Ren'Py - Completed - Mist [v1.0.3] [395games]

Staggeringly linear plot wherein the only deviations from railroading and backtracking across various setpieces are brief detours to refill the ticking clocks (food, curse status, stamina, health) that drive the pace of the railroading in the first place.

Less a game you play or a story you take a role in and more a story you are told about a character you name. Grammar and spelling accuracy appear to decline slightly as the game progresses, as if the developer started with and then lost an editor during development. Environmental quality peaks in the 3rd act (city) and then abruptly declines alongside a sudden and drastic tonal shift. This tonal shift accompanies stylistic changes that really highlight the...unflattering qualities of the enemy models, textures, rigging, and animation. The model for the primary antagonist as implied by the third act is a hideous kitbash of untextured grey lumps in a vaguely humanoid shape with some bits of bloom/emission channel abuse clipping out of it. The female character models are stylistically consistent with each other but not really with the player character's textures. The female models and their rigging are some of the best aspects of the game overall.

All in all, the story is paced in a way that suggests to me the author got bored of or impatient with the richer exploration of characters that is the primary narrative strength of the first two acts in order to force the story to reach their grandiose intentions for the setting quickly rather than organically. This might be a result of continually fleshing out the first two acts while developing forward, but the existence of the barest skeleton of RPG, survival, and management simulator elements that serve as the "gameplay" of those acts just suggests to me that the bad pacing results from impatience for a predefined end result superseding the creation of a coherent and fleshed out path to reaching it.

As a word of advice, from one avid reader and crappy writer to any aspiring writer reading this: build your world first, your characters second, and your outline for your final chapter only after you have learned how that world and those characters interact. Even if you know you want to build a pyramid, building the cap first just makes getting it up to the top that much harder - and it might turn out your bricks are better for building a ziggurat, and you realize you'd rather have that anyway.

V0.8, Android version

Literally had me stuck in the chair for 3 consecutive nights.

Although I was sceptical of downloading it (primarily due to it's art style), this game really broadened my horizons.

The story is top notch (remove the NSFW and it's literally a novel or a movie script)
Animations are smooth as butter, silk, etc. (literally some of the best animations I've seen)
Gameplay - Jeez this game actually has "mechanics" and makes you actually try and find the "optimal" route to play it.

All in all I highly recommend this one. No matter what you're into, this game will surely tickle you fancy !

This game is one of my favourite one. This game have all the thing i like to have in a game. Nice story, best animations and along with that the graphics of the game is just awesome. Also the female characters are also the reason for liking this game.

At first, I was hesitant to download the game since I prefer a more realistic art style in games, but after I've played this, I found the game completely astonishing. The animations, story, art style, etc. were just amazing. Thank you for a beautiful experience.

Excellent indeed and underrated even with 260 odd ratings. Everything about this game is mind blowing, animations are smooth and worthy to called such. Characters are lovable, story is gripping in the sense and well directed, real gem.

This is already a 5 star game compared to many other games out there. The animations are fantastic and the actual gameplay is good.

There's still a little bit of room for improvement, though. Sometimes the dialogue can feel a little unnatural (contractions are your friend, here), and I'd love to see some improvements made to the morale boosting scenes. Scene distribution feels a little bit uneven, with Robin having almost no scenes in the evenings, and Lily (once you unlock her for morale boosting) having no scenes during the day. I also think the dialogue could be changed around a bit. I understand these scenes are basically just a gallery reviewer, but the old dialogue breaks immersion somewhat, especially in Lily's "soft sex" scene.

I'd love to see more scenes added to this mechanic as it feels a lot more organic than going into a gallery to review old scenes.

Overall, this game is definitely worth your time and my problems are just minor nitpicks.

This game is one of the best I have ever played, it has a great plot, interesting stories and it is also fun to play! You get actions of the best quality and at certain points my heart raced because of the intensity! The sound, the music and the effects are all on point and makes this a truly perfect all-rounded game!

THE BEST
+ MIST has some of the best animations I've seen. Also, it seamlessly switch between in-game renders and animations. I can't say if this is exceptional or normal from a technical perspective, but it seems much more natural than in other games I've played.

THE WORST
- The early interactions between the player character and the first girl (Robin) are atrocious. He acts ans speaks like a creep, making it seem very unnatural that she would trust him at all. Luckily, their interactions start feeling more natural as the game progresses.

OTHER POINTS
+ The story is nice enough, kinda fun and manages to keep me reasonably interested.
+ There's some grind, but it's not really tedious.
- I didn't like the navigation, specially because your stamina is rather low even at max and I wasted some going left instead of right. At times, it all feels bad enough it kinda breaks my immersion.

Overall, i highly recommend this game.

Love this game, Noreia has my heart!!! I'd trade all 3 other girls just for her tbh. You've done an amazing job with this game and I cannot wait to see how this amazing VN ends. Quality project for sure,, definitely worth a play and can't wait to see more.

v0.7.2b

I like the premise of the game and horrorish post apocalypse of the setting, the art style and animations, and great music too, but after a certain point the plot felt like it was getting really dragged out and was spinning its wheels.

This may contain some plot spoilers for a plot heavy game



Graphics:

Mist is unique in its graphics. A combination of still images acting as background that is occasionally combined with moving animations as well. The artstyle for the characters is certainly unique as well- I cannot recall another game that has this particular art style, and it works to its benefit rather than its detriment. At first I found myself neutral on the presentation of the love interests, but after a short of period of time found it endearing. This is a game that gets better the longer you play it- you can visibly see the creator's progress as both an animator, designer, and story teller as the game moves forward.

Renders are good. Animations are super slick. While your home base remains relatively static, newer updates have allowed you to have lewd scenes with your love interests in other places than your Cabin homebase, which is both a welcome change of pace and lets the creator show off their capabilities outside of the comfort zone of the Cabin. I never go out of my way to knock a creator when they're clearly getting better, and 395games absolutely is getting better as they go.

Animations are both short and long, with few loops- when you think you're about to be bored, something new occurs, which is a welcome change of pace.


The Writing

I like where they are going, but the earlier dialogue was atrocious when I played it. The MC seemed to be seducing the girls despite what he said, and not because of it. This creator has gone out of their way to go back and retroactively change dialogue options and attempt to make them more organic, which is once again commendable. Taking critique and feedback and retroactively 'fixing' their prior work takes a lot of time and guts for a creator that can just label complainers as 'haters,' but there's obviously an incentive of the creator to do better, and to fix prior scenes and updates to keep them in line with their growing quality is something to be commended.

There are times where the MC seems like a complete prick, and other times where they seem genuinely invested in the health and well-being of the harem love interests. I don't feel as though this balance is always achieved, which is a difficult thing to do, but progress can be made fast enough that this can be forgiven to an extent.

The overall plot, I am sure by the time it concludes, will make sense. But there's plenty of times as the story moves forward I find myself throwing my hands in the air and saying "Okay, then." As things seem to appear out of left field. It feels like a mix of Resident Evil, Base Defence, and morale maintenance. That's something that requires a delicate balance that 395games is still figuring out.


The Flow

The largest issue with the game. I cannot speak to new player experiences, as this developer has overhauled graphics and pacing of your stat-level ups and interactions to be a little faster and organic feeling. When I played prior updates, the flow was an absolute bloody slog. Balancing food income, supply income for upgrading your cabin for plot-related events, etc.. Could take me 45 minutes to an hour. For a game like this, it's too long. It's clearly focused on telling a story that contains plenty of lewdness, but the lewdness was too few and far between. This has apparently been fixed to an extent, but once again I can only speak to my experience as a person who has been following the updates and not replaying it from the beginning.


Overall:

I found myself pleasant surprised by this game. There's only 3 (four?) love interests here but the tightness of the dialogue and pacing that has developed in conjunction with the uniqueness of each character and their relation to you keeps each event feeling very fresh. Renders are unique and well animated. Backgrounds look good. Flow and pacing is being fixed as it updates, and the updates are exceptionally frequent. It's quite different from other games, and this works to its benefit rather than its detriment. Sometimes the developer feels as though they have bitten off more than they can chew, but the fact that they're aware of this and are working towards alleviating these issues means I give it a good rating. Solid game.

MIst feels very very professional and unique. it has some clear influences from Myst the game, and the book/movie "The Mist."

While it's no full fledged puzzle game (I can only imagine how pissy people could get with difficult puzzles in a porn game), it still has the presentation of a point and click adventure game. It's a very unique feeling thanks to the wonderful animations.

Another highlight is the environment of all the areas. They all feel unique, which is always a nice touch.

The beginning *feels* grindy, but I quickly progressed after maybe 3-5 grind runs. It's not really that bad at all. I'm curious about how the combat will evolve, if it does. I don't like the idea of all combat eventually being piles of enemies. That would be a bit annoying.

The story is fascinating and engaging. It has a nice pacing to it and definitely keeps you intrigued. The characters all feel unique, though that may be an after affect of there being few characters.

The lewd scenes also feel unique due to how the models look and the animations. It's interesting seeing the scenes at part of the unique Mist experience.

Game Version: 0.7.2b

I am quite blown away by this game. I truly had no idea what I was getting into when I downloaded this, and this game truly spoiled me by giving me such a great experience. This is one of those games that you really should play and not overlook. Please note, I'm trying my best not to spoil the story so incase someone who hasn't played is looking at the reviews. I'm trying to keep things vague so I don't end up revealing something. (But I will spoil stuff incase I do end up saying something)

The Story
I'm not a fancy writer, nor do I possess the skills to produce a coherent review of a plot. I'll try to describe how I feel about it in the best way possible. The story is really full of surprises and I found myself unable to predict what would happen next. (Which is a good thing in my opinion, because I find stories that I can predict to be quite surface level). I really like how the story brings you into a character that isn't omniscient and learning just as you are learning. I always found myself playing this until 3 am, because I was so attached to the story, and I wanted to know what happened next.

Characters
I love the characters in this game. They all have their own personalities, traits, backgrounds, and talent that are quite easy to differentiate between each of the characters. I can expect a certain type of humor from each character. I love to see the characters interact with each other and it's really consistent. I don't see the characters stepping out of their realm of personality. MIA IS ADORABLE, I LOVE HER

Graphics
The graphics are extremely impressive. I love the character design and the environments. The facial expression, blushing, idle movement and reactions to dialogue during scenes really impressed me and surprised me. The game's atmosphere is amazing! I love the use of animated transitions in the game, it really helps with the immersion. The bodys and genitals in the game really look.. like delicious ? Like I don't know, the combination of the sound of skin touching, goosebumps, shiny skin and genitals really make for a satisfying experience.

Gameplay
I must say, the gameplay really compliments the story. There's many different types of interactions in the game which help portray the story in a wonderful way. They did a really good job with making you feel like you're experiencing the hardships of the story. I really enjoyed the stat mechanics and the exploration system. There are many types of surprises that i don't want to spoil, I encourage you to not spoil yourself, because it's super fun to experience the game yourself.

QoL/Interface
I loved the quest log, whenever I was stuck or unable to know what to do I always found the quest log to be extremely helpful. I really enjoy the navigation system, and the way it notifies you of certain things in regards to certain character events. I never felt that a mechanic was too annoying, or repetitive in the game. In fact, the beginning may seem intensive, but as you progress in the game, solutions arise to make certain things easier to accomplish, which is a really nice touch. Really captures the feeling of progression.

After playing the story for about 4 to 5 hours, I realized that it's a very good game. Story, storytelling, animation, scenes, character design and character development. My favorite character is Robin. She has developed a relationship with the main characters as a support for each other. She gives a feeling of peace and warmth. I love this game.

I'm mostly seconding what others have said already but...

The animation and general artwork is fantastic and I'd even go as far as to say that it is immersive. All H scenes are extremely smooth. There are a few scenes that drift into the uncanny valley, but out of hundreds I can excuse a handful.

The story is intriguing and the characters are charming. I played through in two sittings and after the first I found myself anticipating finding out what was going to happen and uncovering the mystery more than seeing any new H scenes.

The gameplay is neither good nor bad - it serves its purpose well enough and it never becomes tedious. I would lean a little more towards the "good" side as it does give a greater sense of interactivity than a simple linear VN.

The H stuff is great. I never knew I had a pastoralism kink until now, but that's basically what most of the girls fall into - living out in the boonies and fucking your harem and tending the farm. I will say that the area that needs the most work right now is the dialogue during H scenes, as it ranges from erotic to corny to overly wordy to downright cringe-worthy.

The UI is almost perfect. There are a few interactables that have odd "hit boxes" and one feature that's buried in a menu but other than that I had no issues.

My only other issues was that if you stop checking for new conversation scenes every night, you can end up advancing the story so far that the conversations are totally outdated. I think an indicator that these conversations are available would be helpful to preserve the immersion, just like the heart icon is used to indicate a new H scene is available.

Finally, every single girl basically falls in love with the MC after he rescues them. I don't think it's inappropriate for the genre or context, but it is the weakest part of the writing and I know some people take issue with it. Unfortunately there isn't really a way to fix it at this point that I can see, and it really wouldn't be worth the hassle this far in.

I'm eager for more content and highly recommend MIST to anyone who hasn't played it yet.

Review for 0.7.2b
How do you usually rate games? You have in mind some "average" performance in certain aspect, some "lowest viable" and some "ideal". Certainly, if the game matches what you call ideal, you rate it as the max.

But what if the game actually surpasses your previous "ideal" measurement? What if it is so good that it drags the "ideal" beyond the previous level, so good that all other games pale in comparisson? How do you rate those other games now and how do you rate this one?

Here is an example of such rare thing happening. The game pushing the quality beyond previously set limits, the game so over-the-top that it amazes you not by something in particular, but rather by a combination of all parts and how they are delivered to the player.
This is what you call "exceptional".

Mist is clearly a visual novel, despite for some reasons not having been labeled as such, and should be rated by the RenPy VN standarts.

Good points:

The plot is incredibly well made. Most of the times it is either pale due to the dev focusing on other aspects of the game, or it is generic to the point of absurdity. A teen returns back from uni after his father died, a teen goes in the university, dude moves to a new town - you name it. Here the entire plot is built around some strange event, which can be labeled as dark fantasy, but somehow still holds the grounds of being realistic and down-to-earth. All this is if not believable, at least interesting. The plot building is such that the new information appears and covers previous plot holes, and slowly builds the entire image of what is happening.
The characters - no generic models are used here. This is 3DCG, so everything is rendered. The model detail level is low, but this is compensated by how good the quality is. I could not care less about the hair being one stationary object instead of 10 000 independent hairs, if the girl it is attached to looks beautiful. Hyperrealism is not the goal of the dev - well, why would it be, if the game is dark fantasy?

The dialogues - after reading them, I feel like we have taken the wrong turn in the game developement somewhere and this game is trying to compensate for this. I read about character lore - it is interesting. I read about feelings, about emotions, about experienced traumas - it is believable. I read about characters explaining they had to spoonfeed disabled person and change sheets - this is realistic beyond measure. With most of the games all the dialogues are somewhere around sex or can be skipped entirely. Here you are finally given the variety of dialogues which together with their quality allows you to immerse yourself into the story, into playing your character, into this masterfully crafted world.

The graphics is what I was amazed with since the first minutes of playing and until the very end of current content. The renders are incredibly high quality, the lighting, the lumination, reflections, quality of textures - this pleases my eye more than some recent AAA titles could. Everything is clearly made with passion, with love - and it shows so! Every static render, every image, every animation is so vibrant with colors, so "living" that you can just press H to hide all text and sit for a while enjoying it on its own.

The animations - I know myself how hard they are, how difficult it is to model everything, to avoid texture clippings, avoid mesh issues, avoid lighting bugs and screwed camera angles. And here it seems that the dev is the literal god of them. So far the most I could expect is the animated sex scene - I mean, this is the point, right? But would you make the animation for just moving enemy grunt? For walking in the forest? For climbing? This game has so much of unnecessary animations that you wonder who is that person behind those and why is he or she doing so many of them? I mean, when your character is climbing a tall tree, the last thing you would ever expect is 3-4 different animations with moving camera just to immerse the player into the process of said climbing. Just for that! There is nothing important going on, yet the animations are there, at every place you would expect them to possibly be, and additionally in so many other places which could have been perfectly fine without them, but with additional animations these scenes become so immersive you start to even doubt what game you are playing.

The gameplay: the mechanics are very simple, yet so refined and flawlessly crafted that it makes me wondering how that was even possible. Imagine you have to build 3 additional objects to your base. There is an entire menu for that, with all quality buttons and blueprint renders more suitable for a building simulator.
Another strong point about the game mechanics is how well the game is balanced. There is no need to grind anything, just start what you can and do other things while the longer processes are going. There is almost no difference whether you spend 4h grinding xp on weakest mobs or rush forward into the later areas. You dont need to grind foor - just spend one day of the week exploring the lake and fishing. You dont need to keep an eye on 20 gauges like in some games, and everything your character needs is acquirable so easily that there is no need to worry about anything - just enjoy the game.

The content is pretty large by now, I think it took me like 10 hours or more to play through what is available, and I enjoyed every second of it. I have only found this game recently, so I do not know of how frequently it is updated, but it is worth playing already.

The bad points:
Disclaimer: this is nitpicking. The game has so few of those that you have to search for one. I am stating this here that they in no way influence how great this game is, and serve here just as a possibility to improve the game with correcting them even more.
* There are like 5 spelling mistakes in the entire text of the game, almost equally distributed throughout the content. It seems like noone proofreads the scripts, maybe this could be a good thing to do.
* There is no map of expedition locations, this is the most crucial with forest - the very first location the player gets to explore. I have incredibly good visual memory (IRL I am able to perfectly remember the path I have taken in the unknown city/district only once several years ago). But not everyone does. I expect at least some players to get lost in the forest, not knowing where exactly they are and how to go to the mission objectives. If I was the playable character, I would have surely drawn at least a scetch map of where everything is. And there even is a map! The thing is that it is not used for anything, just found and delivered. I think any sort of a map could improve the game even more.
* Lastly, it seems a bit weird that certain activities with the girls can be performed only in a certain timeframe - either during the day or during the night. This is one of the few things which seems not very logical. And all that changes is the light, so it is not really hard to do.

From all by experience in the games of such genre this one is standing out as the one I will probably compare everything else to from this point onwards. I am so happy that I experienced it and loved it, but also sad knowing I will not enjoy other good games as much as I used to knowing how well this can be done.

TLDR 10/10 GOAT game go play it RN.

Highly recommended! The story is interesting and also the animation looks cool too. Finally, the characters are don't feel stupid. Only negative in this game going to bit repetitive, like so many others.

I think this game is amazing in both 3D Graphical and Sandbox aspects. The story is also very well written. If the game gets some optional content after the story gets complete with weapons to be found, side characters to interact with, with new powers and other enemies it can be the best Sandbox-Adult game. Even with the things the game offers currently it is still an amazing game, excited for endgame content. Really good work 395Games.

Outstanding in every way. Just shut up and play it.

Still here? Oh bother, fine then.

I usually do not enjoy survival games at all, this game turned out to be an exception. It is not hardcore survival-wise making it likable even to people like me who don't much care for survival mechanics.

*The story is very interesting.
*The ambient music is outstanding, helping to bring out the best atmosphere and immersion.
*The attention to details (character hand gestures, flying birds visible from the window, steam rising from a pot, etc) is outstanding.
*The animation is ridiculously smooth.
*Sex scenes are hot.

Really, i can't think of a single thing that i don't like about this game.
This dev amazes me, i can't name a single other dev on this forum (at least, not yet) who puts nearly as much effort into their game as this guy. I hope he keeps this up.

Caught my attention with the first cutscene. Smooth transitions, wonderful characters, breathtaking atmosphere. If the creator keeps this quality up throughout this entire game's making, it will become a huge classic!
Love it a lot.