#adastra game

[sing-geronimo]

my favorite yuri btw

[h-worksrambles]

‘Play Adastra’ is the ‘watch Jojo’ of the furry fandom. It’s the popular one your artistic friends recommend to you because it’s really creative, has a distinct and iconic aesthetic, features lots of very sexy men, and despite its fun and colourful appearance, they swear blind that it made them cry.

‘Play Echo’ by contrast, is the ‘watch Evangelion’ of the furry fandom. It’s the one your pretentious friend who watches 3+ hour video essays tells you to play but refuses to tell you anything about it because spoilers. They’ll tell you it changed their life while also warning you that’s it’s going to completely emotionally destroy you. They’ll likely ask to watch you play it so as to see your breakdown in real time.

[crowroboros]

I was once again playing Splatoon 3 when I get matched with....

Is the overlap between the splatoon playerbase and furries larger than I thought? I ran into Leo Alvarez only three days ago.

[petrenocka]

Playing a visual novel for the first time ever so I can watch a 3h video essay about it unspoiled, and because I am trying new things.

So far it's just me chanting

"kill the part that cringes. kill the part that cringes"

Like a prayer.

[leoalvarez-clowncarcommittee]

How about Cassius for the Echo Project Tarot

Mmhh I'm going to say Cassius is Judgement.

Cassius is his own protagonist, he beliefs what he's doing is right for the people, for the commoners and those neglected by the state. Cassius makes his decision to challenge Amicus for the throne, and now his fate and the fate of his empire (and possibly the universe/multiverse) hangs in the balance.

Cassius doesn't fit Inverse Judgment himself, those traits being lack of self actualization, rescinding 'the call', or self doubt. He does certainly inflict these onto Adastra's Fool though, acting as the foil, roadblock, and in fact cause of 'The Call' due to his actions against the meta-narratives protagonist.

On a more physical level, Cassius is snarky and quick to judge others for perceived flaws, even when he's a shining example of them. (See his evil gay Twink boyfriend as he calls Amicus a f@ggot constantly). He also criticizes Marco's appearance and customs

[noah-slasher]

i have been coerced by the youtube algorithm to play this bc apparently I like to cry

[theladysuzanna]

Girl, help; I played Adastra

[critter-wizard]

I watched one (1) video essay on a furry visual novel, didn't even get five minutes into it deciding to play the game myself spend hours and hours experiencing the story (excellent but bittersweet), watched the rest of the video essay. Now playing through the author's other visual novels and godd each of them is wonderfully well thought out and trope defying. Oug wanna make furry characters again they were so fun (not that they ever really went away for me but highschoolers happen yknow) and I'm. Yea. :]

[byfurries4furries]

Adastra (Sci-Fi Visual Novel)

Last time, I talked about Echo, so now I'll talk about its much more successful followup, Adastra. Adastra is written by Howly and its primary artist is Haps. It's important to note that for a very long time, furry visual novels with great art and great stories were very rare. Echo had good art for sure, especially its CGs which are overall stunning even if they do contain minor continuity mistakes, but it's not amazing aesthetically. The sprites aren't very expressive, almost none of the backgrounds are illustrated, and some of the sprites just did not match their character descriptions. On top of that, the engine is very outdated and there's countless grammatical mistakes and continuity errors due to problems with being able to proofread and edit text. Adastra fortunately began production on a new version of Ren'py, the most popular visual novel engine for independent developers, which alleviated those technical problems on top of having some absolutely amazing art. Only a handful of backgrounds are not illustrated and the sprites are extremely expressive, adding a lot to the visual charm of its characters without having to rely solely on their writing. On top of that, the sprites and the CGs have the same artist, so the game is overall much more aesthetically consistent. Unlike with Echo, there's no caveats to it. There's nothing to warn about. A new player would have nothing keeping them from enjoying the game other than the story itself, which is good because the story is itself really good.

Adastra starts with the POV character, who we'll call Marco but who more often goes by the name KnotSlut69, being abducted by an alien. Fortunately the alien is a hot muscular himbo wolf prince named Amicus who basically wants Marco as his concubine, or a pet as he calls it. Now unlike the target demographic who probably would immediately jump at the chance to be a sex pet for an alien himbo wolf prince, Marco is not a furry (yet), has healthy relationships with his friends and family, and was planning on spending this time being a study abroad student in Rome, which he has been dreaming of and planning for for years. So, he actually has reasons not to want to be abducted and taken away to a far away planet. So he doesn't just show a bit of hesitance at the idea. He actively fights and resists, even knocking Amicus out and trying to commandeer the ship. Unfortunately, his interrogation method of just pressing random buttons until Amicus gets scared only leads to Marco almost crashing the ship into a star and depleting it of its very limited fuel. They just barely have enough fuel to fly to Amicus' planet of Adastra as Earth is too far at that point. Now Marco is left with no choice. He has to stay on Adastra until Amicus can figure out a way to get him back to Earth.

Adastra has many things I could gush over. The worldbuilding is really great, especially with its unique approach. The cosmology is really interesting. In the world of Adastra, there are three levels of advancement for civilizations. There are the Parents, who are essentially species that ascended to a state comparable to godhood, the Siblings, who are advanced enough to take on and distribute the knowledge and technology of the Parents to uplift even more species, and the Children, who receive the knowledge and technology of the Parents from the Siblings. In essence, Siblings are like colonial powers and the Children are the colonized peoples. In fact, one of the reasons Amicus came to Earth is he found records of there being an uplift attempt on Earth by Adastrans, which would make them an "abandoned Child" and would make him look good to have a member of a race like that as his pet, and it's clear he has to be right to some degree considering that uplift attempt happened in Rome and Adastra is very clearly reminiscent of early Rome to such a specific degree that it can't be a coincidence. Hell, the first Roman emperor was supposedly raised by wolves and Adastrans are a race of anthropomorphic wolves. They even speak a language that's pretty much just Latin with some relatively small changes. However, because humans have no formal records or common knowledge of Adastra, contacting them would be counted still as "first contact" which is extremely illegal without express permission of the Parents.

There's a lot more on top of that too. Because the goal in the game is to help Amicus become Emperor so he can take you back home, a lot of the game is focused on the history, politics, and culture of Adastra. Despite the fact you hardly get to see much beyond the palace for yourself, Adastra's world feels incredibly full and fleshed out and it uses that for dramatic and characterization purposes as well. For example, whenever something seems to go wrong with the process of deciding the emperor, Amicus is very dismissive of how the people feel about it, but unlike Amicus, Marco can't help but notice the smoke and fires rising from the capital across the lake from the palace. His brother, Cassius, does seem to understand what the populace wants, but he has a tendency to twist it into ugly bigotry and xenophobia. While Amicus ignores the greater political animosity of Adastra's population, Cassius manipulates it to fit his own agenda. However, as you find out more about Adastra, you learn more about what they do to their Children, which is akin to perpetual debt slavery. With that context, you may even start to wonder if the isolationist Cassius would be better overall as he wants to cut ties with the Children and, as an unintended consequence of that, free them from slavery. That is, however, with the drawback that he really hates Marco and directly threatens to execute him the second he gets the authority to.

As you may be able to tell, there is quite a lot more to Adastra than being a furry porn game. It's thematically very rich and touches on many issues that all connect to the overarching theme of disempowerment and lack of autonomy. There's a lot I could say about Adastra, but I have only really scratched the surface of that here. I cannot recommend this game enough, especially if you're new to furry visual novels. I know I could talk about issues like how overall uninteresting Marco is or how drawn out the epilogue is, but it's really nitpicky all around. I said last time Echo is my favorite game, but I would put Adastra in close second. Adastra's highs aren't quite up to Echo's, but if you just want a good introduction to the world of furry visual novels, I would recommend it over Echo in that regard.

Link

Itch.io

[h-worksrambles]

You know, once all of them are complete, (which will likely take god knows how many years), I’d be curious to see some kind of poll to judge which Echo Project protagonist most fans like the most.

Whether it’s Chase’s grapples with his psyche, Marco’s struggle for agency in a strange new place, Samuel slowly learning to trust again, Cameron confronting his inner demons, Scipio navigating both interplanetary relations and his own past, Alex taking a once in a lifetime shot and finding his self worth, or Danny beginning to reach out to other people after so long, I find all of them pretty compelling in one way or another.

These VNs have consistently impressed me with how they buck the trend of blank slate VN protagonist and strive to give their point of view characters plenty of development. And considering some of them have had a little more than an alpha build’s worth of screentime, that makes their strong first impressions even more impressive. But I do wonder which one people tend to consider their favourite. Though in a lot of their stories it’s far too soon to make a fair judgment at present. Still, it’s an aspect of their works that has consistently impressed me which I’d like to see discussed more.

[splodey-goat]

Brok has more action involved than a vn so maybe it wouldn't be as bad

I was gonna respond by saying "Oh you know what I think I was thinking of Backbone" but then I thought I should look Backbone up so I wasn't mistaken again and that's an adventure game not a VN, so

Not sure what furry VN I was thinking of but I'm sure was thinking of one. Still got a backlog too long to think I'll get around to it in a reasonable time but thank you now it's at least not on my list with like, Aviary Attorney and Hotel Dusk where I won't even pretend I'm gonna get around to it.

[mothpawbs]

ohohoho the things i'm going to draw tomorrow once I stop crying over adastra and get some sleep

[earthling-wolf]

Adastra MBTI

Marco: disagreeable INFP

Amicus: ESFP with developed Te

Neferu: disagreeable ESFP with developed Fi and Te

Virginia: disagreeable ENFJ

Cassius: ESTJ with developed Si

Alexios: agreeable INTP with developed Fe

Cato: disagreeable ISFJ with developed Fe

[mechawolfie]

oh my godddd i hate it when VNs let u name the mc when ingame u have zero control over who the character is

[pawberri]

You can tell Adastra fan base doesn't have fujoshis cuz everyone hates alexios just for being a little silly... if it was a BL game and he looked like this he'd be number one in the popularity poll