VN - Ren'Py - The Call of Darkness [v3.01] [Ace Games]

well that was unexpectedly fun.

lots of variety, an interesting mix of elder gods and Alien (the franchise) for plot, and the story, while still getting rolling is easy to follow and fun to watch.

no, there's not a ton of choice here. it's a VN and not a kinetic novel only by virtue of 'do you want to continue with this girl' and maybe 1 or 2 other options that so far have made no difference to how you proceed.

yes, some of the spelling falls into the 'a 5 year old could have told you that isn't the correct word or how any human would say that' category. there's not a ton of it, but it's enough to be noticeable when it pops up.

yes, some of the renders and animations have object collision issues. again, not a ton of it, but when it happens you get a 'wonder what happened there' moment.

all that said, it's a lot of fun to play, and a great example of what you can push virt-a-mate graphics into. really great stuff, and I look forward to seeing more.

This is really good! I love the atmosphere and the story so far. One of the best things is that there's a lot of content for just one year of development, so kudos to the developer.

The game itself is a very interesting space-based story with a dark side and a very interesting cast of girls.

At the time of writing this 'review', the first part of the story has been completed, with two more to go.

Very good game, underrated a bit. Admittedly I'm a sucker for horror-esque type games and this one is a really nice one. To start with, I really like the setting a lot. I think this future/cyberpunk mesh with the lovecraftian type horror is excellent. Absolutely loved the part where you explore the monster infested ship, 10/10. I also actually really like the writing, because this is one of the games where you can actually make choices that you WANT to make, not because you are forced to make choices simply because you need to get the points. You choose how you want to respond and you actually can do that without trying to fish for points with characters. (The choices are just for flavor, except for choosing to pursue characters or not). There's flavor in how you want to approach things and I think that is extremely refreshing.

Graphically, it's true that the models and graphics aren't as crispy as what you would see in daz or something, but I think they are pretty good. Honestly they kind of give me a bit of nostalgia from the mid 2000's porn games. The characters are also all varied, they are very identifiable merely by their looks and they're all unique. Again, really well done here. The atmosphere though is incredible. When you are on the ship and you see the first monster coming at you down that darkened hallway, DAMN. The space backrounds are also amazing and I loved the look of the ships. Excellent artstyle and presentation here.

The sound is also really well done. Nice sound effects to really set the atmosphere, another well done. The game recommends you paly with the sound on and honestly, yeah, it does make a difference.

To wrap things up, I think the game is extremely good. There are a few faults here and there, like I wish we could make some more choices outside of just the flavor dialogues to let us make more good/evil choices (or even neutral). However, I really enjoyed the game a lot more than I thought I ever would. I highly recommend you give the game a shot, it's really great.

Fuck... that was disappointing. Expected a lot more after reading the overview and other reviews. Hopefully this'll get better down the line.

Good stuff
1) Most of the girls are attractive and at least somewhat interesting.

Meh stuff
1) Story? A lot less exciting than overview made it seem.
2) Choice? Flavor or view/skip scenes so far. Haven't noticed any meaningful choices that alter the story yet.

Bad stuff
1) MCs the usual dumb uninteresting "good guy". Porn logic>>>everything else. Emergency? Naaah. Lets risk that persons life and look at panties first. Super soldier strength? Naah. Fuck that. Let that random women knock MC down & fall on top of him.
2) The jokes... they're fucking bad dude. Please Stop. Mansplaining, patriarchy, arrow to the knee. Uuuugh...
3) Time & place. There's a time & place for jokes & pervy stuff dude. I don't get why the dev feels the need to kill immersion by forcing (unfunny) jokes into lewd scenes & jokes/pervy stuff into serious situations. Do you not want players to get invested in those scenes? Like... what's the goal here?

Definetly deserves to be considered one of the best games here.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the story and getting to know every character beyond chapter 1.

Pros:
Great characters,
Great and hot H scenes,
Character designs (some actual hair for once) are all great,
Fun mysterious story that is outside of the norm

Cons:
I think rewriting chapter 1 would be helpful, it almost made me quit, it was not a very good first impression for me personally.

A lot of exposition that answered nothing and added nothing, and starting a game with that long of a dream session before I was attached to any real world characters was a bit rough too. Would almost prefer the dream happened first night on the ship.

I played version 2.75 and the lack of music and sfx was honestly striking. Especially during Lilly's H scene that was otherwise extremly hot, especially the facefuck ending it was so quiet I almost thought my headset died. No music, no sfx.
I know that's being worked on, so not deducting points. But if that scene had some moans this game would be perfection.

Finally personally I found it a little strange and unsatisfying that Val wasn't talked to the same way as Bobbie to prevent the undermining of command. As Val just blatently disrespects her commander all the time verbally, considering how that was reacted to otherwise with characters such as Bobbie, felt a little unconsistent to me. Though there might be a reason.

TL;DR = great scifi harem game.

Story: 5/5
Pros:
+ Story follows captain on the ship full of hot females. A lot of hormones and romance will show up.
+ Story background is about some scifi horror drama.
+ I really liked the story.
Cons:
- Dont expect some super AAA scifi subplot. A lot of cliché here.

Art and sex stuff: 5/5
Pros:
+ Renders are good
+ Girls are sexy.
+ Sex scenes are hot.
+ There are also some alien and furry girls.
Cons:
- I cant think of anything,

Gameplay: 3/5
Pros:
+ This is typical VN with choices.
+ Choices give the player mostly flavour text. Some answers are very amusing.
+ English is decent.
+ The game has some soundtrack.
+ The game has some sound effects.
Cons:
- This game is pretty much Kinetic Novel. Choices mostly give only flavour text.
- The amount of soundtrack and sound effect is not much. There could be more of both.

To sum it up:
This is really good game. I will definitely recommend it.

V2.75

i like this one. now that the scrolling is working for me in preferences, i can read it without being a screen licker. another mouse falling to overuse days after being bought new......and i haven't even been on redtube for at least...er...an hour

the N or novel side of things has been given the attention it deserves and i did not find either the dialogue or the plot wanting. a good solid performance. some may find the pacing a little slow but for those of us looking for a VN not a VSS (visual short story which is what most tagged vn's seem like) or comic will find it engaging, not another mindless fuckfest.

the V or visual side is the weaker point in my view. it is not bad but just looks dated now. even honey select has moved on to bigger and better since the 2010's, and is no longer the rinse and repeat a million times, so why this or daz3d are not a choice for looks to match the quality of writing i will never know. the characters are beautiful enough to warrant that extra touch of class.

better style of art, this would easily be a solid 4 star for me, possibly nudging towards a 5 if a sister gets introduced who likes her brother balls deep in her ass........what? i can dream too. fuck off

I don't actually have a lot to say about the game, as I find there's very little to criticize. I'd like a bit more dirty talk in the sex scenes, particularly from the ladies, but that's a personal preference and certainly not a reason to ding a star.

For a game that's been out for ~6 months now, there is a LOT of content. The story and characters are solid, and I found myself very disappointed when I reached the end. I think the best thing I can say about the game is that if this were just a book I'd still read it. It doesn't NEED the sex scenes to be worth playing, but it does have them, and they are good. Definitely give it a try.

Started out pretty decent and i do like that it has choices where you can turn down girls you dont like and you can even say no to sex in dream scenes which is a rare thing, so it does have alot going for it.

Where it was a let down to me was the diversity in builds of the girls, its main focus is big tits and i just dont like that in any way and it wasent even expected since you see MCs ex- girlfriend in the dream and she has some nice firm smaller sized tits and she looked pretty good as well, but then you meet the crew of spaceship your the captain off and it all goes to shit, nothing but big tits and one weird catgirl? whos very dark/black fur thing, so none of them would ever be a possible LI to me which makes game boring, i wish devs would learn to make diversity in builds but to many fail with that, maybe due to devs having a big tit fetish them selfs i dunno but it will result in less support for the game when it only has a single focus.

The crew is 6 girls and theres the dream girl deamon whatever thing as well so 7 in total, 6 of which has big tits and 1 has normal sized but looks very weird and dark, so i found absolutly no LIs worth going for which makes for a very very booring AVN, i did like the ex-girlfriend but apprently shes not an option so yeah i cant really give this a good rating due to so many failures.

MC is also a bit to cringy, having an MC lusting for everything he sees feels idiotic when you dont feel the same as the player and it makes it even more idiotic to have an MC lusting for someone and then turn her down 5 seconds later, it kills the immersion and story in a big way.

MC is also very submissive, even though you get choices to snap back at someone, MC goes stright to saying hes sorry right after? it feels idiotic considering hes the boss.....but he acts like a grunt....shitty combo.

Theres also alot of spelling issues and words placed in the worng order, it gets a bit annoying in the long run.

As for the main story i found my self getting bored with to much lore and just boring dialogs, also the hole constantly flashing tits and girls walking around either topless or without panties is just to much porn logic which hurts any real story, but alot of it is just plain bad, like MC opening up to the hole crew about hes dreams which should make everyone think hes insane and remove him as captain but nothing really makes much sense.

Animations are below average as well, saw other reviews talking about them being great which feels like fake reviews or maybe they never seen any other animations before....

Theres no music and silent games are just so much more boring, it has a few sound effects every now and then but its meh and dosent really help much.

This was one of the best written VN i've read so far. Beautiful Li, Awesome story, and good animations as well. If dev keeps it up this could be one of the top VN's on this site. Heck even if this didn't have sex scenes in it i would still read it. The sex scenes are just icing on the cake. Good luck Dev. I hope to see more. I'll probably support this one.

This felt like a HIDDEN GEM of game.
Character are good looking
Story is interesting
Animation is really good
BUT! There are sound effects but No background music.
That's why it gets boring sometimes.

I've never been a fan of the art style and tend to avoid games with it but this one peaked my interest so I gave it a shot and glad I did. The use of animations is amazing and you can feel the story forming and it really pulls you in. Great Game!

The dialogue is amusing.
The animation is exciting.
The concept is interesting.
I am enjoying this work and hope those involved in its creation experience success and swift production of more content.