VN - Ren'Py - Lasting Connections [v0.2] [Abyss Exploration]

Oh boy, where do I start with this one? One word : TERRIBLE! I dove into this "Abyss Exploration" hoping for a spicy visual novel adventure, but instead, I got a one-way ticket to Snoozeville, population: me and my regrets. This game is like being stuck at a family reunion where everyone’s just talking about their feelings, but nobody brought the good snacks.

You play as MC, who’s apparently navigating a world of "stunning women with voluptuous figures," but it s more like navigating a maze of useless dialogue boxes without any sense that make you question your life choices. The characters? So stupid that it hurts. Really. They re like cardboard cutouts with big assets and zero personality—think of a soap opera where the script was written by a robot with a thesaurus. And the story? It s a "slow burn" alright, so slow it s basically a campfire that forgot how to spark. I waited for something to happen, but all I got was more useless and stupid talking, more teasing, and a MC who s apparently allergic to action...or brain cells!

The game s bugs are the real MVPs here, popping up like uninvited guests at a party. One minute, a character s standing there like a malfunctioning Roomba, the next, the dialogue s looping like a bad TikTok trend. And don t get me started on the “choice-based narrative”—my choices felt like picking between “say something useless” or “say something slightly more useless.” At least I could rename the MC, so I called him “Disappointed Dan” to keep it real.

All NPCs in this game are consistently intellectually disabled! The entire dialogue is disabled. The behavior of ALL characters in this game is disabled... and I’m not saying this to mock anyone. I mean it seriously. Download the game. You won’t find a SINGLE sentence that a "normal" person would say. Seriously!

Save your 2.5 GB of storage and your sanity. This game s about as fun as watching paint dry in a room full of mannequins. Abyss Exploration? More like Abyss of Existential Dread. Needs a full rework AND a story.

v0.2

The plot of the story was complete mystery, and i like it. It was fun to learn what the hell is going on. Of course the game is really short at this point, so I have no idea if it will be good in long run.

Writing is really good, as characters are really personal and it keeps events moving with good pace. Every conversation feels meaningful, as we try to understand the world and these interesting characters, so that we can choose "right" conversation options. You might really like or hate some characters in this story, but i personally like that style, rather than "perfect" boring characters.

Visually game is good. Women are on extreme side of tits department, but most were pretty. There was only one quick handjob scene, so not enough to have an opinion at this point.

Good start, but lack of content makes it hard to give more stars at this point. Maybe this will turn to be great game, maybe not.

For me, I really like it. I like that the game presents armpit scenes or sniffing scenes. It's my personal taste and I like it a lot (I mean just the game ). I also like that the game gives me a lot of choices. It makes me clearly determine the direction I want to go in, and I think that's important for this type of game.

There are many things about this game that I didn't mention that have both advantages and disadvantages, but for me, I personally don't care much about those things. So now those problems don't affect me at all.

Lastly, I would like to encourage the developers to continue making this game. I really like this game.

(I especially like Sonia )

Ver 1.19
There have been a few updates since the @N0madS0uL review so I thought I'd give this a chance that it had been improved.

Answer: Not that I can tell

Not much to add. It seems to make no sense. I'm not sure if that's intentional but wow. I think ChatGPT would have made something more intelligible. Even with "assisted" mode, I'm not sure what most the choices lead to. Rather than have some character tell me +mood or -missed Flag after a choice, make the choices intelligible if they'll be positive or negative by the dialogue.

All I can say is "huh?"

This game starts off weird and when I say weird, I mean it just happens, the game just drops you in the deep end so to speak. There is no context for anything happening. The MC, which you can't name and has a really weird name is talking to someone who is i am guessing there to "guide" the player but there is again no context, it just spits out a room and dialogue that makes the player ask "what the f*ck is happening"

The models look decent, I wont complain about that, that is the only reason I have it 2 stars, else it would have been 1. That being said, early on the "madam" of the house stands at a table, like a robot, doing nothing, looking like she is jacked into a charge bay...

Then the dialogue, its also terrible, the MC is lost in thought but his thoughts are almost one of some alien observer, no context and it appears being human is a very odd thing for him to come to terms with. At least that's the best way I can find to describe him.

The interaction between the sister and brother (mc) is also so unnatural and the dialogue is clearly very poorly thought out, whatever the story is suppose to be it was thrown together included the script over a weekend while the dev was stoned.

The sister uses the worth "brother" so often that I am sure the dev wants to emphasize and hammer home the idea of these two being siblings to the player, but why? We clearly know they are siblings after the first few mentions and then there is the question of "who speaks that way?!"

I just started it and was so annoyed at this game that I had to post something here to discourage people from playing this mess of a game. Shift + Delete