VN - Unity - Bloodcrave [Demo v0.2.2] [Blue Fiend Studios]

Fantastic game with a lot of promise! Firstly the art is really beautiful and in scenes is paired with smooth animations that aren't at all distracting. There is also voice acting in parts which compliments the writing perfectly. The concept for the story, vampires in a modern setting, lends itself well to hot scenarios. You can either romance your fellow vampire hunters, be enthralled by a sexy vampire, or be the guy to get around.

Besides the standard VN formula of text->choice->outcome, the game also has more unique systems in place. The main one being the day planner, at the start of a day you can choose which things you want the MC to do, whether its for stats grinding or pursuing a love interest. Another system I haven't encountered in any other game is the perspective flipping in sex scenes. In a scene there can be 2 different inner monologues occuring that the player can swap between to see, which is also accompanied by a different perspective shot.

My two minor criticisms stem from these systems and I should note that the game is still WIP so I imagine these will improve. Firstly the day planning events could be more interesting, a lot of them you can skip through if you're doing multiple playthroughs. I think there should be more dialogue choice options in them for different character stats, so the player is more engaged in the smaller scenes and they aren't just there for player stats. Second criticism would be for the dual perspectives feature and that is just that it is barely utilized. It is very cool and unique but not used as much as it could be. I think it could be great to see the MC's inner monologue while he is being enthralled but then to also see things from the vampires perspective.

Other than those minor things, I think this game is amazing and needs more attention. The devs are also very approachable and quick to respond. I asked some questions on this thread and they responded to all of them.

The attention given to the low star reviews is a bit strange. CERTAINLY not as bad as they are making it out to be.

Ambitious game with good art and enough variety to make it interesting to play. It has potential. Considering the absolute horse shit on this site and the games that don't deserve 4+ stars, this is actually good.

It feels like something made by some sort of fan-girl. Someone that is not very creative, but wants to make a living with pseudo-creative projects.

The story is not interesting, and the personality of the characters is quite generic, like most games nowadays. It also feels like the kind of game that will have its development dragged for longer than it should.

I certainly wont be playing the full game, I dont feel it is worth it.

This game is one of the most ambitious I have seen on this site. The voice acting and script for each of the characters make them their own person and interacting with them feels nice. The sex scenes are well-animated, but they CAN be slow when they're loading and the latest one with Nova straight up skips sections. Since that's an exception not the rule, working to get that fixed will pay off in the long run. Not all lines are voiced, either including a sex scene with Chloe. My other issue, which I've brought up in chat, is that the protagonist isn't nameable. I realize that they chose Alex because it is a name that's unisex and the team probably wants to cut down on recording lines for the upcoming female protag, but I also noticed that there are voice lines specifically referring to Alex as "he" which means they're going to rerecord anyway. I personally like naming the character after myself so that takes some points in my scoring. They could go the Persona or My Demonic Romance route and replace the named part with a generic substitute or just mute the name. Regardless, I look forward to seeing where the story goes.

The good:
Interesting story (by no means original so far, but I like vampire stories)
The characters: A diverse cast of LI
The choices: Choices seem to matter, or atleast give you that impression, which is more then I can say about most games.
Graphics: It serves, nothing fancy, but I like it.
Voice actors: They do it well, I normally mute every game, but this is one of the 2 games I make an exception for.

The bad:
When the time passes you get an animation that's get boring very quickly.

Not in the game, but (like all porn devs) they have alot of problem with keeping to their release date promises. I support them on patreon since october I believe and not once did they make their original timeframe. Is it bad not really because the delay is not to long. But, better communication would be great, sometimes they explain, sometimes I have to ask if it is still comming. My advice, be carefull with your release dates. It sets expactations and if you can't keep them it gets annoying. I rather wait 3 weeks if you say it takes 3 weeks, then that Ihave to wait 3 weeks when you say 1 week. It is the same time period, but different starting points.

So far, the game is shaping to be mid but there are several big concerns though.

Text bloat - there are too many text lines even for prologue alone, which makes reading it a time kill, and it is not really worth it. There is no exciting or interesting plot behind, you are reading casual chat lines one by one. (It is a classical error from VN writers/studios, where they wrongly assume that amount of "word lines/word count" = game content/work done, and the more is the better. It is rather the opposite, the more useless chitchat players have t o read, the less interest in the game they will have.

Long transitions -each day is set in 6-7 parts, and between each part you get 5-10 second long transition animation, why? It should be either 1 second or entirely skippable. (To show that the time of the day and sun is changing, you can make a mini icon animation in a corner of the game, without locking players out of the game for ~hours, watching pointless time change animations).

Animation transitions in scenes are non-skippable despite settings options, which is a mood killer as well, as it can take 5-10 seconds to process the animation, everything feels "laggy".

The positives are models - they are okayish, the voicing is hit and miss, with some characters it feels fake and bad, with some it is alright.

I would say the biggest miss of this game however, is lack of a proper sandbox - functional stat/quest system, minigames, any engaging mechanics for players, turning it into a linear VN experience with meaningless choices which will get boring very quick.

Game is fairly average overall it has some nice character models and the animations that do exist are fairly decent, voice acting is a nice addition and the plot overall is slightly better than most of the generic stepbro in a house harem situation.

Unfortunately for a sex game it's incredibly slow to get to the action and has hardly any lewd scenes in most of them involve characters that aren't the MC and the ones with the MC in are only very small scenes.

The game itself is pretty linear and you don't have much control over what the MC picks or who he chooses to be with, it just railroads you into this content.

As of the current release it ends with an introduction to even more characters being introduced when the story itself is so slow already and has barely any sex in it to begin with.

Focus more on the MC and add more lewd scenes instead of padding out the story with a larger cast and barely moving forward with it.

So far I am enjoying the scenes, characters, story, and the world and can not wait for what else the dev has planned! I hope this game can continue getting updates and build upon this very soild game as of now.

this game is perfect and i can relate alot to the protagonist in how he feels at the beginning of the game hope there is alot more of this game and perhaps a sequel at some point also would really like to see the "female protagonist" story line and view point

Very good game with solid writing and art. The content that is present in this public build is impressive. Its the little things like the UI quality that allow you to see how much care and professionalism is on display. I hate voice acting typically but this game has excellent voice work rare for these kinds of games imo. Looking forward to more and hope people give the game a shot, One minor thing is that i wish there was a name change feature even if it meant a few awkward voice overs where the default alex is used i just really like doing my own name.

Half the time is spent on looking at transition screens, there is also forced homosexual content here despite checking the option to not see it (also, the game lacks that tag). There is almost no sexual content here (the dev prefers to add pointless conversations or homosexual content instead of spicy scenes with hot chicks) and the scenes that are in are underwhelming. Everything is super slow here too (e.g. text messages where we have no choice at all). There are also placeholder events here (v.0.0.98) and all in all it's a game not worth playing IMO since it's too much of a kinetic novel. The only redeeming quality it has is art style but that's just not enough to keep playing.

I gave this game a 5 because the quality is just so good! As a QA Analyst, I tend to view games on this site with a low bar. This game is really polished, amazingly so for a demo! I normally cringe at the voice acting we get in games here, but the voice acting in this game is very good! I will be watching this with great interest and will definitely buy it when it is available on STEAM

One of the better new games I have seen in a bit.

The art is nice. Haven't seen too many scenes yet because I have only played the demo version, but the scenes that I have seen have been well done.

The dialogue and writing is decent. I like the banter between the characters. The characters themselves are a little one-note so far, however it is early in the game so it is hard to judge. The protagonist having special blood when hes horny makes me roll my eyes a bit, but it is a porn game, so whatever.

Overall, the game has a really good foundation to build off of. I am excited to see where things go. I hope to see more Amy (ik shes not a dedicated LI but one can hope), and I also hope the corruption path isn't joining/serving Virgil (maybe replacing him or smth?).

(0.0.95)
Very promising game. It's obvious a lot of effort was put into all aspects of this, It's got a nice UI, animations, engaging writing, animations, and voice acting. Definitely looking forward to seeing where this one goes, and worth playing in its current state.

great game so far would love to support but I would love to see this game get a full release here for free then I could really get behind this and join the patreon.

I really like this game, probably my favourite vampire visual novel on this site. I think the characters are great, especially the love interests, the writing's good and it's just nice to read overall. Love the art style as well and the story so far. My only complaint would be the UI, I'd like to have some more save slots and an option to rollback but other than that I think it looks very promising.

The story is a bit bland and with an MC that feels like an idiot and having 0 controle over him just dosent make for a good game, it also gets annoying when other characters ask questions like if MC will allow the vamp to drink hes blood again and also telling him she would never do it without consent but it never gives the player a choice MC just say yes and then MC and the vamp starts to makeout to lower the pain or some weird shit, this type of stuff is happening alot, even when you tell a girl you never had a crush on her then next time at a party MC makes out with her? i mean why.....

Eveything about the game screems kineitc/linear, even though it has a relationship system im not sure how good that work or if it can stop anything from happening with someone you dont like, but i guess time will tell since theres no real content yet atleast not for the MC you play.

Its also one of those stupid plots where MCs blood is special to the vamp and ofc it works even better when doing sexual things with her so that smells alot like forced shit will happen with her.

You cant rename the MC either, i guess their excuse is that its voiced over but they really shouldent have made it using a name for MC and it isent fully voiced either making it even more pointless.

As for sex scenes there are none with MC involved but if you enjoy watching another dude have sex or seeing some bitch forcing them selfs onto a cat girl and finger fuck her against her will, well then theres a little something for ya but its really not much.

The "sandbox" is also 100% pointless, you just click a calender to put in whatever quest you want to do on the next day, something that could just as easy be a normal VN.

The art is great though and clearly the best thing about the game, but it alone cant hold up a game.

Animations looked alright but like i said not much in there yet.

Music is pretty standard background stuff nothing special.

The interface is shit, you cant scroll back and theres no dialog history, no auto save, no text speed setting and its damn slow so you end up dobbelt clicking constantly to speed up text showing and when you click one time to many and it skip text you just fucked since no log......

It does have a chance to be a good game, but it all comes down to how it will progress and if you ever get to controle what MC says and does, if not then it will just be as boring and bland as it currently is.

Pretty damn good. I gave it a shot without expecting much (AVNs trying to be be anything but comedic sex-romps typically fail) but ended up pleasantly surprised.

The art is great. The story so far, while nothing particularly unique (at least what is covered by the public demo), is competently written and interesting enough to serve as an introduction. The characters are attractive, distinct, and bounce off each other well. The VA actually works as a value addition and is not an automatic mute here. The fact that everyone is voiced makes the game more immersive. Characters sound like you'd expect them to do and the dialogue being generally fun and well-written also helps.

It's not perfect by any means. Firstly, there are issues on the technical side. The game lacks QOL features, the UI is not always intuitive and responsive, the menus are laggy (thankfully the game itself runs smoothly including the animations), and there were also more crashes than what i would consider reasonable. The 18+ content is also lacking for the MC with the promo advertising content not accessible in the current demo build here.

However, the underlying product has a lot of potential and the structure itself of the game is solid. Choice and consequences are always a plus. The MC getting corrupted/seduced or choosing to be a good guy with the reverse NTR aspect is also a big draw since that genre is pretty barren in terms of options. Overall, it looks quite promising.

Very promising game. High quality content.

This is finally a game that actually has interesting characters AND an interesting story.

The 2D art is very well done, some scenes have smooth 2D animations, and all characters have a recognizable and unique design that feels like it captures the character instead of the many interchangeable characters that plague a lot of games today.

The writing is pretty good. It's to the point and doesn't overstay it's welcome. The writer is confident they've captured what they went after, and they're not wrong about it either. This is also true for sex scenes. They move through the scene beats without rotating back to a prior element and gradually move the scene forward through the emotional tones the scene is meant to carry.

The writing is accompanied with voice acting that, at times, may have benefitted a bit if the volume was more equalized instead of the shifts in volume, but that's only rarely noticeable.
The voice actors give a good impression as well. They so far fit the characters and deliver the lines well - no monotonous reading here.
The only downside - sometimes the dialogue text does not quite match what's being said as words are added, dropped, or changed. Sometimes a part of a sentence is also not voiced, as if added by the writer yet never recorded by the VA. This is rare, though. Almost all dialogue lines are fully voiced.

The game is still pretty short - and there aren't a lot of sex scenes yet - arguably none involving the MC. But what is there is an engaging story I'm interesting to play - not just for the smooth sex scenes, but the story, the world and the characters that inhabit it.

Looking forward to the release!

P good. Super high production value. Voice acting that while mixed in quality does have some p good performances and is never unbearable, which is usually the norm for any game like this with voice acting.

Animations and art is cool, it's stylized of course if you don't like anime it won't help, but I think its nice.

Writing is to the point but the world is pretty interesting and it's paced great. Scenes are good, needs gay tag on this site I think but idc personally.

Pretty awesome looking game, great for fun vampire stuff if you're into that. It's got a cool vibe/ambience to it.