VN - Unity - Abandoned - Tales from the Slut Side: Order of the White Rose [v0.4.2] [NephiLongbottom]

This game is your standard VN in which there's absolutely no gameplay whatsoever and you just go through each dialogue and render until it's over. Having this format would be quite okay if there was a Skip button, but not having any is annoying af.

Despite this major flaw, the game has phenomenal art, even though none of it is animated. The art itself makes this one worth playing. However, I certainly hope the dev adds a Skip button to future versions to make our life easier.

Very surprising 4 star game.

The models mostly all look the same and have maxed-body-slider-itis, which normally puts me off. There are no choices, no standard save states, and the story is ridiculous with a kinda boring magic system that gets lore dumped multiple times.

But I'll be damned, it's just dang fun. The scenarios are so over-the-top and campy that it kinda works, and the giga-boob models fit that theme. No normal saves is annoying but the ability to jump around to any scene is a nice consolation. [EDIT: I've thought about it, and for a linear story, this is actually a better system than the standard Ren'Py saves. No more having 17 saves and not remembering which is which, being able to just jump instantly to the scene I want is great. Just fix the bug that makes scene selection freeze sometimes and we're golden!] And while I typically prefer sandbox or multi-choice games, having a linear experience every once in a while is a nice change of pace, especially when so many other games make too many branching narratives and then give up when they realize how much extra work they created for themselves.

While the other characters lightly picking on the MC is probably the weakest point of dialogue (conceptually it works, I just don't think its done very well here), there were some jokes that I did enjoy. Him complaining about the pockets and then Meera instantly commenting on them, for example, was a solid joke.

Excited for more, just a couple of important nitpicks:
1. Opening the scene selector and then closing it freezes up the game. Sometimes us players are indecisive, it would be nice to have this fixed.
2. Don't spend more time than absolutely necessary on your lore or worldbuilding. You already have some good things going on the horny and comedy fronts, no need to sink both with pages about how bridges to semi-adjacent dimensions create energy conduit siphons or whatever.

Review for v0.02.1

Playing this game felt like watching one of those cheesy action movies that you know is bad but you enjoy it anyway, and I don't really mean that as an insult.

Realistically, this game fits more of a 3 star rating for me. It has some problems. Being a VN made in Unity and not Ren'Py, it's missing some quality of life features you would normally have. No settings menu, a janky rollback system, no dialogue history, and no saves (though there's a system in place to help that a bit.) In the first chapter there's a sound that plays with dialogue and it quickly becomes mind numbing (thankfully gone in chapter 2), and beyond that there is no sound.

Right now this plays as a kinetic, fast paced visual novel. There's lots of banter and humor. For me, some of it lands and some of it doesn't. The dialogue reads well enough for the most part, but could use touch ups in some places. I think it's too early to talk about character development and such as there's only about an hour-ish of gameplay to go on.

The sex scenes so far basically use porn plot to get to them. Woman was bitten by a sex demon and is suddenly very horny and immediately jumps the MC who she just met as an example. There's also no animations which blows, but I will say the scenes are put together pretty well with good angles and all that. Animations would really be a good addition though imo, as the dialogue during sex scenes isn't the best.

Despite all these issues, I enjoyed playing this! Again it feels like watching a bad movie that you still really enjoy. I think the character models are great (and actually rather unique looking). Having a badass woman with guns is always a plus. I also think the story is interesting enough to keep me invested. Not exactly original, but not overused either. The game does have a unique feel to it.

This definitely leans on the less serious side of visual novels (the MC has a magical healing cock after all). I wouldn't go in expecting a slow burn or deeply developed stories and characters. Keeping stuff like that in mind makes it more enjoyable imo.

With all that said, I think this is something worth trying out if you're interested. It's pretty short as of this version so you don't have much to lose really. This is also the dev's first VN and they are clearly trying to learn, which I can respect. I'll be following this to see where it goes. Good luck dev! I think there's potential here.