VN - Ren'Py - The Survival of Sarah Rose [v0.4.9.9] [HappyDaedalus]

VN done right. You get to choose your adventure hardcore, visuals are on point and the topics the game touches are actually somewhat interesting(surprising for a porn game).

As always you gotta ask yourself why play a porn game instead of A)play a game B)Have sex or watch porn, and this one has compelling reasons to sink teeth into.

The plot is really intriguing in some places, but at the same time it is quite predictable.

But you could close your eyes to this if the game did not jump from style to style, it looks very terrible and ruins the whole atmosphere.
Bed scenes suffer from the same problem, which is critical for a game of this genre.

Now I would recommend this at most for familiarization and wait for the full release so as not to play a mishmash.

I recently played v3.9.9 of The Survival of Sarah Rose, which follows the story of Sarah Rose, the princess of Rosanna. In the game, your decisions shape her journey, leading to various outcomes like the "Royalty Paths," "Adventuring Paths," and even the "Slave Paths." I mostly stuck with the "Adventuring Paths," especially the "Mage Apprentice Path," and I was hooked right from the start. The story and subplots are set in a dark fantasy world, and they’re really well written.

I usually don’t go for games with female protagonists because a lot of them treat the main character like a cumbag for all the monsters and jerks to abuse. While this game has its share of those types of characters, it also has genuinely nice and likeable ones like Varga, Vaelen, and my favorite, “best girl” Samayra. My favorite part, hands down, is the yuri/lesbian content—it’s really well done, whether it’s Sarah X Kate or Sarah X Samayra. Though, I’d love to see more scenes where Sarah takes on a more dominant role. Most of the time, she’s portrayed as submissive.

When it comes to the art, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. It’s clear multiple artists were involved, and the early styles are noticeably different from the later ones. Personally, I prefer the later style, but overall, the art fits the game well and is pretty solid.

Overall, TSoSR is a solid game, and I’m excited to see how it evolves from here!

Great production values, solid plot and beautiful visuals, let down by the author's verbal diarrhea and love for complicating simple situations.

As I was playing along, the balance between "oh, beautiful" and "this is so annoying" increasingly shifted towards annoying. Holding the skip button helped for a while, until I reached the point I really couldn't be arsed anymore.

On the first glance it looks good and very abmbitious. I would even say overly ambitious, there are too many paths, and within those paths there are even more paths. I'm afraid this game won't be finished until 2030+

I'm honestly not understanding the hype. I was drawn in with the splendid artwork in the screenshots... but what you see there is basically all you get. There are mountains of text between H scenes, and the H scenes are limited to 1-2 CG's with more mountains of text. I couldn't even be bothered going back and holding ctrl to find all the scenes (no gallery either). It's not a game you can get off to, which means it has no business being an H game. I didn't find the story particularly engaging either, with 0 interesting characters presented right up to the 1st big choice.

It may sound like a joke but i literally played this erotic game for the plot.

there's many routes, so far I'm more invested in the princess one

The writing is good, some jokes made me laugh and some events made me feel things, only problem here is if something, environmental descriptions can be dragged to much between narrated actions.

the erotic in the princess route is quite low but is the story that more has me invested, only complain from my perverted heart is that i wish there was the incest option with thomas, my sweet Alabama deserves good representation and a kingdom setting fits perfectly.

the mayor unpleasaness you will find is the constant change of drawing style and styling of background places sometimes makes paranoid that is all IA, i wish to see an style get uniformed or at least things like accessories and background places fixed into the written description because otherwise it really hinders immersion, example of this is sarah suddenly having a differently crown when inviting lily into the room, sarah balcony looking architecturally very differently in every art style, or a modern businessman seated in the counsil room for no reason when disscusing the letter of the rumandi queen.

i wish to see that image coungrity fixed at least if the art style cannot be uniformed and i sure hope there's no IA being used, until sure i will refrain from buying but i truly endorse anyone to play this, mostly for the plot

v0.8.9

This is a Visual Novel in third-person narration, so you're just following someone else's story - you are not part of it, although you make decision for her - a Play Her Own Adventure game, if you will.

Many of the choices should be irrelevant, yet they have major effects. As an example, allowing a friend to chat with you when you are angry apparently results in having sex, getting married, and having babies with that character.

At the very least the impact of the choices should be more explicit - how do you go from chatting a couple of times to spending the rest of your life with a character?

The visual aspect matters much more in visual novels for obvious reasons. The art is mixed: the character sprites are rather plain, but the background and full-size pictures are a bit better. I guess that's where the AI tag comes from - there's a clear difference in style and quality.

The player sprite barely changes: the girl's father dies and she keeps the same expression as ever. Her face and clothes also remain the same, even when multiple years pass.

Pictures linger on the screen for ages: sometimes you go through dozens of lines of text with no new pictures, and once you get one, it's often a recycled background and/or sprite.

Due to this, your eyes will be glued to the bottom of the monitor during 95% of the time, instead of bouncing from the text to the pictures, as in novels with more visual content.

On this sense, this game would've worked better as an HTML/Twine game, which is more suitable for textwalls with few pictures. When playing a visual novel, I expect more pictures and variety.

Color-coding the names of the characters could also help - it can take a bit getting used to which is which, especially when you get multiple new characters introducing at once.

I liked the art style of full screen pictures, especially the latter ones, like the meetings of the queen and her council. I didn't like the sprites, especially the eyes - she looks like a sloth.

Regarding the lewd aspect, there isn't much to talk about, at least not on the path that I got: a couple of scenes with the mercenary, and then 3 or 4 with the husband, and that was it. I didn't have a choice in any - all of them happened on their own and didn't offer any options.

I didn't see 90% of the listed tags, so I assume they're part of other paths.

The text itself is neither good nor bad - most sentences begin with the name of a character, followed by an action: "X does this", "Y does that". It can get a bit tiresome.

The story feels like it's written on the go, so all of a sudden you'll be bombarded with tons of new information: people, places, kingdoms... things that didn't exist during the entire story suddenly get dozens and dozens of lines about them and their importance.

This is one of the weakest points, as it can be too much information at once, and it makes you wonder why such an important place/character was never mentioned before.

All in all, not a bad game, just one with a lot of room for improvement.
Maybe other routes have better content - my score is mostly based on the one that I got (marrying the guy with the scar after speaking with him).

Give the game a try. A lot of people seem to enjoy it.

This is purely subjective because I enjoyed this game more than I could find reasons for. The visuals aren't exactly rich especially if you are like me, new to female protagonist and hesitant re corruption or any non-lesbian scenes, I suspect I'm missing on 70% of the richness the games branching provides, yet still what I got alone is enough to make me genuinely care for the MC and her brother; It might be the full-body standing drawing of the princess plus the game's backgroud music. The story ain't anything new but it does the job and you could see the author put thoughts into it, there are many games out there featuring a princess's corruption but rarely do you really relate to the MC and even feel hit home at times. Thank you author for this game and this review is the least I could do.

A unique type of story with many branching paths and emphasis on text, lot of text to the point there is only few images in each scene, that have slight variations just to give context.
At the start you get choices which branches to follow and then you get railroaded on those paths unless they have another branch themselves.
However the main weaknesses of this game are the main protagonist and art inconsistency.
This game made me dislike female protagonists despite adoring said protagonists. The MC is very inconsistent to the point that she breaks any kind of immersion. l would rather have her be silent and only speak when the player speaks (choice). Her alone makes me dislike female protagonists when l think about this game
The art inconsistency is another immersion breaking part, while newer versions get better, there is one huge problem. The main protagonist is shown a lack of consistency especially her breasts. At one scene she has large breasts and at another she has medium or even small not to mention her face as well. l can't tell if the original vision is to make her cute or something else
For me, the MC and her visual styles break any kind of immersion to the point l just skip everything uninteresting.
Only the mage path is what caught my attention a bit solely because your choice can save one character and have her as a lover and together you can have sex with a tentacle like entity But even that moment was my favorite, the protagonist is there to break everything .
With so much text, you would think you have choices on how to express your feelings and be one with the protagonist but no. This is the story of Sarah Rose and despite the many branching paths, all of the sum of its parts makes Sarah very inconsistent throughout the story.

l would rather avoid this game, despite me loving that aforementioned scene

If you have time to read, give it a try. It certainly tries well but for me, l rather not have my immersion break every 5 seconds or any sentence the protagonist speaks.

Extremely lazy work. 20+ sentences for 1 render/slide. Even when the scene changes, the same character is just copy pasted to the next scene. You are better off reading a book than this lazy piece of work.

The story, while not necessarily particularly unique in terms of historical fiction, is well written and engaging. The characters are visually interesting though do suffer a bit from a lack of development, but considering the scope of the VN I suppose it's expected.

I think that's the key point, it's more a novel with a visual component rather than achieving a balance, but without the ability to flesh out its world and people that a traditional full-length novel might be able to provide. The visuals while nice are too static and inconsistent.

The game does make good use of the choice mechanic of VNs. There's a good few paths available from my cursory exploration, though I seem to have stumbled upon what I assume is the "good" path naturally. There seems to be at least some form of payoff to most choices that need to be made with nothing too trivial, so that's appreciated and why I'm giving the game a 4 star rating rather than 3.

This game is in an incredibly unique place on this website. The amount of branching paths is ridiculous, and most of them serve a level of world-building and character development not seen in many other games here. There's a few really minor typos but nothing crazy, the music is always on point, and this game can be really emotional at times(not just for a porn game.) I really like how much time we get with some characters in some routes, sometimes it could be more in others, but overal the game is of a very high quality. I will say the art and cg stuff is middle of the road at best, but if that doesn't bother you, this is a great game.

When this game is finished is going to be a classic but right now is almost unplayable. The sense of choice is inmense. The graphics are barely decent. It's full of plot-holes too everywhere, plus bad writing but again, this is in a very early stage so... I have hopes.

Easily my favorite game on the site. Love Sarah and the seemingly infinite possibilities of her role. Whether it be slave or Archmage it has never disappointed. Always looking forward to each release

Despite relatively common typos, the writing here is excellent and does a fantastic job of making me care a great deal about the world and characters. TSoSR offers many wildly divergent paths. Some I enjoyed more than others, but it's always interesting seeing how they intersect and enhance each other.

Slave Path: I started here since hey, it's a porn game. Standard practice is to make terrible decisions for scenes, yeah? And it was...pretty sad and upsetting to be honest, although surprisingly heartwarming on occasion. You don't often tear up playing something on f95. The bad end on the crown scene hit pretty hard. There's a fair bit of content here, though it's split between ~4 very different subpaths so each one is currently fairly short, but the main ones have promise. Some routes don't feature much dialogue and Sarah doesn't have any real agency which can harm the storytelling, but I suppose it's expected given the scenario.

I'm glad I went down this route first. Becoming so directly familiar with the fate of the people of Rosanna does a lot to trigger an emotional reaction over anything slavery-related in the other paths, especially on the...

Mercenary Captain Path: Truly fantastic. I'll play just about every normal narrative-driven RPG out there, but extraordinarily few of them offer as compelling of a tale as this erotic VN. It plays off the dark fantasy setting perfectly. I really enjoy Sarah's internal conflict over the things she's been complicit in, and the attempts she can make to claw back a part of her humanity. The last time I've felt as invested in a storyline was FFXIV. Funnily enough, the most beloved writer for that used to make porn games too.

As a side note, I appreciate that this, the Mage, and the Ruler paths all easily allowed for a 100% lesbian route which did not feel any lesser for making such a choice. Contrary to another review here, Sarah was also never forced into any non-con situations with men which would have been a bummer.

Mage Path: Mage sits up with Merc as being by far the most fleshed out of the paths currently. Unfortunately, Mage Sarah is quite aimless. Where Merc Sarah overcomes great hardships in a focused pursuit of a goal that the game makes you care about, Mage Sarah just kind of exists from moment to moment, bereft of the struggle and tragedy that makes the other content-rich path so engaging. Major story revelations are offered too freely, without the buildup that exists in Merc. That being said, I did still quite like it. You get a very different perspective on many events/characters, and you have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Samayra and Razaphel who are both a joy.

Ruler Path: Despite taking the center of the splash screen and being the most natural route to take by making sensible decisions, Ruler is still in the somewhat early stages. What does currently exist here is quite good! Very much looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Sailor Path: Absolutely hated it. Other routes tell an interesting story that fleshes out the world, largely using sex scenes to draw emotional connections between characters which compels you to root for them. Sailor is just porn. Which I might be alright with if it wasn't 100% laser-focused on things that I hate (comically over-the-top corruption, sex with revolting men, NTR). Just doesn't feel like Sarah Rose, be it the game or the character. I'll consider this a quarantine zone and hope that it doesn't consume too many development resources.

Overall, I adored my time with TSoSR. It's not just a good porn game. It's a good game and it will make you feel things. First time I've bothered writing a review or paying for something I picked up on this site.

The amount of branching paths and choices are ridiculous (in a good way) with an absurd number of high quality pictures to go along with the abundance of scenes. Also, I really appreciate a sex-positive character, as there are quite a few endearing scenes with the MC.

Few smut games go to the level of detail and effort as this one. The intricate and branching story lines and the incredible world building on top of the text and picture of the sex makes this truly one of a kind

Heavily branching game that does some things really well. The Varga Modernized Queen route is really good, gives the player agency and has challenges and triumphs. It mostly makes sense too. Highly educated royalty leads her country to success, as many women such as Queen Elizabeth, Cleopatra, Catherine and others have done.

The problem is the other routes. Every route is hur dur dum wymynz so weke get rap3d bitchez. It's really cringe incel rape fantasy. You can be a supremely powerful mage able to destroy entire battalions, a warrior that can fight off monsters the size of a house, but if a MAN wants to sexually assault and rape the MC, she is powerless. She is just going to get completely dominated and abused. Like come on wtf.

Why give me a female MC and all these choices to just really showcase a rape fantasy? Take out all the routes and leave two, the Queen and the Slave routes. No need to make a mage or warrior or any of that other stuff, that's just some girl playing pretend and having fantasy delusions apparently. In a world of magic and warriors and all that, it's just lame.

Excellent game, with a great story and scenes.
The paths are mind-blowing, with how much things change based on your choices.
The world building is super cool too.
MC art in the scenes are top-notch, and a lot of the interactions are quite-heart warming.