Spicy Vortex ‘s “Silver in the Sky: Amulet” is a lewd turn-based sci-fi card battle/visual novel PC title (you play as a sexy space ranger babe called Arya), and the game starts of by having you investigating some information passed on by an informant.
Well, before you know it, you are attacked by a defence drone and then by various other baddies on the planet, that you decided to investigate.
Playing as the rather lovely Arya, the game is split into two sections, with the card game section bookending the visual novel section of the story. The card game has a few novel ideals: Taking turns between yourself and your opponent, you have a choice of three cards, which can be influenced by one of four strategy items.
So, an attack strategy should be picking cards that are geared towards fighting, whilst health would pick cards that heal you. Whilst this works to some degree, you do find that a lot of the given cards aren’t appropriate to your strategy…And having three cards that do nothing is not particularly helpful.
Some cards also take up stamina, which does force you to change strategies in order to refill that up quickly, otherwise your chosen card may not work fully – or at all. Play continues until either one of you reaches zero health. If you win, the game continues, but if you lose, you are given the chance to replay the level – or at least, that’s the idea.
Unfortunately, there was a bug where you could restart, but you can’t do anything – the developer is looking into this, however. Another problem with the card battle screen is the AI used for the enemies – it has a tendency to attack a few times and then just continually heal itself, nullifying any damage you do immediately.
So this means that the game drag on for ages as the fights ends in a sci-fi stalemate until one manages to cause sufficient continual damage (this is with no doubt one of the most annoying aspects of the game).
After each fight, your character has the general need to unwind with some “alone time” (aka “lewd time”). This could have been a section of the game, that could have really lifted the game up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t – all you get is a single, static screen with sound effects.
The visual novel part is nice enough, if somewhat basic. You see, there is no backlog, skipping or auto-playing…And that’s something that would come in handy. So let’s just say that there are a lot of things to be wished for in “Silver in the Sky: Amulet”…And I find that to be rather sad, since “Silver in the Sky” could have been so much more than it is.
However, as of now, that’s not the case. So sadly enough, “Silver in the Sky” falls flat on its flaws, because quite a few of the game’s flaws ruins the gameplay experience a whole lot I have to say. Even so, it might still be worth keeping an eye on “Silver in the Sky”, as there’s a chance that Spicy Vortex will try to fix the errors and cons that I’ve pointed out in this review.
At this very moment though, it would probably be a good idea to try the only version of the game for free before you buy the full version of “Silver in the Sky: Amulet”.
Pros:
+ Pretty nice graphics
+ Story should be interesting
+ An interesting starting point for a series
Cons:
– Battle sections are a bit tedious – needs more cards based on your attacking type
– Adult sections are only single, static screens
– At the moment, there are some pretty bad bugs in the game
– Music and sound effects just exist
– Screen resolution choice is limited
Gameplay: 3/5
Graphics: 3/5
Sound and music: 3/5
Controls: 4/5
Replay value: 3/5
Story: 3/5
Verdict: 3/5
“Silver in the Sky: Amulet” is supposed to be the very start of the series, and sure, the first part does indeed have some rather interesting ideas. Unfortunately enough though, “Silver in the Sky” suffers from gameplay and technical issues which would well hamper any progress that you put into the game. However, once (hopefully) these issues has been fixed, it could very well become a fun game.
Title: Silver in the Sky: Amulet
Developer: Spicy Vortex
Format: PC Download
Genre: Card combat/visual novel
Resolution: User-defined
Release date:2018-09-06
Difficulty: Variable
Spent time: +3 hours
Average grade internationally: N/A
PEGI age rating: +18
Price: From 1.72 Euro via Itch.io
Credit:
Robin Ek – Editor
***Disclosure***
The review code was provided by Spicy Vortex.
Nicholas Kingsley
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @sku_te
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Tags: Lewd games, PC games, PC review, Silver in the Sky, Silver in the Sky: Amulet, Spicy Vortex, Visual novel