VN - Ren'Py - Hot Sand of Antarctica [v0.09] [Grinvald]

Models are great, but thats about all it has going for it.


Outside of model differences, the characters are indistinguishable from each other. Every character wants to jump on the MC immediately and provide zero substance to the story beyond sex. The karma system introduced in the first chapter swiftly vanishes from the game. The plot also does not make much sense - starts with mad max and then next you know its about clones and futuristic technology.

After 2.5 years of development the story just left the exposition and there is about 2 hours of content. It is very difficult to see this ever getting completed, since it is probably only 20% complete now.

[Reviewed v0.08]

This game hits all the right notes -- fun premise and story, great models and tons of H-scenes with animations, hours of content. If you like family harem games with a light sci-fi / survival setting, this will become a favorite. Unfortunately, it can't quite compete with a very similarly-themed game also in production, so it loses some shine on direct comparison.

The Good ()

• A diversity of girls with different personalities and body types
• Well-done renders and environments, with some unique settings
• Entertaining if sometimes incoherent story content
• A family harem game that makes (some) sense within the story

The Not-So-Good ()

• A bit of a cliche "MC is the savior and everyone is in love with him" setup, but this is part of the narrative so it is more forgivable
• Some of the story is rushed and not realistic
• The plot / premise seem directly ripped off another, better, well-reviewed game. I guess if you can't beat 'em, copy 'em!

Lots to like with this one if you're a fan of the setting and genre.

I like dystopian worlds. I think that to stay a dystopian world, it is probably pretty harsh living with harsh decisions. I feel novels like this should give the choice between hero route and nasty, I come first F everyone else route. This novel doesn't really give you the nasty route. I think being a hero in this kind of setting probably leads you to a quick death and is therefore not very believable. This novel started off with a karma system that I thought would distinguish between hero and nasty, but it kind of disappears in the beginning of the novel. Not really many decisions after that and I quickly lost interest in the bland story.

The LIs would look great if everyone didn't look kind of doll like (shiny with arms that you know wouldn't bend at the elbow). That really took away any immersion I had. Once the immersion is gone, I tried to quickly move through the story to find a fappable animation. I got all the way to the end of this version (v8?) without one fap. Ugggg, not a good way to spend an hour and a half. I'll be deleting this novel and removing it from my follow list.

I like the whole apocalypse thing and the story is pretty good so far. The women are really good looking and there is plenty of sex. I can't wait to see what happens, all though the updates seem to be pretty slow.

3.5/5 I so wanna give it a 4 but just not quite there for me

+Liked how the gals looked
+Enjoyed the setting and concept, is interesting
+The Main parts of the Story interested me

-I found some of the scenes a bit dark visually, even tried turning up my monitor brightness
-Usage of English was rough in some parts. Pretty much nothing was wrong technically but I did find myself getting distracted at times because some Dialog or Description would just not be said in a way an English speaker would say it
-Chunks of the Story/experience that I pretty much just skipped through because I was just bored of the character describing what was being shown, or Remembering something from the past that probably didnt need more than a handfull of sentences to say but instead had several scenes and stills
-Some animations were a bit stiff but not really all that bad

3.5/5 Was between Ok and Good, am interested to see how the Overall story could play out

Definitely in top 3 VNs I have played.
I love this game, just wish development was quicker.
The twin redhed daughters are amazing.
The setting is interesting and the story is engaging enough.
The family dynamic is the star of the show and we need more of it.

A somewhat unusual story takes a backseat to your average male power fantasy with the MC white knighting his way through the story and women spreading their legs for him at every opportunity.

Oh, what a novel concept, right? But that's what you all are here for, so I am sure you'll love it.

*yawn*

Mindless fun. You won't find the absolute deepest story or best renders or most daring situations, but Hot Sands knows what it wants to do, isn't ashamed to do it, and has a good time along the way. Everything leads into some sort of unsurprising tropey porn setup, and I found myself cheering it on every step of the way.

Review of v0.08

It's impossible to review Hot Sand of Antarctica (it should definitely be Sands btw) without reference to a certain other extremely popular, post-apocalyptic game set in a desert in which you play a skilled fighter with a wife and two daughters, but it is against the reviewing rules to mention other games, so it will go nameless. Nevertheless, the parallels don't even stop at what I've mentioned above. This gives rise to the question: why bother play a clearly derivative work? The answer is that despite the similarities, Hot Sand still differentiates itself in its plot and some other enjoyable ways (a bigger dick, more of a harem-esque feel, twins), and frankly more of a good thing is still good. Also there are countless AVNs with the two sisters one mother slice of life setup, or massive harem wholesome slice of life, etc., so the genre is basically an ouroboros anyway.

At the start of the game I was worried about the mc being unlikable due to his attitude, but this quickly changed as we got to see his softer side. Other than that, everything was great: the plot, the characters (which are a little 2D at the moment but we are seeing development), the visuals (not S-tier quality but still good), the writing (dialogue feels natural; some occasional odd turns of phrase, but few and far between), and the hot as fuck sex scenes. It is still quite short, though I suppose quality is better than quantity.

A 5-star rating system is difficult to utilise because you could argue that only S-tier games should get 5, but I think it's best to be generous when you really enjoy a game, so 5 stars it is!

Excellent story, very well created characters with their plots and personalities. Sceneries of great quality and rendered of very high level. Action and suspense very well tuned with the plot. Very interesting events to follow with surprises and plot twists. Incredible sex scenes. Women of very exquisite taste and distinctive characters when it comes to relationships. One of the best games of F95Zone.

Review for v0.08

It's without a doubt one of the better games on F95, but the issues it has are severe enough to warrant the 3 stars. Nothing that can't be fixed though.

We'll start with the positives. The renders are great and the dev doesn't shy away from the violence of the setting, so there's plenty of blood and other gruesome things on display. The animations are also top-notch, fluid and well-composed. The girls are all attractive, perhaps even too much given the fact it's a post-apocalyptic setting but it doesn't bother me that much. Also, special shoutout to the MC for actually being competent without being invincible, it's a line many VNs fail to toe.

Now for the negatives. My biggest problem is the grammar, it's obviously translated word-for-word from another language, which means there are weird idioms, words out of order, and even entire sentences that make no sense. It needs someone fluent in English to give it a once or twice-over and clean it up so everything makes sense. I also didn't like how many times the MC would randomly start thinking about a memory that was, at best, tangentially related to what was happening, as well as the overuse of flashbacks. I also feel like the story is slowly getting out of hand in terms of concepts, going from a fairly vanilla post-apocalypse to clones and advanced cloaking tech. It's still early enough that it doesn't entirely feel disconnected from the setting, but it hasn't been smooth sailing.

My recommendation is to give it a shot, it's pretty enjoyable so long as you can forgive the grammar mistakes and keep an open mind about the more sci-fi tone it seems to be taking.

A good game if you don't think about it too much.

It's one of those games the dev has spent time actually trying to tell a story, and that should be applauded and because of that it should be given the benefit of the doubt for any oddities which the game ultimately presents you with.

So the character renders are first rate, all lovely looking women. A harem game, quite literally. It's the end of the world, you can do what you want.

Game has a lot going for it, a story which is actually interesting with enough going on where you can't just see through it immediately, the characters are interesting and worth actually listening to and overall it'll probably become a great game.

The issues are skin deep really. It's one of those games where it really hammers home the Apocalypse but at the same time everyone looks like they're off the set of 90210, lipstick is non existent but all look like they're ready for a night on the town with most wearing clothes you'd expect to see in a club. Water is in short supply but they have baths. That sort of thing. As I said, it's better to just not think too much into it cause I feel if you do then it'll become a bit absurd. Just sit back and enjoy.

I think the only issue I really have is the release schedule. 2 years, version 0.08. It's not an issue but because the game is so story focused I worry that it may be years before we reach a point where we expect some answers.

Oh, and shout out to the dev for not pulling their punches. There's some gore in here and they don't shy away from it (although they give the option to before it really kicks off)

Really well built. I really enjoyed playing the game. After a long time i found a very good game with good content. Visuals a good but still need some improvements. Need more flexibility in sex options. BESEV my man you really did a very good job. I own you a Salute. Thanks and keep updating. I am still waiting for a lot of content in this game. Keep it up

Good Points
+ Choices matter, not just you can choose which people you can have sex with or not, you can even choose to let some people live, kill them, or leave them to their death, like Rini.
+ Character stories and their past seems interesting, especially MC's and his first wife's story and how she was actually thinking to kill him, but throwing his bag at her changed everything was very interesting.
+ We have a post-apocalyptic story with lots of interesting details, especially the ghost/shadow thing is pretty interesting, I can't express how much I was shocked when I saw that girl transformed out of nowhere! Or with the MC's creepy sister scenes... And what's up with that all clone thing of MCs and Krugers?! There are lots of mysterious things and these things make you want to learn more about the game's story.
+ Like the story itself story-telling is good as well, especially how things progressed at a well-done speed and how it wasn't too slow nor too fast, and successful to take your interest.
+ We have a lot of gore scenes, but there is a choice to close or leave it open, since they suit the post-apocalyptic world, having gore scenes is a big plus.
+ Most women/girls look hot, especially The Twins...
+ Sex scenes have animations.

Bad Points
- MC's design is not interesting, his hair and face are quite common and he doesn't feel like a unique character at all.
- While the design of most women looks fine, male character designs and the general art style look quite old.
- Sex scenes need lots of improvements. Most of the sex scenes, except the latest update ones looks quite dull even robotic, characters should have more emotion on their face and eyes. Again most sex scenes don't have animations nor have only 1-2 animations, sex scenes need more animations with different angles/positions.
- The game has no changelog, there should be a changelog in the main menu of the game, it's needed.
- Some details about the story make no sense at all. How and why MC left the suitcase behind and didn't finish of copy of him looking nearly perfect? It doesn't make any sense at all for MC to act like that, he is not the type of guy who takes that kind of risk, he went to that mine with the intention to fix everything he can at that point, so we need better writing for some scenes like that one.

For The End
This is an enjoyable game, and at least it does become better the more you play with the improvements, for now, I will give 4 stars rate and hope the bad points I stated will be fixed with the next updates because with fixed bad points this game could be pretty good, it has that potential.

This game visually is very stunning and has good animations. The plot is basically a dystopian harem set up. But I have to say, I personally enjoyed it and I am looking forward for more. And did I mention there are twin redheads?!

Will definitely be checking up on its development.

English: 5/10
User Interface: 3/10
User Experience: 5/10
Art: 7/10
Dialogue: 3/10
Story: 3/10
Opinion: 4/10
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Avg: 4.29/10 [2/5]

I want everyone who rated this above a 3 to actually read the writing in this. The language says "English, Russian" But it should say "Russian, google translate." This 'translation' is either completely unacceptable or completely stiff. On top of this being a middle school boy's fantasy "I'm the best sharpshooter ever in he apocalypse, I have the awesome callsign [INSERT CALLSIGN HERE] (Default Shooter lol), and I'm so good my boss is scared of me. Not only that but every woman is in love with me." (Read that in an over the top 80s action hero voice) When I first tried this, I thought "Oh cool, there's choices that actually matter" in helping/condemning a boy and such. But MC just ends up in a bunker isolated from everything with 4 lusty women. And the choices only seem to affect how much a woman likes MC. And why do I have to name everyone? Just because you can't figure out their names, doesn't mean I should have to. bUt aLsO tHeRe's cLoNeS. Wow. Taking the "Evil twin" plot line from soap operas. And now that I think about it, that middle schooler's fantasy too. This could have been saved by a translation that, you know, isn't abysmal? But the likelyhood of a developer going back to change the dialogue at all is next to zero.

You play as MC, the greatest sharpshooter in the apocalypse. The time frame is a little fuzzy, he's old enough to have lived in the world before the apocalypse... But his 18 year old daughters never did and he's barely 40? But he was picked up as a kid by his boss and that flashback already seemed like the world ended? So depending on the day, he was born into this or molded by it, whatever the overused batman quote is. Either way, the timeline changes based on what narrative the writer want to make that day. Great. The first thing that happens is MC is on a supply run with some grunt that isn't important. They find two women that they're taking for the master's harem. Because we regress to neanderthals, keeping women as property, as soon as the ice caps melt. One of the women is actually scouting MC for some paradise escape that, up til now, hasn't been returned to. She rewards him with sex because he exists, they return to base, and you meet MC's two wives. That he's allowed to keep because he's so good at the murder. Unless she's a doctor, all the women are barely above brain dead cock sleeves. Personalities ranging from childish and horny, mature and horny, or smart and horny. So, truly, the next Homer. MC goes on two more missions, one for medicine, another to kill someone? And after letting a ghost inside the base and a jealous comrade wanting to kill MC, he's chased off base to hide in a bunker. He finds an underground cloning facility. Then more sex happens. The end. It's really not that special.

The story is short, three things have happened, and it's translated to Engrish. Where it's getting these glowing reviews is beyond me. The UI and UX is stock RenPy, mildly changing the main menu and making you name every character. So zero effort. The art is fine, the women all look like they've had plastic surgery, but none of it is terrible. The dialogue and story are both shot in the foot because of the bad translation. But the dialogue is still praising MC for existing and the women being as subservient as possible. So all that 'alpha male' garbage. And I swear, every update they make it so MC has bigger or more muscles and I have no idea why. He's already the best ever for no reason, how big of an inferiority complex do you have to need more and more muscles?

Review for v0.08

If you want to enjoy this game, treat is like watching one of those so bad its good action movies.

The game is just hard to take serious really, and given that it's trying hard to actually be serious, made it hard for me to get into. The writing (more specifically the dialogue) sucks. I think incredibly blunt would be a good way to describe it. A lot of this game is blunt. The MC being the absolute worst of it. You can write a dominant MC without him being the most bland fucker in existence. He speaks in simple sentences and has to show off his dominance whenever he can to solve even the most simple of disputes (because he's the alpha and you should listen to him grrrr!) It's cringe man. You can give him some personality without harming his masculinity.

Love interests suffer in a similar way for the most part. Half the female cast just act as sex robots more or less, which I'm not that into. I need to see more personality, more depth, etc etc. I think that blonde "second wife" is the worst case of that. I can't even remember her name and I just played the game for a couple hours.

Now all that being said, there's actually a lot of elements to this game I would actually say I liked. There's some surprisingly fun action scenes, an interesting paranormal element, and the plot is something I'd actually be into if the dialogue was better. Though the sex scenes would feel better if the characters had more to them, there's some pretty hot scenarios with decent animations as well. Bonus points for having some girl on girl stuff (which is optional should it bother you).

Honestly I'm very conflicted on the rating. Would I call this game good? No. But I don't think it quite falls into average either. One of the rare times I'd actually use a 3.5 rating if it existed, but I digress. Personal taste wise this game rounds down for me, but if you can manage to get yourself into it I can see this being a fun time killer if nothing else.

Hot Sand of Antarctica is certainly an interesting game. It has a lot of stuff that a good game needs to have. It has many pretty girls and very decent animated, erotic scenes. It has a lot of content. And it has a big post-apocalyptic world with warlords, mutants, bandits, rusty remains of civilization and all similar stuff belonging to the genre.

My problem with this game is that it's not very believable. You know, the action goes in Antarctica. The cataclysm which resulted in radical global warning happened only 20-30 years ago. Yet we have in Antarctica ruins of very ancient looking temples and abandoned cities with architecture coming directly from 1920s. It all looks very old and worn out. There's no chance that it all was created in 30 years after the ice melted.
Also the protagonist home looks like some very usual, cosy, modern appartment, which doesn't fit the desolated neighborhood at all.

The protagonist is another problem for me, he's too perfect, a "Mary Sue" type with incredible amount of luck that always succeeds in most improbable situations.

The game starts with some karma system but later seems to forget about it. It also lack a gallery.

So there's a lot of space for improvement for me. But try it out yourself, there is a high chance that you'll like it.

Review of v0.08

I was guilty for a long time of writing this game off as a cheap clone of another successful game that takes place in a desert, but I couldn't of been more wrong. Sure on the surface level they share a lot of similarities, but Hot Sands of Antarctica definitely stands on it's own merits.

MC is a powerful man in a strength based post apocalyptic society which makes him fun to play in comparison to other MCs that are weak and wimpy. Those can be fun from time to time too if they are written in a good manner, but an MC that is respected by (most) other characters is a nice change of pace.

The love interests are modeled and written well. They all feel like different people instead of just carbon coppies of each other. Even the twins have enough differences that you can tell them apart easily after getting to know them. Admitedly I would like to see more of Diana in the future (the blonde one). I feel like she is kind of overshadowed by the other harem members and we don't see her too much which is a shame. Also the small harem that you start the game with seems to be growing but nothing is concrete as of yet in the game, but seems to be headed that way.

The sex scenes and animations are also top notch. Some of the best I've ever seen. The scenarios are hot and last long enough to be worthwhile instead of being over so fast that you can't enjoy it. I'm also not sure I've ever seen so much attention to detail put into how fingers would sink into the soft flesh of a breast or butt. It's quite insane how good the attention to detail is in that regard.

The story is also quite good. It starts as you would guess with you performing jobs for the boss of your clan Mongol. Things take a turn and suddenly you go from a relatively well off life in comparison to those around you to simpy trying to survive. All the while more and more strange things keep happening leaving you with more and more questions and never enough answers. I don't want to spoil too much but it has me hooked and I can't wait until we can discover the answers to all the mysterious happenings that have been going on.

Something that I should of mentioned earlier I guess is that this is a VERY adult game. Not just for the porn of course but there is a good bit of graphic violence and gore. It doesn't bother me but maybe someone out there won't like it.

One of the only complaints that I have about the game is the sound. For the most part the soundtrack and accompanying ambiance and lewd sounds do a great job at enhancing the experience of the game. Sometimes however certain sounds won't be governed by the audio sliders and be extremely loud. I've noticed this in other Ren'Py games too so I'm not sure if this is just a common mistake while creating the game or a limitation of the engine itself so I won't deduct a star.

All in all It's a really fun game with good LIs and a solid story. I'd say it's definitely worth your time to check it out!

Excellent game! The story kept me interested, which doesn't happen often. This is mainly due to the fact that I cared about the way events affected the beautiful women this game has.

MC is an alpha though it's done in a pretty satisfying way - an important guy in a cut-throat hierarchy, who still faces challenges and dangers. So we have a small harem and the women are all good-looking and none of them is a bitch to us, like it happens in so many other games. There are also two barely-legal twins (adoptive daughters since I played without an ipatch). I would have played the game for them alone

The renders are very clean and crisp. The dialogue is well-written (sounds natural and is grammatically correct).

There is also background music though it's nothing special, but it's definitely better than nothing. And there's also moaning during the lewd scenes, that's very arousing and I simply don't understand why not all games have this.

If I can say about a game on this site that it's a hidden gem, it's this one: decent story with pretty frequent and high-quality sex scenes. Enjoy!