Ren'Py - Refuge of Embers [v0.20a] [Escape Sauce]

Honestly, for what's currently in the game, it's pretty dang good as far as quality goes. The story is going in a direction that I really like. Character development is nice so far, and honestly I really don't have a complaint. Yes the story is fairly short at the moment, as there isn't much content. But as a basis for the game it honestly seems like it's gonna be really good.

This game has been in development for a long period of time, but what A LOT of people don't realize(because apparently they don't do much reading) is that the dev team consists of 2 people. And they both have full time jobs. They purely work on this project in their spare time. So when most people are whacking off, they're still working.

Given that, I'd say the progress they've achieved over the past few years is adequate for the most part. HOWEVER, What has been recently noted by the devs is that their artist, will soon be working full time on this game, as the total monthly income for the game has reached a point that will allow a person to leave their full time job come July. Meaning content updates should start rolling out quite quickly, and be far more beefy.

So those that are purely giving this game a thumbs down due to the lack of content, will likely be switching their reviews soon enough. Why anyone goes into a game that is at v0.15 thinking there will be a slew of content, likely also hasn't seen the light of day for some time, as anyone with half a brain would at the very least take a guess that the game is in a very early state.

That aside, the upcoming content should be quite good, as the foundation of the world and the story that is beginning to unfold, should prove to be quite good. And the main romance options, and with whom they involve are ones we don't often see. Not to mention the romance options aren't purely corruption and borderline fk'd in the head like many games out there with these tags often are.. Instead this game is far more wholesome. Which is incredibly refreshing. The cast of romance options are also quite diverse, and appear to alter the story. So the final product will likely be a good one.

I'll definitely be keeping a close eye on this one, and will be eagerly awaiting updates. Cuz lets be real here, anyone that has play'd this game knows we got some milf content coming. If you add Milf in with the current tags, I'm sure you can figure out what 1+1=...'s

The perfect game. Wincest with planned pregnancy. Beautiful art, well-paced routes. Lets you focus on a specific love interest instead of forcing you into a harem. The only complaint I can make is there's not enough content but that also doubles a compliment - 'I want to play more of this'.

Hope the dev will steadily keep adding content and finish a great story some day. Kudos!

Obviously you can see the quality and potential in this game. It is very rare for this kind of games to come in reality nowadays. I hope for more updated to come with more content and upgrades to this game. 5 stars

I've finally decided to play this and it was a huge let down.

Pros:
- graphics
- characters
- writing

Cons:
- sex scenes are weak, really weak
- lack of content

The game is pretty nice, but there is not much of it, I've seen bigger v0.01 releases than this here v0.13 and i'm talking about overall content, both in volume and in substance. If that wasn't enough, the sex scenes are way too tame, even for vanilla foreplay and there are only 5 of them (4 if you exclude gay handjob). 3 years of development for a short prologue.

I unfortunately echo many of the other low score reviews of this game.

Beautiful art. Well designed models that emote a lot of personality for various girl arch-types (bookish shy girl, sassy tomboy, helpless damsel, kinky farmgirl, etc).

But after nearly 3 years of post-0.03 release, it still feels like a 0.04 release. There are what, 3 days of in-game content? Spanning maybe 10 minutes of total time for an average reader? And 5 "paths" if you can call them that, which are basically "who do you spend time with today?" If you pick the right paths your reward is either a HJ, BJ or TJ scene with one of 2 girls, followed by the kickoff of the "main event"; hero needs to go save the world......And then that's all folks, check back in for the next update.

3+ years of development, $25k or more from Patreon support, and this is all that is produced?

I'm inclined to put this into the category of "games that should be considered abandoned, but the devs want to milk their patreons for all they can"

Absolutely beautiful art, from backgrounds and UI to characters and animations. Decent story too. Biggest shortcoming is that it is quite short, but I have high hopes for it, and see fairly regular progress posting in the Discord

You know some games just won't have any content by looking at the art. This is one of those games. The art is great and is a great respite from the 3d models we all see in every game but it's literally a 30 min gameplay and it's being developed for almost 3 years now. The vaginal sex tag is a lie, they just put 2 pictures at the beginning in a dream. This was an immense letdown.

Art and writing is very good, but there is a shockingly low amount of content for a game that has been in development for 2 and a half years... You literally just get to a first kiss (if that) then the update ends. Massively disappointing considering the tags they claim are already "current content". Would rate 9/10 if not for being misled and blueballed

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that the "current content" is technically accurate, but only for 3 out of the 5 characters and only 1 or 2 scenes for each of them. The characters I was most interested in (Eryn and Lena) have no content so I gave up at that point without checking the others. I also wouldn't consider the opening scene enough to warrant claiming pregnancy and vaginal is in the game yet but that's subjective. Either way just wanted to correct myself, will keep the rating at 3 stars for now as it's still a huge concern that the game will never be finished at this rate.

The charm of this game is off the roof. The art is exceptional and the writing is really cozy and down to earth. I really liked the relationship between the siblings, seemed very natural. The only downside is, as with most games of this quality, that updates are small and very far between.
I think this game deserves a lot more attention.

Great story and interesting world, it's rare to see a good incest story. The breeding aspect is also really nice to see as it's hard to find games with breeding.

Hopefully, the game continues to have the same quality for every update. Also, hope that the game gets music and VFX soon as it would make it even better. Overall very nice game with great potential.

I'm gonna give this game three stars, I'm also going to throw some money at the Devs.

The reason I'm doing those two contrasting things is simple. There is a LOT of potential here. RoE plays well, is better than average in dialogue and intriguing enough story (if formulaic), however its the art style that is the real draw. I say that even though I love the pregnancy fetish, it really is the hand drawn characters that make this game playable. That said this is at best a game demo in terms of total content. It's been years since the development started, and at the current pace, it will be decades before the game is finished or far more likely abandoned. I really hope the Devs will put the work in going forward and I'm happy to contribute to that end.

But as it is, this game isn't worth playing yet.

A suggestion.
Hand drawn style is one of the slowest to develop, for obvious reasons. Consider making slightly more dynamic pictures and letting them drag out longer, ie have more dialogue per picture. That way you can release more content per episode, which will also drive up subs. You will have to punch up your descriptive writing a bit to compensate, especially during sex scenes.

I see potential in this game, mainly because of its art, however, currently I get lost on what to do or what not to do to get the scenes, of course it is the typical routine of just as click and that's it, but I feel that this can confuse people Many. In particular, I played it for 1 hour and I must say that I was getting bored at the end, however I see a future for it, I would have to wait until they continue to release more updates.

As for its plot, well it's interesting, but I feel like there's no development, there's no clear objective... so I'd say "normal" among most 18+ games I've played.

First of all, I must advise you that my english is quite bad.

This game has all the things I love:

-Wincest with your sister + future pregnancy
-Medieval settings
-Good romance. It's easy to fuck with some girls, but there aren't only lust relationships, some of them are strongly centered on romance
-Beautiful 2D art
-Doesn't force you to fuck with girls you don't want. I really hate when in some games you are forced to do that
-The game is still in early development, but the story and dialogs are fine. Ofc they're not spectacular, but for a porn game are fine, at least I don't need to skip dialogs. I don't ask for more

The only bad thing so far is that the development is too slow, but the devs can't dedicate all their time to developing this game because they need to have other jobs to earn money. We just can wait patiently.

Based on the (as yet) unfinished v0.09

My usual disclaimers when writing reviews on here are that A. I am here for the "plot" not the plot and B. I am very picky with visual novels and think broadly they can be very subpar. So, take both of those into consideration for my review when thinking about this game.

Pros

• Very nice art style – The aesthetic of Refuge of Embers is quite simply very, very nice. It’s unique, charming and quite simply nice to look at. It seems to very easily walk the line of “sexy and over-the-top” female costumes whilst still appearing like medieval fantasy. I can see this being very, very easy on the eye for a full visual novel. The animations present are also pretty fucking good too, so there’s definitely a decent standard of visuals here.
• Girls are hot – It’s a small thing, but sometimes can elevate a game, and honestly the girls in Refuge of Ember are just all pretty fucking sexy. If that’s the sort of standard of companion we can expect for a full game, it’s a great start.
• Sexy stuff is sexy – At present there is very, VERY little in the way of sexual content, but what is there is also very good. The scenes could perhaps be a little longer and allow themselves to linger over it a bit more (add in some more dirty talk and the like) but as a starting point, it’s definitely showing promise. The game also seems to promise a lot of very, VERY lewd stuff (harems, impregnation and roughness? Yes please)

Mehs

• Story feels somewhat generic – You are a (possible?) chosen one in a remote forest village surrounded by the beginnings of a harem of hot babes while there is some new and uncertain threat lurking in the forest. As a set-up it feels very generic fantasy and like a basic harem fuck-fest. However, this is not necessarily a criticism. As long as the writing is solid, it doesn’t matter if the overall plot is generic if it does some interesting things with it and carries out things through a proper beginning, middle and end. Unique does not always mean “good” and the opposite is true as well.
• Dialogue is also a tiny bit shaky – I largely put this down to the game still being in the prologue stages. People are still delivering exposition and are rushing to establish relationships and familiarity so that the game proper can begin. With that in mind, much of the early dialogue feels a tiny bit awkward and rushed, but hopefully this will improve.
• Super, super short – There is maybe ~20 minutes of content thus far. If that. This is also part of why the limited sexual content gets a pass from me, just because there’s actually not much content in general so far. It’s still very much in the set-up phases of the story and so it feels very difficult to make any real judgements about things. For the same reason, it isn’t really possible to make any judgements about the quality of decision-making yet, but I hope that you might actually be able to make meaningful decisions in the game.

Cons

• Length and development time – I don’t like to say it, but I feel I have to. There is maybe 20 minutes of content, and it is all still in the “prologue” of the story. That’s fine and dandy. What’s less fine and dandy is that this is in a game where the first build was apparently uploaded to F95 in late 2020. This is a game that has now been in development for at least 20 months, and we have about one minute of content per month to show for it. While it’s not strictly a “bad” thing, I think you have to go into this game with your eyes open knowing that it may be quite ambitious and development time is horrifically slow. So, if you get invested in it, there may be YEARS between significant changes to the game.
• Incomplete routes in existing build – I’ve seen this in a few games but this is now the first time I’m properly calling it out. Frankly, I hate this “style” of development and hope that this will not be indicative of how they build the rest of the game. If you create a decision tree, a particular path or route for the game to take and then halfway through said path the game says “this is a placeholder because this section of the game isn’t ready yet” and THEN goes back to the rest of the game, I fucking despise that. While it’s fine when your game is short and quick to play through, it is an absolute pain in the arse if you see the placeholder and then are allowed to continue the rest of the story. Because that means that if you want to see everything, you have to go back and do it all over again… Personally, I would much prefer it any routes added into a game have ALL of their content when they are first implemented so I don’t have to revisit multiple times.

Once again, I feel like I have actually said pretty much everything that needs to be said about Refuge of Embers in my Pros/Mehs/Cons. The game is exhibiting an awful lot of promise and looks like it will, very likely, contain some absolutely smashing fantasy harem fun. It also seems like it may well be quite exciting and ambitious in scope, with the potential of having a decent fantasy narrative on top of any sexy fun times to keep me happy.

About 70% of the stuff I’ve said about the game, one way or the other, is very wishy-washy because it’s really far too early in the game’s story to actually make definitive statements.

One can definitely say that the art-style and animations are very nice and that I’d be very happy to see much more of that, but this is about as much as I can say for sure. The writing seems decent if a bit stilted, but this might improve as the game’s real plot gets going. Or it might take an absolute nose-dive. The overall plot is starting out quite generic, but it might end up surprising people. The sexy stuff sure seems like it could be very, VERY hot, but there might end up not being that much or they might not really keep feeling that sexy as time goes on.

Even my complaint about the development time might actually not hold up as the devs have said (somewhere) that they are still creating character art assets, so if that gets completed then that might actually drastically speed up the pace of creation. Who knows?!

Having said this, you might, very reasonably, ask the question whether Refuge of Embers even deserves a review at this point in time. It’s quite simply far, far too early to say much for sure about it. You might also add that the fact I’ve given it 4/5 stars is therefore extremely generous.

Essentially, I think this is quite simply a game to keep an eye on. Stick it in your back pocket and come back in a couple of years and there might be something very, VERY worth playing here. It is exhibiting just quite a lot of promise.

I also have to add to that, that the game feels criminally unnoticed. Even for having so little in it right now, it absolutely deserves more attention than it’s got!

Game is worth playing. Hoping it will get more attention. Art syle is good it's well drawn. Story is not boring for a 2DCG game. Eryn is my fav girl. If you like to play 2DCG games give this one a try it's worth playing. But not that much content for now. Will keep an eye on this. Keep up the good work dev. Looking forward to next updates

0.08b version

Which character am I most interested in so far?

...So, there is barely content here. This is like almost a prologue.
I really like the art and the clothing choice is constant tease, but... story is not there yet. So, slightly sister just because she has some character development.

Ya... that's it. Feels like 3 pages of a 300 page book. I'll come back later when more is here.

Well written and drawn, great action and storyline - would definitely be interested in seeing this one to the end, not sure if a harem option would work in this setting though it would be worth looking into

There really isn't much to comment on the game so far. Even for an early, alpha/demo. What story and dialogue exist seem to be fine. Again, not a lot there.

So why 5 stars? Simple - the Art is 5 stars on its own. One of the best games on this entire site that I've seen in that regard. This game deserves more attention. Download this game. Support the devs. One of the rare times its actually worth it

Refuge of Embers is at the moment little more than a tech demo, showcasing absolutely gorgeous art by the creators. What little story there is, is about as basic as it goes, following the classic fantasy epic tropes to a fault. The dialogues (no 3rd person narration, you learn everything directly from the characters' perspective) are right in the uncunny valley of writing.

They read like the English dub of a B-tier anime, feeling quite unnatural and moving the conversations way too fast for my liking, while constantly shoving boobs in your face. If the game took itself less seriously and just embraced being an excuse for mindless fun that would be fine, but it's all played straight instead, a belief reienforced by the high-quality artstyle of the characters. The rapid pacing is gonna turn you off for fapping/schlicking, and at the same time the constant fanservice and immature dialogues are gonna diminish your interest in the story. The devs need to make a choice: Either the h-aspects or the story needs to come first, and the other can take a secondary role.

The quality of the artstyle also leaves me wondering if the devs will be able to keep this up for long, since Visual Novels typically have branching paths, meaning it's gonna take exponentially more work to progress the story. It's the reason most Visual Novels here, even amongst my favourites like Inertia, tend to be left in development hell. To be frank, at least at the moment, Refuge of Embers is a waste of art talent.

• Great art & animations, yaey!
• Immature writing, takes you out of it.
• Very little available content.

Currently gets a thumbs down for a recommendation.

The game for my point of view is very very nice, excellent art, the dialogues makes sense, the improved and more detailed scenarios where the events take place, the new sprites and art in 0.7 update everything works properly the only thing that I object is the time between the updates just that, I really hope more eryn content...
Nothing else to say....congrats to the dev and the talented artist )