Ren'Py - Randel Tales [v1.9.1-5] [EroSandwich Studio]

I don't normally play games and care that much about the story, but I was drawn in by this story for some reason and I really liked it. I like the animation, gameplay, and sandbox elements as well as the characters and lore aspects. I think the dev does a good job of setting the stage for you as well as giving you an opinion on the world they live in. On a more personal note, I like most of the fetishes in the game as well as the sexiness of the female characters (I'm a straight male as I imagine most are who play these games), but if I had to add something, I guess it would be more opportunities to dominate some of the women and choose a more evil route without losing the chance to still sleep with or rape some of the women. Perhaps something more along the lines of non-consensual which leads to consensual sort of story line branch.

As this game is still in very early version (0.2), and there is a high chance it will end up stuck in my backlog hell for far to many updates, many issues might be outdated when you read this.

Here I have to note that I'm not a native English speaker myself, therefore I might be more lenient with my decisions on language than most readers.

Art: reminds me of a "Aching dreams" for those ancient enough to remember it (you won't find it here, was on Newgrounds). It gives of this crude but cute vibe. Not for everyone, but if you like what you see on previev images, you will like the rest.

Animation: some scenes have this basic "a few cg in loop" style animation, I don't mind or care for it that much, honestly. I know that there are many who like even these basic movements, though.

Story: for me, this is THE most important part of the VN. Story is rather basic, nothing innovative, but that's not a bad thing. There is visible amount of thought put into the setting, trait that's sadly rare to found recently. There were a few things that bugged me, like MC not using invisibility during July's event, or mention of Wall Crawlers before you met them (depending on order in which you play your missions). I think these will be ironed out later on, but it shows how easy it is to miss a little detail when allowing player to choose his path. Another thing is that the game clearly warns about importance of choices, whille a lot of them do little to the story so far.

Grammar: there are many mix ups between small and capital letters. Quite a few spelling and grammar errors and a few missing dots and commas, but everything was easily understandable. Autor doesn't seem to be native english speaker, but he mentions getting an editor soon, so I hope that these issues will be fixed later on. Some people in comments mentioned that font was bad, but it's does it's work, so it might have been about an earlier update. My only issue is that picking bright cyan blue, on rather bright yellow for USER INPUT font is a really bad choice. As user imputs are rare occurance, especially outside of naming characters picking hard to see color makes it very difficult to notice what's going on. Not to mention that the function they are used for could be done far better by simple menu with if statements. There will always be players that will write it in a wrong way somehow.

Gameplay: a bit grindy repetition of training / hunting / etc cutscenes. Most can be skipped by using cheats, which I advise doing, as they have no point beside delaying player progress. No random, interesting cutscenes, not much difference between early and late levels, no minigames (althrough that one could be a good thing). Aside from that and ONE random quick time event that SHOULD have been either estabilished earlier (for traning, maybe?), or removed completely. Just like already mentoned user input's, they aren't typical elements of Ren'py VN, so tying FIRST instance of that mechanic to instant death event seems like a bad design.

Under the hood stuff: I usually don't mention content of gamefiles when rating a game, but in this case there is an effect on gameplay. Namely, author seems to don't use labels to unify events. This means that in certain scenes, despite having already seen the same resuslt, while picking different choices you'll be unable to fast forward as Ren'py will see it as separate events. Annoying for completionists like myself, but it can be easily bypassed by picking "unseen text" in options.

Music: I rarely turn game music or voice acting on, as I prefer playing YT in background, but from what i've heard it's a decent, if a bit generic VN music. It get's the job done.

Conclusion: far to early in development to say what it will turn into, assumning it won't freeze in development hell, but more than enough as a proof of concept to keep checking on it every now and then.

This is my first review, i had to make one, this game deserves more players.

The art is great, the story is well written, it has good humor and great characters, i like the mc and the interactions with the characters.

Seriously play it, it's really good, you can feel that they put some love in it, and i'm gonna love to see it to the end, loads of potential, ive even thrown 5$ in patreon, it deserves more attention.

Is been a while since i've seen this much love put to a game
while this game has the most generic setting and plot that you can find in fantasy it makes it up with all the care put into the characters

The erotic aspect is lacking but it is to be expected since is the first release, what little it was however, was well done

Every character here is well design both in looks and personality, including the men, (except the teacher, but it is kinda intentional), it is clear that this is the strenght of the game

Plot is simple, you've seen it a thousand times, not that it's bad, just not very original

Setting is simple as well, but you feel that they put thought to it, the geography of the world is clear and it helps you center yourself in it

The art could be improved, especially in the hands, but i'll be lying if i said that the art didn't draw me in, i actually really enjoy those little transitions to a more simple and caricatures art


All in all great game, i had a great time with it

this review is based in version 0.2 of the game