VN - Ren'Py - Realm Invader [Ep. 2 P1] [Invader Gary]

Edit: Upgrading from 4 to 5 stars as of the release of Episode 2 Part 1. My complaints have been rendered moot, and the outdated parts of my review will have strikeout text. The game has been improved drastically with the new update. By and far my favorite game on this site now, and sets a new bar for the genre.

Very well-written and funny game that unfortunately doesn’t quite make it in the “fappability” department.

STORY - 5/5
Exceptionally well-written. The story doesn’t drag and is very well-paced, characters ooze with personality, and dialogue flows naturally. Humor is subjective, ofc, but I found this to be genuinely comical, as the humor almost never felt cringe, quirky, or forced. The dev character is a bit hit or miss, and I considered docking half a point, but the game is just too good otherwise. The dev character is appreciated when explaining game mechanics, but is shoehorned into the story in a couple of small places. The big thing here is the directing. Yes, directing. The dev does an exceptional job of utilizing camera movement, sound effects, and my favorite, music choice and timing. The dev has taken a trope-tier premise and has made something truly magical out of it.

FAPPABILITY - 5/5
Worst part of the game, by and far. There’s 3 total scenes in the gallery, one of which an optional gay scene I’ve opted not to experience. The animations are serviceable, but the scenes still aren’t that exciting, even by vanilla standards. Only blemish on this game.
The Episode 2 Part 1 scenes knock this shit out of the park. Upgrading this from a 2 to a 5. Sex scenes are much, much longer with music, different angles, and really great animations.

“GAMEPLAY” - 5/5
There is, of course, still some interactivity here. Pursuing each girl is optional. There is also a currency system here that still doesn’t seem to actually do anything. You can lose a lot of it early on, but there still doesn’t seem to be any consequences yet, making the whole system rather pointless in current version. As of part 2, you can actually run out of currency, and fail to purchase everything, making the decisions a bit more meaningful. Furthermore, the new episode adds more side options during main story content that unlocks a scene if you play it out properly, while still being entertaining for options where you miss out. Dialogue options are much more varied and add a lot of flavor to the game even if some of them don't change outcomes; they're not meaningful in the long run, but def fun in the moment.

Overall, I’m giving this a very strong 4/5. I am eagerly awaiting episode 2, and heartily recommend the game to anyone reading this.

Like others here have stated, while this game is really early in its development, the content provided in just episode 1 already puts this game pretty high up there in terms of quality.

Pros:
- Great renders with good use of lighting and quality models, though the preview images are pretty good at reflecting that
- Great animations, honestly some of the best one's I've seen outside of pretty heavily financially supported devs
- Interesting story with pacing to match
- Good soundtrack, fits the scenes well
- Interesting cast of characters, not much is revealed about all of them yet and they fall into some general archetypes, but overall it's done well and there is already quite a few possible LIs that have been introduced so far.

Neutral:
- Game development time seem to be pretty long as it's a solo dev, however all things considered I'd say for the amount of content we're getting and the quality it's released at I'd say it's pretty fair, though for those who want to play the finished product they may have to wait a while.
- For those who like a pretty straight forward VN experience, some possible sandbox features are being considered, though from the glimpse of the framework we were given in episode 1, it's pretty minor and may be optional as a continue button was provided, seems to be there more for the sake of replayable scenes.

Can't really provide any cons as of yet. Not a lot I could even point out at this stage of production which could be a red flag, hence most of the "controversial" aspects I spotted pretty much fall under neutral. Dev has done a pretty good job at handling it and their plans seem to allow players a decent choice as to what content they would like to see and avoid in a way that makes it pretty difficult to "accidentally" come across scenes which could pit a fandom against them. Excited to see where this game goes.

Surprised to say but this was Eternum Levels of good. Maybe too high praise haha but the story was good, the render use was abundance and flowed well into the pacing. Also a fan of the supernatural setting without it getting ignored or too clunky.
The episode was an introductory without too much explicit content but I'm personally not a fan of shoving scenes just to have them. Prefer to learn about the characters and their stories which the author seems to want to do here.
My concern I guess would be the 5-7 month gap between releases but if it's going to be this level of quality, I can understand it.
Bravo.

Rare that I'd leave a review after what is basically the introductory chapter, long though it is.

Pros

• Quite well-written. Knows how to diversify the characters enough while keeping a fun comedic tone and execution.
• Premise isn't particularly unique, but is explored moderately well.
• The pacing also leans toward the slower side and properly pushes the right buttons to keep you moving.
• Scenes are handled well with decent music choice.
• The renders aren't the best in the world, but the model choices were picked with a clear idea of the characters in mind, giving it plenty of, well, character.
• The characters feels easy to bond with (including the MC), because they don't feel convoluted (yet), nor are they without common sense. A close enough approximation of somewhat quirky people.

Cons
- As mentioned, the renders aren't *spectacular*, but I'm only putting this as a con for snobs who must have god-tier rendering or something.
- The game claims to have 'meaningful' choices, but the 'walkthrough' is behind the patreon, which is fair, but leads me to suspect that it's really just losing out on scenes for not picking right, given this is a harem title. (THIS IS STILL JUST SUSPICION, NO PROOF)

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Conclusion
This is pretty neat and it's shaping to be a non-cringe harem title, which, on this site, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack of other needles.

Review for Episode 1

This game is an absolute gem. It's goofy in the best way. I hardly ever see many HS 2 based games with this much care and attention to detail. I like to put a good amount of details in my reviews, but this game left me stumped. Everything is good so far and have literally no complaints. Hope the rest of the game stays consistent with or improves on the quality of work seen in this first episode.

Wow. This game is good. It's really, REALLY good. I'm not sure how I managed to miss it for an entire year.

Episode 1 review, and so far it's got an excellent story (and lots of it), great models and render quality, excellent humor (including a somewhat disturbing homo-erotic gigachad self-insert by the developer), terrific music, and a well done and perfectly functional UI.

I'd rate it 4.5+ stars if I had the option to do so, because it's not finished, and not perfect, but as there are only 17 reviews to far and a 4 star rating seems like it isn't good enough and would bring down the overall rating I'm going with 5.

Genuinely looking forward to updates. Hope you keep up the good work Invader Gary, you've got a gem here.

Just finished my play through. The story is good and the caricatures depth are getting there. The thing with the Dev will get a bit much if you continue it as it broke me out of the story to much. The funny parts are funny and the good parts are good. The MC needs a little less 3rd person maybe but over all the story is great, the graphics are good, and thank god you removed the sandbox stuff. I hope the next few releases are as good as the 0.1 then I might even consider changing to a 5 star.

Goodness gracious, can't renember last time I laughed this hard.

Great comedic timing, beautiful renders, cool concept, sounds and tracks are on point. I'm trying to find some cons to this release, and it's hard.

An amazing first release, a lot of content as well. It took me about 2.5 hours and I'm a decent reader. it's well-written, funny, has a great soundtrack, several lewd scenes already as well.

The story is that the MC is teleported into a parallel world where mostly everything is the same (home life, family, friends), but many people in the world have magical powers and it is part of normal life. The MC is figuring out these powers while coming to grips with this new reality. There is an element of mystery and it seems clear this is headed towards "awesome fantasy adventure story" territory.

Only potential downside I can think of is that there's some 4th wall breaking that I think occurs a little *too* much. It is well-done, but I wish the author would not make it as frequent as it is right now.

It's still early but this has potential to be one of the greats on the site.

Ok I always go into these with no expectations at all because there is a lit that are bad or just ok. This was definitely amazing. Great moments of comedy, at times some things were almost too much. And you can tell there's a bunch of places to fill in the story that were missing. Cant wait for the next update!

This is straight up magical man. I came into this with almost no expectations having just come across this randomly. Less than a minute into playing it and I could already feel it was gonna be fire.
Animations: great
Music: great
renders: great
character design: great
world building: great
comedy: great
Everything just feel so well done and polished.
It has the magical feeling you get playing eternum which is just incredible to see again (though I actually prefer this game's setting).
Anyway. 9/10. Will watch your career with great interest.

This VN has huge potential. Best HS2 animations I've seen, great world building, good music, interesting characters, and it has some quite funny scenes too... The best description I can give is that it has those Eternum vibes going on, you wanna play more because of the story, the h-scenes are just a plus.

A lot of potential for this game. It has a magic system, some lore and the renders are pretty good. I think the pacing would benefit from spacing the comedy and bizarre transitions a little. It keeps the game interesting and all, but overusing them and putting them too "in the face" in the long run will wear the charm out of it. The characters have common archtypes in a porn game, but as long as the dev flesh thems out a little I don't mind. The isekai genre is only limited by how deep the author can think in regard to the "new world" the MC is thrown in so I hope the game can reflect that and mesh it with the story.. Good luck.

Absolutely loved this game nice visuals, animations and music It has right amount comedy the story is interesting that I completely forgot I was looking for a sex scene this is my first revive but this excelent game deserve this ( im lazy like chloe ) 5/5 i want more

PS sorry for bad english not my first language

Very surprised with this one, nice renders, lots of smooth animations, pretty solid comedy and a decently interesting premise.
Definitely has a similar vibe as Eternum, but not in a copy and paste type of way, more as inspirational. Characters are solid, with enough personality as to make everyone separate. Only 1 episode out at the moment of writing this, but I have high hopes for the future and will be waiting for the next update.

Pros:

• Characters felt like they are their own character, never bland or boring.
• Comedy that actually funny instead of relying on anime tropes (at least for me)
• Characters design is *chef kiss*
• The story is actually good and engaging for H visual novel.
• Not a sandbox game

Cons:

• Lack of H content.
• Grace's lack of screen time.
• Harem is focusing on the member of MC's family right now.

Yeah it's actually better than I thought it would be. Kudos to the dev who make this game, it actually really good. Since this is still in early phase I suggest you all to leave this game for couple months and came back or just wait until next episode come out. Don't really have anything negative to says, so 9/10.

What an awesome game! The comedy, story, sound everything fits. I must say best game I have tried in 2023. There's not much sex scene in the demo except a bit of teasing but the story is paced so perfectly that I completely forgot I was looking for a sex scene, lol. 10/10 for everything.

This is one of the best games I have played so far this year. It has right amount comedy and a fair amount of contents in its first release. From my perspective I like the renders very much and theshort animations in between the scenes is also running very smooth on my mediocre laptop which has no graphic cards, which is very nice. In short it's worth to try this game even if you have low end pc.

This is by far one of the greatest demos I have played. So much time and effort has been put into this and it shows, the quality is great, the humour is amazing. I am without a doubt invested in the future of this game.

Realm Invader [ Demo ]

Absolutely loved this demo. Nice visuals and animations. And also there is sound and music that let you more immersive in the game. There is fair amount of content for a demo version. First few minutes of the game are absolutely funny. Loved the humor there after that this one took a 180° turn. Game got more serious and thrilling. Graphically for a HS game this one is great. Animations are smooth. Currently there is no sexual content. I don't mind slowburn. Give us deserving sex scnes from main LI's. Hoping there will be nice romace too. I'm always into story driven games and this one passes in that department for me. Story is definitely intriguing waiting to see more of it. Keep up the good work dev looking forward to next updates.

+ Visuals and animations
+ Story
+ Humor