VN - Ren'Py - The Survival of Sarah Rose [v0.1.9.9] [HappyDaedalus]

Best erotic VN with large amount of routes that player can choose. Excelent hand-draw CG with good music. Also Dev very friendly with community and keep the game at the top notch. There is also an update with old arts replasement somethimes. Soo quality of the CG getting better every time. I recommend play this game, rarely see something like this.

One of the best games here, no joke. I would even give it 6 starts if it were possible bc it really leaves a strong impression - u won't forget this game like most others.

Story and writing are truly awesome, u will really feel everything that is happening to characters – this game can stir a lot of emotions when u read it. I also really like the battles, how logical they are. As a fellow total war fan, I was really ecstatic reading them: they are really thought through and those strategies will really work (I used them a lot in total war). I can see how much effort were put into almost every line of the story and this is truly amazing.

There only a few things are lacking to make this a truly perfect game:

• Art is really outdated and should be redone (should be pretty ez with new AI generators).
• Spellchecking is a must, sometimes it’s even hard to understand what is written.
• Expand BGM to add more immersion: current music is really good and doesn’t annoy u, but it doesn’t really change during the scenes (when I played the game it felt like there is only 1 track in BGM, I had to check game files to convince myself otherwise).

Overall, I’m truly impressed with this game, can’t wait for the continuation of the routes.

A game than for once has an actually interesting and engaging story. There are dozens of paths and choices, and the characterization of different actors feels realistic throughout them. Lewd content isn't the hottest out there, but what is there fits into the story, something that many porn games fail at. Overall, a breath of fresh air.

Easily the best writing I've seen on an adult game. Made me feel like I was reading a top tier fantasy novel for a while. The worldbuilding/lore/characters are just THAT good. The game is missing renders in a lot of scenes and has some art style discrepancies but I'm still giving it 5 stars for the writing and story alone. If the author ever published a fantasy novel I'd buy it in an instant.

8/10 not enough Samayra. Currently she appears ONLY on 2 of the branches (Knight/Mage Sarah), and that is a sin.

Presentation is crude right now but It is a work in progress. Like at some point the music stood out to me as something to improve, don't even know why. Most games here don't shine thanks to their soundtrack. Maybe this are my own expectations for the game speaking haha.

Art is all over the place, in both CGs and portraits. In CGs is whatever if they want to support multiple artists but the difference in styles on portraits does irk me.

This is the second time I've played this game and honestly, the first time I didn't give it much of a chance (for reasons outside the game) and now, on the second try, my first route was Knight Sarah, and Samayra captured my hard little horny heart and made it soft, tender and warm.

Now I'm somewhat interested in the world Happy Daedalus crafted as a whole. Going to support and wait loooong to enjoy this one once it's finished. Hope there is a "bad" girl Sarah route, like pirate or petty bandit, and hope there is a lot more Samayra to come (need clumsy tender dommy mommy Samayra, adventurer Samayra, queen Samayra...).

There's some decent things going for this game, but ultimately, it fails to do what it was made for, tell a story. Every path goes surface deep, with no real depth. The story lacks any real care put into it, ultimately making it feel like someone summarizing what happened in an actual story, instead of trying to tell one itself. The choices you get to choose from are diverse enough, but are so rushed and devoid of emotion, it feels hollow. It lacks any flair, any depth, and thus any purpose.

10/10 has potential to be a satisfyingly good replayable Dynamic VN.
No real way to personally know what the dev has in mind. but so far its good.
Even if only one Route turns out to be the True End/Story.

But everyone can have their own head cannon.
as it all in the end is treated like potential route/timeline/pathway/worldline cores. but never used, just used as outcomes that never would occur, as they have always been one way only.

This is an excellent erotic game about the theme of Dom/Sub. The arts are splendid and hot, and the texts depict the psychology of a submissive girl in detail in most paths. The story is also intriguing, I love it!

god damn this shit's good, from the amount of choices to the varying degrees in which any one of the small ones can accumulate to either help or fuck you in the end no matter what you pick it'll have an outcome. This game impacted me so much so that it's led me to write my very first review to give it the 5 stars i believe it rightfully deserves. Cheers!

It aptly showcases the best in visual novels. It aptly showcases the worst in visual novels.

This is a true non-linear visual novel, meaning your choices wildly impact the story you'll see. You play as a princess, and eventually you'll have a choice to forsake high status and princessly life and venture on a journey to become a mercenary, or a mage, or something else entirely. Which is great, but also... isn't.

First problem here is that the author can only write so much, and with so wildly differing paths it's going to be not enough anyway. There are too many characters to flesh out, too many meaningful developments to narrate, too many events. Too many sex scenes to write. Consider this quote (some minor details edited out to make it spoiler-free but otherwise it remains faithful to the source):

“Multiple times a day, he would find and drag Sarah to his room. Once there, she would disrobe and go down on him. He expected her to swallow his cum, and with practice, Sarah managed to accommodate him. What Sarah kept hidden as best she could from the man, was how wet she got when she took him into her mouth. She feared what he would do if he believed she enjoyed it. For the next nine days, Sarah serviced the man with her mouth, several times a day.”

This small paragraph alone can, nay, should be expanded into at least two additional sex scenes, depicting Sarah on her corruption journey. I've chosen this route to see exactly how she comes around to enjoy being an obedient little cocksucker, and all I've got was this? It's truly sad, and a little insulting. And that's not even the most extreme example. A route adjacent to the quote above depicts an even steeper corruption path. From blowjob as payment, to sex, to anal, in the span of nine days, and no more than a page of text. And then Sarah and this man part ways and... all is good, Sarah is admiring new sights like nothing significant really happened—except she's just lost all three virginities, and in a really degrading manner at that. This single chapter of Sarah's journey could be the foundation for a solid medium sized standalone VN. Instead, it's just an episode that the game is obviously rushing to get past as soon as possible, because the game has more, way more chapters of similar or greater impact.

And I didn't even mention that there's very little art to accompany it. And realistically, properly illustrating this epic sprawling story is simply an insurmountable task. So I'm not going to hold lack of art against this game. But I am very salty about such crumpled writing (eh, eh, see what I did there?)

The second problem is that such wild changes of direction also invalidate a lot of narrative and inter-character tension. On multiple occasions Sarah can basically wipe the slate clean, and most if not all previous content goes poof! Made irrelevant with a single—fateful, yes, but still single—choice. You could say Sarah is a master of going out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returning; she can do it more than once in a single playthrough. If that's your thing, okay, but personally I want most character arcs resolved properly in my novels.

And the third problem is that these fateful choices you are allowed to make are not telegraphing what they really entail. Yeah, I suppose that's realistic; you don't know what butterfly effect will bring you in real life too. But this is not life, it's a game that offers only a very limited amount of decision points; it has to offset it with some clarity. Luckily this can be at least in part remedied by installing a walkthrough mod, which I highly recommend. It would save you from wasting time on choices that do nothing—at least in the current version—and focusing on choices that lead to branching, while getting some idea what those branches will hold for Sarah (and you).

All in all, because of these three problems, I couldn't help but constantly compare this Rose to the Sanguine one. In that game, a very limited cast of characters gets pitted against each other and locked in a fairly isolated setting. You are witnessing just one episode of their life, but man, what an episode it turns out to be!

From a technical perspective, writing in Sarah Rose also has its fair share of problems. For starters, it alternates between past simple and present simple during narration, which comes off as pretty amateurish. Spelling errors and typos are also present. Not too many to sour the read completely, but enough of them to be noticeable and rather grating. But to me a bigger problem is that for some reason the author doesn't trust RenPy to do the dialogue attribution in some cases. What I mean is that you'll encounter some properly tagged dialogue lines like
And then the game follows with a line by narrator "He orders them." Duh. RenPy has taken care of that, it already displayed who said it, and we already understand it's an order, so there's no need for a said bookism here, none at all. This feels like the text was initially meant to be a book, and then was hastily adapted for RenPy. Another indication of this is some instances of unfortunately frequent paragraph breaks. In RenPy this makes the prose feel too terse, even though it would be fine in plain text form. Basically, text needs an editing pass, by an editor who is cognizant of RenPy as a medium.

Okay, I feel I've written far too much, but in my defense it's a wordy game, so a wordy review it gets. Time for a summary. Bonus points for meaningful choices and the courage to make it an honest VN without any stupid grind slapped on top (can't believe I'm praising such seemingly basic thing, but here we are). No bonus points for the scale of the story, it's as much a blessing as it's a curse. Art is meh, multiple different, sometimes even clashing art styles. The overall story is not trash, but not a gripping epic fantasy masterpiece either, while being quite lengthy (~400,000 words at present). Smutty parts of the story themselves are not all that hot, or kinky, and worst of all, the story rushes to get past a lot of interesting parts. This is the main reason for my comparatively low rating. And with that said, I believe this is all you need to decide whether you'll like this game or not.

One of the greatest games. Dev congrats, honestly! Keep up with the schedule! Plot is progressing along nicely and consistently which often is the grave of these games. Great work, nice scenes, many routes. I keep getting back to it with every new update.

The Survival of Sarah Rose, is a great example of choice with consequence. The scenes are not overly perverse, they serve the purpose of driving the story forward quite well, in the instances you get to choose directly before a a scene, it can be quite rewarding in fact.

It is decently written, by someone who has English as a second or third language perhaps, but decent none-the-less. There are minor things, word usage, spelling mistakes, etc. But all minor. They do not detract from the quality that is there. I know I'm sucked in because I'm reading new scenes out loud and putting voice to them.

I find it almost has a 4x Quality in that I just want one more go. A slight change in choice that leads to a new outcome. This is exactly what we all wanted out of the Choose Your Own adventure books we owned in our youths. If you're on the fence, try it. You will eagerly turn to the next page.

My review of The Survival of Sarah Rose [v0.70]

This game basically is a visual novel without visuals.
If you've looked at the preview images you've already seen most of the artwork.
What makes matters worse is character sprites with feet floating in the middle of the screen, often looking 10 foot tall, glowing in the dark (not tinted to fit dark backgrounds), and their size being inconsistent (compared to each other).

The story itself is pretty good and well-written.
It's just very disappointing when there are huge battles going on and all you see is the giant princess floating on the castle wall background, while the whole battle is only being described.
It also felt simply too easy to pick the right choices on the "good princess" path (basically [be smart] and [be stupid]).
In that regard it feels almost linear.

After my first "good princess" playthrough I still thought 4/5 and wanted to try the other paths.
However all these seem to require you making an extremely stupid decision (no spoilers).
I picked it to see to see the other paths, but I felt the writing wasn't as good, and after hours of dialogue and staring at the same tent/backalley background all the time I was too bored to continue.

TLDR:
Potentially good game, but needs at least 10 times or more artwork.
Also not for coomers - sex scenes are 1-2 images with 10 minutes of vanilla dialogue.

The story of this game is above anything I ever saw in H-games, an outstanding storytelling! The art of the game is beautiful and detailed alongside with a great character design. The choices you make are actually impactful to how the game progesses. Amazing job.

Amazing story and and in depth world building. The amount of arts maybe lacking but the story pulls through. The different branches because of different choices also make it worthwhile. Though some times it seems like different scenes were done by different artists but the game's animesque art is consistent through out the game.

A very nice game with insane amount of intriguing branches that have plenty of content. Everything is of fairly good quality. The plot also seems interesting enough, excited to see where it goes. Most importantly, there is also zero grinding.

Though, i feel like with the amount of branches, the game maker might have bitten off more than he can chew but well, he's done well so far so we will see.

Incredible polish and ambition. Typically I prefer RPG-style games with progressing stats, but this visual novel is really something else! The writing quality is excellent, and makes you really want Sarah to succeed. The diversity of paths is concerning (since usually authors will get overwhelmed by managing all of them), but there is already so much content on the mage path that I tried out, despite it being only released for a couple of months. I know many games released for much longer with much fewer content, so I have confidence in the author to support each path sufficiently.

Lastly, I'll say that the world building is great and the characters are believable and for the most part not as simple as they seem.

Great game with the great story. It doesn't happen too often that i'm interested enough to explore all the options presented. As of 0.5, most of the paths simply do not exist, but even now there's easily 5 times as much content as in your typical porn game. I wonder what it'll look like when finished. It's possible that the author have bit off more than he could chew, but i hope not.

Good story, good art, really big difference between choices. Chois Tree just perfect. It is not about common stats level up by choices, it is about different stories. Dialogs also is nice. You have feelings that characters have a charisma and live they are lives. I love this game

The story is incredibly written. It is a bit short right now since there are so many paths, but if development continues at the speed it does now, it will be a masterpiece.

I find the sex scenes well written, and you can find many situations to enjoy, though it would be even better with a guide so that you know which route you can follow depending on you tastes. It is not much of a problem to me since I enjoy a lot of different kinks as long as it's well written, but I can see that becoming a problem for some.

I just removed one star for the illustrations of the sex scenes. It doesn't seem to be the same artist as the sprites, which creates an awkward style change. And I personally find the drawings (from the sex scenes) to be quite bad and distracting from the well written sex-scene.

Keep up the good work, and thank you very much for your game!