VN - Ren'Py - Eternum [v0.7.5 Public] [Caribdis]

Cannot wait for more content.
Pros: Some of the best visuals and animation in RenPy, well made characters, sucessful use of humor/comic relief (honors the intended pacing, rather than detracting from it)
Cons: Currently short, and essentually a kenetic novel where you can opt out of each characters arcs if you want (and thats respected in game world, rather than just "happening off screen).

″OASIS was much more than a game or an entertainment platform.”
Ernest Cline. "Ready Player One"

OASIS was many things. So many things in fact, the film and the book couldn't show them all. Some of the things should be probably left untouched, but some, well, one in particular, is rather interesting.

ETERNUM *IS* OASIS.
Except it isn't.

If one is given two smartphone models, of different brands, for example, can it be said that those phones are the same thing? Surely they are used the same, they have the same functions, but they were made differently, on different assembly lines, by different people. One can be different from another in many subtle things, yet these subtle differences are what makes us prefer one model over the other.

ETERNUM is different. Yes, it is clearly inspired by OASIS, no doubt here, adressing the elephant in the room. But it is different. Caribdis could definitely make minimal core design changes and achieve the same result. But the changes were made. Are they for the better? For the worse? No matter, their intention was to create some distance between the game and it's inspiration.

The setting
Minor spoilers ahead.
It is actually closer to our daily world as it could be. People still use cars, go to universities, meet with their friends, engage in outdoor activities. Nothing of the extreme exists in this world. Nothing but ETERNUM. The precise elaboration is not present, but to shorten things up, there are neural implant chips which allow the user to connect to a different world while physically remaining in a sleeping state in real world.
"With a neural implant that recreates the five senses, it becomes impossible to distinguish between the game and the real world." - so the main question is solved here. ETERNUM is seamless. OASIS wasn't.

This seamlessness allows the users to abuse the virtual world, as no law and order from the real world applies here. So, while original OASIS was a teaching program and later developed in all kinds of things, ETERNUM instead focused on providing a refuge for people with specific interests to gather up and communicate with each other as if it was real world.

"With power comes responsibility" - where has this quote ever worked? Not here, at least. For that much attention ETERNUM is getting, it is surprisingly underdeveloped on the infrastructural level. This may have been a negligible letdown, if the same problems weren't already solved by Cline in his novel. I could never understand why would the developer of ETERNUM game take on such a massive setting, if he either couldn't or didn't bother shaping the worldbuilding properly before digging into the plot. Here are some of few things which stand out and completely ruin the story:
* Levels, which are obtained by earning experience, and as quted by one of the main characters, are only for show-off. 5 seconds later, and the protagonist is told that the best stuff is literally gated behind a level requirement. Why? What is the concept of levels in real world? There is literally none. One does not have to get some abstract experience to suddenly get substantial benefits from just that. It wasn't in OASIS, why is it here? The problem I have is that it is never used for anything, like come on, why go all this way to never adress the protagonist's level and why EXACTLY should he want to increase it?
* Questionable authority. In the 0.1 chunk the protagonist meets the representative of local authority acting as if she was a god, or, more precisely - Judge Dredd. Unstopabble and undeniable justice. Later, in 0.2 chunk, THE SAME representatives are killed by the protagonist left right and center, without any consequences whatsoever. This was the plot point which ruined the setting for me.
* One last thing before we move on. The servers, and how they are accessed. Yes, for the sake of plot the protagonist had to meet "The Hackerman" incarnate and use her abilities to personal benefit. For some reason, this involves hacking the game so badly that the hacker takes over several characters and dumps them into otherwise inaccessible server. Now remember what chaos are hackers in GTA Online able to perform with but a fraction of such powers? I doubt the game would even remotely be playable or interesting, if you could login one day and become teleported to some killbox where you would be killed and looted, and then maybe even stuck in deathloop or even lose control of own avatar? Terrible! Ok, this is just one person, this is an exception, noone else can do this. Aaaand, here comes the skeleton man, woop woop, your stuff is gone. And law enforcers literally do nothing about it.
* Ok, I lied, this would be the last thing. Remember how in OASIS every perk, every power was from an actual artefact which gives some advantages, can be farmed somewhere and more precisely, can be countered with something else. (MAJOR SPOILER FOR "READY PLAYER ONE AHEAD") When the nuke-bomb went off in OASIS, everyone but the protagonist died, because the protagonist had an artefact granting him an extra life. Everything there was self-explanatory. But not in ETERNUM.
How the hell does protagonist posess some sort of magic? Why is one of the artefacts having a key role to the plot in an unfinished server and what exactly is it's purpose? Why is the antagonist unkillable for some reason? Why is the protagonist literally invincible?

The setting is like a house of cards. Make it simple, it will be more resilient, but nothing special. Make it complex, people will admire it, but one mistake and it all falls down. It did it. It fell, for me at least.

The plot
It differs from the setting in such way: setting is where stuff happens, while plot is what actually happens. And what actually happens is one big mistery. I don't want to talk much about the plot, as in current state it consists of so many inconsistent events that it is very hard for me to weave them together into one picture. A lot of characters are introduced, the player is dumped on a lot of events with those characters, however the timeline is not complete, the story jumps a day or two all of a sudden, and the events are so unevenly distributed, that it somehow managed to look unnatural. It really does feel like several separate lines of events at once, with poor attempts to connect them together. This impacts the character development, but more severely it impacts the meaning of a lot of text lines. Why talk about something which then gets skipped entirely? Why state it as meaningful information if it does nothing but further confusing the player?
In short, the plot is as follows: the student goes to different city, gets in a new university, gets a neural implant and goes on enjoying the game which the implant gives access to. But then everything goes downhill - solving problems, mysteries left and right, dealing with some complete bullshit in both worlds and so on. For me it is rather hard to understand what is going on currently at any given point in time, what was before and what was after. If it wasn't so for the developer, he then failed to include the crucial information into the release version. Some calendar maybe? A timeline? A phone notification menu? Where are we even?

The art
It pains me to say so, but the art is outright bad. The render quality is lacking, the lighting is botched, many clipping mistakes and seams on textures are visible. The worst thing is that to notice this and make a point out of it, all I had to do was to launch up another game from the top of this cite rating (which I unfortunately am not allowed to name in this review according to guidelines) and it feeled like I advanced 10 years in render quality. There are many great games with low quality 3D renders, of course. But the same time there are many great games with significantly better renders, significantly more detailed backgrounds, smoother lighting, cleaner animations and more polygons in clothing and hair. The bar for 3DCG games was raised so high in the past years that currently someone unwilling to sacrifice a half of own life to compete with those at the top, will inveitably be compared to those at the top and lose in that comparisson.
For such an amazingly complex game surely it wouldn't be a problem to do more thorough renders, hire someone with better experiences with setting up light in scenes, doing animations? I hope the renders will be remade, as we all learn by making imperfect art and then perfecting it with practice. There are games in which either some of the worst events were re-rendered and animations done from scratch, and there are even games which after 6 long chapters stopped and remade the first one entirely, marginally increasing the quality.
Here also the art is sometimes really good, but, when it comes to the art of ETERNUM itself, what it feels like is in attempt to make the scenes more vibrant the artist may have pushed too far. The scenes in 0.3 batch were especially painful to watch with all the magic effects beaming from them. God damn.

The adult content
7.
7 scenes.
In 3 giant batches. Underwhelming? Absolutely! Is is "quality over quantity"? Well, how about no? The quantity of everything else is theough the roof, while the reason for this game being "adult" - not so much. The quality is also lacking in those scenes, half of those are shallow and don't have much beyond talks and some naked body renders. Those with miscellanious characters are not interesting. Those with main heroines are sometimes lacking the obvious PoV.
There are games with few sex scenes. And they are great games. But they make up for it in the length and quality of every scene. Dozens of renders. Several animations of different actions. Several PoVs for every action. Adjustable speed of animation. Name it, it has be done... elsewhere. Major letdown, I have expected way more either quality or quantity judging on other games of similar engine and genre.

The summary
Are we there yet? No, not yet. A great game with a great potential, but a lot of problems.
The setting and plot both have more holes than a strainer, several things don't make sense even as for now, I fear it may be getting worse as the plot grows in later chapters.
The text is massive, but it's meaning is not quite there. Not everyone is Lev Tolstoj or Alexandre Dumas to write giant tomes on any possible theme, and an attempt to extend the text doesn't quite give the expected results when viewed from the lense of importance to the plot.
The art is decent, but not perfect, the lighting is unbalanced - scenes may be either very bright or very dim, the saturation aswell. The animations are good but not polished enough, some crucial PoVs are not there when they should be.
Finally the amount of sex scenes is not enough, their quality doesn't make up for an abcense of quantity.

I have rated the game as 3/5 (Average). I could rate it as 4/5 as for now if the setting had a little less holes in it, now it is like 3.5/5 for me, but I cannot quite justify giving it a solid 4 yet.

I really hope to come back to this review and change it in the following updates, improving the given score. This game is already at the very top of weighted rating on this site, and, well, it is a great game. But being great means being great at everything, which I do believe this game will eventually become. But not right now, let's wait and see.

I do recommend playing this game, but perhaps not in current state, rather when it has more content.

Thank you all for reading!

Words can not describe how well made this game is. The visuals are outstanding, the character designs are absolutely insane, there is some amazing humor sprinkled throughout the entire thing, and even the story itself is mind blowing. Absolute perfection of a game right here. If I could give it 10 stars, I would do it in a heart-beat.

(v0.3)
I've played just over 100 games from this site, and this is the first one I've actually taken the time to write a review for. It's just that good. There's a lot (read: the vast majority) of "fast food" games on here that use lazy writing and recycled, stock models as a vehicle to get from sex scene to sex scene. Eternum is like a breath of fresh air.

The models are all beautiful and unique. The animation is top-notch. Probably the best animation work I've seen in an AVN. The lighting and posing are both good. The animations are super smooth. You can even find quite a few non-adult scenes that have very clean animation. I even found myself saying "Damn that was cool" out loud after one of them. It's a great sign that Caribdis is really going the extra mile to put out a quality game.

The writing isn't perfect, but it's better than almost anything else you can find around here. As a few other reviews have highlighted, the characters are well-written; each one has a strong, distinct personality that shines through the writing. The story itself is actually interesting as well! I found myself thinking about it even when not playing the game.

And my favorite part -- the music and sounds. It's such a shame most adult games don't take advantage of the benefits good music/sound design can bring a game. Spooky scenes, friendly banter, heartfelt conversations -- situations can and do become more than the sum of their parts when combined with good music. Eternum takes full advantage of this throughout the story and in its adult scenes. Any game that utilizes music and sound well gets an automatic 'A' from me.

If I had to choose one gripe, it would be the lack of actual adult scenes, but the story itself is interesting enough to me that's it's not that huge an issue. If I remember correctly, there's only 5.5 adult scenes (one topless scene) for about 6-8 hours of gameplay, and two of them are technically part of the same scene. That means you only get around one lewd break every 1.5-2 hours of gameplay, assuming both my memory and math are correct. (I might be forgetting one or two.) At least the current scenes are moderately lengthy. They're all so well made, it's such a shame there's aren't a few more to change up the pacing a bit.

Also be warned -- it doesn't seem like there are that many (if any) actual choices you can make in this game if that's something you're looking for. No branching paths or anything like that. Just love interest choices, but the characters and story are interesting enough to keep me hooked either way.

Overall, the sheer potential this game with its setting has is very exciting. So far it looks like it just might live up to it. 10/10 so far. Keep it up and thank you Caribdis. Can't wait for the next update.

Loveing it since the beginning <3 cant wait for it to continue
All the characters have there unique quirks and reasons.
definitely one of my favorites <3 If you didnt gave it a shot yet then you definitely should.
Real good job Caribdis

After all these years, this might be the first time I've written a review.

This is probably the best written, and well paced, VN that I've played. The storyline is great. The characters are fairly varied and fleshed out, and the situations make sense based on the world that has been created.

TL&DR - I don't skip the dialog in this one. I want to know what is happening. And the audio works great with the visuals.

5/5

Eternum [v.03 Bugfixed]

Where do I even begin…

Script:

Let’s start with this. Caribdis is the best writer I have ever seen in the AVN world. This VN here…I feel that it’s on a league of its own. The talent that you need to have to place certain nuances to each character’s vocabulary and sentence structure to bring their unique personality out and clear to the audience without the accompaniment of voice acting is crazy, but Caribdis does it phenomenally. Also, it’s not just the main cast that breathes life, the side characters as well. Every character that you encounter in that world (or worlds in this game’s case) is memorable. Why? Because they have their own quirks that makes them stand out individually.

This AVN has it all in terms of storytelling: Genre - Action, Fantasy, Mystery, Comedy, Romance. Emotions – Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Love. The bonds you create feels so important that you really feel the connections. All this because of Caribdis’ stellar writing.

Comedy (this deserves its own section):

There are games that tried and failed. I don’t like mentioning other games in a thread dedicated to a specific one, so I’m not going to do that. The…amount…of times…that I genuinely laughed out loud was immense…oh my god. Tears in my eyes, no bullshit! I’m not going too in depth on specifics of the scenes cause that’s going to kill the mood to people who didn’t play it. But this one warm happy cuddly scene was…I am chuckling while typing this right now…damn. That whole thing was genius, best scene I have ever seen in a AVN. You know what I’m talking about Caribdis.

Characters:

Everyone is memorable. All the way to the characters that only appear once. Also, this is honestly the only AVN that I had genuine trouble in picking a love interest. I’m narrowing it down slowly. So far, I have 3 candidates. I never EVER took nowhere near this long in picking an LI before. All the other AVNs I played, I just look at the introductory chapter and BAM! I already picked one. But not this one, we’re 3 updates in and I’m still struggling between 3 girls and there’s still one more girl yet to be officially revealed as an LI and if it’s who I think it is…shit…4…this is going to get harder in more ways than one…

You even start to feel a genuine friendship with the side characters. Hell, this AVN made me form a genuine friendship with a Money-Loving merchant. This is something that many developers tend to lack on that I’ve seen. Lack of depth and personality with side characters. Side characters are just as important as the main characters, they add a large layer of depth to the world that you are creating and add an extra flare to the main cast by the way they interact with those side characters quirks. Are they surprised, disgusted, impressed? It brings a lot more depth and it shows who they are as a person and how they react to different personalities. Caribdis nailed it with this.

Character, Presentation & Sound Design:

I love the character designs; I feel like I played numerous Honey Select games but I haven’t seen models that I loved more than this games. Hell, I love the MC design and that’s rare! Now the sound. Stellar…a lot of attention to detail. The fluidity of transition of effects and music is fantastic. No moment was excessive or annoying. The effects are carefully placed in various scenes to bring more life. Also, the GUI is among the handful AVNs that show uniqueness. The menu gives the whole game its own identity.

Final Verdict:

The way this AVN is going right now…I’m betting everything I have and say that this particular title is going to leave its mark as one of the best (for me, THE best) AVNs ever created. It is going to be an example to future developers on what quality storytelling and presentation is. Remember that this is my review and you all will surely feel different (uniqueness is beautiful) but every major title that I played that I gave a 5 went down to a 4.9 because this AVN right here. This is a TRUE 10/10. This is the first time I actually given a review and it’s probably going to stay that way…UNLESS!...Caribdis makes another title.

To Caribdis:

I played both of your titles. You are one in a million, shattered all my expectations and brought a new level of standards to quality writing and presentation in AVNs with Eternum. You deserve all this and more.

One of the best, if the finished game was to be released on steam I will definitely purchase it for sure. Its plot direction and story build up are really good, at the end of the 0.2 update there was an epic cliffhanger that made me wish I had a time machine to know what will happen next, also the models used in this game are really good, even tho it's about hentai I was more interested in the story and hentai became secondary haha.

This is for version 0.3. Overall a great game. Compelling story, phenomenal renders, interesting characters who actually have personality and are not just "I am girl, have sex with me." I've encountered zero bugs or error messages while playing. Each update has more content than you would normally expect from most novels of this style. 5/5 would recommend anyone on the site to give it a try.

Reviewed as of v.02

Looking great so far. If you like the previous game made by Caribdis (Once In a Lifetime), you should like this as well. If you haven't played his/her previous game, you should try it!

Same great humor, graphics, and story as the previous game. Personally, I think the best aspect of Caribdis's games is the writing and attention to detail with the way the characters express themselves. This game continues that trend.

I'm generally not really a fan of the whole virtual reality theme, but I think it's used as a good tool here for sprinkling diversity throughout the game, and allowing scenes ranging from cyber-punk to fantasy themed. So far my favorite was probably the mystery themed server, but I'm enjoying how the creator is trying lots of different things.

[Review as of version 0.2]

This is a fairly lighthearted fantasy game similar to isekai/mmorpg anime. The story is about a VR based mmorpg and the protagonist's adventures in it.

What I liked about the game:

- The characters: All the main girls are very great with different personalities. The non-antagonistic males are what makes the humor of this game so great.
- The storyline: The storyline is interesting so far - there is a lot going on both in the VR world and in the real world. There is also a surprising amount of content for just the second update and it left me wanting more.
- The worldbuilding: I quite like the worldbuilding within the MMORPG so far. The game also has in game quests (although to be fair we only had one so far) which act as self contained short stories on their own.
- The diversity of in game environments/worlds: This game is about a VR game having a bunch of different servers so far we have seen a wide variety of worlds including cyberpunk, medieval fantasy, a mystery themed world reminding me of 1800s europe and a snowy wasteland and it looks like there will be many more to come.
- The diversity of character assets: Within the VR worlds characters can change clothing and hairstyles - this I think is an excellent feature as it keeps everything new and exciting.

What I disliked:

- Choices/paths: Some of the in game choices did not make a lot of sense to me and it can feel like choices that close character paths permanently are random/arbitrary. This is by far my biggest gripe with this game.

Things I am indifferent about but others may have problems with:

- Chosen one trope: As of 0.2, I get the impression that this game follows the chosen one trope. The MC is fully compatible with the system (explained by a character to be very rare), he sees certain visions related to the in-game story etc. Personally I dont mind this trope and if executed well I think it can really help the story (harry potter and star wars are some of my favorite works of fiction and they use this trope) but others might not feel the same
- Overpowered MC: As of 0.2 the MC already has access to two of the most powerful weapons in the game and an item everyone is looking for despite playing it only for a couple of weeks. I am not too bothered and it since it is only v0.2 and I can only comment on the pacing after the completion of the game.
- The atmosphere: If you are looking for something dark and serious, this game may not be for you. It is fun, lighthearted and anime inspired - I personally love this about the game but if you are looking for something more serious and focused on drama, you may not like this.

What I would like to see in the future:

- Expand on the worldbuilding and add tidbits of lore. I hate sandboxes/grinding in VNs so I am not advocating for that but it would be great to have a glossray with item descriptions etc.
- More worlds/settings: We already have a lot of different worlds and I want more. One of the biggest strengths of this game is the creative freedom it gives to the developer (since you can have different in game servers) and I think that should be taken advantage of.
- More in-game stories and quests: I think the short story in v0.2 which resulted in the mc getting a certain item was very well done and I want more. I am happy the MC got it through an in game questline as opposed to just ambushing another player. As far as the in-game adventures go, I want to see a mix between story based quests and pvp.
- More adult scenes: Subjective of course but the one thing that is worse than a meaningless fuckfests is blueballing. I want the games I play to strike a balance between the two - while the story is great I also want adult content as long as it is not hollow.

In conclusion I would give this game somewhere between 4.5 to 5 stars. It is one of the better VN based games on this website.

This is up there as one of the best games on the site.
I usually skip most of the writing when it comes to these games, but the story is genuinly funny and does not go on and on like many other games. The characters are pretty sterotypical personality wise but are done well so that you dont really care. The animation and character design are also quality when it comes to this style.

If this is only 0.2 im excited to see what the future holds.

One word — potential. The story reminded me a bit of SAO in general. Bunch of servers (worlds), protagonist who'll become the best and girls, of course. This game will be even more success than the first game of this dev, due to the amount of content this new setting allows to create. More girls, more story, more lewd — that's what we need and already have. I also liked the art style haven't changed and animations were improved a bit. That's exactly what I was expecting, I'd say even more than I was expecting. Excellent, overall, will be waiting for the future updates

It is a great game. It's a very refreshing game with some twist everywhere you go. The whole story itself is very fascinating, and I would like to think a story where you can relate to as long as you live in the current generation. Even though the story itself is pretty dark, but the devs package it with a really good and lighthearted characters. Hopefully in the future updates the devs keeps the story to the original intended one and not branching off just to make one or two fans happy. As I'm sure this kind of story is a very good story that has multiple route to exolore.
As the characters itself, the MC is really good, because he is the typical MC who is quite dense and to some people maybe stupid, but on the contrary he is a genius. I myself almost forgot that the MC is a student exchange and has won multiple awards in his specialization. The LI are beautifully made and each characters has unique personality and traits. Hopefully in future updates, the bio of the LI can be more included (I'm sure devs already thought about it). I quite like the Penny's last scene as the correct choice of our options are based on the conversations Penny had with Dalia in the beginning of the game. I think more choice options like that where u need to read the convo or bio makes us as a player more immersed in our playthrough and the game itself. The antagonist in this current update can't be really seen as this is only a second update. I'm sure the future updates will introduced more and more villains and maybe some allies and plot twist. Man, I can't wait for the future of thiis game.
I think this is enough for the rating of this game. I really like it and hope the best for the future of this game.

Honestly hadn't even heard of this game before I just checked it out after following a fan sig and dang I just gotta say that so far this game is straight up my alley and the humour is spot on for me so I've had quite a few chuckles.

The story, graphics and sound overall is A+ for me though for now the sex scenes are quite lacking but it's still a really early version at v0.2 but looking at the animations that have been shown so far they will probably be quite nice.

I haven't quite gotten a favorite girl quite yet but some of the scenes in game like the horror part was great and even though some parts of the game seems to be some kind of reference or seemingly taken/inspired by other games parts like as previously mentioned the horror part has a unique feel for it.

I also think it's a great premise and gameplay direction for the game to play out in different servers and each server seemingly has it's own theme so therefore what happens in the game differs depending on what server you play on.

For now thought we haven't really seen how the game will play out so this might be more of a guess of mine with what has happened thus far but I really hope it is so and I will follow this game till it's finished!

This is a fantastic game!

After the first 15 minutes I was sceptical. Why such good ratings for - what seemed to be - just an average game.
But after a while it really kicks off and becomes incredible with your first visit of Eternum.

As an Ero Games enjoyer, I must say that this is the funniest novel game I've ever played.

Man, I laugh so many times that I put my dick back in my underwear and started to enjoy the history. Keep up with the game!

I noticed that Annie loves Ready Player One, just like me. Maybe, just maybe this is why i loved so much the plot.

This will be my first fan sign on my profile for sure.

Keko Approves. ♥

Amazing writing, amazing comedy, and the unique camera panning, zooming, and effects really add to that. The general odea pf the story is not so unique but the execution is marvelous.

I want more!!!!

The graphics look very nice also, great bodies, good lighting, it all looks really professional.

ETERNIUM ticks all my 'boxes' in adult games. The writing is way above par, but the animation sequences make it something special. The premise reminds me of Stephen Donaldson's "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" series, updated from the 70's dream premise to 21st century VR technology. The girls do fall in line rather quickly, but the inevitability of that outcome earns a spot in the 'Voluntary Suspension of Disbelief' for an adult game. My only constructive criticism involves the white-flash of the O animations. Very few games show the female orgasm. The body is flooded with hormones and the brain is flooded with dopamine. Not showing it is -pardon the pun - anticlimactic. I'm going to guess getting it to look good is difficult since almost NOBODY does it. This story is top notch, keep those updates coming!

Review of v0.2

Caribdis knocking it out of the park once again. The harem-type formula of the VN is similar to Once in a Lifetime but there are huge improvements in terms of the visuals and art style. It has a really interesting concept this time around, it allows for a lot of cool storytelling potential that I hope the dev will pick up on. I love every character, they each have a distinct personality and the humor is great. Each character is balanced out well in terms of story time. The scenes are super hot and I like the variety in the body types of the girls as well. I'm really spoiled by the quality of the whole package, I feel like I should be paying for this! Definitely one of the best adult VNs I've ever played so far.

I have one minor issue with the dialogue, it is fun for the most part but I feel like the protagonist is, for lack of a better word, too much of a simp. Nothing wrong with compliments but I feel like he goes way overboard with them sometimes. It kinda bogs down the experience a bit. Also Nancy is way too hot and young looking to be a mom, this is ridiculous!

Everyone should check Eternum out, it's a great experience. Super looking forward to the next update.