Ren'Py - Funkelregen [v0.7] [Janamus Sura]

Decent enough VN, but I think it could be much better.

Story & Writing:
I appreciate the author's efforts into world building/lore writing, but I disagree with "lore menu" exposition dumps. Would've been better to gradually introduce the background lore through dialogue, for example. I think the lore menu should've been used as a way to recap what's been talked about in game instead, as it's an ongoing game and players would forget things between updates. Another issue I think is the inclusion of modern day topics like WW2, it feels a bit jarring for people from the far, space-faring future in the 2400s to be so hung up on talking about something that happened in the 1900s. Surely there would've been similar or worse, larger scale events on Earth by then, and that's not including stuff that happened in space. Also, in terms of writing polish the game could use another round of proofreading and/or editing for every update.

Characters:
They all have their own charms, some more than others, but since it's still ongoing I can't really say for sure since the author has time to flesh them all out further.

Graphics:
Personally I dig HS style stuff, but in my opinion the graphics leaves a lot to be desired. While the models are unique enough, there's still a lot of work that can be put in to make everything look better. I'm not a dev though so I can't go in to specifics on how to improve it, but I do know there are other HS2 based games on this site that look really really good. Not to be that guy that goes graphics > gameplay and all that, but it's a porn VN so yeah, the visuals really do matter a lot, and I think improving it could push this game to the next level. Same goes for the UI, appreciate the effort in customizing them, but it's not super good looking at this point.

All in all, the game's got potential, and I can only hope it manages to reach it.

Funkelregen is a well-crafted sci-fi AVN, but it's lacking a bit in adult content as of v0.6.

I really like the variety of characters, both in personalities and appearance. I like the relative imbalance between the MC and the girls - he lacks in physical strength compared to some but makes up for it in "emotional intelligence" and a few other skills. Although there is a lot of "lore," most of it is pretty well integrated into character stories rather than through strict lore dumps; truly curious players can find more information in the codex.

It took about 8 hours to play through all the content, but unfortunately about half of the H-content is shown or implied in the preview images.
Gameplay is mostly fine for a sandbox, actionable scenes are clearly marked to avoid mindless clicking and there was no appreciable grind. It seems some quests have dependencies so you can't quite B-line a certain character without muddling through the rest. Ultimately, the ship still feels quite empty though. Characters move about through the day, but I really didn't find any meaningful interactions or repeatable scenes other than in the showers, which seems to be an RNG roll for content.

Overall a pretty good story and game, but I'll probably wait a few more updates (hoping for more porn) before trying this one again.

As of v. 0.5

Story: 4/5

It's a tad long-winded, but I am enjoying the story so far, and the character personalities are fun.

Girls/Animations: 5/5

Love your animations, and the girls are, for the most part, very well done. I like how you have a type for every taste. The animations and camera shifting are well done.

UI/Gameplay: 3/5

So much potential here. I get avoiding too easy of affection gains, but this is probably my biggest gripe. Having 7+ quests stuck due to low affection is pretty frustrating. As of v. 0.5, I have clicked and checked events, and I cannot find any more affection points. This needs the most attention, in my opinion. Now, maybe the game hasn't progressed that far yet, but being stuck on this many quests, I kinda doubt it (especially since you make it clear on quests that they ended at that update). So yeah... Could use some tweaking.

All-in-all, enjoyed it for the most part. I will try again with the affection, because I would really like to see the multitude of scenes I know I am missing.

Story 2/5
It just dident to anything for me, not the main story or any of the girls, maybe its due to having so much alien/tech/lore talk that it gets quite boring to read, atleast for me.
It also needs a proof reader since there really is a ton of fails with missing words, misplaced words, worng words and so on...

Its also one of those type of games that likes to force sex scenes on you in dreams which i find idiotic when i dont like someone i dont want to see any sex scenes with them what so ever and also not a fan of having fetishes forced on you that way either, its only one big turn-off and its very easy for devs to put in a skip even more so on dreams that means nothing.

Then it goes to sandbox and its really the worst kind of sandbox as well, where you have to constantly check questlog to see wtf you have to do and what time of the day to do it to progress a quest, its just boring.

Also found it funny when it changes to sandbox it tells you your done with the linear part to then go into a 100% linear quest style, theres no choices and its all about doing quests where you cant say no to sex scenes and is forced to build up relationship points with people you hate its idiotic, why not make it so you can just be friends and follow girls story without being forced to fuck em all.

To make it really shitty its pretty much just a kinetic novel since questlines are even tied together so you cant skip something or someone you dont like your forced to do em all.
Questlog is also very shitty, it tells you go to a place talk with someone, but they arent there, ive seen that about a million times over and its annoying every single time.

I gave up since so many quests was either bugged or you would have to do others to progress but you have no clue which, like i had to check up on two Rachel and Zoela at evening...but they where never together in the evenings, and to progress cat quest thing it said to complete the one i just talked about.... alot of other quests just said it reached the end of the current version even though they where only just started.....

Girls 3/5
You got a shy, a slut/whore, a mental case, some bimbos, some aliens, a cyborg and so on.
The diversity in builds seems pretty good its proberly close to 50/50 with big tits and smaller tits which is refreshing.

Animations 3/5
They are ok but nowhere near great, its pretty much just the standard HS you have seen about a million times before.

Music 2/5
It kinda drives me a little nuts at times since they rarely fit the scenes going on, there seem to be like party or action type music when your just talking to someone its just a bit to much.

Good and hoping for more. The timing on the introduction is great, the options for different encounters or races feels seamless so far. Hope development continues on this work as high hopes on viewing so far. (PS only 2 hours in and enjoying this development)

An interesting game, if only being started out at the moment. I see a lot of potential here, notably in the actual presence of a decent story. The only complaint I would give, if any, are only ones that extend to most Ren'Py games; that is to say, poor quality animations, etc. that are most likely simply due to the restraints of the engine.

English: 5/10
User Interface: 3/10
User Experience: 5/10
Art: 8/10
Dialogue: 5/10
Story: 5/10
Opinion: 6/10
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Avg: 5.29/10 [3/5]

To be blunt, the fundamental issue with this is plainly stated in the "self-aware" 4th wall breaking intro. The dev's narrator insert explains that the dev has written novels worth of unpublished lore that you "most certainly won't need to know for the story." Then every interaction between characters is line upon line of lore dump, as-you-know dialogue, or universe exposition. The kinda thing you would want to learn over time, not dumped on you before you can tell what's a race and what's a name. And the choice to add a bunch of gibberish languages on top of spanish, latin, german, and english all while the english is subpar is brave, to put it nicely. Every few lines has either a spelling mistake, typo, or poor grammar so I sincerely hope an editor is hired in the future. But I'm sure the layman will counter argue with "Alien species not speaking fluently is to be expected." No. Every character makes similar grammar errors consistently, and the further in the story you go the worse it gets. And the lore dumps hinder this more as you're not learning about a character, you're learning about a race of people. Imagine going to France and instead of someone telling you about their daily life they summarize the French Revolution and describe how their culture got to the point it currently is. Your only response would be "Bro I asked what's up, not the significance of the guillotine..." It's just not conducive to character building.

After my introductory paragraph, this is generally where I'd start talking about the story. The unfortunate truth is, so far, what I've gotten from the story is: You play as MC. A 4 foot tall turbo virgin with a 2 foot long penis. He graduates spaceship camp and is put on barebones crew of a stolen(?) ship with a super AI from the future with 9 other lifeforms. I would say women but one is a tentacle monster and the aforementioned AI is another (to make it 10). That's all I can say because it devolves into a sandbox and interacting with anyone gives you a lore dump of their species instead of, oh I dunno... Anything about them? You get basic personality tropes instead of anything less than the entire history of their people. Which would be great if it actually had anything to do with the individual giving the history lesson. The tropes are: The Noble born medic, that seems ignorant of sex. The tsundere lieutenant. The dominant co-pilot. The awkward, intrusive other human. The clumsy metalhead. The sexually forward tech. The friendly and curious hive-mind. And the commander that is behind the AI supership supplying the mystery. I'd love to tell you anything more about these characters, but like I said, you get a history lesson not anything about them.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE world building and story stuff. But throwing it at a reader like pocket sand is unpleasant to say the least. Add that to a sandbox with not a lot to do with broken English and you have a recipe for a subpar experience. If you're playing this for the first(or, hell, second or third) time, the scene where MC listens in on Zoela and "???'s" conversation, they throw every name, race, planet, and other at you all at once. And if you're supposed to understand that amidst gibberish fake language and broken English, the writer really needs to find a better way to relay this information. NO ONE wants to read datalogs in a dumb porn game, sorry not sorry. WHEN am I gonna need to know even the NAME of a Veludran(And no, I didn't remember that race I had to open the codex to find the name) family to do anything? Let me answer that, if the dev reads this review, once, if not NEVER. Instead, it should be MC stumbling into a racially heated moment, then he asks them or someone else why they hate each other and you get the BASICS. Not a detailed history of how two races came to be then hated each other. If the dev DOES read this, I have notes on how to improve almost every aspect of what I've complained about so far. And with minimal changes to what's already here. (Outside of the UI that needs an overhaul. And I'm not about to pretend to tell anyone making new images and UI design is simple)


Anyways, I really want to like this more than I do. I see the effort and story, but so much of this takes you out of it like you're reading an actual textbook on some made up race. The English is rough. The UI is bog standard minus the codex and minimap. The UX is also default. The art is okay, the girls are a little anorexic if I'm honest, and the details of the ship are greater than the characters, but it looks fine. The dialogue is mostly lore dumps, I'm excited to read this when there's no more lore to expose to the reader. The story still hasn't started, my shot in the dark is "The people on the ship do something bad with time travel." Beyond that nothing is happening. This is middle of the road for me, if it improves, I'll happily eat my words and re-review this. As it stands, 3/5...

Pretty much excellent.

It's an early version as of now and there aren't that many sex scenes right now, but I'm sure that will change with time. The characters are all quite unique and interesting - in body as well as in character.

Furthermore, the worldbuilding is very extensive in this game. The dev clearly put way too much thought into his little project and the scope of his universe is clearly way too much for an AVN. Luckily the in-game wiki is there to help...

Funkelregen [v0.1] [Janamus Sura]
Average, if not for color variety of the girls/models and great world building backlog. You're more than welcome to try this VN, it has prettyinteresting introduction into the story. Check it out.

Story - 3,5/5. Acktually intriguing, if not for the fourth wall breaking, dev thinks he's super meta about it, but no. It's annoying and it breaks reader's immersion way too hard, that's why most writers so rarely use it, you need real writing finesse for something like that.
World building - 4,3~/5. It's solid, as dev said, there's quite good WB for this VN, which is fantastic. Love when autors take seriously WB of their creations.
Gameplay/Choices - 1.5/5. VN sandbox with point system. You can play the game "click on eveything until something works". I know, sounds SO exciting.
Characters - 2/5. For now mostly one~two-dimensional. You won't care much about them beyond superficial attraction. Like "race-level deep", like cliche prime examples of their races, save for one (two): "scientist/doctor, human, individualist, slut (sorry, "open minded" in this universe) and don't forget about generic MC with most generic MC personality.
Models/animations - meh/5. It's HS. Stock animations, nothing interesting. Build up for the scenes is absolute t, so it's a miss too.
Grammar - ?/5. It exists, I guess.

Short demo of what to come. Check for story and LORE, everything else is quite lacking.
"Viewer discretion is advised."

PS: Personally, I just love when devs show how everyone around MC is having sex or talk about how they fucked almost every sentient being in known galaxy. And how I need to spend HOURS of reading and clicking just to see one measly handjob or whatever scene with MC, while everyone else fuck their brains out. Really shows that I, as a player, spend my time wisely playing this game. Love it. Thanks for valuing my time and experience. Just note for everyone.