VN - Ren'Py - Surviving the Apocalypse Is More Fun When There’s Sex [v0.2] [JellyFluff Games]

Review as of version 0.1

I gave this 3 stars which according to the site is average, because I feel like "average" is a good descriptor for this game. It's a very typical Ren'Py VN that has alright renders, a few dialogue choices here and there and a point relationship system (e,g Choice A gives +1 for the LI, Choice B gives none).

Most of your choices have no other significant effect, except perhaps a couple scenes and lines of dialogue differing depending on what you chose. There are a few exceptions, and the game has a "depravity" system, where certain choices make the MC more depraved and allow for some risque or downright immoral options to be chosen, but even then there doesn't seem to be any long-lasting effect for the story, at least not yet.
An example of this (which you can see in the screenshots so it's not really a spoiler) is when you get a choice to spare or kill a female bandit, the choice -other than possibly seeing the MC being utterly deranged especially if you made her give you a blowjob and then killed her anyway- doesn't seem to affect how Emily (the main LI) feels for the MC or set up another plot point or possible LI with the bandit, as she disappears from the game either way.

Some good points I'll give the game are:
+ the character design. While certainly not perfect or that innovative in design, character models are nice, the women are not plastic looking bimbos with over-exaggerated proportions and the MC is looking mature enough for the setting and not like a kid.
+ the renders. Quality is alright as I said previously, but I specifically appreciate how there are quite a few instances where depending on your choice there are different ways a scene unfolds and not a recycled render with a different dialogue on top.

The story is... okay, and the dialogue is inconsistent in quality and at times I found it a bit too cliche and slightly immature, but I guess it's not worse than the majority of the games on this site.

My biggest gripe, other than the lack of consequence in the plot choices, is how quickly the relationship between Emily and the MC moves. This isn't a slow burner by any means, and while for some people that is a plus regardless, I felt that Emily goes from the "I'm a strong female survivor and I'm not some easy woman" to "OMG I've always liked you so much MC-san you always make me laugh" overnight and it's quite jarring.
Even weirder still is that this happens regardless of your choices, and it's the MC that gets blocked from reciprocating her feelings if you didn't make enough "+Emily" choices! It should be that you, playing the MC, are able to choose when and if you want to be flirty or making advances towards Emily, and it's up to her (according to how well you've treated her and the choices you've made) to reciprocate. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.

Overall I think this game for me at least is trying to fill the void of Lust Man Standing (which was on a post-apocalyptic setting too, but sadly abandoned), maybe with some Desert Stalker elements, which sounds good in theory but I found this early version not really that interesting to keep me hooked.

Still, give it a go if you like Emily's design or the setting.

For a first release it has a very good amount of content. The visuals are good and the story is interesting. My only criticism is that it feels like things progressed a little too fast between the mc and emily. At the end of the game it's supposed to be a month since they met, but the way the scenes are shown it feels like it has been just a few days. Other than that I don't really have anything bad to say about it. It's a solid first release.

Reviewing V0.1

Short Version:
Among the most boring games i've ever played, this one is the least infuriating, but some dialogues are weird, the graphic is okay-ish(classic "not good but not bad") and Emily has a weird chemistry with MC even when romanced, due to her hard-to-define personality, i could spend an hour writing down things that she isn't but she kinda is due to how vague and generic her personality truly is. Overall it's one of those games that i would recommend if you had nothing else to play, i'm being harsh to a first-version but check below to learn why.

Pros
- The premise of the game, is good: Finally a serious game with nsfw content and not nsfw-content with some plot in it, which is weird considering that the title is "Surviving the Apocalypse Is More Fun When There’s Sex", but still like the approach tho.
- Graphically, the game is good, Emily is averagely pretty, not a bimbo, but not a monster either, she looks realistic, like someone who may actually meet in real life.

Cons
- The plot seems to be about surviving and Emily's past, which is fine, but we get teased way too much, there are two major dialogue where Emily explains bits of her past, and the second dialogue is a basically a repetition of the previous one because nothing new is said about her backstory.
- MC is sometimes dumb as a rock, and sometimes Emily(who seems to be the expert among the two characters) is the stupid one, classic "things happen because the characters are suddenly stupid"
- We've no real perception of time, if we count the days, by the end of the update, MC and Emily spent less than a week together, but around the end of this update, we get told that since the very beginning of the game, a whole month has passed...so the timeskip(or timeskipS) aren't really shown. Seriously if check the cycles of Day&Night, you would assume that a week(i mean by the end of the this release) has passed since MC met Emily, but nope suddenly we got a "it's been a month" kind of dialogue, what if there were more timeskips that simply weren't acknowledged? What happened during those?
- Personality-wise, Emily is pretty annoying, commanding, whiny, while also dismissive of others, holding MC with a double standard. MC complains about being tired? That's bad! Emily is the one complaining? No problem. MC has to cope that he survived a mutant's attack? Isn't allowed to have 5 minutes to mentally deal with it, but when Emily is kidnapped by soldiers, she needs a few minutes hugging MC despite soldiers are in the area(meaning that they're both in potential danger). Ultimately Emily's biggest flaw is her hypocrisy, she left her original group to hating the lack of ethic about human-experimentation, but she is totally cool with killing people left and right.
- Fuels based on ethanol(the most common kind), last at best a year if well-sealed(and that's a stretch), and yet Emily insists on finding some of it, despite the fact that it's been YEARS since the apocalypse began(or so the characters say) meaning that there is a problem with details, which are very important in a game about surviving the apocalypse(but don't worry, this didn't change my opinion of the game, it's just something that annoyed me a little bit, and i wanted to rant about it).
- The characters tend to forget what they said to each other a little too often, meaning that some dialogues feel repetitive.

Conclusion
The game is boring, it has good ideas, but it's bad at executing them. Not bad, not good, just boring so far, Emily is cute, but her personality is weird. MC is not fleshed out so far, it's just a guy with an unknown past.

For a 0.1 this game already has a lot more content than most 0.1s that usually get posted:
The graphics are nice and dialogue is pretty good.
The story got me engaged with it from start to finish and while it is not the most creative setting it is at least well done.
For the sexy bits there are only 2 scenes now that depend on how you chose previous options and both can be avoided if you for some reason wanted to.

Overall im happy i played it and look forward to see how the story unfolds