Truly excellent game. As someone who doesn't typically enjoy the sci-fi/post-apocalyptic genre of h-game, this one stands out for avoiding all the typical pitfalls. The writing and pacing are excellent and the game expertly manages to navigate the trails established by post-apocalyptic classics like Fallout, Fallout 2, Wasteland, Wasteland 2, and Wasteland 3.
Getting one minor negative out of the way first: Some may be put off by the initial visual design. The game is 4 years old now and even then, its graphics weren't stellar. The maps, the GUI, and some of the older scene backgrounds definitely have not aged well and clearly do not match up to the sleeker Renpy GUI designs and sharper, more detailed backgrounds of 2024 Renpy games. However, the models are high quality and attractive, and more recent updates do improve in overall graphical quality.
So what does this game do well then?
First, while there is a sandbox, it is extremely easy to navigate: two-clicks at most for any location and built-in markers for which location has new content available. (Notably, these markers work even for repeatable events with new content, which is a common failing in many other games.) There are no days-of-the-week or times-of-the-day or hunting for which girl is in the right "state" in the right location at the right time; it's just about choosing which events you want to see in what order. This also gives the player a chance to choose how much of each type of content they want to see in a row, if they need a break from the sci-fi drama and exploration and instead just want some wholesome family fun, they can do that, or if they absolutely need to see a questline to its end right away, they can do that too.
Second, the game avoids massive upfront loredumping, as often happens with games in this genre. What typically happens is the developer has imagined this big complex world and all the rules that govern it, writes background and lore on every part of that world, dumps that all on the player in Chapter 1, then figures out how the story is going to work later. This causes three common problems: 1) a whole bunch of the lore is completely irrelevant to the player and the plot, 2) the plot later needs to violate the original lore, so we get retconpaloozas, and 3) the player gets overwhelmed and/or bored early in the game. Desert Stalker does not do that; it trickle-drips background and lore to the player as it becomes relevant in the game - we learn things as it becomes relevant to the MC and plot. At the same time, the background lore is not improvised and glued together as the game goes; it shows enough forethought and planning that the pieces fit together well.
Similarly, the girls are introduced at their own pace (this is a harem game, after all). Again, harem games often throw all their LIs at the player in Chapter 1, then have all the romances proceed at the same pace. This again results in overwhelmed and bored players, but creates further problems with pacing: since all the romances proceed at the same pace, the MC is often notably celibate in early chapters before the game devolves into a fuckfest later. Of course, the "solution" to that is random side-girls the MC fucks in early chapters before the main LIs open their legs, or a forced sex-scene early to show off the game's lewds.
Desert Stalker starts with the MC in a very loving family right off the bat, with established relationships. Other girls are gradually added to the harem one at a time, over the course of the game's current 17 chapters (days). This frees up each LI to progress at their own pace, without starving the player of lewds. There are slow burns and long seductions, there are one-night stands, there are arranged "marriages," there are "forceplay" relationships, but none are required to follow a chapter-by-chapter progression chart. Each romance feels natural and true to the LI / relationship - some you fuck upon meeting, others have been gradually seduced over the course of the entire game so far.
Fourthly, the family grounds the MC and makes him relatable. Make no mistake, this is a power-fantasy harem game with an OP MC, but instead of spending the first few chapters establishing how OP and badass the MC is, the game actually spends that time establishing that the MC is a family man. The MC converses with his wife at night about the futures of their daughters, about their futures, about their relationships with the MC. This isn't an isekai. The MC has values and virtues and established relationships that are important to him, and the player is brought around to valuing those things as well.
These conversations and family relationships also keep the game from getting too dark and morbid. Too many post-apocalyptic h-games are too focused on establishing how grimdark the world is, depressing and demoralizing the player. Why do I want to play a fantasy game in a world where everything inevitably sucks? Why should I empathize and care for characters that will inevitably suffer? Instead, Desert Stalker does a great job of injecting beauty and love into its grim post-apocalyptic setting. The dev recognizes that a story must have hope in order for there to be tragedy, there must be something that of worth in order for there to be loss. The MC's family is first and foremost in this, but the player is gradually made to care about other LIs, the MC's friends, and some factions in the game. There are good, innocent people the MC wants to protect, and this gives the player an impetus to succeed and be heroic, not just be the baddest bad-ass in this bad world. This mix of the personal and the political gives everything the player does in the game more weight, as they think about how faction choices might impact the ones the MC loves.
In many other games, there would be a disconnect between the personal life of the MC and the things they do out in the game world. Instead, Desert Stalker has done an excellent job of bringing everything back, especially for a game developed in an episodic model. Characters the player meets with earlier always return later. There have been very few throwaway characters - most characters that are introduced are significant and will appear again later (if not killed ASAP), unlike other games that introduce the second cousin of the antagonist's wife's sister's coworker's manager, then forget them. Even the characters in the opening sequence, which would otherwise seem to exist just to establish the game's tone, appear again; even more amazingly, those two characters take completely separate paths, serving as a contrast between chaos & violence and peace & pacifism. I don't know if the dev intended for that contrast from the beginning, but it's a quietly brilliant narrative choice with two random side-characters who would have been throwaways in almost any other h-game. This makes the decisions in the game feel important and weighty beyond just the "game" element of min-maxing your factions; I sat there for a long time thinking about what to do with Pepper and Chili's people, because I'm confident that the dev will bring that decision back to impact the broader game in some way in some future chapter. In this, Desert Stalker does something that even the original Fallout games don't manage, actually personalizing the faction choices required of the player, and promising that the player will feel the consequences of those decisions. (One minor quibble here: putting Mantis' development AFTER her *important* decision reduced the impact of that decision and puts the player in a position of making the decision with very little information. Instead putting Chili and Pepper's development and giving them more screentime BEFORE their *important* decision lent that decision a lot of weight.)
Overall, balance is probably the best word to describe what makes Desert Stalker great. Yes, there are random arbitrary acts of violence and cruelty in the game, but they are scattered between moments of beauty and triumph and friendship. As a result, they serve as an effective reminder of the game's setting without overwhelming the player with morbidity and cruelty. The characters themselves discuss and wrestle with this; what the player sees through Shani's eyes in the Zone affects Shani deeply as well, both the beauty and the horror, and Shani's conversations about and responses to those experiences help the player process those events as well. What the player makes of those events is mirrored by how Shani is affected by those events, and by making the player think about how those events would impact an 18-year old girl, the player's own feelings on the Zone sequence are further strengthened. Beauty, tragedy, eroticism, death, humor, and mystery, are all scattered throughout and blended together in the game masterfully, creating an experience that is continually interesting and engaging.
Other devs in this genre would do well to play Desert Stalker and learn from it. It doesn't just avoid the annoyingly common pitfalls of other games in this genre, but it does a masterful job of pacing all its various elements. The player never feels stuck in a rut, because some other, different experience is always just a click or two away. Desert Stalker strikes the balance that makes games like Fallout special, better than the new Fallout developers manage it even. I don't know what the dev's background is, but there's some really excellent writing here. The dev gets how to surprise the player in ways that make sense and the player agrees with, constantly brings back earlier elements and characters in ways that make sense, and weaves together tonally distinct elements into a new, distinct tone of their own. It's really remarkable work in a single-person h-game.
Some additional notes:
- I love the Shani Zone sequence, in case it wasn't obvious. The tree sequence and the callback to it were masterful, like something out of the best animes or movies. I have no idea where the crossbow will lead, but I eagerly await it and I actually believe the dev won't forget it.
- There are still some incest-harem tropes in the game, but they're still executed excellently. While Rabiah is "the aunt with a wild past and a shitty husband for you to cuck," she is better executed than any other version I've seen. As of 0.17, the MC has not fucked her, but honestly, I don't even care that much at this point. I'd be happy if her plotline just ends more or less as is, that's how much the dev has made me care about the development of the "aunt" character in an h-game.
- The MC is still very much a manly man who gets all the girls and fucks whoever he wants, in an incest-harem h-game. If that puts you off, that puts you off.
- The game has cutscenes. Sometimes they're a little unnecessary imo, but the dev included a feature where there's text informing you that you're in a cutscene. It's a great useability feature so players can avoid clicking through them by accident. These started off fairly rudimentary, but now there's even one with a (really easy) QTE built in, which is a technical innovation I haven't seen before in a Renpy game. So yes, excellent overall technical quality.
- The dev is mindful of the player's time and user experience. The player does not have to click and click and click through pages of dialogue. There are no pointless 1-option "choices" though there are a few choices that are just text-flavoring. A couple of game-overs possible but you are quickly returned to redo the choice, and they're part of some tightly-crafted narrative sequences, not just randomly in regular gameplay.
- I've written 2000 words about how good this game is. You really should try it.
