VN - Ren'Py - Phone Story [v0.73] [Taptus]

Phone games live and die by their writing, and the quality of the writing in Phone Story has been decreasing steadily ever since its very first release. These games seem to only have a vague outline of a narrative structure with a steadily rising degree of sexuality involved but lack storytelling in themes, conflict, character arcs or even a proper plot and Phone Story is no exception.

The dialogue isn't much better. As an example, the way Sam is written to imitate ebonics is just... jesus christ. It gets worse as Lisa describes him to Kira as having a "huge salami" and how he "smells amazing of coffee". If you're a non-native speaker it should be a requirement to at least run what you're writing by someone who is.

Some responses are so robotic it's comical:

"It's shocking. I'm completely confused and don't know what to do next. And I'm jealous."

Click to expand...

A real line from the game. Even omitting the fact that this is supposed to be a phone game which implies naturalistic stylized writing, this doesn't even feel like a line that would ever be uttered by a real human being, through text or else.


The last version I experienced was v0.72 which was a short beach-themed update and it was pretty bad. The writing seems to be getting duller and duller and essentially nothing happens throughout the whole update as Lisa just keeps babbling on about ice cream and lemonade as well as constantly finding new ways to describe how warm the water is.

Once again both Kira and Lisa are repeatedly perplexed over you being into something innocuously lewd even though you've already done/said much crazier things. This will make you feel like you're in one of those episodic TV shows that lack an ongoing storyline so everyone's memory is refreshed every new episode.

At some point Kira will start sending you bizarre pictures of random dudes surrounding Lisa in comical quantities. The whole scene is super vague and even eerie as no activity, conversation, game or anything concrete is described or even alluded to. The only thing you hear from Kira is that your girlfriend, surrounded by an ever-increasing amount of men, "flirts" with them as, in the meantime, Kira, who was supposed to be wearing a mega-slutty swimsuit with her cooch basically out, had nobody hit on her for no reason.

Through this combination of the nosediving quality of the art and dull nonsensical storytelling, the scene ends up delivering a truly strange type of unintentional surrealist comedy, likely not what the dev was going for.


On a more general note, it's seemingly obvious to everyone that the freedom/love/lust system is already a nightmare to deal with and is only going to get worse. Its focus on point-hunting is immersion-breaking and only emphasizes the lack of meaningful choice further. The dev is either going to simplify or cut it or have nothing but complaints about how stupid and arbitrary is as the game grows in size and complexity. Having to replay a potentially sizeable chunk of the game because you're sitting at 119 out of 120 abstract poo-poo pee-pee points is not going to win anyone over.

Anyways, this game feels exactly the same as most other phone games:
Writing is in total free-fall, Updates are getting smaller, narrative progression more artificially drawn out as the game has to substitute its lack of proper storytelling with progressively lewder events but not go too far too quickly. It was never amazing but now it's just bad.

Good but could've been better
Points for being original and for the beautiful art (although there aren't many images due to the nature of this game).

What I didn't like about the game is:

• The whole thing about doing things through the friend Kira like she's a mediator. That was really lame. I think speaking directly to the GF, slowly encouraging and opening up about your desires would've been so much better and realistic.
  A slow burn with the GF talking about new "friends" she met, taking photos with said friends, maybe some incriminating photos with suspicious things in the background, etc, would've been so much better than a weird friend who takes photos of your gf.
• Things escalate way too fast. Story starts slow af, there's a bunch of nothing for half of it, then suddenly your gf is down to blow your friend/enemy in the car. That's lazy writing. This LDR scenario would've been perfect for a slow burn with lots of teasing and suspicious things from your gf. But then it moves on too fast, makes no sense.
• Blackmailing. Hate it. Specially when it doesn't make sense like in this story. A hacker who hacked your phone AND your security cameras and you can't change them? C'mon
• Dialogues aren't realistic. Don't sound like conversations you have with people close to you.

Overall, like the idea of a phone/texting story and I like the whole cuckold/hotwife/cheating theme but the story could definitely be better
A game where there's barely any images of the characters should have better branching, specially one that doesn't rely simply on a points system

Here is my general feedback about the game :

- Characterization :

In a story with relationship dynamics at the core, flat characterization feels especially stands out.
Characters in fiction—whether it's a novel, game, or an erotica story—are most memorable when they feel human. They don’t necessarily need to have loud(distinct) or quirky traits, but they do need depth.
While I appreciate you brushed that part in some earlier scene (the introduction part) I still feel this part needs to be fleshed out more to get the most out of that part, yes she was very kind, yes she was very nice, but why? Why she was acting like she did? Maybe she was kind to everyone but is secretly terrified of confrontation , or maybe she’s "nice" because she craves validation, or maybe because she grew up in a strict household and represses her true feelings.
These kind of motivations/flaws add dimension and depth to the character, my usual advice for this thing is to imagine yourself having a one-on-one interview with your character, and ask them about themselves, what's their deepest secret, desire, etc. and so forth and so on.

The Writing :

- While I don't expect a professional writing, I do appreciate you are going with a more grounded approach on your narrative story telling, but I do think the writing, in some aspects, needs to be better, try to read more about "Show, don't tell" in writing fiction and try to implement it in your work, it will enhance the story exponentially.

And also I hate reading internalized monologue/thoughts from a character in a story, yes, hate is a strong word, but it's true, no scratch that, I DESPISE it. It takes away all the immersivity, engagement, and any sense of tension in a story, when I read a story, I want to feel the story, not reading a character's thought about what's happening in them, there are more subtler, elegant way of getting your points across to your audiences than writing down the exact thought of your characters, learn how to do it.

- Some dialogues does not sound natural and sounds too formal for daily conversations

TLDR : A nice phone texts game that has more a grounded and natural way of it's approach, which is of course the more ideal form of the storytelling. It's definitely worth to keeping an eye on, especially if the author polish and flesh the story more and improve their writing skill.
I personally would rate 3.5/5 but I give bonus point for keeping the grounded feeling in their game.
Thanks for the game, good luck and have a nice one.

It's a solid game so far with a pretty good story, but for me the main flaws are the same flaws usually present in most point based visual games.

That problem with these types of games is that the plot is less based on singular choices and only more so on if you have met a threshold for any particular route. This leads to the problem that any choice you make has little to no impact on the current conversation. While the choices in this game do sometimes have minor effects on the current conversation you are in, the conversation tends to find its way back to the current route the story is taking and the conversation becomes superficial noise that sometimes doesn't always make perfect sense. I did notice a few scene choices that did significantly change any given conversation and content and still make sense, but even those choices would tend to eventually lead back to the path you are on.

The game is definitely more netorase based as indicated, but you have to work hard to steer the mc and other characters to move from that into netorare. Nothing wrong with that, but it does amplify and make more obvious my critique about how the story and conversations don't always flow perfectly if you are playing anything other than netorase.

The choices throughout the game are also kind of convoluted and not intuitive to you the player finding your way to the path you want to see most. Even with the hints, the choices either sometimes don't always make the most sense or feel opposite and forced to what direction you want to go. For instance, if you choose to flip out when your wife's friend finds your porn, the hints indicate that you will lock out much content by choosing this option, but does not go into any kind of detail as to what type of content is locked out. Maybe that content is content you are fine with moving away from, or maybe you are locking yourself out of most of the game like many games do. There is no way to know.

It's also frustrating to get to choices where 3 of 4 choices are blacked out because you do not meet the requirements. You the player are locked into a direction based on lofty choices throughout the game that led you to that point and with little guidance as to what route you locked yourself into and then either need to move forward or go back to an early save and start making choices based on points instead of how you wanted to answer the story based on the direction you thought it would take you.

That problem emphasizes the counter-intuitive choices and points you've made and earned that don't seem to jive with the journey you are trying to make.

The ui is ok enough I guess, but I tend to speed through dialogue sometimes and will often miss the MC's thoughts and have no way to re-read them for better understanding into his thoughts, so that is a bit of a pain. The low quality security camera footage is too realistic for my preference also. Meaning it's difficult to see. For a game, I think the footage for those types of things should be only somewhat degraded from the normal game view. Making the footage ultra realistic in quality only takes away from the players experience to enjoy the game IMO.

Overall, I'd give the game 3/5. It's still an enjoyable game, and the problems are not show stoppers that turn me away as I will still keep testing the game out as it progresses, but there are certainly ways to improve the game.

This game is definitely among my 10 favorite games, and I'm talking about at least a thousand games that I have tested/played

The first strength of this game is the choices. It's very rare to see such an excellent choice system. Thinking about it now, I can't recall any game that has such a meaningful choice system. Every choice is important, meaning they aren't just superficial and without role in the script. Each choice causes changes in stats and simultaneously (this is interesting) that choice is stored in the script's memory with a variable! In 99.99% of games, we don't have such binary choices, It means they only increase and decrease the statistics, they don't have any other effect. and the fact that all choices are written meaningfully and logically makes you pay a lot of attention to them, enjoy them, and it causes more and more immersion. I might say this is the best game in terms of choices among all the games I've played, they are really beautifully designed. This shows and proves that this developer both has great talent and really puts in effort, which is why he truly deserve support

The next point is the personality
FMC:
Literally: extraordinary. I'm really not exaggerating; just look at the ratings I've given to other games, you'll find lots of 3 stars. And I will prove that the personalities in this game are extraordinary
Let's start with the FMC. She is an extraordinarily complete person, having everything simultaneously. In most games, when they want to design a very kind and so-called positive FMC, they damage her confidence and freedom of action, and as a result, they make the FMC turn into a doll that everyone can control. And conversely, in games that try to design an FMC with confidence and a free personality, they make her have offensive, illogical, and slut-centered behaviors, which of course this personality gets boring very quickly and doesn't have any special appeal
But this FMC has both sides simultaneously, meaning that while she is kind, responsible, principles and moral values, she also has confidence, self-respect, and an independent personality. This combination makes it very easy to fall in love with her and enjoy the full experience with her. I could explain her personality much more
MC:
This MC is definitely one of the best MCs I've seen in NTS games. He is neither a boring, meaningless, unbelievable alpha nor a stupid, weak beta. He has a complete personality, is very intelligent, behaves excellently, and has no issues in terms of confidence, self-respect, and similar qualities, and also has no problem in sexually satisfying the FMC (this can be fully understood from the first hour of the game)
All of these are conditional on the player not destroying him; after all, the player has godlike power and can cause him to go down the wrong path and constantly make wrong choices, and well, what do you expect!?
When you make the right choices, he has a completely satisfying personality that I personally enjoy being with very much, especially that behind-the-scenes personality of his where he tries to manage people, which is very good
Other characters:
I prefer not to explain this, just briefly: every other character is excellent in their own position for their own role

Appearance:
This doesn't need explanation. I think we all agree that the FMC is simultaneously very beautiful, very hot, very elegant, and has an original appearance that is rarely seen. Original appearance means it's not copied from other games
The appearance of other characters also matches their roles and personalities

Dialogue: I enjoyed every dialogue in this game. You might sometimes ask why it's sometimes long, but it's not a problem because firstly, it's attractively long, and secondly, it's necessary. It increases the credibility of the game. For example, it's not like some games where the MC very easily sends his wife into others' arms, which is both laughable and illogical, and damages the credibility of the game

I've written a bit too much, so I'll write the next points more concisely because the purpose of reading a review is to understand the value or non-value of a game

• Story and writing: Very engaging, attractive, logical, and believable, which adds a good element of tension to the game
• Relationship between MC and FMC: Extremely excellent - without any flaws - very natural - one of the best relationships I've seen so far
• Atmosphere: Completely immersive and enjoyable
• And others: All other aspects were also well-worked on and thought out, and I was completely satisfied with all of them...

Weaknesses:
The only flaw of this game is the lack of a dark mode, which I think all phone-oriented Renpy games have this flaw

Conclusion:
100 out of 100
It's definitely and strongly recommended, it very easily found its place in my list of 10 favorite games
Special thanks to the developer for creating this great experience

Not gonna lie - I generally dislike slow paced games but this thing stands out of them. Things evolve giving me more and more naughty situations that the wife falls into without being too sudden or denied by her for no reason (like many other games have).

I would definitely love for it to get more smutty in the later updates, but as it is now, it keeps me on edge and blood pumping. Lack of needing to go back and forth between apps and screens as on other phone NTR games makes this really smooth to play (tho obviously less interactive if someone is looking for that).

9/10, would rate 4,5 stars if I could. Dev is doing a bang up job, only things I dislike is coming from my specific distaste, and even so this doesn't make me hate the game as I would others. F for the leak, since game is free anyway.

As of latest Update 08 March 2025- Game really does well in the NTR aspect. Though its good as NTRS you will find many like it in this site.

It really excels the NTR. The game loves to give control to the MC on how the story turns while knowing when to take away that control. It knows exactly what you want and it delivers. You will not see many devs who are in this much sync over how the player wants to play it

In a sea of similar games, Phone Story manages to standout for it's good pacing, art and story paths. I was pleasantly surprised by how polished it was and the fact that it didn't feel like it was being filled with filler to pump up the updates for patreon money.

Honestly this is one of the best ntr / text based games. The dialogue is excellent. The story is erotic. Photos are excellent. All in all, great game . So hot. Best wishes to the developer who deserves our support.

One of the best ntr\nts game. High-quality images, good plot, regular updates . The plot doesn't stand still, but it doesn't rush either. Events happen "naturally". I recommend it to all connoisseurs of the genre

Average for the genre so far. It's AI so it all looks the same. At least the wife is more realistic as these ai generated models go. Otherwise, it is what you'd expect, complete with the typical BBC "friend." It suggests, perhaps, a sharing aspect at a later date. Overall, it is a resounding "ok."

Awesome game great art I feel like the story is well written I hope we can get some animation in this game but if not that's ok to so keep up the great work dev I will be looking forward to the next update!

Pros:

Art is very good. I wouldn't say it's top notch but still the best part of this game.

Neutral:

UI runs pretty clean. What it does, it does well. But it lacks a lot of features found in other phone games. You have texts and stats, that's about it. The gallery is only accessible through the main menu.

Cons:

The story. As other said the MC's personality is very janky at time. At one point he's talking about how his friend his shady af then a little later he's all but asking his friend to keep an eye on her. That's just one example.

The MC himself is hard to like at times too. He's bitching about his wife wanting to get the faucets replaced and how much he looks forward to his trip to get away form these "boring" responisbilities. Then again in the story's jank once he's on his trip he's talking about how awesome his wife is.

The MC's wife friend is borderline manipulative, which is fine, but the MC is all over the place with her too. Part of my problem with the game might be that I'm trying the love route (for a change) but it's pushing the NTS/NTR so hard that it feels like the author doesn't really want to allow it.

The overall story itself is an overused trope. Husband who has to go away for a long time leaving a wife with libido issues behind. She has the girl friend who all but aggressively leads her down the path of sleeping with other men. And there's the black "best" friend left behind to help her out which unsurprisingly includes nights out to the bars. Can someone come up with something new for a change, please?

Overall, I don't hate the game, and I'll still play it. If you're looking for a game like this and are pretty forgiving with the story, you might like it too.

Images are hot and story pacing is good. Which is not too fast and has good approach to teasing. A big step up from v0. 1 to 0.5 in terms of quality and game design. Author freqently posts news updates, which is good indication, that he's passioned about his project and listens to audience. Will follow him till project is completed.

version 0.4

what ruined for me the game was the lack of cohesiveness of the MC's writing. I'm not sure if this is because a translation problem or narrative design miss, but the MC's inconsistency of the thoughts bubbles from one to another to the overall dialogue is pretty jarring and immersion breaking.
but other than that, the dialogue overall is reasonable when the MC doesn't talk too much lol.
The art is ok, its an AI art, so compared to all AI art, the quality is not over the top but the same as most.

There's a ton of such phone games right now, but this is one of those well made with quite good plot. Sure - it sometimes could be less naive, but overall you can feel the connection with characters. They are not completely stupid, and that's one of the most important things for me. Art is quite consistent and pleasurable to the eye, so 5/5 from me Keep up the good job and don't make too much branches, cuz I don't want to see another "Abandoned" flag in a promising game

Lately, I've been playing a lot of phone simulation games, but I leave reviews for very few of them. This is one of those few. I really liked how the story progresses slowly and solidly. Even though I didn't quite like the characters, I enjoyed the game overall. It features a story where there’s no corruption by the second message, and you progress at a logical and ideal pace. It's one of the rare messaging games I'm looking forward to continuing.

One of my favorite game :3 The character designs are absolutely stunning, and you can tell a lot of effort went into the dialogues—they really turn me on lol. I’m so hyped for the new updates. If you’re into NTR, this game is a must-play!

Art is a strongest point of this game. Wife is georgeus. Thats it.
Pacing is bad. Not like slow burn pacing, more like The Walking Dead season 2 TV series pacing. Everyone keep having same dialogue over and over again without moving the plot forward. Dialogue feels forced and railroaded. Reminded me of famous "Anyway, how is your sex life" line. And repetitive. Let me elaborate more why this is badly written story in my opinion.
MC`s or the husband`s personality is incosistent, he switches between edgy master manipulator and insecure shy schoolgirl.
There is different routes like NTR\NTS or even love route(dont know, didn try), which is a plus.
There are better written games in this genre, my recomndation is to try them first and if this is your jam and you want more than this game may be able to satisfy an itch or tide you over until update to another game. Writing is just too bad, which is a pity because art is good.

The AI generated artwork stands out, and the story is serviceable, but it doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from similar games in the Phone NTR games. While the premise shows potential, the current lack of meaningful choice detracts from the experience. Most decisions seem to have minimal impact on the story or the content, with dialogue changes feeling more cosmetic than consequential.
Hopefully things get better in future updates.