VN - Ren'Py - Radiant [v0.6.3] [RK Studios]

Game started well. Writing was good, graphics were impressive, opening scene was fun. But the plot has stalled, and there haven't been any more scenes worth while. Last update had a filler arc just to pretend there was still sex in the game, with a character that was just introduced and made no sense whatsoever. I don't mind a slow burn, but the lack of updates and filler content just make it hard to even let the burn build up.

IMO there is little to debate about the quality of the writing & graphics. It's just that 3 years in, the MC has barely gotten to 2nd base with the main 3 LI. Becuase of the pace, its "play it once & forget it."

EDIT: Not changing the review content, but just discovered the game is 3 years old, so I took a star away and maybe should be a 2/5... I don't think there should be any goodwill left on that timeline.

I'm a bit torn on this game... It has all the hallmarks of an all-timer: good writing, very high quality renders, an emotional connection, solid initial pacing, well-thought-out decision/influence system that is not cumbersome... It feels like the devs aspired to greatness and were well on their way to hitting that lofty goal but, BUT...

As it currently stands the game is 90% shiny veneer, amazing, amazing veneer, but once you get past the blinding gloss, you start to see other hallmarks; hallmarks of a game trying its hardest to stretch content. Payoff pacing noticeably slows, writing (while still mostly solid) begins to meander a bit with an over-reliance on internal dialogue to pad/fill, but maybe the most critical, the seemingly elegant decision system actually has next-to-zero impact.

I played through the game twice in both the loving path and the dark path, arguably the most different possible modes, and I'd say the content was 95-98% identical. Not only did the context of scene rarely change, there were no fundamentally different scenes and no cascading context into future scenes.

The upshot here is that a high-quality game with the appearance of multiple themes/routes and deep emotional context is actually a very shallow game that is increasingly trying to pad an extremely linear single-path whose emotional depth is constantly undercut by its own long-winded internal exposition and lack of any real decision impact.

All that being said, as long as these devs stay with it, and perhaps find a way to produce more content on a better timeline, I believe this game will still find it's way to being an all-timer. The only problem is content or the lack thereof; the ambition is there, the vision is there, the foundation is there, and the talent is most certainly there... I just hope they don't spend all their goodwill before the game finally gets there.

Radiant Review (Version: 0.5 alpha Taboo Edition).

This game has a very solid foundation thus far. The story is great and sad, the main character (MC) is a good one, and the wards and other women are well made and hot!

What stands out the most is the system for the wards, you can choose whether to keep them pure, lust over you, or outright corrupt them with choices you make. This is called pure, lust, and dark points and they affect the outcome of future content (and to a degree, current). This is a great system and allows you to more play how you want to play, instead of having to stick to what the writer feels should happen. This will also be great for multiple playthroughs!

What people may not like, in the present form the game is short, there is not much content with the wards (none with Maddie really). That is why I think this is getting downvoted a lot is because people are frustrated, they played through the present content and got basically nothing with the three wards, just a little with two of them and nothing with Maddie.

I personally feel the game is far from complete, but should be commended for the merits it does have. I really like this and I am excited to see where it goes! I will return and update the review once more of the game is completed.

PROS:

• Great MC
• The wards
• All women so far
• The story is good and has sad elements
• The choice system is incredible! I was hoping for something like this.
• What is there is very well done
• The renders are great and girls are hot
• Hot scenes
• Actively being worked on with recent updates

CONS:

• Not much content yet
• Not much content for two of the wards
• Nothing much for Maddie yet at all
• Very short and far from complete as of 0.5A

Solid 4.3 so far, likely to go up as it progresses!

What is here is very pretty but not worth your time or support.

This game is 3 years old already and you are barely kissing your 'wards'...
This is a harem focused game, so instead of focusing what little priority the developers give this game over their other projects gets put into adding new and differing characters then the 3 girls in the banner. These new characters also suffer from having a bunch of exposition dumped on you as an excuse to quickly drop panties, trying to keep your interest as the player.
At this tempo it will be another 5 years before you get to see any penetration with your 'wards'. I'll give it credit for trying to give its characters more depth then becoming shallow, static fuckdolls like other harem-games often end up being, but it doesn't succeed outside of the 'wards'

Eagerly awaiting more. Strong renders, good story, interesting options. The hidden variables hint at future relatively complex paths, and the number of characters introduced as of .4 seems to indicate at least a 6+ harem which is dope. The only thing that'll make it better on completion is pregnancies. 10/10

This game seems really nice. There is also a lot of content and the characters look super attractive. The graphics is also awesome and beautiful renders. Unfortunately when the game starts to have great flow, there is end. It would deserve much more.

great game! good writing, story is interesting. some heartfelt moments (even if we are all here for the same reason). wish i had the ability to do a dark/evil run haha.
The models are divine. cant wait for the next update

Have you seen one of those Xmas movies that has the most predicable plot ever but you still watch it because you know it´ll make you feel good?
Radiant is the porn version of it.
This game goes really out of its way not to hurt your porn feelings.
Exibit A: A woman has a biological daughter and she´s a virgin. Yes you read that right.
Exibit B: All girls are virgins. The mother also. Obviously. The women that aren´t are nice ok? It´s not their fault they lost their V cards before meeting you.
Exibit C: You are absolutely gorgeous since 2 weeks ago. Before you just worked too much and because of that were ugly.
It feels so niiiiiceeee
Look. Somehow this works.
Don´t forget. Triplet daughters. Yeah. My ´cest bros are hard now.
But here lies it´s downfall. They are jeolous of each other. Where is my harem? You´re hurting my porn feelings!
Again just play it. It just works.

The game is just beautiful, and the characters have the nicest eyes. The only complaints I have are the speed of the updates, and how realistic the story line is at points. Definitely worth a try, and worth the wait for the updates!

I would have given the game a 2/5 score if not for the fact that the dev suddenly came out of hibernation and actually updated his game.

Story: 3/5 - Even though the incest theme is played out pretty nicely, and MC's relationship with his daughters is still steadily developed, the fact that the overall slow-burn progression, let alone the extremely long development pace (three updates in 30 months), really makes you become less interested for the storyline. Also, the choice of pouring dramas one by one (how to tackle with the relationship with your daughters, the mother of someone that you accidentally kill, the creepy ex-fed that is somehow committed to destroy you...) just from the start of the game is already a bad move in my opinion, and adding (or rather being throwned by) other LIs seems only to fulfill the horny hearts with some additional sex scenes, which is inevitable since the dev specifies that it is a harem-themed game that focuses on the topic of incest, but it still makes them unfulfilling to say the least.

Writing: 4/5 - The writing is really captivating and I haven't seen any noticeable typos or grammatical errors. Even though the extent of dialogues between choices is relatively long, I don't mind it as long as it's conveyed well.

Visual/animation: 3/5 - the overall visual looks amazing and the character model of the daughters are certainly astonishing, but the animation, especially lewd ones, is very meh. For a game with such compelling writing and visuals, the terrible animation fell out of place.

Character relationship: 3.5/5 - The only issue for me is the relation with Maddie. I don't have complaints about "dark paths" as I know some of them are into this kind of stuff, but the fact that you can get to see more contents with Maddie only when you choose to go for the dark path (aka domestic abuse) and actually hurt her till she gets scared by you is really disgusting for me. As I've said I don't have any issue with bad paths but at least the dev should learn to balance and offer some counterparts with each update.

Overall, the game itself is really promising, but the fact that the dev could spend a great amount of time developing every single update leads me to believe that the game would eventually get abandoned or, if we are lucky, get done after perhaps 10 years of development.

My review of Radiant [v0.4]

A very nice and wholesome daughter-raising game with an optional domestic abuse path
I really enjoyed playing it, but unfortunately it does have its flaws...

The biggest flaw is the small amount of content.
Even if you're reading everything really slowly there's maybe 3 hours of content per year.
This is very little considering the circumstances.

Another flaw is the AUDIO.
The game has background music and everything, but there are many sections with zero audio, and the music itself is pretty generic.
Some short ambient sounds also aren't looping properly.
It's clear that not much effort was put into this.

Then there's the GRAPHICS...
They're good overall, but some backgrounds have blurry Honey Select textures, and dark scenes have very visible compression artifacts.
The animations seems to be hand-made and below average quality and there's very few of them.
At least all the girls look cute though!

Lastly the WRITING:
It's good and entertaining, but nothing amazing.
There are some spelling mistakes and some screens are 4 or 5 lines of text... this could have been done better.
The characters itself are unique and interesting enough.
I really like some of them and I'm sad I have to wait forever for new content with them.

And in terms of "important" CHOICES... they don't really matter much apart from short flavor text and skipping unwanted scenes.
But if you don't want to miss out on lots of extra scenes you have to domestically abuse the third daughter!
This appears to be her canon route and she is always cautious and distrustful towards the MC - whether you treat her nicely or not.
You just lose lots of content if you treat her nicely!
That's pretty lazy by the dev and I don't like it.

...Wait you also want to know about the SEX???
Well, you can pretty much fuck and cheat on every adult women you come across, if you chose to do so.
With the first two daughters it's currently just groping and helping them masturbate (or hardcore domestic abuse including spanking and choking with the 3rd daughter).

Overall this game feels like wasted potential, and if you don't like daughter-raising stuff it's only average.

You can't just pull netori content on me and NOT expect me to take it. I think i like Jade more than Brooke to be honest. I have a massive weakness to crazy girls, and anyone who says not to stick your dick in crazy is a coward. So yeah great content for the update and i can't wait to knock up every freckled girl in this game.

Writing: 4/10
Imagery: 6.5/10
Kinks: 5.5/10
Overall: 5/10

First of all, remove the cringey prologue, idk what purpose does that prologue serve, more so when it doesn't elevate the story at all. Love the incest theme, that's actually one of the few good things that keeps players interested. No build-up, no story, just fucking, into my folder of generic porn games list. Anyway... that's it? Game released in 2020 and that's all you got to show for it lmao, don't get me started on the delay in updates, heh. Other than the decent renders and incest theme, this game is meh. If you remove them, this game is basically a pile of burning garbage. I usually give 1 star for this kind of trash, but added 1 due to hope that one day the dev would open their eyes, stop milking them patrons and improve their work (especially the writing, dialogue and updates). Players/readers aren't stupid bruh.

v0.4 - Very good, though it will be nice to get more interaction with the girls as it progresses. The relationship advancement is a little abrupt, but I'm sure it's hard to avoid dragging it out and being way to wordy/boring otherwise.

I was genuinely sad not to have more 'time' to spend with Gracie. So that was a bit of a gut punch out of the gate. (well done on that story element... not complaining )
I look forward to future updates.

Wow, I'm mesmerized by this game it's an absolute gem. The sad backstory with Gracie made me cry cause I've been through some shity years myself.
The renders are great. The woman are sexy hot and cute. The story is on another level. I play the loving pervert route

The game is in the incest category, but why does the story have to be so good?

It's a really good game, both visually and in terms of the scenario.

Really well written and well planned

I was clearly very sad while playing the game, I can say that the story and graphics are already better than many games

I never thought I'd expect something like this

The game looks so good already

Good luck to the developer.

Worth the time. Story and art and animation and everything is quality. Updates cold be shorter but they have several projects on the line. Maybe they shouldn't but that's up to them. I really enjoy the story it has a good emotional kick and the situations you get in are great. Really enjoy finding out what is gonna happen next. Every girl is beautiful.

If developers of this game are reading reviews, pls for the love of all pornographic and lewd, remove the prologue!

After seeing how it played out I almost deleted the game right away, no joke.

It was so cringeworthy that I had a grimace the whole time playing through it.

Worse of all it was absolutely unnecessary.

The rest of the game had already sufficiently established MCs circumstances. There is no need to torture the players with that "fever dream of a teenage mind" of a prologue.

If there is a need to introduce some element from it let it be in dream just like it was with Gracie or as a flashback.

Even if we do not talk about the positives the game would receive in terms of presentation without the prologue, at the very least we as players would have better perspective on a life altering crash and subsequent memory loss.

SO PLS REMOVE THE PROLOGUE!

Otherwise, I have nothing bad to say about the game. In all honesty, I quite like it. Try it for yourself, just remember that the prologue doesn't exist and it was simply your imagination.

This game should be on everyone's favorites list that love the daddy incest genre.
Slow corruption, perfect renders, supercute girls, some extra girls on the side, nice storyline, doesn't get much better than this.