VN - Ren'Py - Element-174 [v0.26c] [Knotty Games]

When this game first showed up back in 2019 I thought "Huh this looks neat but it doesn't have that much content, I'll read it again in a couple of years". Well I completely lost track of it until I randomly stumbled on the 0.26c version. The TLDR is this: Plenty of girls to choose from, dated renders/animations, enjoyable, mildly disappointing. Overall I had a decent time with this but I can see why some people hate it.

★ ★ ★ Presentation ★ ★ ★
This is a classic Visual Novel with multiple branching paths and choices (maybe too many). You can tell the dev is a seasoned VN enjoyer with the 'Japanesque' VN intro and music, the couple of battle sequences, the magical girl transformations etc. I personally didn't care much for this as it looks jarring when those anime conventions are paired with semi realistic DAZ models and it comes with some tonal whiplash, I feel like this VN would've been better off forgoing those things and crafting its own style. But regardless it was still entertaining even though it changed how seriously I started to engage with this.

★ ★ ★ ★ Gameplay ★ ★ ★ ★
This is one of the most contentious points, the game has about 16 heroines, each with their own paths and some are mutually exclusive with each other, you can easily get locked out of most content by not picking the right choices and even if you "play perfectly" you'll still have to play through this at least 4-5 times to see all the content.

I played blind at first and had an ok time, but the way I engaged with this after, was by looking at the 'official' Walkthrough and looking up which girls were compatible with whom then I grouped them up and played each route accordingly.

The choices are mildly disappointing as I thought they would have more interesting outcomes or dilemmas considering this is a type of sci-fi time travel story, but instead they all amount to for the most part as [Do you want to fuck this girl?.... Or maybe this other girl?] But I still enjoyed mapping out the correct routes and figuring out the optimal way to get the most out it and I had fun piecing together the story by revisiting other characters (even if the story is not that interesting by the end of it).

★ ★ ★ ★ Sound ★ ★ ★ ★
Decent choice of music, it has a couple of grating sound effects but I appreciate the effort, I wish it had some SFX for the more intimate moments, but aside from that the only blemish imo is the misplaced Japanese soundtrack that is used here and there, I don't think it's particularly bad it just doesn't fit in this type of VN all that well.

★ ★ ★ Writing ★ ★ ★
The story is somewhat convoluted, with a lot of bloat, weird girls with weird quirks, secret organizations, conspiracies... and it all feels somewhat bland and undeveloped. Dev has some neat ideas and creative moments but what does the Justin Bieber Alien have to do with the Bimbo ninja assassin? Nothing really, a lot of the intricacies and oddness from each character feel self contained for the most part and don't contribute much to the overarching plot (with a couple of exceptions obviously).

On the technical side it has good English, you can tell it was written by either a native English speaker or someone with high proficiency in the language, with decent sentence structure and grammar, but it lacks refinement. In some cases conversations go for too long and in others it feels like important plot points go underdeveloped. It definitely feels amateurish although I can appreciate it at certain points.

★ ★ ★ Visuals ★ ★ ★
Dated, they would've been ok 6-7 years ago but nowadays people expect more out of this type of VN. Although you can see some improvement between chapters for the most part there are some glaring issues like lightning looking bad in some scenes, a couple of models looking ghoulish with a sickly skin tone, stiff animations (limbs moving but torso staying static, 2 second loops, jankyness that type of thing)

It pains me to give it 3 stars since I do like most of the character designs. I've never considered myself strictly a small boob or big boob enjoyer. I like variety the most in my porn games and this game nails that with girls having smallish perky tits, melon sized milkers and everything in between.

★ ★ ★ Porn ★ ★ ★
The most glaring issue in this VN is how formulaic and basic the sex scenes are, a couple of exceptions aside most scenes progression happen like this: Handjob -> Blowjob -> Missionary Vaginal sex on top of bed ->Vaginal sex again in a different position -> Threesome with another girl. Good WEG developers use sex scenes as a means to portray the personality of each girl or maybe enhance a humorous or sentimental moment in the story in some way. Here it feels very formulaic and it wouldn't be that bad by itself but adding the other small issues with the writing, the non choices you get during gameplay, lack of sex SFX and the quirks with the visuals you get a disappointing experience that could've been much more.
I would say however that the sex scenes are still plenty fappable depending on how tolerant you are of certain types of jank. Each girl has a decent amount of content too so there's plenty to go through.

-Final Thoughts-
Reading through my review I feel like I had more negative things to say about this VN, but overall I felt like it was time well spent. I can appreciate a lot of things in this project even with all the little issues that it has. This is one of the rare cases where I can see why someone would give this two stars or five.
Even though I wish it could've been better at least I hope the dev uses this to grow further as a creator, I feel like with the right direction he can make something great in the future.

Not a fan of the quite convoluted blocked paths from day one.
Game isn't nearly good enough to merit a dozen playthroughs to see all the content.
Renders are not great.
Animations are basic.
Story is not terrible, but I really don't like game over choices.
Game might have been decent 7 years ago, but not so much these days.
Played through twice and still didn't get any scenes with half the girls.
Games like this should be fun, not a boring chore.

I haven't read through the negative ratings on this VN, so I can't comment on them. I've always like the characters in this story, and how quirky their individual arcs are, as well as having some affection for how sexy the models are. If I had any wish for this, it would be that it updated more often, but as a someone not in a position to lend a hand financially, I don't feel like I can really complain about that.

Short summary:

2 stars for the game as a whole. 3.5 stars if you install the gallery mod and look through just the girls you are interested in.
This game is the definition of “not quite there”. The story is not complete trash, almost OK, but fails too much. Some characters may appear to be interesting, but mostly they are not good. The renders are usually pretty terrible, and grainy, with some being ok.



Good Things

• Some girls are sexy
• Variety
• Some sex scenes are ok and animated

Bad points

• Idiotic choices: “Punch this fucker!” and “Kick this asshole!”. Wow so interesting
• Bad grainy renders most of the time
• The story and characters are best described as “not the worst I’ve seen”

Welcome to "Black Screen : The Game"... so many all over the place I first thought they were placeholders. Oh boy was I wrong ! It's just a way to no render part of the scene and it's basically called "laziness".

- Music is very generic, I had to mute the whole thing.

- The story is a chaotic mess with a micmac of personnlities and situations you find in other AVN's but in a all-you-can-eat buffet style.

- Renders are not bad but nothing to get excited about and somewhat outdated. Girls are kinda cute and various body shapes. And let's not forget about the horse-dicked MC.

- Animations are not really animations, juste short, robotic and bland loops.

- Writting is nothing special either. Sometime you have to go through a wall of text with a still image (yeah.... the same one) even when people are talking, you have to stare at some funritures. At times, I felt like watching a powerpoint presentation.

What's more, the rythm of the story/scene is broken because of those black screens...e.g. you are dating someone or having insipid sex, suddenly you are back home or somewhere else in town. No goodbye, no transition. That's is frustrating.

That's it for me.

I honestly wish I felt the opposite of what I feel for this game.

The graphics are good enough. But the story ....

Like most classes in these games. The premise is college. But the MC's dialogue is essentially like what the freshmen in highschool were like

There were no limits to their horniness. The mc isn't even at nice guy level but at pathetically let's try again level. Chick is a snob, okay, don't simp. But later goes right up to that, seemingly expecting her to not be a snob or whatever you high class elites call that shit.

And the options! No middle ground or avoiding things! Either go with this girl or go with another girl. . . .

I couldn't! I wanted to enjoy the game! I really did! I wanted to find the cultured content too! But my mind just said, "find another or get rid of this. I can't anymore".

It was bad enough that I felt compelled to come here and post this.

It took awhile before the greatness of this game became obvious to me. It's a legit sci-fi game, and if it weren't adult-oriented, truly ambitious. 16 possible allies to avert a future apocalypse. So far it looks like the MC can only save/advance a max of 5 of them to the next stage (Week 3) per playthrough. But even choosing to go with only one (or none), the player experiences a fully fleshed-out adventure. Some combinations give synergies of superpowers or woven storylines. Those you don't choose could all die, choose an antagonistic pair and one of them could kill the other. Character-building is the dev's strength and none of the deaths, or even mundane-looking choices, are taken lightly. You will feel immersed as you live through your the consequences of each of your in-game choices. Add in the beautiful models, backgrounds, and steaming scenes, and this is already a classic.

Renders are good and the story is very good and its easy to understand. There is lot of choices and all matters,not all girls arent slutty,all girls are interesting and have a backstory. I understand that some people dont like because close paths to other girls but that gives more replayability. It gonna be only 4 episodes but its a good game to play.

A game with a reason to sleep with girls. Good premises. The girls are okay. Most are boring and not very good looking but some (Zoé, Penny, Madison and Jules [what's this name?]) are over the top. Most other are just place holder and i don't even remember their physique or their story.

Edit: i forget to speak about animations? they aren't. The sex scenes are somehow non existent : images rather than animations.
And there are a LOT of "black screen with description" moment which just let think that the devs didn't care to create a scene and prefered to write a wall of text to describe 5 minutes of game...

The whole story doesn't make much sense, but with its focus (that I can't spoil here) it's not a wonder at all.

The in game walkthrough is one of the worst I ever saw; you get girls icons, some with transparent border, other with red. Nothing in the game tells if the transparent are "go!" and red are "avoid!". Speak about confusing tool.

For a "have sex with girls" plot, you do not sleep much around... it's a bit lame.

Besides, during the days, you "have" choices to do this or that event... and then you have very few choices and days go with 2-3 events. i'd not care if the game was like 90 days long, but it will probably not be and the pacing feels wrong.
There are also "main" girls (probably) but nothing tells you that. The "secondary girls" you think they matter? they won't.

Finally Dev has ambition, but promises only have value for those who believe them. I'll see what is really done, from the promises because at this point, the game do not deliver much of those.

v0.20b
Starts off like a typical "new guy joins university full of chicks" VN, but then opens up with certain twists and a lot of branching choices. Writing is mostly good, no complaints there. Story is a bit of a stretch but at least not totally bland.
Despite playing through the game 3 times (2x thoroughly and 1x fast forwarded) still didn't unlock the majority of gallery/memories. Gallery for me was also partially bugged, wrongly locking last scenes of characters that I saw. Ending/reveal didn't make sense to me, major plot holes that I won't go into due to spoilers. Despite plenty of girls, overall not the prettiest cast, found the minority attractive (6 pretty, 3 OK and 7 hideous); but that's obviously subjective. Music is present, but there is no further sound design (such as moans etc). Scenes themselves are all very vanilla and formulaic (mostly HJ>BJ>SEX>SEX(creampie). So formulaic that I didn't feel rewarded because I already knew the next "stage" of scene unlocking, because it was so predictable. Scene quality is average/slightly below average, just static images, renders are fine, but there are no animations or other fidelity aspects.

Still, overall good.

+ many characters+choices
+ writing
Ø story/plot
Ø music/sound
- low fidelity scenes (static, vanilla, formulaic)

Element became one of my favorites over time, one because i love all things Sci-fi & another, i love the connection and slow build up you can have with some characters, my Favorites being both Zoey & Chloe, ill be keeping a close eye out for future releases & hope to dive back in soon to see what happens next.

I can understand some of the 3 star reviews, especially the way the girls tend to lose the more outrageous aspects of their characters as they fall under the MC's charm or his general niceness and caring; and to some extent the failure of choices to impact the story arc. There is a bit of a sense that this is a porn morality play and that everything will end up working out well for the MC because he is a good guy.
However, the game has unusually good re-playability for me because the story is well written and characters are nicely conceived. Most importantly for repeated playthroughs is that depending on choices, different aspects of the girls are revealed. It is like looking at the storyline through the eyes of at least a dozen different people. And it takes about five different playthroughs to discover the secrets or unique backgrounds of all of the possible LIs, and to experience the story through their particular viewpoint (and get all their scenes). While there are 4-5 girls who are so central to the story that they are going to show up in all the playthroughs, there are also 4-5 others who may only have a single superficial appearance before vanishing from the game if the MC does not express enough interest in them.
The result is a game with a lot of buried content to be explored, but the game creator has designed the choices around a constant story in a fashion that there is not the crazy excessive branching that some developers of (often abandoned) games fall into.
I'm looking forward to Chapter 3.

Game version: [v0.20b]

A sometimes quite charming game that stumbles over its own convoluted systems and despite appearances features shockingly little player choice.

The game does a great job with its pretty unique setup and with giving you multiple interesting girls to pursue. Unfortunately, the MC is just another wet blanket, no-face, horse-dicked schoolboy and you basically are given no choices as to how you interact with anybody.

The only actual choices in the game seem to be which girls you meet during any given time slot to increase your relationship points. It feels like a poor sandbox formula crowbarred into the VN format. The fact that the dev integrated the walkthrough mod into the game feels like an admission that the game is unplayable without it. But even the mod doesn't actually fix the problem. Figuring out which combination of girls you can pursue at the same time during a single playthrough is some kind of rocket science because "well, at this time slot you can get this important scene for character A, but also these minor scenes for characters B and C, while the scene for character A can be pushed back for X days, but this other scene is only available at time point Y. Also, you need X points by week 2 to not have that character's storyline end. Good luck."

That's not even mentioning the fact that every girl has certain other girls that produce extra scenes with both of them, which require that you keep both of their points up, which means if you like a certain girl and want to see all of her scenes you basically just have to slavishly follow a walkthrough and pursue girls you're not interested in.

Mind you, all of these systems exist in a game that literally has the most natural setup for a harem storyline of all time. You have to cum in as many girls as possible to save the world (yes, this is the plot of the game, and it's actually handled in a pretty funny, self-aware way.) I'm not even that much of a harem fan, but it's so fucking weird to have this extremely exclusionary system in a game about wanting to fuck as many girls as possible.

Sex scenes are another disappointment, they are uniformly bland and painfully vanilla. They're also incredibly short and while the writing in the rest of the game is actually pretty good, the writing during sex scenes falls off a cliff. Some sex scenes are literally a) she puts the penis in her mouth b) she sucks it once c) she sucks it twice d) "TIME TO CUM!" This is a personal preference thing, but the language used during sex scenes is also incredibly weird and inconsistent, waffling between lame poetry ("womanly flower") and vulgar ("cunt.") I personally like vulgar, it's just weird when it's mixed in with something from a 14-year-old girl's diary. Well, more like a 14-year-old girl from the 1920s.

In general, the game is just too wholesome, from the "nice guy" MC to almost every girl being shy and sweet (even the ones who are cunts, because you just have to be nice to them long enough, then they'll transform into being sweet too.) It just ends up very same-y and boring. Can't have a girl who's an arrogant cunt, we have to cure her with our dick and by being a nice guy. Also can't have a dumb bimbo, she's just faking it because she's actually the smart villain. But also, we can't have a villain, because she was just forced to be the villain and we can still rescue her and fuck her. The further you progress into the game the more all the girls meld into the same character and get more boring.

I liked Jules when she was an arrogant rich bitch. I liked Penny when she was a clueless bimbo. But we can't have those things, every character has to become the same vulnerable/shy/sweet waifu. I understand the trope of "taming" the bad girl or whatever, but it just feels like all the interesting edges get sanded off, and instead you have "well, this girl is technically an alien/robot/immortal, isn't that neat?" No, not really, you don't actually do anything interesting with that. All of this is also complemented by the terrible choice of playing sad/sentimental music during every sex scene. This game really has zero sexual energy. It actively works against you getting horny. I really wanted to like this game and I did enjoy some of the characters before they got hit with the wholesome-hammer, but overall it's just a chore to play, and the sex scenes are a disappointment.

TL;DR: At least during the first in-game week, it's a chaotic mess of mostly random scenes, purposefully increasing confusion; and not much interesting. No getting to know girls romantically or psychologically. One of the few really pretty girls is the largest bitch that rather would make me sick than horny.

It all just feels too hectic:

- Every character seems to be somehow crazy. E.g. a girl grabs my crotch and says she'd like to hang out with me or something, and then she leaves and disappears for good.

- There is no sequential story development, just a heap of scenes with no clear cause or continuation (such as: a girl randomly appears at my door and soon leaves, fuck knows why).

- I always have to choose this or that, but not both (e.g., I can't call a girl later if I was too busy to take her call, even though it was not urgent).

- Often when I want to do something logical and obvious, like agree to join a club, the game doesn't give me that option. (Instead it often throws at me just more random ridiculous scenes.)

- Consequences of my actions are usually unknown (e.g. when I did that test with Trish, no response about its results). So everything is just building confusion and absurdity.

- I tried to use the walkthrough or the WT mod, but they didn't clarify the game's logic. Quite the opposite: I discovered that I couldn't join a club I was invited to twice, just because some time ago I chose to punch some asshole. WTH is this?

- So I can't really choose my ways, but they get defined by some cascades of cryptic events.

- Renders are lazy work (e.g. no one in the pictures of Saturday evening downtown, though the text says it's swarming with people).

- Add to that annoying long hard pauses between days.

Marvellous renders, hot women, quite the story so it should've landed on 4 stars but I can't give this VN 4 stars because of the selection of women you can interact with (read have sex with)
Without the walktrough I would've never had seen the tentacle scene, which was the sole reason to why I downloaded the game.
Two women seem to be mandatory cum dumps in the story, but the others you have to select which means that you have to replay the VN for each of the other women.
I'm too lazy to calculate how many times you would have to play this VN to see all content.
Unless you UnRen them or use the gallery unlock cheat-mod.

Also with F95Zone user logic this game is missing the tag "pregnancy" as he ejaculates several times in the vaginas and as we all know that's insta pregnancy!

Rated: 3/5
Based on: v0.19b

This game has way too many paths.
It's hard to choose your favourite girls because mostly you have to choose between them. I don't know why there are so damn many "Now or never" options, if you get what I'm sayin'

For real this game has such great models (mostly) and an amazing story but with all these paths I don't know if I'll try to play the other paths.
Like I did play it oncce and was on these paths with Zoe, Penny and Jules and it never went further than going down on each other, while there are at least three other girls I could've slept with.

It would've been better if you could interact with more girls at once and not have to decide between them every two minutes.

This is a good game that many sci-fi fans will like quite a lot. It was not my cup of tea, however.

Some Observations:

• Attractive females with different personalities and types, a little something for everyone.
• Amazing branching structure that works but does make you feel as if you'll need to play the game about 20 times to meet everyone. On one hand this is cool because your gaming experience will be different depending on what choices you make. On the other hand the game can get overwhelming because everyone you meet is bringing in some very different storylines and it can get confusing.
• Over-the-top. Without going into details there are just too many things going on here, and to be honest, I stopped following the dialogue before I finished. There was just too much for me to enjoy following.

So why 4 stars if I didn't like it? Because it is a well done game and it doesn't have any glaring flaws that I could find. The language is good, the Dev seems to have a good plot going and is sticking to their internal roadmap. So I would totally recommend people try this game. So if a little over-the-top sci-fi is your thing, please try this game! You won't regret it!

What is this game?
I fucked an alien?
Huh?
All I want to do is fuck this beautiful blonde bimbo but she is the most confusing character of them all?
What is going on with this story it is like an episode of sherlock but my mind-palace is full of blowjobs so I can't figure out shit?!?
How can a plot make no sense yet completely branch out like this?
Loading is probably the most annoying thing in the game since its like load every two scenes and even then you aren't sure how it all fits together.
Whatever. Just play it and find who you like. You might even be able to fuck them.

This game is without a doubt my most favourite VN right now. Decisions are really impactful, and the huge amount of route variety.

The story and romance are also 10/10, which each girl having their own unique background story.

The only disadvantage is that the renders arent that great, but the girls definitely are gorgeous.

This would be a 5 Star game if it wasn't for all the medieval stuff, Other than that its fairly grounded in reality, there is one character in particular that caught my eye Miss Caroline, she is an interesting redheaded older woman who comes across as slutty but seems to be more than meets they eye, she seems to have genuine feelings for the protagonist & it would be great to see that further explored in future updates