Ren'Py - Completed - Space Journey X [v2.20_022] [y.v.]

I dont know if I should keep my review simple or long. I'll do both.
SImple : THE BEST game here! No doubt. No hesitation. No second thought

I played it 4 times throughout development. Starting from scratch every time. Never got bored. Same excitement every time.
I'm going to skip the pros. There are no cons. Just suggestions.
Dear Mr. Y.V. I hope you are reading this.
1. Pleases fix the economy. Its ridiculously easy . After day 20 I no more struggled earning money, which kills the whole economy . On which you spent so much effort with Auto-trading, Sex arcade, Mining , Fighting ...etc. Most of the game didn't make sense at that point. I finished it with 600mil , which i made with almost 0 effort and no options to spend it anywhere.
2. Please reduce the amount of Bot parts dramatically. I strongly believe players of all games are sick and tired of the amount of junk we encounter daily. Starting with Diablo 2 and ending with Fallout 76. From gamers we became hoarders.
3. Most of the commodities have no use. For example you can add a foundry for the ore, just like you created Assembler.
4. Graphics -character graphics are awesome, dont you dare touching those! But the low poly objects, like ships and stuff ...maaaaan
5. Now that we have ground combat with the bots it'd be nice to do planetary missions with them or even capturing stations (I'm pretty sure actually you thought about that already)

In short your main flaw is that the game has no challenge, except for the battles , that i find very difficult, no matter how well you arm your ship. That's good, keep it this way, but add the same challenge everywhere else.
Also bare pussies on day 10? Please add some challenge in the uniforms as well. Some of the characters are ridiculously easy to persuade. Oh, and more skirts please....

Looking forward to your amazing updates and starting it from scratch for 5th time!

Difficult game to review.

On the one hand, there is a LOT of "game" here. Literally hours and hours of play, and there are a lot of mechanics that work well and work well together. You can fly your ship. Upgrade it in certain ways. Explore stations. Do space combat. Play the markets. Build sex robots. Just, all in all, a lot.

If you compare this to 99% if other lewd games, the difference is staggering.

That said, since the game is mostly pretty good, in gonna focus on the bad, because it's where I think the game could improve:

- Poor Quest Management. In the game, the phone tracks quests and sorts them into "main" and "side", which is extremely misleading as "side" quests are NOT optional. Specifically, there are multiple side quests chains you need to complete to be able to progress the "main" quests. This really frustrated me, because it is non-obvious which order I need to do quests in or which ones I can even do. For example, I spent quite a bit of time futzing around with the biolab section, unaware that you needed the character sidequest Infiltration robot mission done beforehand. Eventually, I gave up and started reading the walkthrough PDF, but an in game system that shows what quests are blocked due to something and what quests unlock what would be an extremely nice feature.

- Not a lot of lewd content. For the size of the game, there's not that much lewd content, and where it is, it's not integrated that well. As a "trainer" type game, it somewhat falls flat because the "trainees" are sort of flat and there's not a lot of progression. Furthermore, some of the key kinks that this game plays at such as exhibitionism and corruption only really work best if the characters don't already have hypersexed porn-world mindsets. Gradually convincing a crew member that they really should walk around nude everywhere is sorta devalued when this is already commonplace and not taboo.

- RNG and Grind. I got stuck several times because I couldn't get what I needed to. For example, I spent forever looking for a "T2 military grade cortex" because the luck tables just apparently weren't with me. Locking quest progress behind random gates is frustrating.

Well done.

Good story, kept me entertained. Needs more grounding, tho.
Some more mature themes would have been nice.
Could use more complexity, late game feels a bit flat (combat/trading) could have introduced a more meaningful planetary exploration system while scrapping the outpost one or smthing along those lines, still does the trick tho.

PC needs more character development. In general, all of the characters need more development.

The weakest part of the game are the H-scenes, most of them feel redundant because of the lack of character writing.

For your next game try using Vagrus as an game mechanics inspiration.
As for the story part, read some books with strong character development, preferably something that has multiple povs.
You are welcome.

Donated.

Very good history, good gameplay, large game, lots of thigs to do, lots of fun. I did get lost a little sometimes using only the help of the ingame walkthrough and there are times that I get blocked by some quest cuz I didnt min-maxed the save. But this is common in a VN so I dont really blame them. I liked everything overall, I would love if it had more sounds tho.

Absolutely great game here:
Cool gameplay, very good music especially Iltari/gallery Voron combat music, nice art.
Better than a lot of non eroge commercial 4X ...
Some things can be better, especially for collection addicts.
The porn part is the less good part.. and we initially come here for that !
5 stars rated.

It's honestly one of the best porn games I seen.
The sophistication of the game mechanics is way way above most things on this site, it's in like a top 1%.
Graphics and drawing style are good and high quality. Wouldn't necessarily say my type for sexy things but that's just a matter of taste and preference; the girls look good. Ship, environment and map, all look really good for this kind of game.
The quests are fine, and the hints plentiful, I rarely had to check things in the forum. Some of the combat was a bit confusing, but to be fair the in game hints are nearly enough if you take your time to talk to people.
The grind is there but not as dull and bad as some other games. What I find that you do something a number of times you can usually move on, so no endlessly doing the exact same thing.
I don't typically like the type of humour writers put in these productions but I actually liked the jokes in this one because it's light hearted, brief, often unexpected, not hilarious, but I chuckled once in a while, it improves the entertainment level.

On the other side, as someone else mentioned, I also miss a bit more personal involvement with the girls, and the sexual part is pretty basic. It's more a game and less a porn thing. That I can't even call a negative, it's just different ratios I guess, we're used to VNs with a lot of very explicit stuff (which I like) and very little anything else, so it's just a different part of the spectrum.
Overall it is refreshing to find this type of game and I wish the dev all the best. I wish all devs had this level of standard as a target for themselves.

It's the level of quality that certainly deserves the monetary compensation because it's high quality work.

Through game I had many mixed feelings about how to rate this game. At one hand I love space operas and this one is very well written, if it comes to story, and have nice visuals, but the rest ... well, let's begin.

Story, as I wrote earlier, is very well written. It have some mysteries, nicely described universe and have a potential for future games. It's the part that kept me playing this one.

Art is also very good. It's quite unique for porn games and that's definetely a bonus. Scenery is well prepared and characters are nice for an eye. Can't also complain about animations.

Mechanics is a big part of this game. It's one of the most complex Ren'Py porn game I ever played - most of things you can do with keyboard, many shortcuts (you still can click by mouse, but it's very useful to navigate with a button instead of going through decks or rooms to go for example from armory to galaxy map), two quite simple fighting systems and the ship one can be challenging. The only thing I'm missing is a possibility to skip fight. Some later fights are just a waste of time and possibility to skip without casualities these with 90+ chances to win, would be a great time saver, because with cloaking shields and high lvl weapons, it's just extremely simple. Grinding also isn't very challenging and time consuming, if you have some experience in this kind of games. The only thing I had to use console was precursor crates, because I just opened them earlier and couldn't create extra infiltrator.

But here we come to cons. Or should I say con. LIs are beautiful and have unique characters, but it doesn't matter as you won't be able to properly know them. Most of dialogues is about missions, you don't really talk to them. No even semi-deep dialogues, no background story, nothing. Ok, almost nothing. That leads to lack of connection with them, MC could just use bots as well and it would be the same. The same is about sex with them, it's short and boring. MC put dick inside, few thrusts, some grunts and end. What also disappointed me is that there almost aren't any non-human looking aliens. Creativity in case of species went all to the plot and almost none left.

To summarize. It's a good game, 5/5 space opera, but not really a good porn game, average and vanilla, 3/5 max. It's not a fappable one, but still worth playing, if you like space operas. I see that dev is going to create next product and I wish him/her all the best. Definetely going to try new one, if poll results won't change and will be taken.

This is a pretty good game:
The good:

• This is a real game with real gameplay.
• Unlocking upgrades for your ship is very satisfying, and the way to acquire some of these upgrades is different and surprising.
• There is a huge variety of systems: bot upgrades, space combat, mining, crew management, trading, missions etc etc.
• The game is finished. There is an ending.
• There are a ton of quests and content.
• The art is really good. The environment, sprites, characters. They are all amazing and very dynamic. For example, what scene is outside the ship windows changes depending on where the ship is.

The meh/annoying:

• The game looks like a trainer where you are corrupting the crew, and even talks about "training" in the MC's dialog, but really there is very little character development to the female characters. You are allowed more scenes and different options for a fully "trained" character, but this doesn't come through at all in the dialog and interactions. The relationship between the MC and the crew doesn't seem to change: everyone still talks to the MC as if he is a nuisance at the end, and everything remains completely transactional throughout.
• The animation is meh.
  • While the static images look amazing, the animations looks like 2 keyframes tweening. It's just penis going in, then reversing out.
  • There is no bouncing physics.
  • There is also no climax animation: you get a static image for coming outside and nothing for coming inside.
• The RNG is annoying. There is a lot of RNG in this game. I don't mind RNG, but in this game, it can make a HUGE difference mechanically, so you can't really ignore it and just take the average. For example, if you want to make a top tier sex bot for big money, you'll depend hugely on RNG:
  • You'll need elite parts for the bot. and the only efficient way to get this is via randomly encountering a merchant who sells you a random elite bot part.
  • The random elite bot parts, although all elite, still has RNG variation in its stats. It can be a 42% improvement or a 48% improvement, and this can be a big difference.
  • You'll need precursor cortex for the bot. This can only be gotten via precursor bot crate, which can either be RNG loot or RNG reward from investment.
  • When you open the precursor bot crate, what parts you get is also RNG.
  • When you go make the bot, its IQ, personality, traits, and preferences are also RNG again.
  • There are system such as bot part upgrades and personality/traits/and preference cubes to reroll some of the stats, but you can also just use renpy rollback to reroll. Reroll hundreds of times to get the best outcomes is the optimal way to play, but it is also extremely tedious.
• There are many easily missable unlockables or tedious unlockables in the gallery.
  • Some of these are easily missable if you advance the quests before you exhaustively view the scenes. Such as turning in quest items too quickly.
  • A lot of it involves repeating the exact same scenes with different outfit options.
  • Some of it is unlocked via RNG.
• Most of the quest events are based on time of day. Without looking at the hints, which the maker has generously provided, it's almost impossible to organically encounter these through regular gameplay.

Anyways. This is still one of the best adult games available. And the good outweighs the bad.

Good game overall despite its Renpy's limitations. Plot is fine, gameplay is great, and models and assets interesting. Grindy at moments but never too frustrating to make it non enjoyable. Plus, benevolent dev leaving hints for those who get stuck, or don't want to think too much.
A solid 4.5/5.

Awesome game, great graphics, very well planned and programmed.

It has fully functional trading, a good Story, quite cute graphics (i normally go for games with realistic graphics, so this is an honest compliment from me here !!)

I don't know, why I have to write more than 200 Characters, but well, here they are

What a great game! Artwork is outstanding, solid story, and a good combat system! The dev is very involved and has a cohesive vision of the development path. Each new system or feature is well integrated with the existing framework, and balances well with player progression.

So by all means this is a well made game.

It's not my thing though but I have to rate it objectively.

The visual style is top notch and the gameplay is fun enough to tag along and the story is fine.

That's about where things end with positives for me as the game is such a slooow burner and the H scenes are not really... like... they're not satisfying enough.

If you're down for a slow burner and getting off to pics that sometimes slowly move - it's a great game.

Overall it's consistent and everything comes together very nicely. I just wish there was way more porn in here.

Absolutely fantastic game. I loved the game play, as I could work most things out and only referred to the walkthrough and the forum for the odd thing I got stuck on. It was usually me being thick as opposed to the game being hard.

I loved the different elements to the game and the increasing level of titilation with the characters as you progressed.

But what I loved most was the freedom to do whatever I wanted without being driven down a single path. I think I clocked up around 400 in-game days of playing and there were only 2 gallery images I didn't unlock. One was the magazine from Nimhe, which you can't get if you miss it the first time, and the second was the ship kills.

The only criticisms I have are that it took me a long time until the Krell quest that revoked Moira's pet exemption turned up. This could do with a capped RNG, so you do get it within a reasonable amout of time. The other one is the Yvyee doesn't show up as a red marker on the ship map, so I didn't know she was onboard!

Interesting visual style, plethora of sci-fi references and various gameplay elements (trading, bot design, uniform choices...).

Lighthearted fun with NSFW elements that can give you more than a few hours of gameplay. Repeatability with additional content, even if the label says complete developer still updates the game, is pretty good.

Easy 5/5.

This is a rather high quality game, with rather high quality renders, and actual gameplay. The issue is that the H-scenes are pretty dull and the gameplay is tedious and grindy as all hell.

I'll give an example of the raw bullshit you have to go through to do a simple task. I want to go to another sector in the game. Well, you need to upgrade the engine on your ship and grind enough extra parts to get the engine running well enough to reach the warp gate. Actually, you need a warp drive and enough parts for that to be working at 100% capacity, too. Actually, you can't access the warp gate unless you unlock another character first. Actually, you need everyone to wear a certain uniform first before you're allowed to go. Actually, you need to grind enough stats on every character before they actually even want to wear the uniform in the first place. Actually, you needed a license to use the warp gate. Actually, you need a multipass to get a license in the first place. Actually, you needed someone to take a multi-day class to train in using the warp in the first place. Ok, now you can jump-, no, wait, now you need to actually find someone with connections to that sector, then trade favors with them.

If you read through all of that and didn't have the urge to shoot yourself, maybe the shitty combat will, the gigantic currency grind, or constant upkeep of the ship and the crew's sanity and needs will.

I think you get the point. The juice was not worth the squeeze for me.

I don't understand why people gave this game so many upvotes. Despite being an average game, I spent half the time trying to decipher the interface and ways to progress, and I was using the walkthrough document. The game is repetitive, full of grind, and the unlocked scenes honestly don't make up for the amount of grinding you have to go through. Even as you progress with the girls, it seems like nothing in the game changes regarding them. They remain annoying and reluctant with every interaction you make, and the game limits you to the maximum points you can progress on one day and blocks any interaction. Progression is difficult and confusing without a proper tutorial, and the game's hints are extremely confusing, giving you hints that you should use an item you haven't even unlocked yet or using keywords that don't help at all. You have to guess a girl's progress: giving a specific drink at a specific time, gift an outfit only when the heroine is in the room. I got really frustrated with this game; I even started using renpy console commands, but I still couldn't finish it. I'm only giving it 3 stars because the girls are beautiful, the game's visuals are beautiful and the dev really tried to make a game, not just a gallery game like many other devs.

One of the best Ren-Py game. The creator was able to add different gameplay so you are not bored of the repetitive action.

If the dev continue to extend the porn part i happily give it another go in few months.

No 5 stars because the corruption is lock to scene (due to engine) and not reflect beyond it.

One of the best games on this whole site. Clearly, a top tier game with a lot of heart and attention to detail. As someone below mentioned, unlike other games where you just wander around the map collecting CGs, this one actually has gameplay. Resource gathering, trading, ship upgrades, space combat, android assembly, and of course, relationships with the heroines.
The developer is very active and constantly improving the game. I respect that the developer engages in a meaningful way with the community instead of trying to milk a game. Absolutely deserves 5 stars.

An excellent sandbox game. Unlike other games where you just wander around the map collecting CGs, this one actually has gameplay. Resource gathering, trading, ship upgrades, space combat, android assembly, and of course, relationships with the heroines.
The developer is very active and constantly improving the game. If other devs—those who drag their projects out for years—had even half of this one's enthusiasm, those never-ending games would have been finished long ago.
Yes, the game has a lot of grinding, but that’s not a problem for me. Highly recommended.

As others have pointed out, it's a bit lacking in the sex/animation department, but more than makes up for it as an actual functioning game. If anything, it does a really good job of making you feel like an actual space ship Captain. Beside all the day-to-day management of your ship systems, you also have the crew to manage as well as your general cash flow. The space combat minigame is simple but in-depth enough that you have to properly strategize, while also making sure your ship is running at top performance in-between fights. A constant flow of new quests and side objectives also keeps you engaged, which is always something I find lacking in small-scale or solo projects.

Ironically, the normal game content kind of takes precedence over the sexual content. That's also where my criticisms come in: the game has an attempt at animations (both for sex or other activities like the dancing girls at the space bars) but they look a little too stiff and awkward for me. I personally think they would have just been better delivering high-quality renders.

My last criticism would also be the pace at which you can "train" or "corrupt" your crew members. A lot of progression is locked behind specific quests or game events, which means there's less of a sandbox approach. It would have been nice to choose which crew members I wanted to max out stats with.

Either way, this was a really strong game. Looking forward to whatever the devs put out next!