VN - Ren'Py - Cradle Beyond the Veil [v0.2.3b] [First Wish Studio]

I played Cradle Beyond the Veil and really enjoyed it. The story is simple but flows nicely, and since Brutalisk is part of it, we can expect top-tier animation.

The human voice sound effects are a nice touch and make the game feel more alive while reading.

The renders feel a bit blurry, but maybe that’s intentional for the style they’re going for. I do wish there were a few more player choices, even if they don’t have a deep impact.

For me, this game is around 4–4.5 stars. But after seeing people throwing around 1-star ratings here, I’ll give it 5.

On itch.io this game is close to 5 stars, but here on F95 people rate games as if they’re the worst thing ever, instead of being grateful that devs are putting so much time and effort into a completely free project.

So if the devs are reading this: focus on your supporters on itch, Patreon, Discord, etc., and just ignore the 1-star trolls on F95. This place is becoming more and more toxic.

I actually couldn't get through all the current content as the MC is so bad

To say the MC is passive is a super understatement, pretty sure you could steal one of his organs and still not get a reaction, a waitress literally brings drugged wine to him so thugs can rob him and then goes right back to the same bar but doesn't say a word, also 100% sure he's devoid of brain cells given he is drugged and robbed after trusting the first people he see's and then goes and trusts the second person he meets right after waking up who then betrays him and leaves him for dead, and when MC then decides to forgive her i ended the game right there, there is pathetic super simp and then there is this moron.

MC's reaction to waking up lost in the woods = meh
MC's reaction to seeing a elf = meh
MC's reaction to a werewolf = meh
MC's reaction to being drugged and robbed = meh
MC's reaction to seeing boobs = oh wow they are perfect
MC's reaction to being late for work = it's worse than death

Animations are nice and smooth

The story is pure garbage and full of so many holes it's not even funny.

The cradle company could not be more suspicious if they were called mega-suspicious-totally-not-evil-inc. and the explanation of how it works makes no sense at all, for some reason they will pay MC to enter a virtual world and work jobs hes unqualified for while taking care of his body full time or doing anything he wants until a random event lets him see the way out and again for some reason they pay him for this, don't worry through because they have no bad reviews and there are rich people showing how much money they have made doing this prowling around town, even through the company is super new and it was impossible for them to have actually done it given the lengths of the contracts, the MC through ignores all that and the totally out of place sci-fi miracle tech and just stares at the receptionists tight uniform.

Story 1/5 (no logic)
Sex 3/5 (good)
Characters 1/5 (horrible)
Art 2/5 (low but good animations)
Choices 1/5 (didn't see any change)
Kinks 1/5 (none)

PROS
+ The Cradle thing was kind of interesting, I guess, even tho it's heavily similar to a certain game we all know.
+ We have animations for SFW, NSFW/sex scenes, and they have good physics.

CONS
- Meluel talking weirdly like that was really necessary? Don't think so, it just makes it hard to understand things, and that's all. In fact, aside from the weird way she talks, her act was a bit weird as well, like how stubborn she was for no reason, and MC had to lie with a straight face constantly saying ''I didn't help you at all'' to not hurt her fragile ego. And not to forget, her monologue wasn't weird, and was normal English, which is even weirder.
- Even tho things get better when he risks everything to go after Cradle, the first hour of the game, and how insufferable MC's life was, it was a bit annoying to watch. He had terrible job, awful place he live, he was broke, his BOSS was treating him like a sh*t, he had no one loving him at his life, and nothing going on at all And like this baseline we have shown wasn't enough we had Mia's scene with those thugs as well, where she got harrassed, and MC saved her by sacrficing himself to get beaten by them like a pathetic weak loser. So, honestly prologue could have been handled way better, and could have been at least enjoyable to read.
- The whole writing revolving around Elizabeth is terribly-done, she literally listened how terrible MC'S life was from him, which BTW as a player we had no choice, but trust her, share lots of secret information, etc, she showed him the contract, and we had option not to sign, and if you don't she forcefully makes MC sign while he is sleeping, which is seriously concerning, you telling me people can be forced to accept contracts while they are sleeping? What kind of nonsense plot hole is this? This is quite concerning, they should change this for sure, and make it like people can only sign contracts when they are actually constent. Anyway after that you wake up at dungeon-like place, MC asks why she did this, and she lies about it, says she didn't done it, and after some events she betrays him, he turns into a stone, and makes a talk like ''You are good guy MC, wish you'd had the change to know me better.'' the hell you on b*tch? You betrayed him. There is no better way to know someone than knowing she is a back-stabbing betrayer b*tch. What's worse is MC literally had chance to testify against her to Sentinels so she can get punished for abusing fresh spawn, yet he didn't, he lied, and protected her, and players has given no choice over it, which is nonsense AF, in fact she even told MC ''I can show you around, but I'll need your trust, from this point you will trust for all I say or do'' after everything she done, and again we have given no choice, and MC just blindly trusted her, which at this points makes you consider MC has IQ lower than 50 or something... The whole thing just smells of poor-writing. Especially considering she shown to be big part of the game's main story, and LI it even makes the whole thing worse.
- Forced named saves feature is a bit annoying, but it seems like they are working on making it optional for the next updates.
- Something like an ingame walkthrough would be nice.
- Visual quality seems a bit inconsistent, in some cases it looks pretty good with good lightning, and good quality renders, but in some it looks a bit low quality, and bad.
- Art style and character models mostly look fine, but the space between legs and the part where the ass and legs connect on women looks a bit weird. The feet and ankle design is a bit weird as well. And some characters' tits could use to be rounder and firmer. Mia can use some changes for her tits, or Elizabeth can use some changes on her face and tits. MC's face isn't that great either, to be honest.
- Almost everything about the game, especially the story, and the art style feels pretty much the same as a certain game we all know, but again, almost everything like art style, or story is worse than that game as well, and that's a bit meh.
- Shopkeeper told MC clothes from corpses can't be sold, so you telling me there is no looting mechanic in a game, kind of reality like this? That's super lame.

VERDICT
All things considered, I don't think I can suggest this game to anyone, unless they remake almost everything it seems a lost cause especially with main story is being poorly-written.

I've enjoyed playing the demo, then the 0.2.2 update came and the game felt even better. The work put into the renders and animations is next level, the devs are masters at improving on the HS2 graphics. This is the strong selling point of the game.
The writing leaves a bit of a sour taste if you compare it with the visuals, it feels clipped and unnatural at times or overly long and verbose at other times. There are some grammar typos too, but those can be fixed quite easily. The overall writing gets the point across, but it should be a point of focus for the next updates.
The story starts to shape up, the scope seems to be massive and I can't wait to see more of it.
The character introductions and growth should be improved upon too. There is too little we are shown about them and some actions happen too fast or out of order. Hopefully we get more time and info about them in the next updates. A personal opinion regarding how the betrayal was handled: It should give the player a bit of a chance to get revenge/even or at least show more strength, instead of just caving for the reason that she knows about your parents.

Overall, I would rate 4 stars, but I will give 5 stars for encouragement and also because I feel there are some 1/2 stars underserving reviews. I shall bring balance to the force.

tldr Solid animations, bad everything else.

Blurry/Low quality images, inconsistent sound effects and weird choice of music. I wouldn't have mentioned it if the game itself didn't at the start as "Part of the experience."

Those are unimportant, the true bane of this one is the writing. If you've had fever dreams with high temperature, you'll feel right at home. Dialogues are arranged in ways I've never seen any human speak, writing is fast because writer has no story to tell. There is a prepared 20 minute exposition dump for a character no one expected. With images. Just because.

Version [v0.2.2]

Top notch visuals and animation. Cool world building, setting up to have at least a good enough plot for a porn game. Definitely will play future updates.
Shame we didn't get to see more of Lara, love a nerdy redhead in cosplay.

I expected much more.

Writing is bad. The pacing is too fast. Events transition from one to another with no smooth progression. The druid has only two defining traits—"I’m too proud" and "I want to fuck." I get that this is a demo, but what exactly its supposed to engage us with?

Graphics? The renders are low quality.
Animation? Sure, the sex animations look decent, but that’s not the author’s achievement since they aren’t even theirs. Outside of sex, all animations are either taken from Mixamo (or something similar) or made from scratch—but they look janky as fuck.

That’s it. Maybe I’m being too harsh on this demo, but it’s probably because I got misled by the high ratings.

Cradle Beyond the Veil 0.1.6
Great diction and spectacular animation. This project has immense potential.

I especially like the druid's dialogue; she's an enjoyable character. It's not hard to see why whoever the overview's written by thinks that this will be the best adult visual novel: it certainly can be.

Cradle beyond the veil v0.16

This a demo but so far I liked this one's short and dev showed his skills in renders and animations. Plot seems mysterious can't say anything for now. Druid girl is totally sexy and gorgeous. Visuals are great. Lewd animation is steamy. Dev did a good job with the bouncing boobs that's hot. Lewd scene was totally hotter.

Hoping to we will get to see nice story too. Keep up the good work dev looking forward to next updates.

It's alright. The animations are great, but the story is very bland, and the things they say and think are a bit cringe.

It's definitely not something to get that excited about. Animations being great with a nothing burger for story and character aren't going to get very far.

And I wish developers would stop doing straight cuts when moving characters within the same framing. It's gross to look at, it wouldn't hurt to dissolve it. It's two words in renpy for Christ's sake.

It is a short demo right now, but it is VERY well made. The best renders I have seen of any game on this site. If it can keep this level of quality going forward while going further into the story without taking 6 months between updates, it will be an excellent game. I will definitely keep an eye on it.

This project is definitely worth following. The animation is some of the most beautiful I've seen in any VN, and even the stills are very well composed. The author's use of light was some of the best I've seen. Not much character development to speak of yet, but I'm intrigued to read further, and was vaguely disappointed when the demo ended. My one reservation is that the LI's dialogue was somewhat difficult to understand; but this may have been a deliberate choice on the author's part. Maybe it'd be a good idea to ensure that the non-English terms can for the most part be worked out on the basis of context. Difficulty parsing dialogue might take certain readers out of the story.

Disclaimer: this score is based *solely* on the visual and animation aspects of this tech demo.

It will be very much subject to change if the writing turns out to be dogshit, and with that being said, I hope the part of the story seen here either doesn't get included in the actual Chapter 1 whenever it drops, or is reworked to have more build up.

...nothing else much to say, visually the demo is excellent to the point it took me a bit to realize it's HS2 based, and I will be following the progress of this project.

Edit for v0.2.2: while the writing as a whole is not flat out bad, it is definitely not on the "good" side; the pacing is absolutely atrocious and a ton of attention is focused on places where it doesn't matter, and there is a huge ass exposition dump that either could have been spaced out, or shown more than it was told.

This game doesn't actually deserve the 4 stars I give it. But it's a tech demo meant only to be a sign of what is to come.

It's made by an experienced animator and you can immediately tell. It plain looks great. Models are not as impressive as the animations but overall it's one of the best looking VNs on the site, right up there with seven realms. From what I can tell it's custom too, unlike all those HS2 or koikatsu games you see everywhere.

However the writing is complete and utter ass. The introduction makes 0 sense, the dialogue is bad and it's hard to get attached to anyone. It's like they thought "how the fuck do we cram ALL the isekai tropes in one go??" . Character writing is awful too. The elf you meet speaks in the laziest attempt at a "fantasy language", hates you and then immediately fucks you in 2 seconds. I understand devs wanted to show off their strongest point as soon as possible, but even a quick fuck of strangers can be made far more convincing, you don't need a slowburn to make compelling writing.

Now, that's the extent of my review on the game's own merit. From now on is a bit more of a personal rant. This game screams deliberately made to the lowest common denominator, with what, harem-bait waifus and all. It's a rather corporate, kinda soulless attempt at making an Eternum competitor. But the peeps behind the game like more spicy stuff. The chief animator, Brutalisk, pretty much does nothing but cuck stuff. And the only reason a dude like that would make a bog standard isekai harem porn is, well, money. Which is fine tbh, long as they don't add in the more spicy stuff the animator is actually known for after achieving mainstream success -and they likely will-, since the audience they're catering for hates the stuff.

Guess all we can really do is just wait and see how it turns out. I have a feeling that an actual game release will be not unlike the demo, bad writing and good animations.

Review for v0.1.6

Even stated by the dev's themselves, this is really more akin to a tech demo showing off what they can do. I'm kind of rating this with that in mind. So really it's much too early to say anything concrete. With that said, here are my thoughts:

It's a bold and ambitious claim made on "creating what we believe will be the best adult visual novel." When I think about what I look for in a good adult visual novel at a very base level, there are two aspects I feel are most important. Good writing and good lewd content. Not every game is going to be plot of the century nor is every game going to be the hottest thing you've ever seen, but when something can strike a good balance with both is when I truly enjoy AVNs. So with that claim, I would expect those two things from this game at a minimum.

I'm not a huge fan of isekai tropes personally, but this game is better with it than others I've played. I appreciate that air of mystery of just waking up in this different world and that's all you get. No getting killed by a truck and talking to goddesses to find out you're a chosen one. It's a little more of a realistic approach.

After a little exploring you happen to run into an elf girl who's being chased by a werewolf, manage to help her kill it by providing a distraction, and then she takes you back to her camp. Up until this point, I don't really have complaints about the plot so far (as little of it as there is anyway). Wouldn't say I was hooked, but I was interested.

Now I am not familiar with the animators work, but I've already seen a few people recognize them. It's no question that the sex scene, animation wise, is top tier. It's just something you don't see much with 3D models in AVNs. THAT level of quality. It's easily this little demos strongest aspect. But what separates a good AVN sex scene from just looking up porn is the writing going into it, and that part has underwhelmed me. After getting back to that camp, suddenly the elf girl monologues about how sweet and cute and brave and fragile this human is. Then she gets horny and lets you help tend to her wounds. Then you start having full on sex with her?

I feel like this scene would have made sense like way into the game after we got to know these two characters more and see a relationship grow between them, but it felt very out of place and rushed as is. I found the girls monologue annoying and kind of unrealistic is maybe the way to put it, given she just escaped death moments ago and was inherently distrustful of this random stranger in the woods. Maybe a single thought about the MC being cute would be fine, but to have all these feelings out of nowhere, well, feels weird. I think the wound cleaning moment would have been great to build a little tension, but to be the transition into full sex makes this feel like it would be taking a fuckfest kind of route. Now if this is all just for the purpose of the demo and to show off a sex scene fair enough, but I would be unsatisfied if this was the actual start. Though maybe I'm reading too deep and this elf doesn't even matter, since we seemingly wake up and "it was all a dream" or something.

The game ends right after that so there really isn't much to talk about. It definitely has all the bells and whistles going into it with the nice renders, great animations, sounds and music, etc etc. But plenty of games can say that and still fail to hold my interest due to the writing not being nearly up to the same quality. Hoping this one surprises me on that front, but it definitely has my eye for now.

This is my review of v0.1.6

Ok, so this is kind of a Demo a short one but very well made one I must say. And honestly if you have any doubts about trying this early game its maybe 15min long but this really is something special easily One off the best if not the Best Animated game I have played on this site.

-Story is 7/10 interesting enough to get to the "fun" parts a bit rushed but hey its a demo
-Renders 9/10 excellent, world looks great
-Animations 15/10 wow they were not kidding amazing!
-Sound 8/10 good, could use some more lewd sounds imo
-Writing 8/10 good enough, bit fast paced but interactions between the main characters were well done

Overall: Give this is try well worth it! 11/10

review for v0.1.6

bruh the animations are so fuckin good, i need more.
writing kinda mid, but does its job.
girl was pretty cute, current version kinda short, but still nutted cuz the animations are that good.