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

Sandstorm is an adventure story about four friends who are on vacation in Egypt and then get involved in a mystical plot involving ancient Egyptian gods. Sandstorm has a rather unique setting, which is certainly refreshing. It's not your typical slice of life story or yet another game set in some generic (US) city.
So if you want to experience something truly different, Sandstorm may be worth checking out.

The game has a high replayability factor because you have to go for one of the four romance paths in this game relatively early. There's one throuple ending, but if you want to see the content with either Rion or Maddie you will need to play replay almost the entire game, since both paths are mutually exclusive and branch off very early. Nora's path branches off later in the game, you don't need to replay from scratch to see her solo content.
The various solo paths are relatively short, you can easily finish one path in 3-4 hours or so.

Since I was only interested in Rion I have not played the other routes, so I cannot say too much about the content for Maddie, thus my review is mostly for the Rion (and partially also the Nora) route, your experience on the other routes (including the evil option) may vary!

Anyway... there are several things that keep Sandstorm from being a truly great experience. At least on the Rion path.
One reason is that the renders are at best average. Not bad, but certainly not great either.
The animations are mostly bad, sometimes they have a certain stop motion quality to them, i.e. they are lacking fluidity. Also, the various sex scenes themselves are pretty average with very little or even most of the time no real foreplay, you jump straight into the action several times.
The sex is of the vanilla variety (at least with Rion), I appreciate that, but if you want more kinky stuff you will be out of luck, at least on her route.

And another shortcoming of Sandstorm is the writing. And here I don't necessarily mean the basic plot, which is pretty generic (you have seen that plot before), but it's more or less ok... but the writing for the characters (mostly Rion) is pretty bad at times. And the underlying issue is that Rion at least has quite a few paths available and the story does a really bad job of separating all the paths.
On top of that that there are occasional typos and grammatical mistakes. It's nothing too bad though, but you will notice it.

But a few more things about the renders... character design is ok in this game, all three main love interests Maddie, Rion and Nora are really pretty and should offer something for everyone. Maddie is the brunette curvy love interest and she's the one who invited the MC to come along on the trip, since her relationship with another man ended shortly before the vacation, but she didn't want to cancel it.
Then there's Rion who is the highschool crush of the MC. She's more of the petite variety, cute and sexy with smaller breasts. The MC was too shy to approach Rion in highschool and thus the two never got together. Rion is in a relationship at the beginning of the game with Julian and her boyfriend is also a part of the travel group. So you will have to steal her away from Julian if you want her.
The third potential love interest is Nora, a local the group meets a bit later in the game, she's the exotic love interest with dark hair and she's also a bit mysterious.
Otherwise you don't learn all that much about the characters, since the game is pretty short and has little time to delve deeper. Other than some basic background info you will not learn too much about their personalities.

The game uses a third person perspective, but here and there there are also POV scenes (also during sex).
The framing of the renders is a bit weird at times, especially early in the game, the composition of the renders could have been better here. There are too many wide shots of scenes where you see the characters from a distance only which feels weird.

One thing I didn't care for too much about the character design are the overly exaggerated irises of the female charactes, they are huge and thus the girls tend to have anime eyes. A weird choice in a game that otherwise has realistic character designs.
Also, at least in one sex scene Rion's belly button was in a very wrong position, much too close to her sternum, no idea what went wrong here. And in scenes where her legs are spread her genital area can look a bit distorted or just weird/wrong.

Also, for some reason the game has a few VERY long montages. The introduction for Nora is a 5 (!) minute cutscene in which she performs a belly dance. I have to admit I lost patience after a minute or so and pressed the space bar. Later in the game there's a sweet cutscene with Rion performing a song, no animations here, just a montage of various renders set to a pretty song with female vocals, there's a song scene for each major love interest, but not all the scenes will be available in one playthrough.
You may find these things a bit tedious perhaps, but the game does warn you when the long cutscenes are about to begin and you can simply end the scene at any point.
The game has music, which was ok, not annoying for the most part and Rion's song and one acoustic guitar piece played by the MC are really sweet even. But that is entirely down to personal preference.

But let's talk about the writing. As mentioned Rion's route is somewhat of a mess. While it is believable that the MC can steal away Rion from her boyfriend in just 1 or 2 days (there is some trouble between them in the beginning anyway) since the two have a long shared history and the MC had (still has) this massive crush on Rion in highschool (and it's later revealed that Rion would have chosen the MC had he made a move back then), several other things with Rion make little sense.

The dev wanted to include a threesome/throuple option in the game and chose Rion as the gateway to that content. Now you can easily stay on a solo path with Rion, however even on a strict solo path Rion will suddenly, out of the blue, declare her love for Nora in a scene with the MC (it is the scene where you can choose her solo route of all things)... and mind you, at this point in the story the group met Nora roughly 24 hours earlier.
There's zero setup, no rhyme or reason, the bi-curious sharing / threesome option just makes zero sense here, it comes out of nowhere because the dev probably just wanted to have a throuple option no matter what, even if it makes no sense.
So depending on your own preference that may make Rion a character you may want to avoid. I mean which normal person would still pick a woman who tells him she also loves someone else and a woman of all things??? You have to suspend disbelief here quite a bit or just choose to ignore it, Which is very unfortunate, because Rion is otherwise cute and fun.

And it doesn't stop there... later in the game there are still hints of love between Rion and Nora, even if you tell Rion that she's your only one (right after she tells the MC she also loves Nora) and that you love her (which is the option for the solo route).
Nora herself also talks about her love for Rion close to the end of the game... and quite frankly, on a true solo path this is just plain annoying and unnecessary.
It's not a major dealbreaker maybe, depending on your tolerance level for stupid things.
I just rolled my eyes and ignored it, but the entire thing just makes no sense, since at that point Nora has known the others for maybe 48 hours or so.

The problem here is that the entire game feels incredibly rushed, the entire story is told over the span of just four days, which is much too short for any meaningful romantic build-up between complete strangers like Rion / the MC and Nora. Thus, in my opinion, the choice to make Nora, the complete stranger, the throuple/threesome character with Rion and the MC feels entirely wrong and just plain silly. Maddie was the only logical choice for a throuple ending if you absolutely have to have something like that in your game.

Also, if you pick a solo path for Rion any hints about love betwen Nora and Rion should have been entirely cut from the story, this makes the entire Rion route feel a bit silly, fake, stupid or even unnatural.
It really would have been better to make Maddie the threesome option, since Maddie and Rion are friends to begin with and the MC has known Maddie for a couple of years as well (since college).
Why the complete stranger with zero backstory with anyone was chosen as the throuple option is a complete mystery to me, this is just bad writing in my opinion.
I wouldn't have made Nora a love interest at all to begin with since it makes no sense. Not when your entire game just covers 96 hours. Make her a fling if you have to, but full blown romance with solo path and throuple ending? That's just too much.

Another issue in the game is that there are several instances of dream sex. Sometimes skippable, sometimes not... and the MC will dream about Nora and Rion for example, even if you have zero intention of ever choosing the threesome route. You can also choose who to dream about here and there.
Dream sex is something I don't like to begin with, it's often just a cheap gimmick to show scenes that (at that point in the story) make no sense.

The basic plot also has a somewhat awkward beginning with a neverending scene in an old Egyptian temple where the group gets some kind of tour, things only pick up the pace when the characters become witness of some weird sex ritual in the temple, which is the actual starting point of the plot.

The real underlying issue with the game is its short length, as I said, it does not really allow for much build up or character development, so everything feels kind of rushed, especially when Nora is introduced, a local gypsy girl. Her potential bi-curious romance with Rion and the MC sticks out like a sore thumb in the game and it is something that really made Rion's route somewhat of a letdown since on a solo route you are still confronted with all of that. Whether you like it or not.

Another major misstep is forced sex. On the Rion route the MC can give her a first kiss, a dream come true you may think, since she's been the MC's crush for ages. Only 5 minutes later you are railroaded into a sex scene with some Egyptian woman. Later on it's kind of explained away by magic and how the woman more or less forced herself on the MC (she's some kind of villain), doesn't change the fact though that forced sex scenes are just plain bad.
The scene exists for plot reasons, since the major McGuffin in the story is powered by sex (what else...) but there should have been other options to introduce that concept. Forcing the MC to have sex and to basically cheat on Rion (and she's less than happy when she eventually finds out) left a somewhat sour taste. This scene happens on any route, so you will also get it when you romance Maddie. You will also cheat on her whether you like it or not.

There are also several options for NTR scenes with Rion, i.e. where the MC is either cucked on the Rion & Nora throuple route (they will have lesbian sex without the MC who can merely watch them from afar) or where the MC can basically let some random evil dudes have their way with Rion in exchange for some fuel for an ATV. However, you really have to go out of your way to ever see those scenes.
Maddie also has NTR scenes, but here too you need to be really stupid or very deliberate to ever see those scenes.
To provide an example... at one point in the story the MC can choose whom he'd like to spend the night with. If you are on the Rion path - which means that Maddies's romance/love/affinity points are very low (unavoidable) - but you decide for some weird reason to go to Maddie instead of Rion... you will find out that Maddie is having fun with someone else. Your affinity with her is simply not high enough and thus Maddie is not interested in you.

However, there's no reason to panic, as pointed out the NTR scenes are super easy to avoid, actually you have to actively sabotage your own playthrough or maybe you specifically want the NTR content, because you need to make extremely obvious stupid choices to see the NTR content. And one NTR option later in the game (where you throw Rion to the wolves) even mandates that you choose the evil path before that, otherwise the option will be greyed out and not be available at all.
In any normal playthrough in which you apply common sense (or just don't care for NTR) you will never ever see any of those scenes.

And that's certainly a postive aspect of the game: there are quite a number of iterations and paths, with 11 endings in total. And on the various paths you can choose to be more romantic, about true love, or more about lust... you can also turn evil and become a real asshole if you like that.

On the Rion route for example you can decide between the following:

- true love and romance route
- a romance route with lust instead of love
- a threesome route with Rion and Nora
- become evil and "lend" Rion to lecherous assholes who want to have their way with her (there will be no Rion ending on the evil path), you can then watch them having sex with her if that is what you really want to see

Another thing that is certainly commendable is that each main love interest has two different endings. An ending that is probably more canonical and a "special" ending with an alternate outcome.
Rion's normal (canonical) and special endings are extremely different.
If you want a happily ever after ending you should opt for the special ending. It will become pretty evident in the game what option to choose to see either the canonical or the special ending. Hint: don't go with Nora at one point and instead ask her to let you go. And you get the special ending.
Be warned: the canonical ending is extremely unsatisfying and maybe something that will get resolved in the sequel. This is at least what the game is teasing.
But the choice between normal and special endings means that you are not stuck with some unsatisfying cliffhanger and that you can also opt for the very happy ending and if you then decide to not check out the other option you will probably be quite happy with what you get. I really appreciate that approach.

So Sandstorm, despite some messy writing for the characters, lackluster animations and a very rushed plot certainly has its appeal. It can be fun, the setting is very unique and you get basically three or four games in one, since the branching paths mean you have to replay the game for each route.
You can try to romance everyone... but you will not succeed, you need relatively high points for each character to succeed on their route, thus you must pick one character early in the game and then stick with her. And gaining points with one character often means that the other one will get points taken away. So you really have to dedicate to one option early on and then stick to that route.

So... who will enjoy Sanstorm? If you can accept that the game has extremely easily avoidable NTR content (meaning you have to go out of your way to see it), if you can accept that everything is pretty rushed, if you can accept that at least Rion's path is quite messy here and there, if you can also accept the subpar animations and renders that are average at best... then you can certainly have a good time with the game. The unique setting certainly has its appeal.

If you think NTR is worse than the plague and if the mere presence of extremely optional NTR turns you off, if you cannot tolerate that a major love interest even on a solo route will still tell you she also loves someone else, and on top of that, a character she has known for merely 24 hours (really, what was the dev thinking here???????), if subpar animations do nothing for you and if a proper build-up, some teasing, generally speaking some more or less realistic romantic progression matter to you... then you will probably not enjoy Sandstorm all that much, maybe not at all.

Final words: I really wish Rion's path had been better written.
The silly and highly unrealistic throuple option with Nora should have been realized differently, Rion should never ever have told the MC she loves Nora... instead the option to open the throuple route should have been solely with the player / the MC who suggests it to Rion AFTER telling her he loves her.
Here the MC can merely deny the throuple route or give his ok, but you, the player, have no real agency, you don't bring up the idea, Rion does. This was a very bad idea if you ask me. In my opinion even a throuple option initiated by the player still makes no sense though, at least as far as Nora, a complete stranger (!) is concerned. The only viable throuple option would have been Maddie & Rion here.

And if you don't choose the throuple route... set a flag through a variable and then make sure that later in the game on a solo route neither Rion nor Nora still talk about love .... it's just annoying when you have to hear that. It kind of ruins Rion's route and it's so easily avoidable with some better/different writing and maybe one extra variable that hides certain dialogues when no throuple option is selected.

But if you can live with all that Sandstorm is certainly a rather unique experience, it's very different from most other VNs I have played so far. I hope the sequel will have better writing though. And never ever again should a major love interest tell the MC she also loves someone else on a solo path - or seconds before you are about to select the solo path. Never. Ever. Cardinal sin in this game. These things should always depend on player choice only and only after you commit to a love interest.

All of these minor or somewhat more major missteps make Sandstorm an average game, it can be enjoyable if you tolerate the shortcomings, it can be a disaster if your tolerance threshold for certain things is close to zero though. So make sure you are ok with the things mentioned in this review before you play Sandstorm. If you are you will probably have a (mostly) good time though.

Overall good, but v1.0 needs more polishing - characters reference choices that you didn't make, lighting changes back and forth within one dialog, characters fly in the air in some animations. All of this breaks the immersion.

A fun but rather short multiple ending, lewd adventure. For me everything was good but not great: story, LI's, lewd content, graphics, ...
You could do a lot worse but it's not the cream of the crop either.
I suggest playing it on multiple routes, there are definitely big differences but some are small in comparison to others and it gets rather tedious skipping through the content over and over again.
The game is complete and nicely wrapped up and that is a huge plus in this genre. Not to mention a sequel of some sorts is in the making. Kudos to the dev.

i played for about an hour and the story is good, but needs more corrections. i spent alot of the time fixing the errors in my head which took me out of the game. i can see the developer did a good job trying, but still needs a little work. the models are great, but the animations are a bit choppy. if you can over look the errors and the animations, then give it a go.

The game is nice, but if you use the mod to play around you realize the point system is somewhat misleading.
Balanced choices can bring nothing, and some points are acting as triggers.
For example, a single point in Nora's lust can change the whole storyline no matter the points with the , so it feels more like a VN with branching paths.

In this case, a pathlike replay/walkthrough like in Midnight Ride should be better: you don't feel like missing out and it feels better experimenting choices.

Aside from that, game deserves its score

First of all the creator gets props for completing a game, hundreds of them seem to drag on forever with small insignificant updates year in year out.

It's not that hard to make a renpy game so obviously a lot of developers seem to want to milk the patreon tit for as long as possible.

The game is good. Hot renders, frequent and good sex scenes. A lot of choices. A lot of paths. 11 endings.

Depending on if you really want a story in might be 5 starts. If you are looking for good fap material it's more like a 3 or a 4. For the simple reason that it's incredibly vanilla and a very small part of the game is sex scenes.
And it's mostly vaginal vanilla sex, a little rough here and there but very basic.

All the girls have roughly the same kinks and sex scenes.

Having said that it's kind of funny and choices actually matter.

Story + sex scenes as well as kinks and variety make it a 4 in my opinion.

Sandstorm is a VN about a life and death, Indiana Jones style, throwdown in the desert and the group of helpless desert tourists who trip into it.

It doesn't do anything particularly mold-breaking as far as VNs go. That said, while the inevitable story bottleneck does come to pass, there's a frankly impressive number of ways to get there and a good number of endings based on your decisions along the way. I'll award a few bonus points for nice renders, though the animations aren't great. From a gameplay perspective, Sandstorm is a very good VN.

Unfortunately, the characters and story didn't really do much for me. The "helpless tourists" angle of the story meant that the opening just wasn't engaging. There was no hook to really draw me into things. This is pretty sad, as the story behind Sandstorm is actually interesting, but the way in which the game tells it forces the focus onto the boring "helpless tourists" angle for nearly the first half of the game.

In addition, the characters didn't feel like they had much in the way of chemistry, making the dialogue fall flat. I think this springs from a lack of clever banter between the characters; conversations where the characters are just having fun or joking around. Any conversation between characters in which they weren't trying to achieve a goal felt like filler, burning time until the story advanced. Admittedly, that kind of writing is hard to do well.

Overall, I feel like Sandstorm is worth playing, but it isn't going to redefine the genre. I feel like the sequel has a good chance to be better since the "helpless tourist" angle is impossible given the events in this story.

I almost deleted the game after the first 20-30 minutes as it imho starts out rather bad, however after that time the writing improves, the renders improve, the story picks up, ... and now that I've finished a few endings, I have to say I love this game.

+ Interesting story (serious at times, funny at others)
+ Cute and hot girls (especially Rion)
+ Some very hot (optional) NTR scenes
+ Different routes and lots of endings

~ Animations are ok
~ Not a big fan of 5 minute videos in my VNs

- Some grammar mistakes, especially early in the game
- The first 20-30 min are pretty bad but thankfully not represantative of the rest of the game
- Not enough NTR / sharing content!

Also I wish
Anyway, loved the game enough to join the Patreon! Will play some more now and definitely keep an eye on the sequel!

Reviewing v1.0
As this game reaches completion state, it is time to rate it and say well done.

The game is set up in an adventure setting with an Indiana Jones vibe that I loved. The story itself is interesting if you like that premise, but it can also get a bit complicated. But the good thing then is that there is a fair amount of replay-ability, especially with all the different paths you can take, as well as the many different endings.
Those path include 3 different love interests, each with different personalities. Rion was my favourite model from the start and the only reason I even tried it (she still is) but all 3 are gorgeous.

So far so good, so why didn't I give it an 'excellent' rating?
It falls short in the framing department. Not the rendering, which is pretty good, but the camera angles. Many times I felt the dev was choosing angles purposefully to hide certain things. I'm guessing models didn't have the level of details they wanted in places, or they struggled with some posing? What I do know, is it spoiled the broth for me too many times.

That being said it still remains a good interactive novel, and is well worth playing.

Up until the last chapter I had this game at 5/5.

The 3 girls available are completely different, their motivations more or less interesting, and love routes generally cute.

The only reason it's 1 star less is chapter 9. I was going for one specific girl, something happens, I decided: "OK, let's be honest with 2nd girl and drop first one because story reasons". Game is fine with that...so fine with that it completely stops acknowledging I ever chased first girl. It completely ignores all love scenes, messages and plot and switches 100% to mode as if you were always with 2nd girl. With which I, until last chapter, had nice round 0 points with.
I know making additional route would be ton of work and all, but few different lines of text would have gone a long way. It genuinely felt like nothing I did up until that point mattered in the slightest.

Outside of that little rant the game is f-ing amazing and unfortunately overlooked (guess due to NTR tag).

After playing version 0.9 and all paths this is rating Wasted Protentional 2/5

Whole experience felt like mish mash of routes. there are many holes and crossing in paths. whole game felt like I was playing last part of story instead of beginning. 3 weeks in game experience were crammed in 3 days. Romances felt like rushed and incomplete.

Only LI I kinda liked was Rion and her model but her character was butcher, When she suddenly declared she loved Nora out of nowhere. it felt out of place and rushed. There was no development in their Relationship..

In story word love is used very carelessly. it loses all the intense and deep meaning. feels very cheap.. Whole story feels very rushed. It could have been very good but unfortunately its wasted.. On technical side Animations are very very bad. Static renders would have been better then this horrible animation.

If you are looking good romance and love story this game is not for you. If you are looking for good sex scenes this game is not for you. Whole sex is mehh in this game. At best you will gate midcore experience of rushed game

Edit: Review of Beta 1.00

The full product is something I want to love, but has parts that kinda fall short. I thought about dropping the rating from a 5 to a 4 but decided against it. The reason is it is a full product, that has obvious care from start to finish. It is still among the product I have held the most interest and the parts I have problems with are on my part nitpicky. The full review is down bellow, this edit is just covering final thoughts and my nitpicks of the endings.

Review as of v0.9

The game has a lot to like to the game. the three main girls are great, from their models, personalities and interactions with the mc. Having explored all of the romantic aspects thus far for the three solo romances and the one duel route, I personally find Rion's solo route to be my favorite. if you follow the romance side and not the lust side (didn't touch more than seeing scenes, don't know how in-depth the lust focus impacts.) The chemistry between Rion and the mc is actually outstanding. The pacing is good and the bittersweet aspects hit. Her route has a lot of heartfelt, romantic scenes if you aim for them. Without spoilers the campfire scene honestly sold her route hard for me. She is my favorite model and storyline.

Next is Maddie, who also is no slouch as a character and partner. Her heartfelt moments are definitely there, however her romantic moments are a bit more rare not that they are lacking. Maddie is just a more guarded character and it shows with how she develops her relationship. With the v0.9 update you can see more on their relationship, and I actually really liked the interaction between them from the time they get on the bike to they end of the current build. You see the two start to rely on each other and makes the relationship way better in my mind. That jeep scene was pretty hot btw. I cant say a lot on her route as it has a lot of the main plot mixed in.
She is my third favorite model and second favorite storyline.

Lastly is Nora, I really really like her. She is another that I cant say much about do to plot. She is sweet, kind, but also manipulative. She has a decent amount of really good scenes with both the MC and her other female LI. My only issue with her is unlike with the other two character there is no prior history so there are parts that feel a little on the rushed side, but its still effective in its intents. She is my second favorite model, but fourth favorite storyline.

The Duel route is good but wont be talked about in case people want to naturally find the pair (not that its secret). This is my third favorite storyline.

Sound is hit or miss. The music is top notch, with a vast variety of songs that usually do great job to set the mood for the scene. The sound effects are the issue. Some do a good job to get a chuckle, or do as desired. the sounds during some of the intimate scene are well just atrocious. not all, but personally they are hard to ignore and cant be turned off without disabling all sound effects.

NTR. Outside of the evil route with the most recent scenes of this patch there is almost none. There are dreams that included it, but outside of 1 scene that you might consider a ntr dream are all optional. personally speaking the only ntr scenes that happen without you having a choice are not ntr. if you do not spend any attention to the two girls who are in the duel route they might sleep together. you can spy on it. this happens if you just really fuck up. the other that i know about is Rion might or might not go back to her room with her boyfriend to do the dirty. one they are dating and you have yet to try anything. this again only happens if you are not actively going after her. i personally didn't see or here anything its just might be implied depending on how there relationship is at that point based off your choices.
The new scene for Rion is without a doubt the first REAL NTR scene and SPOILER

An AWESOME GAME made by Gleen X Studio. There are MANY PATHS that you can take which shows us how much effort the developer is putting in the game. Definitely check this game out and Make sure to SUPPORT THE CREATER in any possible way. The PLOT in this game is INTERESTING
THANK YOU Gleen X Studio for making this wonderful game . I hope you continue this project till the end.

Reviewing 0.8 version of the game.

This game is probably one of my personal favorites on this site. It definetely has some flaws and it's not perfect, but there is just something about this game that makes it stand out from the other ones.

Character design - 5/5. Main LI's look stunning (Rion and Nora are my favorites and TOP 10 from all games on this site )

Story, setting and overall feel of a game - 5/5. Really digging Egyptian setting. Story does it's job, cinematics are nice, with well chosen music and aesthetic. Stands out from other games. Points and routes system is easy to understand.

Romance / Adult content - 4.5/5. Most important point in these kinda games and this one is kinda hard to rate. Animations needs some work and can be improved a lot. Some of the scenes can use more descriptions (I personally hate sex scenes with only pictures and animations. If I want that, I would just watch porn) It would make them even better and they are already pretty good in my opinion. I considered giving 5 stars just for variety of scenes. Definetely not only overused vanilla, has some spice and for that dev deserves some praise for it.
There are 3 main paths - romance, lust and evil path. All three are very well made and worth a playthrough with different heroines.

Final - 5/5. One of my favorite adult games. It does not have a funding or polish of the most popular ones, but it has something magical, that I really like and it is hard to pin point what exactly. This game definetely deserves more support. I was shocked to see such a low patreon numbers, compared to the quality of the game. It was one the reasons I decided to write this review, because I usually never do this. Good luck to the devs and I hope they get recognition they deserve, from this amazing game.

I really appreciate the fact that the developer worked for a long time on the story before publishing the project and in my opinion every project should be started like this and not improvised as many do but if anything improved during development. It seems to me a nice game I started playing it from ver. 0.6, unusual and imaginative story I think also with good potential but currently not very exciting for the part that concerns the erotic and sexual aspect I hope in the future the dev will be able to cure this aspect with spicy dialogues that stimulate the imagination of playing in the moments that precede the sex scenes and in this regard personally I like to glimpse more than watching obvious sex scenes and I also hope it will improve the graphics, acceptable until now. Another positive note is that of being able to choose the path and therefore to shape, in some way, the story according to one's own tendencies. I don't like some characters but they seem to me, if not avoidable, marginally manageable along the way. I wish this dev the best and hope he can entertain us and enjoy him as much as possible.

V.06
5/5 Character design (appearence, personalities). Maddie, my favorite is great, deep and realistic.
5/5 Story. Deep and compelling. History, Mysteries, adventure, romance, lewed, all in one.
3/5 Graphics. Functional, but need improvement in Camera angles, light schemes, depth of field.
5/5 Music. Nice and very well picked.
3/5 Sex scenes. Weird. See them for yourself.
5/5 Choice system. Great use of Choice throuout the story, with important story relevant differencies.
5/5 Menu and Extras. Very well thought.
5/5 MC development. Plenty of options. Nice balls there. YOU can actually choose one love Interest and stick with it, without the need to turn into "harem" mode. Your choices matter.
4/5 Animations. Not many. Suffers from the same issue than graphics.

I have been playing for 30 minutes and so far there is 1 negative thing, and 2 positives:

The two positives are the renders, which are of a very decent quality but since the Egypt thing is kind of new and fresh, im inclined to rate it higher than average. So far i have only seen a couple of attempts at sex scenes, im guessing those dont represent the actual quality of sexscenes in the game. It would be bad.
And the other positive thing is the dialogue, its fluid and imaginative, not over the top funny of the drama club type. A Really interesting and enjoyable reading.

The bad thing are the Lewd scenes:
So far i have seen one scene, performed by 3rd parties, another scenes performed during a dream, or a trance that wont affect the plot or the relationships, and a third scene which is a dream. Im not liking this 100% dream related scenes. I REALLY dislike it. And those scene are not good, are kind of bad actually, this may end in disaster, I hope not.

Another bad thing:
Unavoidable sex scene, in a game that is about choices. If you try to pursue a romance, im sure a girl that you just met and had 0 interaction with is the girl to have sex with. This is a narrative killer and also substracts points. Well i dont like Zaya, why do have to to have sex with her TWICE?
All the game making choices to have some attempt at lewd with the other girls and i get to have sex with another girl twice?

And this leads to another thing, the sex scene is bad, and it is already the 4th one, its definetly a pattern. This is gonna end badly.

Well i noticed the music sometimes is kind of squizo, is nice that it is there but most of the times it creates a mood that doesnt fit the scene all that well. Sex scenes are still bad, i finished the Rionrnrner route and they are definetly below average, i can not tell if they are the focus of the game, it doesnt seem so.

After the scene where Nora is introduced, with that cinematic thing...The game kind of died for me. I cant tell why dev decided to lose production time in that when his sex scenes are so lacking. The effort should better be put in improving those, which are the foundation of a porn game.

Well the game went down from 4 to 2 stars, and its saved cause renders are pleasant to watch.

I am not native when it comes to english, but whenever i see grammatical mistakes it breaks my immersion times 100. Do the developers burn their eyes out after writing their texts? Alone for that i need to deduct 2 of 5.

The story itself seems fresh but badly executed. The NPCs and the MC are beyond retarded when it comes to risk managemant and just seem to jump into their misery like those movie-mentally-held-back-people. The blonde girl has somewhat of a brain but still follows the group and that also makes her dumb like her friends.

The male FrIeNd is another nutcase. He is with his girlfriend on this trip and makes himself out as a giga coomer to the point i want to just shoot him and let the MC bang his girlfriend (a former crush).

Edit: the fuck is a promess dude, its called promise even my deranged sister knows that. After a little research i found out its the french version but im playing in english so why.
Edit2: the little cinematic in the second town is interesting but the immersion gets destroyed the moment the woman doesnt touch the floor anymore when she belly dances. OMFG the moment the dancer wobbled her head to both sides i died.
Edit3: trying to get out of any NTR is hardcore you literally need to min/max your stats and need to plan everything

Really great game with multiple paths and multiple choices. Due to the divergent number of paths, you cannot see everything in one playthrough and need to have multiple walkthroughs to see all scenes, which is great, as each path feels unique. You can be a lover or an asshole, you can cheat around or establish relationships, all is up to the player.

I disliked 75% of this game, but it's the 25% that caused me to give the game 5 stars. There are four scenes that were highly erotic, triggering great eroticism. Explanation of those four scenes, 2 NTR, 2 Harem (I hope the dev reads this too):


Music was fantastic and top notch.

I wasn't into the rest of the game because the MC has the kind of face you just want to punch really hard. It would've been better to never see the MC's face, so you could self insert more.

Often times the scene & clothing assets don't match. A lot of assets like cars and structures don't mesh well. But, hey that's not an easy task. Creating a believable fantastical world is insanely difficult. This hurt immersion for me. But, at times, he did nail the scenes right, and the assets all meshed well. Yet most scenes didn't really produce a good erotic impact for me.

The extra dude at the start of the game who sits with the girls isn't necessary, just cut him out. He complicates the dialogue in a needless way.

Maddie wears all black, which is a SAFE color. But if her outfit was given more color, it would bring out her beauty even more. Lara croft colors are always a safe bet, brown, cyan, any color that represents rustic, with low saturation of course.

Nightshow didn't produce any eroticism, but that's subjective I guess. I don't find belly dance to be erotic, it looks kind of stupid to be honest. Modern stripper dances are far more erotic IMO.

I find Nora & Rion to be extremely annoying and immature. The maturity of Maddie is far more attractive, but that's subjective also. It feels like the game was supposed to be centered around Maddie, and that Nora & Rion were tacked on. IMO, it should just be the MC & Maddie. Rion & Nora complicate the plot, and unless you're quenten tarantino, it's too hard to bring all these characters together in a story; imo.