offer. It can be better? yes, but it is in the right path.
renders 9/10
sandbox 8.5/10 (more banter! please)
characters 9/10
play 8/10
replay 9/10 (it´s better when you know what to do)
story 8/10
User interface 7/10 (funtional, but aestetic)
animations 8/10 (the inicial ones should be redone)
Ver. 0.5.1

I've got to say, I'm quite happy to have found this under rated hidden GEM.

I'm not sure WHAT it is doing so low on the weighted ranking board, considering this has one of the most polished story, art and animations in AVNs I've played to date (and we're talking a couple of 100's at this point ^_^.)

The prologue, was exceptionally enjoyable, even if there's no choice at that point.

But, the animation, and attention to details (the sun shadows moving slowly to follow the sun's movements during some scenes was a very very subtle yet noticeable thing.)

The only thing that bothered me, was the navigation within the ship, and finding the interactions available... until I remembered the "you are here" button. My suggestion, would be to remove the actual navigation of the ship, and just leave the ship's map. Considering how much more practical it is

But this little gem, is clearly not getting the exposure it deserves.

This game is the greatest! It is intelligent, the art is superior, the characters are awesome, and wow...combining sex and science fiction? You can't get any better than that! What more could anyone ask for as the MC plot, as one guy alone on a ship surrounded by a harem of beautiful women from all worlds competing for his affection! It also entertains the intellect as it does the primal yearnings, making it the perfect "thinking man's sex game." Xavster if you don't make a million bucks from this game then I don't know what is wrong with people. I look forward to continuing to support your work.

short scenes with little to no value of replaying the game. It is ok but not more than that
The scene of the pole dancing was robotic as fuck...
And I really don't get the main menu, I needed a few moments to work myself out of the confusing mess.

You need to adjust to a more intuitive menu the first time someone plays.

Oh boi where does man start with this beauty!?
Characters are lovely to look at, as well as play with. Enjoy the story and actually playing. Usually I skip 90% of the game's text, not with this one! Scenes are awesome, and there's quite a pleasing amount of them.

Have played this game since it was released and always loved it, the girls , the story, the povs and animations, the writing....... all of it is done with pretty good quality.
The character development is one of the thing I like a lot, including the girls past, it really enrich the story.
The game may seems linear and in way it is but is very enjoyable.
The sandbox is easy with marked events and gps location of the girls, if you read the story you won't have any problems either if you need to travel somewhere.
The only thing that I'm not interested at all is the "trading" system but is not really something you need to play with if you don't want, you earn enough money with the quests.

Removed 3 stars:
the game endings are kinda rushed, some choices at the end of the game make's no sense at all, and the whole misleading "harem" that the player believed to get was just fake, you are forced to choose 1 of the girl in the endings. This kinda ruins the game.

Potentially a good story and the renders are nice, but that's unfortunately where the good stuff ends.

The pacing is very off-putting. There's no development, stuff just happens with no preamble whatsoever, meaning the game basically presents more as a long series of incidents rather than a story which flows.

The writing seems like little more than an afterthought, present only to minimally give context to the pictures. There's no small talk or banter, only straight-to-the-point, which makes it read more like a balance sheet than an unfolding story, as there's no attempt at creating ambience or character depth.

It really is a shame that the text and visuals are so utterly out of sync in terms of quality, or this could have been a five-star job. As it is the two stars are for the visuals only, since the remainder deserves none.

Edit: amended to three stars. I thought the writing got better in the second half of the play-through, but it was frankly still quite soulless. Meat & 2 veg, rather than entrecôte & potatoes dauphinoise. Shame, as the story is very good and deserves more inspired writing.

Very good.
Interesting mixture of "history of the galaxies" with many boobs in between, and that always brings joy to the story and never is too much.

The only bad thing is that they are taking a long time to continue the game.

v 0.41
Callisto has the potential to become a GREAT game. This genre is something new for me, although I'm a huge SF fan and see the nods to Firefly and ST-TNG.

My complaints - at my current level - is only with the game mechanics. The provided hint system is probably more than adequate for those familiar with this type of game, but for us noobs it can be a little too vague. For example, there are a series of available storylines available, but I have NO FRIGGIN IDEA what the letters represent. I feel I'll be able to eventually figure it all out, but until then I'm mashing buttons and hoping for the best. The fight training animations are first rate, but that isn't enough to maintain interest while figuring out what the hell I should be doing to advance the story. I feel like a kid sitting in a Ferrari. I could have a blast if I only knew how to drive the damn thing!
I'm not a fan of the map system either. IMHO the ship map should be something like a pop-up viewscreen when you enter the corridor. The pads - or whatever they are - could be really cool if they took you to all locations, but they don't. By putting the ship's map as a secondary screen from this point, extra clicks are required for many movements around the ship.

Let me be very clear, this game is still very good, and I'll be watching for future updates unless I continue to feel overwhelmed. I've been trying to maximize my money situation since I started, and have just learned from reading game discussion there's no need for money earned from the trading aspect of the game.
Keep up the good work, and for god's sake keep the fantastic animations coming!

Category: Video Game
Version: 0.41
Visual novel/Script: 5
Gaming experience: 5
Graphic quality: 4
Character development: 5
Xcitement: 4

Considerations: Good game, have free roaming / sandbox along with a nice plot. Space adventure, ship management, cash, and rich character relationships. Some easter eggs would be nice. The map to roam through the ship help perfectly to prevent grind, as well as indicators where the "action" can take place. Would be interesting to add some random space events, pirates, failures, meteorites, etc with decisions to take and consecuences.
Good.

I am so tired of "magic dick syndrome". This is just lazy writing. Why not give women real agency other than being mesmerized by the MC's cock? Jeez. And don't get me started on the Cpt. (MC)... if I was part of the crew, he'd be out of an airlock before the first mission. He is an incompetent, spineless push over. How hard can it be to write a strong male character?

As others said, setting and art is great, characterization is awful, choices don't matter. This is a linear VN pressed into a sandbox corset.

If you can live with the shortcomings, there is effort in there somewhere. Personally, I can't.

I am seriously impressed by how much effort and polish has gone into Callisto, it really feels like a labor of love.
The artwork, characters, beautiful renders, even story line, hooked me in.

The Prologue was brilliant itself and near as long as some complete VN`s on here. I love sandbox elements and Callisto feels great in that aspect, gives it more longevity and adds to the space opera feel more. I can`t believe this VN is not more popular.

If you love Sci Fi games then give this one a try, it`s seriously good.

Update - Having completed all content so far, I have dropped this to 4 stars.

Why? well, the love interests are very unrealistic, as in literally all of them are or become Bi. MC even gets the evil eyes at one point if he even suggests being disloyal to more than one. Yet, here they are all humping and chasing each other or corrupting...Rachel and Alice seriously get on my tits!
Plus, your initial forced girlfriend gets it on with Julia, Rachel and Lia as well.
Sorry, My MC would pick Sam the robotic Maid than these girls.
Oh and the MC instead of being a typical ex-military type, comes across as a Simp. Seriously, the girls all seem stronger than him.

Can anyone actually write strong, masculine, Male characters these days?

Great game let down by crap Love Interests.
HINT: Balance...have some LI who are straight and not into sharing.....

Based on the (as yet) unfinished v0.41.

My usual disclaimers when writing reviews on here are that A. I am here for the "plot" not the plot and B. I generally dislike visual novels. So take both of those into consideration for my review when thinking about this game.

Pros

• Setting - This is a rare one for me, but I actually LOVE the setting of this game. It's very, very blatantly doing a homage to Firefly but there's a whiff of Mass Effect/Star Trek there as well which is pretty great
• Characters - All of the female characters/crew members seem unique and for the most part have their own drive and motivations (although at this stage largely unexplored for the vast majority of them). As much as I am here for the fucking, this sort of thing can really elevate a game. Plus, they are hot as heck
• Plot - Gets a little bit wonky a bit later on, but broadly speaking it's straightforward and engaging. It's not trying to be complicated, but that actually suits porn games better than overly convoluted plots
• Looks - Just about every aspect of this game looks good. The renders are great. Animations are a tad stilted but definitely not bad and the UI is super crisp and clear

Mehs

• Trading mini-game - This is easy enough to get to grips with and make money with (AS LONG AS you make sure to do the early story missions first) but currently is basically pointless because there's literally nothing to spend your money on and you get tonnes throughout the story missions too
• Prologue - Mentioned this in a comment but it's a bit weird that the prologue can only be viewed as an optional thing after you've started and isn't automatically offered up front when you start up. Just a weird decision...
• Level of interaction - Very, very limited sexual content in terms of the girls you can interact with. Despite having 7/8 crew-members you really can only make decent progress with 2 currently

Cons

• Sex scenes - Just sliiiightly too few for my tastes (possibly due to it all still currently being in set-up stages) and also they are largely unfortunately VERY short with VERY little writing. I.e. you get "hi captain, let's fuck" and then "oh my god you feel amazing" and then "wow thanks for cumming". So it's hot... But could really use a bit more time spent on them to make them better (plus, while I loved the interactive sex scene, this is only one with very limited options)
• No choices - Currently your level of interaction is choosing whether to view a scene or not. There are no branches, no dialogue options, heck no options for whether to cum inside a girl or not. Currently this isn't a huge deal though, given that the game gives you plenty of room to mess around with the "dating sim" aspect, but if any of these things got added, it could really improve life
• Animations happen as a block - A more technical complaint here. Essentially, while playing you click and it moves to the next line of text. When there are animations though, there is often several different animations back-to-back and if you click you skip through ALL of them (instead of just the one you're currently on). This is frustrating because sometimes you want it to move a bit faster but also sometimes you can't tell if an animation is part of a block or just one on its own and whether you can safely click to move on...
• Early game - When you first get throw into the game, it's genuinely confusing as fuck what you are supposed to be doing and how to progress things. Given 10 minutes of clicking around and you'll figure it out but if, for example, you think you need to focus on trading at the start before doing any story stuff, then you're gonna have a bad time

Callisto overall has the makings of a top tier game on the site. Has the promise for being an excellent harem romp with your sexy crew of your own starship (and honestly that setting alone is fucking class). Add in the fact that most of the girls are interesting, there is a relatively engaging plot and you might be onto a winner here.

Moreover, it feels like a LOT of thought has went into the framework for the game. Moving around the ship and investigating/finding new events is (mostly) easy and intuitive and it very clearly gives that impression of being scalable. Like now that the framework of the ship/travel/interaction is there, it will be very easy to expand and add a lot more cool stuff in.

For me, the biggest reason I am not giving this a 5/5 is the sexual content. As someone hoping for good fap material, this only just delivers. The sex scenes feel a bit rushed through for the most part (despite looking great) and at the moment there just isn't enough of them. Nor is there enough variety. I sincerely hope that as time goes on it'll get much more kinkier stuff (it hints early on at the options of roughness but that's never really delivered).

There is also, currently a lot of setup that has no real payoff. A lot of the characters are unexplored and one of the main mechanics has no real purpose. For instance, one thing which genuinely bothers me a bit is that there is currently only one girl for whom you actually need to a tiny bit of "grinding" in order to improve your relationship with her. Moving through training with her of several different options, where you have to train multiple times to get to the next level... And this doesn't go anywhere yet?! I mean, godamn Xavster, talk about giving me alien blue balls...

However, I'm maintaining the high rating under the hope that these are both something which will be delivered on in later versions and in the final product.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this.

I would say that the game doesn't have ton of depth and the story can stall at time just cause you run out of filler stuff. But the story and progression are great. Art and animations are great as well. I am hooked I can't wait to see what's added to this as I am impressed with it as it.

The Setting is good, Artwork is really great and the animations are very smooth unfortunally the characters are very basic and the story is one of the worst ever.

The "missions" are boring, obvious and way too short with more plot armor than all the star trek episodes put together.

None of the decisions do anything on the missions or outside of them and there is no choice of women either they are all forced on to you, the "captain" has no control over anything so far in the game.

The crew act on their own doing anything they want and why not the "captain" dosen't discipline them, i didnt see a point in even having the captain around, he dosen't make any decisions, dosen't manage the crew or ship, dosen't do deals, what is his purpose in this game?

I had hoped that since the MC is a captain he would have some balls but the robot attack incident shows he is just another wimp, 3 crew members fucked up(1 bringing the robot on board, 1 messed up repairing it and 1 didnt protect you from it) and MC gets stabbed so how does he react, oh well i know you didnt mean anything bad lets just carry on as if it didn't happen, pathetic man.

Even when one of the crew(which MC hired for a specific job) decided she didnt want to do her job anymore and just handed her job over to a robot(which she used the ships resources to fix) then promoted herself to a better job you would think MC would be pissed and fire her immediately but no for some reason the "captain" dosent see anything wrong with the crew doing anything they want.

Story seems interesting, altough everything happens to fast, renders are great, writing in general is not bad, but sex scenes are one of the worst parts of this game, too short with only few lines of dialogue, they are made like an afterthought, sandbox-like gameplay is ok.

Good Points
+Story seems interesting.
+Girls loks sexy.
+We have animations.

Bad Points
-Story seems interesting but its to much fast peaced everyting happens to fast. Some times feels low detailed and off. Just one day pass and Tanya starts telling ''Dont be stupid we are crews you cant deal with that alone.'' like that things or they becaming close friends to fast etc... Come on man? I'm not big fan of slowburn stories but that much fast peaced story dont make sense...
-It doesnt have any walkthrough and its sandbox with not any tips system. So its like blind run and its pretty boring to...
-Some characters are not well writed and annoying AF...
-We have animations but nearly all of them are not well maked and looks weird...

For The End
So for the end this is not bad game but it need some fix about story and game system. If i was DEV of this game i will make this more VN like game. It doesnt suit that much this game being sanbox. Or good walkthrough or tip system could be helpful. Right now i dont suggest you play this game.

---- Characters :
---- Renders/Graphisms :
A really good job on that side, the characters have their own looks, own personalities, own quirks. They are not lambda and you enjoy getting to know them more

---- Story/Writing :
---- Background/Atmosphere :
The space/aliens background is well built and "believable". The story could be a little more epic but makes sense overall. There is a lot of effort in context. In fact it could be a story suitable for a scifi novel, less for a scifi movie. The writting is very good, and the humor is there.

---- Animations :
---- Sex scenes :
It's above average, the renders and animations are ok, but the high speed pace is making them a bit futile. It's over in 3 secs or 3 clicks, then you get back to business. The results is a lack of intensity which could be negative in the long term as we might not care much if we get some sex with her or her.

---- Gameplay :
---- Contents/Updates :
Heavy in both ways.
Lot of contents, but a lot of time spent to get those, although the prologue is quick paced and intense.
That said, the mechanism of the gameplay works well, and comes out with some context, but it makes the main story kinda slow and hard to follow and remember. The music is a great match.

===

I usually don't like sandbox system, but the map of the ship with the stars saves it from being a total hassle and as the background, the music and the characters fits very well to the scenario, you can bear it pretty well. The actions makes sense and the writting is qualitative.
However it's not one of those game that you can't stop playing until you reach the end. Here you will have many occasions to say "geez again trades, showers, training ? No more, I stop for today, I want to sleep"

review based on version 0.41
pro:
- not bad CG
- good enough animations
- very good UI and navigation system
- not bad story
- code is ok
cons:
- grinding money is easy, but in current state- its useless
- not real flaw, cuz game in early development stage, but player ll feel- some content missing

in declared genre, considering early development stage- game very promising and curently very good.