VN - Ren'Py - Stormside [v0.23.1.4] [Atemsiel]

One of the best VN games on this side. Some games focus too much on story or dialogue, some are all about fucking. But Stormside strikes that perfect balance which I have been looking for. The story and setting satisfactory. The girls are all beautiful and different from each other in terms of personality, body, backstory, etc.

And the actual sex scenes omg, the developer is truly suffering from success in those because I already played the game once and still havnt discovered half of the sexual content available.

It's one thing giving a variety of choices and branched paths narratively, but when you are doing so with sex scenes (which take a lot of work to make), and the kind of relationship you can have with the girls. It's extremely ambitious to say the least and amazing so far. Also the sexual content are like proper 5-10min ones with character appropriate dialogue, and a lot of work/thought has clearly been put into them.

The only problem I have with this game honestly is that theres not more of it. I wish Artemsiel the best in his future endeavours and can't wait for future updates.

You deserve all the success man, please don't abandon this

fucking loved it the comedy was just perfect for me (i do have bad taste in jokes so, also it was nice with the drawing you made in like mspain dude it had me dying) the animeation or like artstyle or what its called is not really my thang but i belive stormside made it work for me, i do like the idea of the ghosthands and the ghosthunts from what ive read people did not really like the minigame of the stage but i find it quite enjoyable. Yes i did get lost and that poem had me fucked up was so lost but the hints help so all in all I found it amusing.

You own your art style and it makes for a really good game. Love all of the girls and their facial expressions are really fun and cute as well. This is a game I hope I can keep following for awhile because there is a lot of potential for where you can go with it. So many different girls!

Great, but not excellent.

I'll be honest with you guys: this review is probably unfair. Stormside is an incredible game, and as a hentai indie VN, it's markedly better than dozens others I've played here that I've given a similar rating to. Compared to the remainder of this website, Stormside is a 5/5, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you don't play it. That being said, the game is so good, I'm comparing it in my mind to other stellar VNs, and not to the usual sandbox slop we get; and also, comparing it to what I believe the fully finished game will be, given the current state of development.

Just about everything in Stormside is nice. There's three markedly different routes for each main girl, the soundtrack is fine, dialogue AND writing in general is very good (minus some spelling mistakes; notedly, the dev messes up your and you're sometimes, and is particularly prone to writing "hearby" instead of "hereby"), interactive elements feel nice, the phone system is cute, et cetera.

So why am I giving it a 4? What's holding the game back from the 5 that by all means I've already made clear it deserves?

Stormside suffers from two main issues: there's too many fucking chicks, and there's too much branching. Allow me to explain.

The part of having too many fucking chicks is simple enough: Some of these girls are entirely forgettable. The main driving point of the game, despite some mystery undertones, are the girls and their own personal plots. Therefore, you'd assume that by 0.23 and after two years of development, I'd have some inkling of all the main LI's at least. That does not happen. Olivia is only relevant to the story in some points, and she's memorable mostly due to her character, which is quite different from the others. Cassie serves quite a bit early on due to being one of the only 3 characters really early into the VN, and then gets yeeted out of existence once we get to Stormside Academy proper and assume our position. Taliya just really, genuinely, does not exist. She does not have a single moment where she does anything of note in the entire VN. You can argue Cassie and Olivia have had points where their lines and dialogue affect the story, even if they're few; Taliya does not. Sasha's story also feels entirely self-contained and apart from the rest of the characters and group, and makes it feel very disjointed. This all culminates in a lack of cohesion where I'm unsure how to feel about some characters, simply do not have enough information beyond their stereotype for others, or in the case of Taliya, don't have anything related to them at all. Despite the fact not all main LI's are developed or given the time of day, we're then met with yet another barrage of side characters, who again some get some time in the sun and others don't. There's some side characters that genuinely have more characterization with less time in the story than some main LI's, and that doesn't feel quite right.

Branching. Branching is usually not an issue, but this game overdoes it a bit. I'm fine with leaving a lot of agency to the players, and I think it's wonderful; but I believe this is happening in this game in detriment of other things. Some variance is expected, yes; each main LI is meant to have three routes, after all, and I'd be fine with all three having separate scenes. That is not the case. Riley, for example, has one night where her entire Romance route can branch into - and I shit you not - SEVEN different gallery scenes. Admittedly, some of these are continuations of a previous scene, so in total, there's only really four variants of this scene; but come on, there's FOUR variants of this scene for one of THREE routes?! I spent more time replaying this single night and reading every option than I spent on entire days with all their different options previously. I'm probably not exaggerating when I say this night is like 1/3rd of the game. It's fine with the (sub, slave, romance) versions because they're meant to showcase different entry points into a new route, but even then, they can feel a bit redundant; much like Akemi having three different possible scenes at the end of the update, instead of simply just two. It feels as if the game forsakes progression for variance in the development and in the gameplay; I spend more time branching out laterally, examining stuff in width, instead of actually choosing something and playing it in depth to see how it changes something further down the line, and this quickly becomes tiring, as regardless of the scenes, the plot itself is fairly unchanged between these variances within the same route (romance/sub).

Despite how lengthily I've spoken about these two things, they're truly not that much of an issue. The characters are all quite appealing and work, the game design is fantastic, the characters are expressive, their movements and soundcues are all on point, their expressions are vivid and full of charm; the soundtrack works fine on almost every occasion even if not memorable, and the writing quickly makes you latch on and feel attached to the characters that actually do get their chance and spot to shine (such as Riley and Hikari thus far). The H-Scenes are good, and the difference between routes is markedly felt - there's even some extra mystery in the slave route, with some red pulses on screen that happen when you take actions that are far too harsh with the other girls which point to something more at play in the VN itself. All in all, Stormside is great; unfortunately, with the width issue I've previously mentioned, I'll by no means hold my breath for this to finish any time soon, sadly.

I'm going to break my review down into Visuals / Choices / Writing, since those are the elements I tend to value most in AVNs.

Visuals

The game looks really good. It's easily in the top 5% of games with Illusion-based CG.

The animations are great. Again, easily in the top 5% of games 3DCG games with animation. If you just look at the sample image gifs in the main post of this thread, they might not look that impressive, but one thing that the gifs don't show is just how *many* different animations there are. Any one loop might just look good, but the animations transition from one to another at just the right pace. You're not going to be looking at the same animation loop for 30 or 40 lines.

Choices

The game is almost entirely a pure visual novel, with a few optional free roam segments that can also be played in VN mode. One area that Stormside goes above and beyond as a VN is the variety of choices the player has. Each girl has three main routes (romance, sub, slave) and a possibility for no route, but even within those routes there are hundreds of options, and most of them have *some* actual consequence.

The fact that 2/3 routes are somewhat BDSM focused does mean that players who are into that content will get more out of Stormside, but I would absolutely recommend the game even to a player who only wanted vanilla content, and they would still have choices within the game about how to get to those scenes and what to do during them.

Writing

The general tone of the writing is light hearted and a bit goofy, but not in a way I found offputting. I generally prefer slightly more serious writing, but Stormside really makes its style work. There was only one time I found the style offputting ( ), but that's a few minutes out of a many hour game.

We've only seen bits of the main story so far, so I can't really review that. What we have so far mostly serves to set up the premise of the game and the MC's position, and works well enough for that.

The character writing perfectly suits the general tone of the game. AVN writing in general is not the deepest, and Stormside does not have the deepest characters of any AVN.

But more importantly the characters are fun, and generally likable. Many fit certain tropes and cliches, but they are not entirely defined or limited by those tropes. There's no major character in Stormside that I don't care about, which is not something I can say for every AVN (or even every AVN I would give 5 stars).

I'd recommend Stormside to basically anyone who likes male MC/female partner AVNs, unless they were looking for something very particular. I'd recommend it extra hard to anyone who is interested in mild to moderate BDSM content, but that's not a prerequisite to enjoying it.

What's here is good, the major downside is that the story is kinda boring and there's entirely too much of it (we're here to fap, not read, if you're gonna put a whole lot of story in a hentai game, you'd better at least make it a good one so we're at least still entertained while our dicks are going limp or our pussies are drying up...), I guess some people liked it more than I did, it just wasn't really grabbing me.

but the girls are hot, the animations are good, the sex scenes are good, there's not a lot of them but the vn wasn't quite starved for them either...

But there isn't a lot of game here, I played from start to finish and the only gamey stuff was some lame ghost hunt thing, the description made it osund like you'd basicallybe going around school, punsihing and rewarding girls, but there isn't a lot of that,what there is a lot of is dialogue and generic VN stuff.

To be fair, it IS version 0.23, not 1.0; but to also be fair, it's been in alpha for over 2 years.

This game should be an easy 5 stars but it has one major hindrance to that. And it's already showing in the development speed of the game. There is literally no reason to have a romance branch for the girls. This is a game where bdsm is basically fundamental to the story. Two branches is already ambitious as hell but 3 is going to make it so it's actually 2032 by the time we see an end to this story. Who the hell plays a bdsm game and chooses vanilla romance? The choices should be as simple as 1. Do I want to fuck this girl? and 2. How/what kind of relationship do I want with her if answered yes to 1? That's it. Also, why are we having to choose which Japanese sister to see a scene with? Entirely unnecessary and easily fixed. Hopefully at some point, dev ditches the 3 path nonsense. Otherwise, It's a fantastic game. The girls are sexy and adorable and feel like real characters and the story is solid.

On top of the really good models, characters, writing etc, the pacing is the most well executed part of this game. You aren't having to hold ctrl through thousands of lines of text to get to any good action, but its also not throwing h-scenes in your face so easily they start to lose all interest. Always looking forward to updates.

I love the game so far. The storytelling is great. Graphics are awesome.

My only wish for improvement is to have more interactive punishment scenes like Hikari's first punishment scene.

I have one other thought. This game is very ambitious. Having 3 routes and tying in to many dependencies is going to make coding this game a nightmare. You've done awesome so far but I completely understand if you have to dial that down in the future updates.

Great game, 5/5 easily. The dev has clearly thought through *a lot* of detail about this VN, from the interface to the various paths with each LI, the sheer number of LIs, etc. At the end of the day, it's a VN with soul. One made by a developer with a clear goal in mind and it's just nice to play through something like that for a change. I can only think of a handful of other VNs that have the same soul... and come to think of it, most of them are made in HS...

On that note, I think HS1 renders are not everyone's taste, so I have a feeling this game gets rated lower than it deserves to on average.

Anyway, 5/5 writing and balancing of the paths. Kudos to the dev and I wish them a very successful journey

There isn't too much to say about this game in my opinion, in a good way. Character model and personalities are fantastic, H-scenes are done very well, the writing is fun and entertaining, and although it's not open world, it makes up for it in having 3 "routes" you can take with the girls. Some of the background setpieces are amazing as well, with proper furnishing and lighting, although their quality seems to drop off as the game goes on.

I had fun playing this, got pretty disappointed when I reached the end of the latest update haha. Good writing; I enjoyed the occasional fourth-wall breaks and the overall comedic-ish style of the game.

I liked the animations, most of the time they were funny as heck; and the scenes where the dev could not render because of their hardware restrictions and hence drew themselves was pretty funny. Some renders are kind of wonky, like how Riley's face looks warped in some of them (but that could be some screen resolution issue on my end).

I also think that the sounds effects and BGM were nicely done - really appreciate good SFX and music selections.

Keep up the good work Atemsiel !

Very impressive setup, each LI has 3 possible paths which means there are many permutations players can mix and match going forward.

It is not often I see visual novels that are truly non-linear in nature and so far Stormside is one of the rare ones. The main story while silly at first sight, is more than mitigated by the overall immersive experience and dialogue.

So far the game focuses on Riley, Cassie and Sasha, hopefully we'll see more development of the others going forward.

I was not even sure I wanted to download Stormside. The game was really large. Was it worth it? I only took me about 5 minutes of play to decide that I needed to support the developer. No game has ever had me so surprised (or had me laugh so much). There are so many animations that is like the game is alive. The attention to detail is incredible. The sound effects follow the game perfectly (and there are a lot of them). You can pick so many paths that it is hard to tell how many times you could play the game and have it different. Decisions in the game can make a huge difference in the story line so you need to try and anticipate what will happen. I have never seen programming this good before. There are many kinks in this game. I think they can all be avoided and the game will be quite "vanilla" or not. You're choice. I did see a couple of mistakes in the game but considering the number of renders, animations and story paths, it is surprising there are not hundreds of errors. There one story path in this game that is so incredible that there is probably nothing like it anywhere else (you will find no spoilers here). You can take either a VN path, a sandbox path, or skip it entirely. The sandbox path is like nothing I have ever seen before and I do not think that "sandbox" really can describe it. It is amazing. My main recommendation is to play this game with sound. You will miss too much without it.

Wow, this game is incredible and a near masterpiece! The game blew me away from the start to the end of v.0.23.1.

Pros

• Excellent story
• Excellent writing
• Excellent character development
• Unique and fun characters
• Well polished game
• Excellent sex scenes
• Good renders
• Good animations
• Lighthearted and humorous - thank you for the laughs
• Likable MC and characters
• Lots of content to play through

Cons

• English could be improved
• Based on the depth of choices, enabling the walkthrough is a must
• It isn't finished
• Story is too linear and needs a free roam time period per day to do misc tasks/events
• Game begins to lose focus with so many main characters and side characters

There are several characters in the game that aren't native English speakers and their English is intentionally broken / not perfect, however the native English speaking NPCs also have some minor to moderate English language errors or problems.

I'm not a fan of Honey Select but the author did an amazing job with it!

The sex scenes are hot, make sense, and are engaging. There is a moderate amount of sex scenes in the game (perfect blend of story and sexy content).

The game is well polished and I can tell that the author is highly competent and skilled. The game is a near masterpiece!

It is a fun, lighthearted, and humorous game!

There are a couple of story events that could really be taken advantage of with a free roam option. An example being with taking Jade up on her offer - future scenes of your agreement, etc. Making stuff like this linear is going to be problematic as the player has no choices in what to spend his time on.

Haters will always show up on any game and attempt to trash them. Ignore these toxic people. They must live miserable lives. I've personally played over 50 games on this site and this game has become one of my all time favorites! I'm also way past my teenage years. These haters love to try and belittle other players. Ignore them and don't take the bait.

I can't wait until the next update! I wish the author lots of success with this game! It is a brilliant game and every aspect of it is well executed!

I highly recommend this game and encourage others to give it a try!

I'll save you some time. If you haven't played this, play it. It is a content filled beauty of a game. Enjoyable cast of characters with solid writing chops and even some actually funny moments. Oh, and it is quite hot. I really don't feel a need to elaborate further, genuinely. Play this game

My one fear with this game is just how Ambitious it is. It has yielded amazing results so far, but for a game like this to feature branching paths and have no sandbox sections weaves an incomprehensible web. That undoubtedly will make further development increasingly difficult (NOTE: This is NOT a commentary on the developer, update schedule etc., but the game itself). Compound that with every single dialogue bit having a separate shot and it's no wonder that the file size is already so large with such a small percentage of the game done. All I want from this game is Mooorrreee

Really surprised this rates this high. Seems to be among a few outliers on the first few pages of "weighted rating."

Pros: Seems to be a lot of content. The promise of different routes, and how they're accessed, seems pretty clear and well thought-out. There are a few funny moments. Magic elements are suggestive of deeper world-building.

Cons: Every character is fundamentally, clinically a total fucking retard. I do not use that word lightly. The MC plods inconsequentially from unearned, unerotic scene to the next. Some of the renders had me questioning what I was looking at (like the normal map on the legs in the bathtub masturbation scene--wtf. Why does a young girl's skin look like the weathered stone of a desert tomb?).

I think you might enjoy this if you are very new to porn games, and are a teenager. If you have ever slept with a woman, or if you are a woman yourself, you will be baffled by the characterizations of and interactions with the very standard-issue cast of characters.

Also MC's cum is very, very watery.

Impeccable, from the writing, to the characters, to the sex scenes, there's a really great balance to all this, making it a great AVN.

Characters are fun and they all do something to put them apart, the writing is good and feel pretty natural, even leading and into sex scenes which is rare and appreciated!

The small details make this for me though, the unique and presice animation, even out of wank territory, the care put into each character's spoken tongue, the minigame, that seems great but way to stress inducing to play though for me.

Magic element that don't take over the game and only serve (for now) as a way to get unique and fun scenes, the ways your choices influence others is also great.

And I have to give massive props for the ingame walkthrough letting me make informed decision, love that!

[v0.23.1.4]

It's a rare case when a game hits so many things right.

Are there things you could hold against it? To be sure; but many of those depend on your preferences:

The plot seems a bit arbitrary (and, of course, cliches abound), but that's explained by the humor tag -- the devs seem to be OK with a porn game not needing superbly serious plotlines.

Nevertheless, the writing (including spelling) is definitely above average of the games here, and you can get the feel for the characters, who do exhibit different behaviours and personalities. The sort-of antagonists Akemi and Olivia give the right vibe for rich spoiled brats of different types, but also offer glimpses of the troubled kids behind their facades.

The supernatural/magical vibe is underdeveloped -- but at least for me that's not a negative, that shit can spiral out of control very fast, kicking your suspension of disbelief out of the water.

The character stats and passage of time hint at a potential sandbox mode, even though the game is strictly VN at the moment. Hard to tell, but it's usually harder to make a good sandbox (intertwining plot lines, you know, etc), so that's quite OK, too.

The devil is in the details and this game is quite polished there.

A bit too much of dialogues perhaps (I felt I had to skip 80% of the beginning until getting into Academy) and there's the whole thing for showing passage of time and giving 3 screens for changes between scenes (and showing a clock go forward between scenes), but it's not taking up much of time.

Visuals are very impressive. And I am not even a fan of HoneySelect in general. Nevertheless there's the same attention to detail in scenes [such as characters changing expressions quite often, etc.], which helps make them very enjoyable, as well as good animations both for H-scenes and in certain surprising moments in the game itself. People might find H-scenes too short, but for me they were completely good enough when tied together with the general story and dialogues.

UI, dialogue animations (meaningful ones actually), music, sound effects are all not only present, but also very polished, not overdone, and have a lot of options to turn things on/off. This once again, sets the game apart from many, which are either mute or have one or two tracks or one or two sounds included.

There's a very good (optional ofc) in-game walkthrough for achieving the game results you want, which explains in detail whenever there are choices which matter in choosing a path.

Maledom is pretty hot. Definitely 4/5 compared to many other supposedly maledom games here. Good scenes for various discipline stuff, even at Submissive level, not only Slave -- the plot hasn't progressed to using much of bdsm tools, but the existing scenes are good. Higher level of sexual humiliation/degradation is hopefully yet to come, when I'd gladly upgrade maledom rating to 5/5 (something I have rated only 1-2 games in F95 at).

All in all a excellent effort, which I am considering of supporting.

versions: 0.23.1.4 Android
Score: 5/5
Genres: comedy, school life, urban fantasy
Tldr: Maledom. Interesting characters run on porn logic. Smiled a lot.
Audience: For those that are into comedy or maledom.

Strong points: comedy, maledom, menu options, choices, “created in a considered way”, girls, replayability, amount of content,
Neutral: porn logic, stupidity, story, graphic, sex animations
Weak points: small

The best porn game I played on the phone. Kudos to DA’s den for porting it. I downloaded it on pc too, despite my decision to stop playing on pc. Don’t feel guilty dev

Comedy
Comedy is—in an anime way—exaggerated and stupid. When there is a chance to make something funnier, it’s usually explored—even small things like a university website, decorating room, or tutorial video. It’s excessive but enjoyable.

Maledom
Maledom is vastly portrayed, from soft to hardcore. 3 ways for each main girl (romance, submission, slavery) exist. Some extreme instances of dominance, like excessive kindness or violence, aren’t present. Still, the lack of it makes sense story-wise.

Control and choices
The player is given lots of control for avn, including many menu options, like walkthrough, turning off lesbian content, gallery unlock (absent in the win version) and more. You can even choose in-game if you want to have access to gathered info about girls’ sexual experiences in the past (some people are irked when they get info about girls’ sexual experiences in the past without asking). Sometimes, there are only two choices in the game, but if it’s after the beginning, they’re likely “meaningful”, so it’s much better than presenting many meaningless options simultaneously. The game is almost considerate of men’s fragile egos. Almost cause the dev is calling players “nerds” (outside of the game too, but whatever).

Story
It’s built on a simple concept. Some “side stories” and questions connected to the main story are interesting, but it’s hard to tell how they develop.

Girls
They vary by looks and personality. They’re interesting despite being somewhat archetypical. They’re mostly lovable, and if not lovable, they still hit some commonly desired archetypes.

Animations
It’s a matter of preference because they’re hentai-inspired. Not only ahegao, but even the way they're animated, with fast, sharp movements, unlikely “fast adaptation,” and so on.

Porn logic
Exists here. However, there is almost always an explanation (better or worse) outside of porn logic why something happened. It makes the created world a little more believable and, as such, more immersive. Porn logic should be used in more games like that (with additional support of any “reasoning”).

Performance
Good. It was tested on a 3-year-old mid-range phone and a new mid-range laptop. It shouldn’t be an issue, even on older devices.