Ren'Py - Parasite Black [Steam Demo v0.154] [Damned Studios]

An interesting enough dark fantasy setting...This would have been great if it wasn't for the whole combat RPG sandbox thing the dev is trying to do. The art is good, the sex animations and current amount of content is decent...BUT:

• The problem with supporting the dev is every update seems to break the game saves, likely due to the convoluted code they use to code this RPG combat system they use.
• They also keep adding and updating to the combat and make it grindier and less fun, which just misses the forest for the trees.
• For the next however many years development, whenever there's an update, you're probably going to have to restart the game from the very beginning because the game will break if you use old saves. Hugely detracts from the experience.
• And now that they're going to Steam to put this game on Early Access and I quote "“The game will approximately be in production for a few years as we want to expand the world significantly.", this is going to be painful to keep replaying from scratch over and over and over again.
• There's alot of placeholders for the planned future for what the dev has in mind for the game. It doesn't seem realistic given the existing pace of development, which is SLOW.
• With this being on Steam Early Access with so all these placeholder content gaps, the slow pace of development being a mismatch with the huge scope, this all indicates a high chance of abandonment before completion.

3/5

I played the 0.153 version, and I've actually really enjoyed it. I'm usually not a big fan of VN or Ren'Py games, since to me at least, they tend to get boring even before halfway through the story. However this game, to my surprise, has managed to keep me captivated, and here I thought I would only play it for only a day or so haha.

Pros:
Story: Honestly it's pretty good if you ask me, though there's definitely a lot more that needs to and will be added. Honestly I was surprised that I even managed to reach the last quest, though that just means I enjoyed it to the point where time went by quickly.
Artwork: *Chef's kiss* Both the Art and animation are some of the best I've seen, and honestly I’m excited to see what’s more to come. The backgrounds, the characters, they all look fantastic, especially for “certain ” scenes.
Characters: While some are your typical NPC’s, there are some characters where they didn’t feel 2 dimensional. I really liked how some of them had some personality to them, hell I even had a couple chuckles and shock from some of them.
Sound: By the Gods, the soundtrack and atmospheric sounds definitely help with aiding the story. To be frank, it really does help build suspense, or bring the atmosphere to the environments..

Cons:
Combat: It can get a bit repetitive at times, especially when trying to get to from one location to another, so I think the devs should add a skip battle system, or at least give the player the option when their character reaches a certain level.
Content: I understand drawing and animating take time, so i’m not too upset from the lack of some content. I know more will be added, and patience is key, however there is still a lot that needs to be added. Personally, I’m excited for more *Ahem* Regina content .

TL;DR It’s definitely one of the best Ren’Py/VN games I have ever played, and this is coming from a person who usually gets bored when playing them. It ain’t finished, it ain’t perfect, but it’s definitely an unpolished gem I would recommend to anyone curious enough to play it.

Review of v0.154...

3 1/2 Stars

I knew nothing about this game going into it other than I liked the artwork in the previews. The story is okay so far. Basically a medieval Venom.

The writing is very good. I only noticed a few typos. However there are massive lore dumps. You will easily spend ten minutes reading a conversation with a character talking about the lore of the game. I appreciate the attention to detail to wanting to give the game a rich backstory, but it would have been better to save the lore dumps for codex entries so the player can read up on it when they want to.

Like I said I really like the art. However there are inconsistencies when the characters are portrayed in different situations. The art is still good, but sometimes they look like completely different characters. And apparently there is only one tit size in this world and that's fantasy large. Sigh.

The battles are repetitive and get old fast. Aside from the mandatory battles you will have to do at least 1 to 3 battles while travelling from one place to another, and you will travel a lot.

I'm not familiar with the development of this game, but from what I've read in other reviews they've been working on it for 2+ years and this is as far as they've gotten with the more recent updates being underwhelming. I'm willing to give them a little slack because I know creating art like this takes time, but there are only five locations right now and I think ten more planned on the map. If it took them this long to get this far I'm not hopeful for the game to be completed.

And also apparently every new version breaks your save making you have to play from the beginning every time. There is no reason to have this problem.

For all it's faults I did like the game, but like I said if they've only gotten this far in over two years and with all the other areas they seem to have planned I wouldn't be surprised if they abandon Parasite Black. I hope they don't, but I think their reach is exceeding their grasp.

Miss, miss, miss and more miss... As much as I appreciate the drawings and animations and this fantasy VN work, I would advise the developer not to be so RNG-obsessed. If the combat is like this early in the game, it's frankly unbearable for long hours. The constant misses of attacks on enemies make the game unplayable. I wish success in the development process of this game, but I hope the developer remembers the purpose of such games. I honestly don't think anyone would want a challenging turn-based combat system. If I personally want to play something turn-based, there are already plenty of AAA games.

Potential to be a 5* star game but has been trending down. The first two years of development were rapid, with tons of new content that was high quality. The main story line has not advanced in a year now, with development instead focused on tinkering with existing game mechanics and adding unnecessary grind features.

Adding side quests for the adventure guild was a good decision. Making it so you have to do several battles every time you travel somewhere was terrible. No one likes grind features, so why add one in 3 years into development?
For those having trouble with the battles - they are very easy. Just upgrade your strength and you can one shot everything.

The addition of a new character (traveling merchant) also seems excessive to me. When a game is several years into development, adding new characters without advancing the plot line is not a good sign towards game completion. As it stands now, I do not think this game will ever be completed. If you look at the map, there are dozens of planned cities/villages when only 4 locations on the map are even remotely complete now.

Good game, just want more progress in combat and character stories
And luckily the game does updates, not the fastest per say but still good amount of updates.
Also as I said the combat is still early in development from playing the game same for equipment but slowly it is improving in different ways.
That's all for now

A game that reset with each new update, introducing systems that worsens the game mechanics and makes simple resource obtaining a nightmare. Previous drop rates of resorces from enemies has gone to shit. WIth this new update map system has become worse, Infection drop rate from fighting is not happening, RNG has become worse, and even after so many updates Dev doesn't know how to make previous saves compatible. FK this game and Fk me for wasting my attention and time on this game that turned from gem to trash with each new update.

V0.152

Pretty good game overall. This fantasy story's something we've seen before, where an expendable group of soldiers are sent on a dangerous mission, and only the MC and friend escapes with superpowers. Of course, in the realm of hentai, the cost of this power is you're very horny.

Reading that, expect an overarching story, and plenty of different characters to breed. Artwork's nice and overall was a very good experience. I'll probably wait from this point until a full release. 4/5

Arguably one of the top five games in this site. Dialogs, art, story, and just the sheer possibilities it entails. There are entire cities yet to be explored and the whole story while very well told, is still in it's early stages. I can't wait for more.

One of the most fantastic fantasy game I've seen on this site. The world is fleshed out and makes me excited to learn more about it. The characters have distinct personalities and models, setting each one apart. And the sex scenes are fully animated, well-drawn and voiced (although they're background noises rather than the lines). And the fetishes! Not just regular women or fantasy races, but a futanari, a trans woman and a femboy. Definitely recommend it.

TL;DR I think the final, polished version of this game will be one of the best adult games ever made.

+ Great writing
+ Great art
+ Uncensored
+ Big focus on breeding/pregnancy

= Updates are a bit slow and light on content. Not necessarily a bad thing when the quality is high, but it's always a concern that games like this will never actually be finished for whatever reason the longer development takes.

- While most of the art is outstanding, there are a not insignificant amount of scenes of way lower quality, often even with the same character. Hopefully they get reworked before the final release.
- Quite a few typos.
- Saves seem to break between versions. I don't take that into account for the rating but it is incredibly annoying.

Really buggy early release but could be a good game.
I went to the lake, killed the slimelark and am stuck at the lake.
Clicking the travel icon shows some travel tutorial message and goes back to the lake

The game needs a guide or clarified dialogue to keep the game moving

Really amazing game. What's get me exited is the size of the map that I wish I will have the chance to explore it one day. It's really a rare thing to try a game where it has a nice questline with lewd elements.

This is great. Combines both the power fantasy of prototype (or venom im told, which is a good point, it talks. but i just like prototype more), with your usual hypersexual adventure one. Put all that in medieval times with some dark fantasy and there you go.

no, seriously, i dont ever do reviews, but this one just deserves to be talked about. The unique transformed designs are very nice and so is the art that goes with it.

all thats really missing is literally just more of it and maybe some combat revision. But lets be honest, thats not why we are here. As for the smut, its good. especially the newer stuff. They just get better with time.

Still waiting for the more of the mom and the sis. If youre like me, the incest tag may be what got you there. But as of now, its not worth it. you get no escalation yet.

I stayed for the story though. its pretty damn cool

Ok imma be honest. This is a real gem of the dark erotica, there is simple so much to say so I will be quick for anyone that is just reading for a simple rating that could summarize if he (or she) should play this, well If you arent scare of gore and heavy themes, you should definetly play this game.

Story: Its good and original, its a nice fresh air compared of the 90% games of here with male protagonist, you have a; medieval dark fantasy, alien themes and venom, yeah, venom, you can tell that the idea is heavily based of symbiotes like venom but more invasive... I love it, and you have a gymbro, if you are a gymrat like me you would enjoy the idea of a supportive bro.

Characters: You have a vast cast of girls that are likable... mostly, it covers a lot of kinks too and you can tell that it could end in an harem route with justifiable reasons.

Gameplay: This could be mostly the negative part of the game, the fighting feels repetitive and there is no upgrade or tree of skills at the moment so the combat is just plain.

Scenes: Yeah totally fap material but there is not enough scenes for each girl at the momeny so one will just have to wait.

Overall this is a 4.7 / 5 stars
Things that should improve is the combat system and maybe more choices, sometime it feels disconnected form certain important characters like Markus that it seems he is having problems lately.

Parasite Black is a great game if you like RPG games with some erotic stuff thrown in. For me it belongs to top 5% of game on this site.

Actually it would still remain great even with all sex stuff taken out. It would be still a good RPG with choices that matter, pretty handdrawn graphics and combats that are interesting and neither too hard or too easy.

The story is not worse than many big famous RPG games. To be precise I would say the story is worse than Witcher or Gothic but not worse than Baldur's Gate, Eye of the Beholder or Knights of Xentar. Sorry for some ancient examples, I am quite old

It's quite a typical fantasy story of a young man living in a hard times, going from zero to hero who has to save the world and rescue the princess have sex with as many gals as possible. But it's well presented and interesting. He's also some kind of mutant with special powers and curses which adds some nice twists to the gameplay, making it less worn out.

The game is now at rather early stage but I guess by just looking at the map that it going to be a big game. There is a lot of locations and while you cannot visit most of the yet, you will still get several hours of gamplay.

As I said, I like the graphics, it's pretty. It's not these same 3D models used again and again but something unique, a bit similar to classical paintings. The animation is worse but I had no problem with it.

Try it out guys and girls (any here?). It's worth it!

An excellent game. I am biased towards 2d art and there aren't that many good games with such art. So, I am very glad that this game has a decent enough story with great art to back it up. Though, it can be a little tricky to find certain character, the built-in walkthrough helps a lot. Would love to have more content with some character but I'm that will happen eventually.
Good luck to the dev for the future.

If you're a part of the harem anti-ntr crowd like me I just wanna give you guys a positive note: so far Lostraven has kept his promise on not including ntr. While there is netorase, it's completely optional. To my pleasant surprise even lesbian was made optional. So I'm just saying the game is safe, don't worry if you wanna try it out.

OK, so now I guess I'll be an analytical nerd about this game:



What did I like about the game?

1. The general plot seems interesting
2. the focus seems to be mostly on maledom harem
3. the fact that netorase and lesbian seems avoidable
4. the writing is done in an interesting way
5. graphically beautiful and artistic

What did I not like?

1. combat seems EXTREMELY repetitive. It's the same bland fight each time we head out. Turn 1, strong attack first enemy, weaken the other enemy. Turn 2, strong attack and normal attack the first enemy, it dies. Turn 3, strong attack and normal attack the surviving enemy. Turn 4 normal attack the enemy with 1 of the characters, game set. It's a dominant strategy that will never fail or result in anyone getting knocked out. I know it's not a finished product though. It would feel rewarding to have some kind of progression tree of some kind. It would be cool to maybe gain abilities and stats of the tree based on killing and fucking (because we're getting used to our new enhanced bodies.)
2. I had borderline no difficulty managing the infection. It's too easy to fight/fuck in the game so the infection level was almost permanently low. Perhaps make it so every time I use the enhanced form my infection goes up? Or make some kind of combat abilities that cost infection? Or if we're going with a progression tree make it so when I upgrade my abilities the daily infection goes up temporarily? And maybe some upgrades to slow it down, or improve the rate fighting/fucking will lower them?
3. A lack of combining combat and story properly. It would be nice to see the characters progress from training to after their infection. For example, when the mc and his "brother" fight in a training battle (your first fight) they're both able to do 25 damage with a normal strike. At the very end of the current version of the game what damage do their enhanced muscular human forms do? 25 damage. This is after the parasites explain they've altered our bodies to have denser muscle mass. They also imply extraordinary regeneration abilities which does not show itself anywhere in the game.
4. Map and time scale. It's implied that it shouldn't take more than a couple hours to get to the desert and hunt demorai. But in the story the emperor and characters are shocked they ran home in less than a week. I think the author could stand to make the map look a bit more scaled for this inconsistency, or make hunting them seem like more of a long term expedition.
5. although the graphics are beautiful it's difficult for me to call them sexy. I really like ahego, but for some reason the faces and scenes feel a little too awkward. I don't know how to describe it.
6. some dialogue feels like it should be in game, but isn't. For example, when Nyx (I think that's her name?) told me she knew what we were, the first thing I wanted to do was give Markus a heads-up. But there's no option to tell him.

Neutral comment
The game suffers from a jack of all trades issue. The game is kinda... excessive in variety that it lacks a certain focus. What does this mean? Well, let's say you don't like furry? Let's say you don't like lesbian? Or netorase? Or orc girls? Or trans/traps/futa? Or voyeurism? Or tentacles? Or anal? Sorry to tell you, but this means.... you're going to miss out on a good chunk of content in the game. While it's all avoidable, that also means the content left is very limited. I'm not complaining there's too much variety, I'm just giving everyone a heads up: there might be a very limited amount you're interested in.

Anyway, personal preferences aside, it's 5/5 stars as a game, and I hope he continues on and keeps making a great game!

I can't provide 3.5 stars, so I will settle to 3.
(This review is about 0.147)

Why the average rating? The answer is simple. There is no skip button, so if you are playing on android, where you can't press tab in order to activate/deactivate skip mode, the game can get tiring very easy. I can also mention the fact that save and load are merged to a save menu option that makes saving/loading confusing for a while as the menu feels counterintuitive.

With that being said, I believe that the 4+ star rating that the game has, is justified. There is potential here.

v0.147

maybe in 2 years this could be a decent game and in 5 years it will be an excellent game, but so far it's a waste of time. very unpolished. the writing is professional, and some animation scenes are really good (even with low movement) but there are so many problems with the game i would run out of the character limit.

first of all a lot of stuff doesn't make sense. this game prides itself on the violence/gore yet already makes the clear distinction in the intro that they would never do sexual violence, in a tone that suggests to say that they would never stoop so low and they never condone sexual violence.... ok, does that mean they condone murder/torture and ripping people in half and eating their heads? lol i dont think so. so it's empty virtue signaling at best.

some animations are pretty nice... but those animations are usually 10% of what happens in that erotic scenes. lots of text how MC is getting a blowjob and different positions and how they move during sex, while all you see is a well animated missionary/cowgirl position with no other movement. it breaks immersion more than if it had no graphics at all.

another problem with art is that characters look different in every art and animation. their hair color is the same and the length more-or-less. but that's it. it's like it was made by AI or many different artists who couldn't replicate the propotions of models. it breaks immersion too. even the main MC's best friend looks different a lot of the time to the point of barely resembling to previous depictions.

the writing is tiring. it's professional. clearly. yet tiring. long drawn out descriptions of lots of stuff, i skip half of it then read back history if something is important.

you can have a good story and good writing without making it overbearing. this game just goes over the limit. not that much but still..., i've seen worse but if you hate garbage english sentences which are hard to decipher, this is the opposite. where the english is perfect but you get sleepy reading it... which is not a good sign for a porn game where you rather sleep than jerk off.

combat is extremely mindless. you have a defend skill which reduces dmg taken by 30% for 3 turns... if you do the math, you realize it's not worth it. altogether it reduced dmg taken by 90%...so altogether it protected you for 90% dmg by losing that turn. (so you took 10% dmg for no reason. no charge up attacks by enemies either.)

i don't want to spoil much but later your combat power pales in comparison to the text of how strong you are before the fighting begins. typical case when a boss joins your party and suddenly he is 100times weaker. it just doesn't make sense. like lots of other things in the game.

the game is truly in alpha, and it has been going for 2 years. the game is quite unique i give you that, and the basics are already made, so there should be no reason to not make a lot of content with the available engine right?....

well.. wrong. somehow the main quest is still very short, there are some sidequests... which are ok, but i think the dev lost its vision how to continue. so it will 99% turn into some shitfest unless he spends a lot of time revisioning stuff, which comes to my previous point, that it will probably need like 2 more years so the game is playable and not just an intro with some dating simulator, and probably like 5 years until it becomes an actual great game. it certainly has the potential... but not now. if the game has more content and some clear path to move forward then i will change my ratings too according to that. but at its current form this is a 2/5 blueballing game with some great animation where the text breaks immersion completely.