VN - Ren'Py - Completed - SandStorm (EraStorm Saga #1) [v2.01] [GleenX Studio]

Great:
Fun historical type read.....
Nice graphics.....
Variances on the character's personalities. Love em or hate em at least they are different.....
Several different endings including a bad ending......

Not so good:
MC is pretty worthless and stupid throughout most of the story until the end where he 'suddenly' becomes more dominant and smarter.....
Ending, which was fine, seemed a bit rushed, but still complete.....
The points with each girl don't really mean anything...You'll probably just end up w the one you spend the most time with, or are nicest to.....

Great job. You get to wander around Egypt and a couple of temples, meet Nefertiti/Nefertari (I forgot which it was), and enjoy the company of a couple nice girls. The artwork is great and it feels like a good change of pace over the usual stuff around here.

This is Dev's first game so I'd say is pretty okay. It's not amazing, but I still manage to find myself finishing the game and trying to find all the different endings. Plot is pretty intriguing. Some of the endings are also fairly enjoyable, especially Rion's. Intimate scenes are average at best, but I can see it being improved as Dev gains more experience. Character personalities are pretty unattractive, with Nora being manipulative, Maddie being too dominating, Rion being naive/ignorant, and MC just being stupid.

Pros:
Plot is alright
Branching endings
Music
Avoidable NTR

Cons:
Unattractive character personalities
Mediocre intimate scenes
No VA
No Harem route

Basically, it's just not well written. The girls are boring as hell, nobody is clever, the writing is full of grammatical errors and weak sentences, and the plot is a ridiculous string of impossible coincidences.
Rion (if you follow her path) is an abusive, cheating, jealous, bitch, who gets mad at the protagonist for getting raped. Oh, did I mention that the protagonist gets raped?
And the sex scenes aren't any good.

Renders are nice.
The story is... present. And the dev knows something about Egypt. Well, ancient Egypt at least.

But the girls lost me.
I'm not evil. No priestess.
Rion, your early childhood friend that you're wanted forever... and you don't make your move until you're both in your mid-twenties, she's already fucked other people, and only seems to switch to you because she's upset with her boyfriend.
Maddie, who is one of the most joyless, angry, and aggressively unpleasant LIs I've ever encountered.
Nora, who has great things going for her, but.... meh, my personal reason for not being interested isn't worth mentioning. (no, it has nothing to do with her being a gypsy).

I sort of appreciate that it isn't a harem game, but then again, with three LIs you can pursue if you don't play evil, it could have been worked in without the game being bogged down.
It's nice, I guess, that you can do a Rion AND Nora path, but there is no Maddie-slash path.
With the limited number of LIs, you could have pursued a single one, any combo of the two, or all three, seeing as the game is already going for multiple endings. Priestess offers a story branch. Rion and Nora offer a throuple. As unenjoyable as Maddie is, I don't see a reason to even play her solo path, unless you're just a completionist.

MC is obnoxious, and some of the dialog is genuinely painful to read.

However, there is a concise story. Renders are nice. UI isn't complicated. There are choices with branching paths and multiple endings. No bugs. And the game was developed to proper completion.
Despite my issues with LIs, MC, some dialog, and lack of a "hard to obtain and you can only get it after beating the game at least once" secret path that could net you all three girls....
The fact remains the game is decently made and entirely competent. Rating it as terrible or poor is simply unjustifiable. But I feel a distinct lack of enjoyment from several sources, most of whi revolve around LIs, that simply prohibit me from rating this as good or excellent.

I've no doubt that this game appeals to many, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. I'm sure the high rating is earned, from people who rated it as such. Please, don't let me put you off trying this game. But I think people who approach games the way I do will find that this, sadly, does little for them.

SandStorm is a well made visual novel with four main branching paths that can change the progression of the story and its ending drastically sprinkled with a couple of minor choices that are there to add more content. You are a rich young guy who is traveling with a couple of old friends in Egypt and slowly unraveling some mysterious plot alongside your girlfriends that will become your interest. The game really pulls the Egyptian themed text with a bunch of lore from that culture but not so much to get tiresome. Maybe a bit at the beginning but the character relationships get to be the focus soon enough. The models are good but not something fantastic, and the characters are significantly different either physically or their personality. Some girls require a more docile approach, some are more aggressive. The result for what romance branch you pick is many scenes scattered through this not so long story. It is a very good VN without a doubt, the plot get a bit strange but nothing too over the top and the girls have nice personalities with the exception of one. If you finish the game once you will miss over one fourth of the scenes because this game was meant to be played multiple times. After getting them you can easily access the scenes on the menu screen. The only bad points I can pick is how vanilla the scenes are. In a VN you can go crazy with the tags like with Fetish Locator. But in SandStorm the scenes are more tamed with a couple of exceptions dealing with the same tag. This is a good recommendation and GleenX Studios next game seems like a continuation of this one.

Written as of version: 2.01
Genre: Mostly urban fantasy and romance
Score: 4,5/5
TLDR: Good story with beautiful women of rather unattractive personalities.

Weak points: flawed main girls’ personalities; forced to romance any main girl or being evil;
Neutral: animations; few instances of voice acting;
Strong points: story; amount of content; beautiful characters; music; graphics; choices; branching; endings; performance;

Weak points
Main girls possess qualities that turn me off, like:

What’s worst player is forced to romance at least one of the characters or be on the evil path. That’s not the most well-thought-out solution. Some players may not be interested in girls for any reason (despite their excellent looks), and giving them the evil path as the only alternative is a little devilish.

Neutral
Few animations are really good, most are about decent, and some are bad. The problem is that animations of lower quality also occur during sex scenes.

Almost no voice acting. There was at least one moment when it appeared. It didn’t disturb and rather didn’t help the experience.

Strong points:
Interesting story. It could be a game without sex, and thanks to the story, it would still be good. It contains adventure, romance, slice-of-life moments, and mystery. Narration build-up and relation development exist.

There is a large amount of content. In respective variations, most of it can be seen on any path, but some of the content is exclusive to some choices and ways. The game gives you lots of choices and possible endings.

Experiencing good graphics and beautiful characters is enhanced by well-chosen music.

Performance shouldn’t be an issue. It was tested at 12 yo laptop from mid-range.

Considering this was the dev's first game, it was pretty decent. The animations felt a bit forced, but it's alright since the dev is gaining experience. Personally, I feel like the dev was interested in the history of Egypt and decided to create an entire porn game around it. Maybe that's why the characters feel a bit forced in the game. However, the models looked fairly original and the plot was also rather interesting. I would give this game a 9/10. Really well made for his first game.

Character Analysis:
First, I will talk about Rion. Personally, I'm fully invested in the childhood friend topic. Nearly every other game I play, I immediately go for the childhood friend route, but here Rion felt a bit forced. She didn't have much of a plot or backstory and was only present to show a poor innocent maiden in distress. Her motives for cheating on her partner were also really weak. Even in-game, she didn't have much of an impactful story and was only there for the sake of it.

Now talking about Maddie, her personality and backstory was very interesting and fun. It looked as if she had a genuine place in the game as the "expert". Her in-game story and motives were also very strong and her ending felt fulfilling with respect to the dev's next game.

Nora also had a very well-made plot and personality. Her role as a local expert was perfect for her and her endings and motive were as fullfulling as Maddie's

A remarkably memorable experience that takes elements of mythology and supes them up in service to the plot.

It honestly starts off about as you'd expect a Romance VN to do so. The MC meets some of the girls that you have an option of choosing between throughout the story, and the MC has several obstacles that could impede his progress including but not limited to:

1. Only being able to commit to one(or in a rare instance two) girl(s) per playthrough.
2. Navigating your choices in the best way to reach the highest approval with the girl.
3. Keeping the MC alive as certain events nip at your heels(although to be frank the game goes out of its way to ensure this doesn't happen on its own, there's only a few notable "game over" instances that I can think of. In this game failing is not getting with the girl you want to, and not unlocking all the scenes you want, for the most part.)
4. Understanding the save feature and how you can use it to optimize your choices so you're not left dry on points in regard to select girl's affinity.

Some characters are more affable than others, a few I find to be rather heartwarming in the way they bond with the MC in quiet moments of intimacy but I'd be remiss to not mention that I can't tell if the wanna-be archaeologist uses the flaccid characteristics of your average starbucks feminist as a front for her later likeable tomboyish personality, or if she was actually designed to be a contemporary representation of the ongoing politics that most players including myself couldn't care for in the context of playing a porn game.

In other words, there are a few moments in the game where you wonder to yourself if "THE MESSAGE" is meant to be a theme whenever a certain character talks about "muh marginalized groups" and "muh respecting wahmen" and the MC is often scripted to follow through with these premises with no point of molding your own opinions on the matter but these moments are few and far between and are even made fun of a few times, especially on the Mystical path, where the MC is outright raping characters for impeding his onslaught through the story, and as a result make these musings far FAR more tame than some of the stuff you can find on here. Characters on a very basic good-vs-evil heel vs babyface note, do well enough to fulfill their roles, and you can't go wrong with what choices you do make, so you'd do yourself a favor by following along with the wild ride that is this story.

The art and sound design of the game is very well put together. The characters look great, the mood is consistent throughout, and it often feels like you're along for the ride with the primary characters. As more irregular events happen in the story though, you could have expected more than what was already seen by that point, but fair enough effort was put into the plot anyway, so it will not detract without reason. Sound effects pop and bring you into the world, and the music choices while not perfect are far from abysmal.

By the time I reached a playthrough where I tried to complete the "Mystic" or "Evil" path, I discovered a great wealth of fun that in comparison to the other paths, outmodes them just due to the sheer tonal shift alone:

1. The MC drops his Shonen Protagonist level attempt at being a People Pleaser(which is not bad in of itself) and becomes more jaded and rapacious.
2. That few characters you thought the MC should've been berating from the get go on the account of their arrogance or failures? He begins to mock and humiliate them and others in spades, to the point where two characters abandon you.
3. You get the complete story of the mystery surrounding the game, and why a key character makes the choices that they do, including how they got there. So if you come to enjoy the lore of this setting, I would recommend getting as many points in the evil path as possible, if only for one time. I'd be lying if I said it weren't a big factor for my rating for this game, because of the depth of the MC insofar as how vulnerable he can become to corruption. It's a theme I hope is taken into #2 and expanded upon no doubt.

I initially avoided this game due to prior reviews and it not being finished but I'm happy to say it's up there in my eyes with some of the more well put-together games here. Keep up the good work!

To be honest, 5 maybe too much for this game, but i believe it deserves more right now.

Honestly its nod bad or great. Its just good.
Story is intriguing, but you need to play each paths. So, made saves for each heroine and dark path as well.
Music is good.
Sex is... could be better.
Characters... are little stereotypish.
Its a game with many choices and not a harem game. Its not good or bad, just a fact.
But, its also a start of the series. And you can'e judge series only with first chapter. Snowstorm even if not finished is much better. But still, play this game before the second chapter.

I really struggled to decide between giving 2 or 3 stars for this game. I went with 3 because despite all the things I dislike, I finished the game and it's clear a lot of effort went into making it.

And what don't I like?

The writing is bad. The author clearly isn't a native English speaker, so that alone makes things feel stiff. Coupled with bad dialogue and characters who make stupid decisions and say naive and weird things, it makes it a slog to get through.

There are also occasional moments where characters stop to rattle off information about ancient Egypt and its gods. I eventually ended up skipping these.

The renders are passable. There are some animations but they aren't great. The most egregious being a 5-minute long dance to introduce one of the characters.

Overall though the general idea for the plot is somewhat interesting. It doesn't overstay its welcome and was clearly made by passionate people/person.

Well, that was quite an experience.

First of all, the game has really great non-harem mechanics. When you pursue one Li, you not only don't get any points with another one, but you also lose points with her. That's pretty cool. This way game makes sure you won't be able to pursue all LIs at once.
So, if you want to get full experience and content from you path - stick to your chosen LI from the start till the end in order to gather as maximum relation points as you can.

Also I liked the story, it was pretty intriguing with some unexpected twitches.
Warning: some special endings are a bit confusing and illogical, but that's because they are not canonical. Dev said he will fix it while making final version of the game.

All NTR are fully avoidable:
1) Don't go into Evil path
2) Don't try to pursue All Lis. Game mechanics, as I mentioned before, won't allow you this, in fact, eventually you will end up cucked by both of them (Maddie, Rion), except Nora maybe. That's the price for being the manwhore)))
Also, after choosing your path (Li) don't try to pursue suddenly another one in the middle of the game, again, you could just bump into NTR scene.

The idea of an adventure to Egypt is great and the music fits too, I like the looks of the characters and the locations. Sex in my playthrough was pretty much vanilla to my liking, although I haven't trodden the slightly darker paths I think there's something in there for harder tastes too.

Unfortunately, the chance to write an interesting and exciting story about mythology, adventure, romance, betrayal and tragedy was very lightly wasted. Instead, this great premise was overshadowed by implausible relationships. as well as unbelievable character developments.

Great game.
Sex scenes are kinda meh, they're not bad, just average. But storytelling and replayability are the reasons I rate 5/5. You need to replay the game at least 4 times to see all content, and everytime from different angle and different girls/sex scenes. Waiting for sequel's release.

This game deserves more credit than it has been given, it is a hidden gem, and it should be at least a second page VN.

To say even shorter after finishing the game, I became a Patreon because I want to support such games!

I say the second page as its not perfect, but none of them is, and this one is certainly better than them. Let's also not forget it is a studio's first release and rate it accordingly, or it will never grow over those VN's that are lacklustre but have a fan club (because of specific kinks)!

If you read the review about the paywall, ignore it.
As I said, I became a Patreon after finishing the game, and I do not have the slightest feeling that I needed to replay the game because of the missed additional scenes.

It is like complaining that you did not get the $20+ personal Patreon renders for free that others do but do not get any backlash over.

They did an outstanding job with it, with additional scenes you don't need but something extra for those that support the development.
Think about it; we should not complain about this, or else we are the problem creating the micro-transaction, paid DLC that we all hate.


I am looking forward to SnowStorm and everything this studio creates!

admittedly, I came into this game thinking it would be low quality (I judged it based on the look of the title picture), but it surprised me with how well-written and interesting the plot is.

One thing that I will give the author immense credit for, is that characters that I thought I would hate at first glance, ended up being the most likable,. And characters that I assumed I'd like, ended up disliking. This whole game is one big subversion of expectations (done right of course).

Very engaging story covers a lot of fetishes.
Pros-
1. The girls are attractive and have a distinct charm.
2. Lore is fascinating and history terms are pretty well researched.
3. Choices really matter a lot.
4. multiple endings evil one is my favorite.

Cons-
render of mc makes him look like a beta, but doesn't think like a 14 year old.

Don't why this game is not that much famous.

Pros:
1)Very good story telling, doesn’t ignore the fact Visual Novel has the word "Novel" in it.
2) Great renders but most VN has them now
3) Great character development
4) Your choices matter, and will result in a variety of major endings


Cons:
1) Updates were pretty slow when it was being made.
2) Didn’t like the music choice but I suppose it is appropriate to the theme

Overall if you're looking for a VN that actually lives up to the word "VN" of VN and is actually finished with a conclusion unlike most VNs, then this is for you. I have high hopes for their new game "Snowstorm" because of the success of this one. Good luck.

I'm surprised there's not more reviews at least, because
+ it's completed
+ there were stable updates before
+ diversity in LI looks and personalities
+ quite believable characters
+ multiple paths and quite a few sub-branches
+ lot of endings
+ lot of nsfw scenes
+ both fetish and vanilla - doesn't force anyone yet not bland
+ adventurous captivating story
+ no mum fucking
+ scalable netorare/netorase on Rion's path
+ audio is good for adult games level
- too heavy on lore for my taste
o some content for patreons only (leechers are not happy about it, but as long as the free content is so wholesome and it helps devs to really work on the game, why not?)
o often shamed animations look as bad as in pretty much any top rated game on this site

I really wish I could give this game a better review, as there were parts I really enjoyed, but it has some issues.

The Good

Story is solid and pretty unique. Have never seen this kind of history heavy story in an AVN, and I enjoyed that quite a lot.
Girls are all very pretty and have distinct personalities. Each one had perks and quirks to their characters that made playing the individual routes enjoyable.
Music and sound were pretty solid for the most part, though the sound and music bars getting switched and/or combined at parts of the game was quite annoying.
Branching paths were pretty well done and provided some variety for multiple plays.

The Not So Good

Right off the bat it loses a star for locking the best bits of sexy time behind a paywall. That shit is just annoying.
Sound and animation in the lewds are inconsistent. Really enjoyed the lewds with sexy sounds. Unfortunately, most of them didn't have any, or had the sound and music bars switched or combined. Animations as well, were kind of all over the place in terms of quality. Lewd animations needed to be more plentiful and longer. Non-lewd animations were actually pretty good.
Grammar was a nightmare at times. I usually try and overlook this, but sentence structure and word usage were so bad at places that the meaning became unclear. Needed a proofreader who was a native English Speaker pretty badly. Especially when an AVN is as wordy as this one, writing needs to be solid. The idea was solid, the execution, not so much.
Would have been nice if the game was a bit longer, by at least one, if not two more days. Felt a bit rushed, and the relationship building, especially with Nora, who the MC just met, seemed a bit artificial. Another lewd scene or 2 with each of the girls, would have made the game a lot more fun to play.

Overall, a decent first effort, and worth a play.
Looking forward to higher quality work from this Dev in the future, hopefully not locked behind a paywall.

Couldn't really get into it. Sentences have noticeable grammatical mistakes and awkward phrasing. The dialogue consists of either an unfunny attempt at humor or bland descriptions about the love interests or about Egyptian history and myth.

I had to give up after 20 minutes because I couldn't take any more punishment. Sad because I expected so much more based off its current rating.