Ren'Py - Abandoned - Fall of Ashenburg [v0.82] [Alteus]

Not sure if there is much to say,the game is abandoned and the dev has taken all the money he made and dissapeared.

Even if he didnt the game is bad,the music is decent,art is ok but everything is happening very much randomly like poof here is a generic guy we know nothing about as protagonist with 0 personality who is suddently controlled and pushed around.The game makes no sense.

Characters and plot are very superficial,the grind is very very bad,equipment and combat could have been promising but it feels like beta level development,there is nothing unique or dynamic about the game,the worst type of VN.

Art and scenes are ok but dont make up for the rest of the mess.

It's an interesting game with decent images, bearable script and plenty to keep you interested. But as at present constituted (extraordinarily in view of the poll result which was a big majority view against fights) it isn't really an "Adult" game at all: it's a teenagers' fight game with some short samey sex scenes tagged on. Hopefully it'll be improved as it matures. So great if you like fighting but forget it for the Adult content.

If I had been part of the poll, I would have voted for the combat as a method of grinding. It reminds me of the hours of fun I had in the past playing such games as Wizardry and Bard's thal. The graphics are far better than those games. Hopefully the memories of this one will be as happy as thoe.

The game looks nice from the forum page.

Being a RPG fan, i can appreciate the effort put into the battle system.
Still, it's not good enough and it's all over the place so this game is a grind fest where you have to endure the battle system for hours in order to get any content.

So, i'm not even sure about the H content but let me tell you this, i'm not going to find out.

My advice to the dev : enhance xp (x2 ?/ x3 ? ) and gold ( x4 / x5 ? ) rewards

Wasn't sure about the rating 2 or 3 ? I'd probably have rated it 2.5 if it was possible.

First of all I have to say that the game itself is good, it has quite a bit of potential.

Let's analyze the game be it good points or bad points:

-The combat system is quite impresive, it shows the care of the developers over it, but it has quite a few problems, first of all the issue of equipment, except the equipments that add stats (which is kind of late part of the demo) you won't truly feel an increase in strenght of the character, a beginner player will find big problems at the start until he/she adapts over it. This is kind of a barrier for possible new players for the game.

-Next let's talk about the characters, we have a varied cast and many of them are interesting, but the bad point is that they have limited actions, in fact unless we are following the main quest we can only chat with them.

-About the sex scenes while I find them good the thing is that the characters won't remember any of it, for me this is quite annoying because it has potential. Giving a tiny spoiler you will unlock something that will make you see the true nature of a person at night, but the bad point is that they won't remember anything at all, in fact all sex scenes are kind of "do it but no one will remember it".

-While the game doesn't have it yet, one thing that will have is "character development", we even have a potion to cause permanent corruption on characters, however this game relates it to fetishes of that character, however the objective of the game in that case shouldn't be to fully corrupt characters because imagine that you have a character with a kink like exhibitionism, if you fully corrupter her then she would end up into public sex while in the nude, or for example a dominant character would end up being a dominatrix teasing and demeaning her partner. The nature of this game isn't over control but about expanding the fetishes of a character, so the character should feel comfortable with a level and don't move from that.

-NPC's interactions: There aren't many, and for me this is a bad thing for a RPG game. First of all I think that it should have a system of affection or something like that so that NPC's are more friendly with us or even flirty, on the other hand it would be nice to be able to have a few random events while visiting a character, one interesting thing for example would be if the female warrior could get drunk and try to defeat and rape the player at some point of the game, or perhaps that a girl would lie to the player, or use him any other way. But an important one would be side quests outside the main plot.

-Dungeons: This I think it's the worst part of the game, for me choosing the difficulty of the dungeon feels weird, just a tiny change like dividing the dungeon on levels would help quite a bit, the higher the level the more difficult the enemies are or the higher the number. It's a tiny change but makes more sense. Another thing is that it could be good to have a few random events during the dungeon or that by having high perception we could find items.

On the other hand we have the bosses, which follow the same fault, I would prefer rather than 3 levels that when you defeat the boss once, he will run away, at the second time he will fight again more prepared and at the third time the boss would have no escape and you definitely kill him.

Overall the game has potential and in some points it's good, but I think that more character interactions are a must and adding a bit of diversity over dungeon runs so that you aren't just constantly fighting.

Version evaluated is 0.6.

I really enjoyed this game and the scenes where decent. However the leveling through the first level was quite tedious the game could really use more variety but i think that should come with the later releases (really hope so ). Aswell as the game seems like it could use a lot more balancing since i found out that there are quite a few overpowered weapons specifically the faster ones against the boss tend to be way too effective while the slower ones tend to be quite useless. Also the scene near the well seemed quite comical and i'm not convinced it meant to be the writing there was quite bad. Overall really enjoyed the game hope to see it finished and not dropped halfway like most of the games.

I've played Ren'Py games with gameplay before like Mask of Arcadius and so on, but this is THE game with the smoothest experience I've ever played. To put it bluntly, Ren'Py is bad at simulating gameplay because there are normally delays and hitches between transitions that ruin the experience so much that to this day I wasn't able to treat Ren'Py as a serious visual novel engine (or engine of anything really).

While Fall of Ashenburg isn't able to completely avoid this issue, it was certainly a lot less glaring than any other Ren'Py game I've come by. The game has a simple but fun 'beat dungeon get loot' loop but without the dungeon crawling, which so happens to be the part I dislike the most in a dungeon crawler so I'm perfectly fine with it.

The equipment and stats - for now - all seem to be very meaningful. Despite a post I saw claiming that there's no point upgrading any other stat other than STR just because he happened to have an STR-based weapon first, I definitely found use in a Dex build as well. For example, I have a blue Stiletto that has a fixed damage of exactly 4-4 (excluding damage boost from stats) and deals bleed damage. With some points in Int, STR and a major focus in Dex I'm able to kill the boss orc through 2 Rages in 4 ~ 5 turns. Sure, there's only so much weapon and enemy variety right now but there's no way you can say any other build except a STR build isn't worth building, so great balancing dev!

Also, the loot you get is completely RNG, and you may grind a dungeon for hours and still find yourself lacking even a green shirt and shoes for some reason (seriously at one point I thought there were no green shoes/shirt to wear in this version of the game), but it's like playing an MMORPG but being able to grind through them a LOT faster. It's also a singleplayer game so you don't need to cry a river over bad teammates, which is always a plus in my opinion.

Dungeon progression is pretty okay in my opinion. At first, you have to do the Easy dungeon and grind a bit until you're equipped with good items. Then, you stock up on consumables and attempt the Medium dungeon to gain better loot, leveling up in the process to ease your entry. Finally, you repeat the same process and challenge the Hard dungeon for the best loot. It's surprisingly well balanced, seriously, this is NOT the kind of tight gameplay you expect from a porn game like, ever. These days people can't even balance the amount of time you spend mindlessly clicking to oblivion just to pass the day (I'm staring at you Sunrider Academy you're a fucking trash game you are). I'm really glad you treat your core gameplay loops seriously.

What I really like about this game is that the girls aren't wearing obviously scanty clothes or armor for no reason whatsoever. The warrior is in full armor, the priestess is in full robe, the merchant elf's casual clothes actually look like casual clothes and even the witch is... dressed like a peasant for some reason. Seriously, I didn't recognize the witch for who she is in the first page until I deliberate tried to look for her, but again they're technically 'undercover' right now so that's perfectly okay!

Finally, the sex scenes... well my variety of praises for sex scenes are kinda narrow, sorry. Uh, they poses are great, the style is great, the costumes - especially the night ones although I totally find the Headmistress and merchant elf during daytime way cuter than their desire form - are bloody awesome there are quite a surprising number of them in the game. I honestly wasn't expecting too much considering the amount of effort that must've been spent into building that beautiful, beautiful combat UI of yours in Ren'Py. Well done mate.

Story wise I can't comment much because it is kinda short right now. I mean, there's probably not much you can write about a protagonist waking up to no memories and a disembodied voice that totally has power over him. Maybe there'll be a point to causing the Fall of Ashenburg in the future, but for now story is definitely not the focus or the strong point of this game.

In conclusion, this game is a combat-focused quality asf version of LLTP. Very, very impressive. Keep it up, also you have my support at Patreon for sure!

Nice story, quality graphics and good quests, seems like to be a great game but a bit hard to make money or item. And lack of story of MC's before. Cant wait for the full game and medieval age fantasy with elves.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is v0.3...

This game shows a small bit of promise, but it is also a bit buggy...

The visuals of the characters are decent... The backdrops look unique and creative... The user interface is easy enough to figure out...

The script is a mixed bag, mostly it's readable but it has a mix of broken English now and then, along with the occasional spelling error, and lots of grammar issues... The plot appears to revolve around a male protagonist in a fantasy setting... He has a presence within himself that wants to control him, and he is forced (through pain) to do the voices bidding... He then works along side a witch, who summoned the presence, and now the protagonist must help them with their plans...

After the short introduction you go through a short combat tutorial and then the meat of the game begins... It's built like a grind game but with a RPG element... You gain influence with various characters by completing tasks, which usually involve the combat system... Once enough influence is achieved then the next step with a particular character can be accomplished...

What I originally thought was a bug, was apparently just a function of the Inventory System that I was not aware existed... Apparently you can switch between View's to look at either Items or Consumables... It was always defaulting to Consumables so I had no idea it was a feature to switch back and forth between the two while looking at the equipment screen and while talking to vendors... My fault for not seeing it... So be aware of that...

I was able to get as far as taking the woman warrior to her next step, but there is no further content for her after that... I also finished the influence for the Temple woman, and that opens up a library of sorts, for increasing some other stats with money you make during the combat grind... There are some other stats taught in the tavern by a roguish type male character as well...

Overall, the game almost feels like a simple RPG game play format to mask the grind portion of the game, behind a fantasy combat system... Some of the dialogue did appear out of place, using some more modern word usage, for what appears to be a fantasy setting, like when a character said 'his bad'... Which sort of felt like a break from the mostly fantasy based world immersion... It's not a bad start, but you can feel it still has some work to do, on both the mechanics and the text... The money grind was my biggest gripe really with this game... You end up spending a lot of time grinding out the combat, in order to gain money as well as item drops, to sell to vendors for money... Money being the main driving force for skill increases... With some content gated behind certain skill levels...

In any case, it's an interesting start... Games with combat systems for this genre are not usually games I typically play... But this combat system seemed easy enough to do, but it does require a lot of doing it... I didn't experience any erotic events or scenes, but that may just be because I didn't want to keep grinding away at the combat to purchase all the necessary skills to keep opening new content... I will check back on this game at a later date to see if it improves a bit and works out some of it's issues with the text... Perhaps I might be more open to spending a bunch of time grinding away at a later date...