VN - Ren'Py - Mythos: Book One [v5.0.1 Hotfix] [Nine of Swords]

I almost can't believe that this is your first game ... all credit to you.
In my opinion, wonderfully made characters (I want Rain Sunbeam for my birthday).
I personally haven't played the female MC story, so I can't comment on that.
I think the male story is well done and exciting.
For me a 5 star game without restrictions.

I don't like writing reviews. If you don't know my taste, you don't know what to do with it anyway, so it's like proving my importance to myself.
Briefly about myself: I'm not really into porn, and I'm biased towards the developer. (She's nice, sympathetic and communicative.) Please take this into account, I try to be objective.

Story/writing/characters: there aren't many urban fantasy crime comedies, so the story is unique. The characters are not two-dimensional, they have developed personalities, which is rare in these games. The writing is fair, the story is interestig, the storytelling is logical, the dialogue is realistic within the context.

Graphics/Music: Fortunately, the developer doesn't just use music as background noise. Animated scenes are few and far between, although I don't think this kind of story really needs them, the graphics are elaborate.

Fun: no grinding, no statuses, all sex scenes easily accessible. If you like detective games or good stories, I can recommend it. If you are just looking for masturbation aid material, this might not be your game.

A surprising level of attention to detail goes into this VN, and for a first project, it's production value is impressive.
The game is filled with little details that make you go "Huh! I can't believe they thought of that!" which I appreciate a lot.
The writing is good and the story is very interesting. Characters are unique and interesting, and the renders and animatios are nothing to complain about.
The criticism about some scenes feeling mechanical and lacking in romance is valid though. I kind of just chalked it up to inexperience on the part of the author. (Not sure if it's any better with a female MC, maybe it is. I haven't checked).

Edit: I am ammending my review now that I have tried out the Female MC side and I have to say, while I still believe the game deserves the 5 stars for it's clever writing and interesting narrative, it is definitely better played with a female MC. While the author goes to great lenghts to make sure the story works both ways, there are some moments that just don't work very well with a male MC. (An example is how after the first sex scene with Tara, she is wearing a completely out of character gamer shirt the next morning, which makes little sense for the male MC, but in the female MC line, it turns out it's the MC's shirt.)

All in all, I'd give the male MC version 4/5 and the female version a 5/5 if I could do so separately. I think this game sitting at a 4.5 is relatively fair all things considered.

Mythos, a game by Nine of Swords (Nine for friends and everyone else), is an AVN with a large focus on characters, story, and mystery. While playing, it becomes immediately apparent that Nine is a skilled storyteller. Both the text and visuals are packed with details and world building, without them becoming on-the-nose or overbearing.

Characters are introduced masterfully. We’ll have a small conversation with them before we’ll see a splash screen with their basic information. Every main character has their own primary color and theme music. This helps cement these characters in the players’ memory. Additionally, Mythos has what it calls a “Lorebook”, which is a notebook where the game writes important information. Unlike every other game that has this kind of system, right-clicking inside the notebook does not open the Save or Preferences menu, but goes back a level or closes it. It’s a detail, but a nice QoL feature to have!

The sound settings are at 50% by default. This level is perfect for me, and made first starting this game an enjoyable experience, instead of frantically having to click through splash screens to lower the volume quickly.
Other settings include ‘Textbox transparency’, ‘Romance hints’, and ‘Investigation mode assistance’. This last one is applicable to Chapter 3, where the player is tasked with clicking words in dialog to pick up on interesting or contradicting remarks. Enabling this option will display a border whenever such an opportunity presents itself.

As if this weren’t enough, Mythos also includes an in-game achievement system, a gallery, and a collection of unlockable short stories. These stories are canon and expand on the lore and (side)characters.
When starting a new game, Nine will warn players that no game files need to be edited to access any achievement. Of course, this being a Ren’Py game means someone could edit files to unlock every achievement, but where’s the fun in that? This remark does make me wonder if Nine played ‘Doki Doki’.

After a few splash screens with warnings and tips, Nine introduces their game. After this, an intro cinematic plays. I can’t express how much I appreciate it. It’s short (about 90 seconds) and gives a good impression of the game’s characters and the world they live (or died) in. It’s remarkable that the intro doesn’t spoil anything about the story, while still containing so much information. At the same time, rewatching it after finishing the game, immediately makes certain plot points and mysteries stand out.

After the intro cinematic, we get to pick our main character. Our choice is between Kyle (male MC) and Kylie (female MC). The game’s content for either MC is the same, except for, of course, pronouns, and sexuality.

For my first playthrough I chose to play as a male.

I like the game’s interface. Profile pictures (side images) accompany the text, and change depending on the mood/expression of the person talking. While the characters have facial expressions in the renders, they mostly convey the general mood of the person. The side images provide a line-by-line tone. Having a sense of the MC’s emotional state during his lines is very helpful as well.
Another small detail is that a rotating hourglass will signal to the player when an animation/transition is playing. This helps the player to avoid accidentally clicking through them. I don't understand why other games don’t do this. The player is primed to click as soon as things stop moving or when we’ve finished reading. Just let us know that there’s more coming. You, the dev, spent time creating that render, and we’ll happily click through it, not even realizing it exists.

As far as adult content goes, Mythos is fairly tame. This is fine, since the game is story-focussed. Relationships aren’t over-complicated and are left to the player’s choice. The player can enter a monogamous relationship by acting monogamously (and their partner will notice this), or be polygamous. None of the Love Interests will try to force monogamy on the MC. It’s also possible to keep things friendly with every LI. The same goes for individual sexual scenes, each can be avoided if a player wants to. Because of this, the relationship we have with the LI can seem disjointed from the story. Except for a few remarks here and there, it would be possible to cut out the sexual encounters and end up with a T-rated game with the story fully intact. This isn’t criticism, after all, this game is about the MC’s investigation, it’s not a slice of life story.
The animations are good, with attention to different body parts moving at different speeds. The lust the characters have for each other is palpable, but I’m missing actual intimacy and build-up. The lesbian scenes feel more intimate to me, due to the position of bodies.
From chapter 3 onward, Mythos does away with animated sexual scenes, instead opting for renders. I think this was the right choice. From the perspective that a developer has a limited amount of time, I would rather they spend it on longer interactions with attention to positioning and interaction, than animation.

Writing - 2/5
Graphics - 2/5
Story - 4/5

This seems like a decent first attempt at a VN, with a few standard flaws.
The author seems to be more into book writing than VN writing, not letting the graphical elements do their work in telling the story. Instead there is an overflow of text to describe what is already on the screen without adding anything of value. If anything it takes away from the immersion as the reader's interpretation and involvement is discarded in favour of telling the reader what his/her thoughts and reasoning should be. A strange choice given that the VN seems to tilt towards a detective-oriented "can you figure it out on your own" kind of game.

The sex stuff seems tacked on almost by accident, not fitting with the overall story at all, and definitely not fitting with the personality of the MC. Classic good guy / horny guy split personality that is far too common in VNs. It probably needs to be said again that *it's okay to want sex and to try and get sex, even for good guys. There is nothing shameful or deceptive about it.* It also makes for a much more consistent personality and better story if the MC doesn't end up getting sex every time by women accidentally falling on his dick just so he can preserve his moral purity and good guy status.

Best of luck to the dev.

Mythos is a good surprise to me with its strange mix of humour and a detective story amongst odd and supernatural people, the good writing makes it work very well.

The possibility to choose between a man or woman MC helps to add some replay value. A good plus as the MC is wrote as a likeable character and not some cringeworthy pervert creep.

Another plus is that the story moves forward smoothly instead of stalling and meandering around, there's a bunch of surprise happening around the plot, giving some depth to the Mythos world.
The characters are fun and have some interesting interactions and dialogues with each other progressively revealing more about themselves and what they are and how they could be possibly involved in the main plot.

The only bad point i have with Mythos are the sex scenes that lack feelings with no romance or love atmosphere surrounding them, they feel very artificial/mechanical (at least with the man MC).

But other than that, i really liked the various dialogues going between serious (there's the ex-girlfriend murder to solve after all) and some funny banters. Some of the 4th wall breaching from "B" are sometime leading to some funny and puzzled reactions from the MC.

Can't wait to see what's going to happen next in this quality AVN as there's some very good potential.

I really enjoy this one. The writing is great, lots of humour, realistic sounding dialogue, and a story that grabs and keeps your interest. Throw in a very eclectic bunch of differently attractive LI's and I think it's a winner.

If you're looking for a dozen women with the same face and quadruple F tits that want to have sex as soon as they meet you, or corrupting your 'landlady', this isn't going to appeal to you. (Not saying there's anything wrong with those, I play some of those too.) But if you want something funny and engaging that also has some good sexy bits, then it's worth your time to try it out.

v5.0.0
The lewds are totally tacked on just to say the games has em. The renders top out at above average. The content is hyper-woke. And it's pretty short. All of that, and its still the easiest 5* on this site for me. If the lewds are super important to you, it might behoove you to look elsewhere. If you require S-Tier renders. There are other games for you. But if you care even a little about writing and 3 dimensional characterization you'd be a fool to not play this game.

This game has the best writing of any game on this site. The plot doesn't actually break any new ground. It's a magical-ish murder mystery. Plenty of movies/games/books have done that. But the way the plot progresses here is amazing. Its funny. Its engrossing. Its VERY unique. And a little sexy too. Frankly its my favorite AVN of any sort. It isn't SG or BaD, but it doesn't try to be. Nine of Swords is a dev that absolutely knows what kind of game she's trying to make here. And just makes that. And she makes the absolute best version of that game. Its all a real breath of fresh air.

I'm not saying everyone is going to love this game like I do. But if you like good writing, even if the tags don't appeal, you should absolutely try it. It's honestly not trying to be the next big thing. Its smaller than all that. You should absolutely try it out anyways. I absolutely adore this game.

4 very good and well written chapter so far . The initial exposure of the characters , the lore and tying it all into a murder mystery was very smart and well done .
Having a choice between male and female protagonist is a nice plus as well .
The renders are excellent , and only improving so far . The characters designs are pretty good , even for those i assume to be lesser NPCs , which is rather rare

Review for 4.1.0
Well as this game is 4.8 rated I just had to give it a try. However, it did dissapoint me a bit but there are definitely some good elements in the game so lets get into it.

First of all, this is probably one of the most expiremental and extreme game i've found out there. Especially in the first scenes of the games that are a lot of sounds/music/animations and such to create mostly jokes/funny moments. But personally I felt like the humor was a bit over the top and childish. All the animations, sounds and the personalities of the love interests felt a bit off/unrealistic and too extreme for me to actually enjoy it.
Dont get me wrong, personalities are definitely appreciated in games but this was a bit too much.

The romance furthermore also felt just like the general feeling of the game a bit extreme and over the top.
The graphics are decent (a bit outdated maybe) and the sex scenes are animated surprisingly well. Because of the graphics and the expiremental style of the game I will have to give it three stars at minimum but because of the dialogue and romance I cant go higher than that.

This is really overrated. The humorous tone is not really funny, more annoying than anything, the LI cast is not very attractive and the female MC is forced to be a lesbian. There's a lot of 4th wall breaking and prominent products placement for other games, and it's something that break the immersion and the world's consistency.

I wrote quite a bit about the game in the thread already, but since I neither wanna just copy+paste the stuff not simply repeat myself I feel like I should write a bit about my experience with this game, why I feel it deserves 5 stars even though to me personally it's more on the 4,5 star end of things & what makes this game stand out as one of my favorite VNs I read in recent memory.

First things first: I'm not a native speaker, so my praise for the writing should be taken with a grain of salt. I am pretty sure I'd notice repeated typos or if something was really odd, but I mostly go by intuition when writing english myself, so I wouldn't know if there are some advanced grammar or language rules getting broken.

That out of the way I will now shamelessly praise the writing in this, to me it's extremely easy to read, it transports the emotions I would expect in the respective scenes, there is a light tone overall but the tragedy around Lisa & the protagonist, especially Lisa's passing & the fact she never gave them a chance to come clear or work out a solution is treated with the appropriate level of sincerity, seriousness and soft melancholy on the writer's end. From there we, as the players, are given a more than satisfying level of control over how exactly Nelson feels about things.
There's also a very competent use of humor, not only does it balance things out in contrast to the gloomy aspects of the story, but it also never goes too far in the other direction. There is some ridicule in the 4th wall breaks, but it is never directed at the important characters, least the player, instead it lands some decent hits against porn logic, porn games that take themself to seriously, or even the writer themselves and the fact that some things happening in the game are a bit convenient, for the sake of preserving the author's sanity as well as making sure the game is as enjoyable and wholesome as possible.
Maybe it's just bad luck on my end, but compared to my usual experiences with 4th wall breaks specifically this really impresses me. Normally I'm clicking through and ignoring 4th wall breaks, here they made me smile or even laugh at 1 or 2 occasions.

Next I wanna talk about the characters, which have all been very likeable for different quirks (primarily, but certainly not only, the main cast, which to me are mostly the characters having a dedicated romance route), their interest in the protagonist comes across as genuine (I'm playing female Nelson, so I will say it surely helps making it pretty believable that female Nelson isn't simply pretty or busty but an actual, gorgeous cutie with just the right amount of imperfection - especially in regards to her facial features - to seem exceptionally attractive but not like an immaculate doll or statue.) but certainly based on physical attraction as much as (potentially) liking her. Here player choice's seem to play a significant role.

I tried out 2 seperate romance routes and went for just romancing everyone at once 1 time, so I can't tell for absolutely sure, but it seemed to me as if the story and characters very well register the difference, so they have a bit of varying dialogues depending on the player faithfully sticking to just 1 loveinterest or wooing them all. The latter part doesn't lead to any major conflict yet, in fact I think every character specifically states they are open for polyarmory, but I will say I felt as if there was a slight amount of (in my opinion not undeserved) wit directed at the fact that it's obviously one of those conveniences, that exist to make the game accessible for different types of players.
Personally I see that as a positive, despite not enjoying harem and especially polyamory stuff all that much, because I don't think a game should try to lecture the players about those things. Yes, in reality it would be a pretty selfish and shitty attitude to want a bunch of lovers for oneself, without necessarily feeling okay with the other way around, but that's obviously 1 of the reasons why people enjoy having it in a game.
Kudos to everyone who can guess which Devs I'm taking a friendly shot at when I say that it probably helps a lot to not have a dozen self-insert characters of the authors in game, which they then are unable to treat like NPCs with the main purpose of making the players enjoy the game as freely as possible. Believe me, I fully understand that sentiment, but I think it has no place in business and when you expect people to praise your game.

To end this probably a bit overly lengthy review: The music in Mythos is nice in my opinion, visually the game is very appealing, the characters look good (well, Tara looks a bit strange in a lot of scenes but I'm not even sure why. In her animated scene she didn't look off, so I think it's a mix of my eyes and lighting.
Speaking of the animations: They are simple but look very smooth, some of the best animations I've seen in this type of VN.
The reasons why I would give this 4,5 stars rather than 5 on a purely subjective level is that I feel like this would be even better if it was a bit slower & lengthier, more scenes for the characters and the protagonist to grow close to each other, a bit more idle time with scenes not serving any other purpose than being enjoyable to read (yeah, wholesomeness, you got me, I want as much of that as possible :c), a bit more buildup to the whole story and the twists and turns (of which there have been 2 big ones to me by now, especially the 2nd one just caught me entirely off guard) and just some more alone time with the chosen loveinterest.
I can't in good faith give 4 stars for that though, it's entirely personal preference on my end and especially it isn't the Dev's fault that there are no half star ratings on this site.

So...take your 5 stars, you doodle, and don't you dare not at least releasing 1 or 2 games for Nelson & the loveinterests from this game, otherwise I'll throw K-Pop collections at you.

Okay, I'm big into AVNs with good stories....This on is really aweome! There are lots of games on this site that are carbon copy , blah junk. This one is truly unique! If you're into AVN's (duh why would you be here if you wernt), into shows like true blood anf the magicians....check this out its very high quality and I could see the story made into a tv series like those. Really fun stuff!

v3.11 (i am at the start of ch2)

This Game is a Gem , polished to near perfection.
Slowburn made really well.

The writing is flawless , funny and without ,like at most games , the overused vulgar sexual undertone.

The Renders are awesome , the girls looking really great.
I would deduct a half point for the Animations , but i think it will get better,
so full 5 stars.

I really like the subtle hints to other games (the metareference achievement for example).

The Lorebook is well made and well implemented.

I am excited to see where this game will lead us, and how many "Books" we are get.

Thank you for sharing your work with us here, Nine of Swords, and good luck and success for the Future.

Story is different. Premise is different. First chapter and introduction got a little boring to be honest, could be better. As for the end of 3rd chapter, it picked up pace and got interesting. Hope it stays that way. Dev is trying to utilize the engine to its limit, which deserves appreciation. The mystery solving in a VN should not be easy to code and implement, hope dev can overcome the challenge. While a mystery drama, it has a comic tone to it. (meh for me)

We might need shorter inner dirty talks, while I give credit for ostentatious writing , describing the visually ongoing deed with Dostoyevsky-like precision can get tedious for reader, so I skipped mostly.

Likeable characters and interesting world building. Quite interested, what this will amount to.

Any game that has at least TWO Ryan George references gets a 5 stars from me. Most of the LIs aren't my type but the characters are interesting enough and the story seems promising so far so I'm willing to see where the game goes. I like Mara and Tara enough,and the walkthrough mod plus hints setting are saving graces.

This game is the absolute bomb.
Do you like mysteries? Check.
Do you like very attractive ladies? Check.
Do you like to see them naked? Check.
Would you like to have sex with one, several, or all of them? Well, it's a game, hon, you can't. But you're in-game avatar can!

It's funny, it's pretty, it sounds good, it might be porn but dang if it ain't wholesome too.

And then there is the Dev -- she will listen to her fans, and make adjustments to her game (within reason) because she, get this, wants you to have a good experience.

Also, she is enormously talented. She's even writing the music.

Support this Dev!

You will be glad you did.

[v3.0] Mythos starts out as a run-of-the-mill supernatural murder mystery. You are Kylie. Your no-contact ex-girlfriend dies suddenly and unexpectedly. Something feels off to you, though you can't pinpoint exactly what. You start pulling on loose threads here and there, and a huge world beyond imagination starts revealing itself to you.

There is much to praise here. Nine of Swords is a talented writer and developer. The world of Mythos is deep and immersive (do read the codex!) with a central mystery that has me completely invested. The cast is lively and colourful. Many of them would be really annoying to be around in real life, but in Mythos they bring much appreciated charm and witticism, nicely balancing the dreary plot.

The game also features an original soundtrack. That's rare in the AVN world, but Mythos is a perfect example of its value proposition. The music is the dev's own work, and it is just the right mix of understated and impactful. It really elevates the experience.

I've written a lot on these forums about LI agency and how much it means to me. It's so rare for a developer to have LIs have their own agenda and not merely follow the player's whims. It seems Nine have decided to take that idea to a genre-defying extreme and I couldn't be happier. As things stand, all LIs (and many non-LIs) are acting at least a little bit suspiciously, and Kylie has been told that one or more of them might actively be conspiring against her. All you get to do to is search for clues and decide who you trust or suspect. It's honestly a breath of fresh air for a whodunnit, and I'm really looking forward to what comes next

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Well written story. Fun characters. Interesting mystery. Well crafted environments and characters.

Animations are not up to par with the rest of the talent on display in this game. Not horrible by any means, but definitely stand-out mediocre at best.

Story convenience and the "everybody knows everybody" factors are too high, probably in an attempt to push the story pacing up to where the author wants it. Still, these flaws are all to prevalent in games today. Makes the world the author is setting up too small.

Doesn't tick all my boxes but *sigh* that's not unusual or unexpected. I'd still recommend giving this a try.