VN - Ren'Py - The Voyage Above [v0.1.5] [thejellyfish]

Very nice writing and I love the characters!! They are very fleshed out and do not feel like the same old bland ones. Despite the story it does not take forever until some action happens, which I truly enjoy

Torn on this, it has some really nice strengths but quite a few bland points. It's a VN, very few choices. You are a dude in his early 20s living in a far-future homosapien colony on a distant underwater planet. This is where you were born. It is both your refuge and your prison - your colony is likely the last bastion of humanity in existence after what your ancestors did to Earth, but you are also trapped and confined to your domes under the sea. There is definitely thought put into this, you're a curious guy who wants to leave a legacy, but you also have a normal life and know a lot of smoking hot ladies...
Fellas, let's level with each other: this is a fucking porn game. Not only do I not need 5000-IQ writing, I'd go so far as to say it detracts from the experience. I'd also say that I'm not here to read a fucking novel. However, there are definitely minimum requirements as well. Too many games on this site are written as if the developer rents their brain out as a speed bump on the weekends. The writing in this game is masterful, IN THIS CONTEXT. To be brief, there are enough words to create an enjoyable story and no more, and the words that are present are thoughtfully curated to provide the best porn VN experience possible. Will it rival your favorite literature author? No. But this is desirable. 10/10.

As I said, it's a VN. This should mean the gameplay is utter trash and... yeah it mostly is, but I wanted to point out that the dev is doing what they can to make it an enjoyable porn experience. For example, the first sex scene you see is not animated. The dev adds a little dev note right before it that says "Hey, this scene isn't animated, but don't get upset because every other scene after this is". Cool. Yes, it would be better if the scene was just animated, but everything takes time and resources and if the stars haven't aligned for that yet, I'm glad the dev at least gave a heads up. He does a similar thing when you're about to make a story-branching decision. Yes, this might break your immersion in some other settings like film or traditional games, but in a porn game I thoroughly enjoy these considerations. It shows a dev is trying to give a good porn game experience.

Dude, you can see it in the preview images. It's good. Consistently good. Like, STELLAR. Every scene I saw I was blown away, both the women and the environments. Details too, for example all the windows have light cascading through them as if waves are crashing on the surface of the ocean you live under - it really makes you feel like you're part of that world. Also, the characters have lots of different expressions, some different outfits too - they're all entertaining and pleasant to look at. This is a really beautiful game, and it carries to the animations as well.

Last thing I'm going to talk about is general "sexy stuff". First of all, you get to have enjoyable sexual encounters very early on. The dev had a beautiful idea: Let's drop the player at a point in the story where the MC already has a hot side-piece, and has a hot acquaintance he's kinda making progress with, and has a hot boss he's barely talked to, and a hot mom/sister who he's never thought of like that at all, etc. As soon as you start, you have the immediate opportunity to for sex content due to some of the former girls I mentioned, while still maintaining the opportunity for slow burn type stuff with some of the latter, and thoughtfully the slow burn content is focused on the characters you would want the slow burn to be with. It's brilliant.

And the scenes: they're great! They could do with a bit of variation in each scene (almost all of them are a single pose), but you at least have the option to cum in/out in some of them. The dialog is consistently good, and I suspect this is going to be a novel with some heavy breeding content. There is already a really good breeding scene, but... overpopulation seems like it will be a plot device... one that MC directly influences... And I can't wait for more.

The downside here, as with all young games, is there is not quite enough content for a solid play through yet. Maybe 8 or so sex scenes, and don't get me wrong many are very good, but the dev has introduced a lot of interesting characters and a big world that players will naturally want to be able to experience more of.

So, to conclude, this title is promising. It really reminds me a lot of S.H.E.L.T.E.R which is one of my favorite games of all time. The one weakness it has over that title right now, is that it is purely a visual novel, where S.H.E.L.T.E.R is a game. There are pros and cons to each, but I prefer a bit more of a game experience than a novel experience. I like being able to go spend my time where I wish, to travel to my favorite character and ask her to suck my dick again, or change my mind on my way and fuck her neighbor instead - a bit more control (I also feel like this is the best way to introduce a gallery - build it into the game experience instead of some random option in the main menu). However, this is a bit easier to fuck up, making things too tedious. Given where the game is today, I don't think it will ever move out of the visual novel territory, and so I may never improve my rating, but I do expect to always recommend it. Probably 2 or so more updates and it will be very much worth a go. Right now I'm hit or miss on recommending a play, the last scene with Anika (your boss, indian lady) is the really juicy scene - super good but the others are all just sort of appetizers. It needs more juicy scenes like that.

v0.1.5

Decent little story so far. Not so many choices, but that's okay. The art style is interesting and the models are attractive.

The impregnation scene with Anika was . I hope to get more like that in the future.

Not a ton of content right now, but it still pretty early in the dev cycle. There's enough for you to know what it's about and I'm looking to play more down the line.

The art is amazing. Just needs background music and sounds. I haven't seen art quality like this in a long time. Looks very polished and refined. There isn't any bugs either in the coding. Hope to see more updates to this. You have my support!

(v0.1.2 )
This is a really good fast paced game with an interesting setting, good 2D art, animation and a non-disgusting MC.

Pros:

• Great animated art, with many attractive female characters.
• A non-slow burn (fast burn?) plot where the balance between plot development and action is satisfactory. As a slow burn fan, I am not always in the mood to start a game where it would take me hours to get to the sexy bits. Having a fast paced incest game that manages to achieve this kind of balance is a breath of fresh air.
• Interesting setting (underwater colony on a new planet)
• No need for a patch for the incest content. And it's properly implemented in the story (no Frankenstein incest/not-incest weird dialogues)
• No bugs encountered

Cons:

• Suffers from the "Small World" syndrome: the dozen or so characters seem to be connected and the higher ups in society look and act like middle management in a medium sized company.
• Mom's corruption route looks mislabeled (unless the one being corrupted is MC). I would either rename it or rewrite her dialogue.
• This is a nitpick, but it would be better if MC and his family would interact in the evenings before going straight to bed (have dinner together, watch TV, play a board or video game...etc.

Overall, The Voyage Above is a good game if you know what you're getting into : Fast paced incest game with hot characters, hot animated scenes, a cool setting and an MC who is NOT a repulsive bratty rapey psychopathic midget.

[v0.1.2]

Lovely art. Mediocre writing, and terrible sex scenes with no build up whatsoever.

It's a light hearted story, so I'm not expecting some deep characters or plot developments, but honestly, the writing is just so basic.

There is actually quite a decent potential for intricate world building, but it's never utilized. If the story was more serious and attempted to tackle the intricacies of living in an underwater colony with different departments, the plot and setting could have been more interesting than this bare bones set up that exists only so MC can go around banging chicks. But I can still get behind the light hearted approach.

However, since there is no real plot to hook the readers, at least the character dynamics and interactions should be more developed. Alas, the characters have no discernible traits other than their job titles.

There is no build up to the relationship or sex. Even that could be overlooked if we are being generous considering this is a light hearted porn VN, but at the very least, the sex scenes should be fappable then. Too bad this game features sex scenes that last for about 5 lines of dialogues or so.

A typical scene goes something like this.

Thank you for helping me.
I'm a dependable MC.
Fuck me on the desk!
Ughh.
Ohhh, your cock is amazing!
I'm about to cum.
Cum inside me!
Oohh that was amazing.

Yeah. This is not story-driven, neither is it character-driven, so it has to at least be porn-driven, but there is just no eroticism in the build up and the scenes end as soon as they start.

I'm tempted to give it a 2*, because that's what I actually think it deserves currently, but I can also consider it a very average romp that doesn't stand out apart from the lovely art. Since it's so early in development, I'll leave it at 3*. Good luck dev.

The "game" is okay. The art isn't bad, it's kind of unique. The animation is limited to shifting through a couple of images but the author tried at least. The story is interesting and unique if a bit thin. The writing is okay, not too many grammatical errors. It's particularly sexy or exotic, just mediocre thus the 3 stars.

The demo is pretty short but that's to be expected (about 10-15 min). There's one sex scene and a little peeking at some booty. There's no audio whatsoever.

But I'll look past that since it's only a demo, I'm hoping this type of stuff will be added in later versions. The art is great and it feels fresh, it doesn't look like art I've seen in any other games.

The english is good, and the story (alltough not developed into much yet) has a fun and interesting start.

Can't wait to see where this game goes, not worth the play yet, but definitely worth to keep an eye on!