Ren'Py - Desert Stalker [v0.16c] [Zetan]

Great game overall, the ladies were designed beautifully and the way you are able to interact with them is quite nice as well, everything looks great in my opinion and was very fun to play. Can't wait for more!

It's a beautiful work, I can't wait to see the rest. The story, the characters and the dialogues are interesting. The pictures are beautiful.
We can only complain about the fact that it is too short. Congratulations to the developer for this masterpiece to become.

Played version 0.08c:
-the women/girls are beautiful/pretty
-the story is ok, it's not very gripping but it's at the beginning, hopefully it will get more interesting
-the graphics/animations are good
-there is almost no seduction/build-up with any of love interests of the MC: he gets his wife and younger daughter from the beginning. There is a tiny bit of build-up with the older daughter but he bangs her quite quickly with almost no seduction.
The only possibly significant build-up is with the queen, the MC only gets to grope her tits in this version (which she seems to enjoy).
Overall, the game is good but not great, so 4 stars.
The main two problems are the lack of a solid story so far and lack of seduction/build-up with the women/girls he meets.
Hopefully the story will get better and there will be more seduction.
Good luck to the dev.

Wow, I have to say that it's a really good game. Immersion is very good, the universe is atipical and original, arts are high quality made (a few are animated), great sounds and good musics. There's a lot of good scenaristics ideas and artistic direction is really good.

Only things is that it's lacking of sex sounds, and choices could be more inpactful (implementing a dominant gauge for example, that could unlock special scenes or habilities depending on the choice you made).

Oh and, the game is quite low on contrast and brightness, I forced my nvidia control pannel to 90% contrast and 70% birhtness to get something interesting. When set up this way, the game looks splendind with high quality lighting effects.

This review for Desert Stalker v0.08c
=== Writing ===
+ great dialogue
+ likeable characters
+ great pacing
+ very believable setting & premise despite being fantastical (suspension of disbelief etc.; anything that's unrealistic is remedied with good aforementioned writing, so that it doesn't really matter)
=== Graphics ===
+ beautiful model renders
+ beautiful environments
+ amazing atmosphere
+ pretty good animations
=== Audio ===
+ pretty great audio (although, I usually mute games and play my own music instead)
=== Gameplay ===
+ tons of female characters to pursue
+ good variety of decisions and choices which are impactful
+ great genre content, some specifically avoidable (NTR, incest, urination, darker themes like rape and domination etc.)
+ most content is almost impossible to miss; a few are choice-bound, but that's ok because choices should be impactful
+ no mini-games, stats, or other things that weigh down fap games imo, entirely story & choice
=== Playability ===
+ bug free during my playthroughs

It is very rare that you find good games out there, but this is really a great game. 100% one of my top 5 games.

If you like games that doesnt push porn down your throat instantly and has good but not too long buildups, and dont like pages of text constantly, this game is for you.

I really find it hard to find games that doesnt have pages of irrelevant text you have to speed through, this game has the perfect balance of text and action imo. One of the rare games where you dont have to hold down ctrl for 5 minutes to get to the next interesting point.

PROS
- Good story, unique plot
- Not too much text, short and precise dialogues
- Beautiful women
- You decide the direction of the game
- Not straight out porn, but an actual game with a story.
- Great MC
- A lot of characters

CONS
- The game for some reason uses a lot of CPU in the menu screen, not an issue at all when playing the game. This is a very minor thing.
Cant think of anything else

I can recommend!


V0.008c

An excellent game! MC is not a fucking wimp, but also not completely evil and/or deprived! The kinks for example male domination/urination/slave/incest are amazing! The characters and the story are well-written and believable. The pacing is perfect, although you have plenty of action early, it doesn't feel rushed and you can see character development. The graphics are AMAZING!

Edit 2023: The game constantly gets worse with every update. The behavior and character of Mc changed completely. what a shame

Not to come off. Here's how I can briefly describe this game.
Amazing. Bold. Addictive.
An interesting plot, wonderful characters, and more importantly, a badass MC.
A breath of fresh air, after all the primitive shit I've play before.
I wish the game only success and for a long time to please us with content and interesting stories.

For my personal opinion - one of the most Epic and Unique games i ever met.
Plot is great and characters are great and story is cool too. I very appreciate that your choices have consiquences, such as if to killing the lady in beginning of the game, you may not have sex with her in the middle of the game)) this is smart way to teach to players to humanism, LOL)))
wish all the success to Zetan! Great job, man!

v0.08c Reviewed.

This is definitely an ambitious take on a popular genre I've never found particularly appealing. That's not a critique of the effort in and of itself, however...In fact, it's a stroke of genius, really. Writers of adult games are often faced with two choices: Either pick a mainstream story and ask the reader to suspend disbelief about the girls' unlikely behavior, or pick a fantastic story and apply a different set of social rules to make the behavior feel less contrived.

Desert Stalker is a better story than it is a porn game, but many of the top-rated games fall into this category. The problem to my admittedly amateur eye is that Desert Stalker may have been too ambitious to leave much room for any erotica with any weight to it.

I would echo what others have said...The sex scenes often feel bolted on and lack heat or buildup, or are over so quickly they leave you legitimately wondering if you should roll back and replay them more slowly.

Add to that art that is somewhat hit and miss from a quality perspective and you end up with an experience that's entertaining, but somehow less than the sum of its parts. In short, the composition and expressions may be on point while the lighting feels flat and lifeless. I do try to give leeway here for the dystopian setting.

Having dabbled in 3D art, I will say that I understand the challenge any developer who chooses to work outside of a contemporary setting takes on to build and consistent and cohesive world, and that is certainly present within the limits of the available art assets here.

That aside, the game is interesting, if not riveting, and more than competently made, and simultaneously somehow leaves me wanting.

I'm doing my best to avoid letting the kink focus taint my assessment here, but I can't say with any certainty that I didn't find some of the dominance themes offputting. Even given the change of rules the setting of the game offers, it does make much of the sex feel completely unearned, which for me often diminished any sense of reward for consistent play.

I agree with others who say the character development and writing is really solid, which only reinforces my initial sentiment that this is a great visual novel that almost feels held back by it's lackluster lewd scenes.

To summarize, there's a lot here, and I don't want to penalize the dev unduly for simply creating content that runs afoul of my personal tastes. There certainly seems to be no lack of people gobsmacked by this effort, and I need to take that into account when I formulate my own score.

Desert Stalker feels like a solid 3.5 effort to me, but given how many have rounded up, I'm going to round down with the caveat that I will revisit this when it's completed and revise my score accordingly.

One of the best games. The world is unique and beautiful. A real blockbuster among the genres of visual novels. There are no colleges and vanilla stuff, just real hardcore gameplay.
Renderings 10/10
Music 10/10
Plot 10/10

Great Ren'Py game, one of the best that I've ever played, despite being so early in development.
In particular, I enjoyed the post-apocalyptic setting of the plot, with the coexistence of primal society ruled by power and fear alongside the lawless outerlands of Cairo.
The storyline was captivating alongside the game's homage to Fallout and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, bringing back fond memories of familiar roles and archetypes.

This game absolutely is a masterpiece.
The story, characters, music, art, the writing everything is just magnificent.
i played it on my android phone and i just love it so much i played about 30 games but for me this one easily is the best.
i just love the MadMax style of this game the atmosphere of the game the graphics everything i love the whole idea behind it and i just can't wait for future updates.
Big Thanks to developers and hope you release an update soon.

I prefer this game than fallout 4 , It's one of the rare games I play without going through the dialogues. It's clear that the developers really care about the game. Music, scenes and gameplay , no nonsense grind and good atmosphere. I was really upset when I got to the final scene and realized that I had finished all the content. I look forward to the next updates.

Before We Start
''Inspired by the Fallout and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, this game offers an original storyline, involving different factions and side-stories that explore romance, violence, and everything in between, sprinkled with a lot of adult-oriented content'' this is thing DEV written about this game, and we will look how much is true or not. Some of them gonna be in part of ''Good Points'' and some of them gonna be in part of ''Bad Points''

Good Points
+ First of all our game have a lot of similarity with Fallout and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, I can give that. Especially the storyline, different factions, and side stories are pretty accurate. And the most important part of Fallout is here as well: mattered choices. Choices really matter, even the very first choice you make about saving the elf girl or not affects the story a lot more than you expect and there is a lot of choice like that in our story, which makes things pretty interesting... It's a quite good point to say, and something a lot of game lack.
+ Another one is ''explore romance'' which is actually quite good for only one character for now but others don't have any romance built up and their sex scenes happen out of nowhere. Big (step) daughter's romance development was cool and reaching her first time was cute and lovely. But it's still not changing other girls/women don't have anything we can call ''exploring romance.''
+ Violence part is true as well. Blood and gore parts are quite enjoyable in this game, there is a lot of gore scene like chopping people's body parts, etc, which is make things quite realistic and even the game gives you the option of not seeing them, which is good again.
+ Character's drawings/renders look amazing... Girls/Women are so damn pretty and their facial features look well-made as well.
+ World design and render quality are pretty good as well, you can feel you are inside of a well-designed world and it's quite immersive. The usage of colors, art style, and how scenes described with pictures & animations are amazing, it's nearly good as masterpiece level.
+ Music and sound effects fits the scenes they belong pretty well and they are quite good.
+ Story is well written and things we learn later with Elf Girl lead are pretty interesting as well.
+ We have quite an interesting story-telling, especially scary/creepy scenes that are well-made and pretty good for making you nervous for sure, like Shani's haunted apartment adventure... That was scary AF...
+ Visually everything looks pretty good (Word design, interiors, sky, cars, etc...)
+ Not all sex scenes, but with the current version 70%-80% of the sex scenes have animations, and they are well-made.
+ We have lots of animations for certain scenes plus with renders, for example, you go to a new place, you see a house, the animation starts and shows different perspectives of the house, you hear sound effects along with the animation, etc. It's quite a nice touch and gives an immersive feeling. And like scenes with only pictures, these scenes have amazing art/render style and quality as well.
+ We have some QTE fights and they are pretty good, especially Shani's fight in the zone was amazing, still, it can be more detailed and better, I hope DEV improves these great QTE fights to the masterpiece level or at least adds more QTE fights like the one I told.

Bad Points
- Sex scene animations come a long way, they look pretty good now, of course there is still room for improvement, I would say they are like 4 stars quality now, and wouldn't mind them become 5 stars quality animations, especially some improvements on physics would be nice.
- Save screen IU can use some changes, classic Renpy IU is far better and easy to use.

For The End
Well... My original rating for this game was 3 stars, but thanks to improvements especially with the sex scene improvements I'm rising my review to 4.5 stars, since there is no 4.5 stars rating I will be giving 5 stars rate to the game, which is very rate thing to do for me, so I really hope the game keeps getting better and quality never drops.

Review of v0.08c.
Just.Play.It.
Thank me later.
Story 10/10 .Set upon a very nice setting and backed up with good ass lore. Choices affect characters around you and also how the story unravels. That unlocks some side quests. It is a sandbox with some RPG elements and surprisingly it doesnt feel boring.
Presentation 10/10 . Is this a Powerpoint slide? No! The way the scenery is presented is just amazing.You gotta play this to get it.
Models 11/10 .Just amazing. The models are just gorgeous and the eyes are fken mesmerising.
Gore .Just existing makes this setting so much better. And nice to see the option to partially disable it.
Music 11/10 .Its not just some boring looping BGM. There's also sound effects on certain scenes(not those kind of scenes ). This makes the game feel so alive and its actually one of its best assets. Also the combination with the presentation is just godsent.
Sex scenes 9/10 .Good if not amazing but imo could always be improved.Big + future preg content.

10/10

v0.008c

Desert Stalker is a cruel one... What I mean by that is now I am going to be stuck fiendishly waiting on every update to this beautifully written, atmospheric world.
The plot, characters, and even the music: I seriously have to commend Zetan for how truly unique this feels. And I can't wait to see how this one develops (but I reckon it will be a memorable one)

H-scenes
So far the animations and statics are simple, but beautifully done. All add to the ethos.

The "worst" complaint you will find is the "sparse" content so far, but enough to whet your appetite.

Mostly vanilla in terms of kink variety so far; though I suspect there will be far more added going forward.

In conclusion: Absolutely loved what was there, just want more of it. If you don't mind waiting: enjoy it now. Otherwise you'll certainly be enjoying it later down the line

This game is incredible, and I don't throw around praise too freely. It's got a unique post-apocalyptic world that's a mashup of fallout and mad max with tons of background, beautiful character models, entertaining characters, engaging events, choices that matter, and a story that's just starting out but very promising.

If there's a weakness to this game, it's that it can border on the edge of porny nonsense rather aggressively. The societal rules of the world are awfully convenient for throwing porn around to the extent that it prods at my suspension of disbelief every once in a while. However, this is a porn game and since exhibitionism is my kink, I find it difficult to get too annoyed that everyone is okay with the MC molesting whoever is within reach whenever he feels like it.

what can I say? this is an exceptional game in my eyes, great epic storyline beautiful models (particularly your wife and daughters, all of which have steamy sensuality to them) the music fits, the action is gritty and visceral the societal concepts are intriguing ( assuming you are a strong healthy male or female who desires to be a stalker too, or are female who likes being sub) I can't wait to see where this is going with the introductions of both a dangerous enemy and a questionable ally. Lets just say I have never been a fan of monarchies... Is this worth a download? DEFINATELY

The amount of content is enough to immerse into the story and discover its own world. The world this game creates is compelling! the one bad thing is that the characters are just ugly. You can probably guess this, but when the girls are ugly, you can't do much to enjoy animations of sex. Situations themselves are good. They are well integrated into the story and you want to see them, but it's hard when girls are like that.