Others - Borrowed Lives [v1.0.2] [Corvienne]

Best sandbox for me. A lot of bugs but it will be fix I hope. The biggest advantage of this game is the freedom and variety of actions. You can be and do whoever and whatever you want. It's a fascinating job.

Current state of the game 1/5
1.0.2v defacto version 0.0.2 maximum. This is an unpolished demo. My game was softlocked by an event near the house the next morning in the game. The found knife did not appear in the inventory (I saw reviews from someone who had the same thing after buying things from merchants). The characters with whom you started a sex event after flirting will be your partners in any place (yes, even if you went far from the village) and even events (which probably softlocked the game for me).
Interface 1.5/5
Some even do not understand how to go to sex, because the game has a brilliant UI/UX solution: after undresing, its icon turns red with the inscription removed or opened, but to interact you have to click again until it disappears completely. The save menu does not close with a cross, escape, or clicking on the game background. It only crashed when I tried to click on the cross in the game window (minimizing and resizing the screen to close it also worked) It feels like the developer didn't play what he posted.
Gameplay 3/5
Typical grind from HTML games when you click on some choices to increase your stats, wasting time so that you can have bigger numbers later. Lots of activities/professions, but they all work almost the same. You can walk around a conditionally open world.
Game activities 1/5
The world is empty. The only event I had appeared on the next game day. If all events destroy the game, then it's even good that I didn't encounter them anymore.
Writing 1.5/5
There are often missing phrases in the sex dialogues, so I can't fully evaluate it. From what I can describe: the backstory is written briefly and vaguely and exists in the form of a mutually exclusive choice with increasing characteristics (which the game will not inform you about) Parents are function characters who replace your encyclopedia, literally. You literally ask a bunch of elementary things like a small child, and get an answer in the same style. According to the plot, you are an adult, but the question about animal reproduction does not raise questions in the characters, you will get an answer from a children's encyclopedia. When interacting with a strangers, you can mostly get 1 simple phrase. The author created a bunch of systems and achievements for metaprogression with bonuses when you play a new game, added a bunch of tags for kinks, but released the game in a broken state at the basic level. Don't look at the 5/5 ratings, they are obviously overestimated. Even if you put up with bugs and lack of content, the gameplay is not worth more than a 3/5 rating

Awesome start, however the UI and certain events make options non existent. For example, the Herb garden/farm has no way to harvest the items after growing (I think the Button is just not setup right), nor can you use items from inventory, and after some sex scenes, the character can't do anything. There is no warning for a reason why I can't move out of the inn, everything is grey'd out.
I used the Window's exe version.

This is just a normal text based RPG which I really like but if you're looking to jack off maybe give this one a skip.

This reminds me of CoC and Free Cities where I just wind up playing the game so I don't notice how the porn itself is rather skint. Fortunately the game is good its got an experience system that satisfies me so that I want to do all the chores and such so I get chores xp.

the navigation from place to place is cumbersome I would have given it 4 1/2 stars for that but I'm rounding up since they say that they'll add in a map which will hopefully simplify things greatly.

Very early stages but I'm eager to see where it goes. What exists here currently is a nice baseline that just needs to be added onto. I agree that the sex isn't the best, just like a lot of other text based games but I always prioritize sandbox systems in games like this and this one does a very good job showcasing a deep and interesting sandbox that I want to engage with and roleplay in.

This is on version 1.0.1.

So it's worth noting that right now this is more of an outline for the idea of a game. It doesn't have any written characters or content or events. You can repeat relationship and skill interactions to make bars and numbers move around, that's about it. The sexual content is limited to stock text regarding sexual actions.

With that stated, there's really no reason to play this right now, unless you're really hankering for sandboxes and want to provide your early thoughts on this one, hoping it produces a promising result later down the line.

With that said, here's my evaluation on what it is now.

I like a lot that logical options are added, for instance resting by the lake, even if they don't really do anything for gameplay.

I like that there's a clear intent to provide players with a world to interact with, and sexual interactions coming around as part of that, rather than the world being a vessel to deliver sexual interactions.

I like that a broader set of preferences is being targeted than what similar titles do, that is, I have every reason to believe a smart, dominant character could be portrayed, which is not something the well-known text-based games allow.

I like that that it fully appears the player will have the ability to develop their character as they like.

In short, I like the ideas I see so far, and I believe that if those ideas are expanded upon with characters and events this could become a very, very good game.

However, I'm not impressed with what we have right now.

There are some clear oversights.

It's odd that "your" family doesn't really offer a reaction to you asking basic questions about the village. Those are things "you" should know. And in fact, there's a strong disconnect here between the player and their character, because we're told that our character receives the memories of the body they're possessing...but we don't actually get any information from this. So we're playing a character that should have information on the local area, but we don't, and nobody finds it odd that we don't.

When going to the town market, there is a character named Veyra. The text tells us she's moving around solving disputes. This gives the impression she's some market official, but when speaking to her, she appears to be a merchant of her own, you even have the option to ask about her goods (there is also a typo here, "What kind of goods do sell?", missing the 'you'). You can't actually shop with her though, even though she asks if you're looking for something. So she's a merchant I can't buy from that is solving arguments for other merchants? What?

Getting into combat will always talk about you swinging your weapon even if you don't have one equipped. In fact, it will talk about wolves trying to "reach out and grab you", which doesn't make much sense. Actually, it also talks about the clashing of steel when you're throwing hands with a bear.

Clearly some things just weren't fully considered.

There are also some bugs.

One that stood out to me was going to the town gate at night. You're given both the option to convince the guard to let you through, but also just the option to go through. I'm fairly certain that latter one isn't supposed to be available right there. But also, you can just keep choosing the former and it levels your Charisma and Persuasion very quickly.

Another pretty big issue is that when in combat with multiple enemies you're supposed to choose which to attack. My attacks just always hit all of them.

As for things that the game just doesn't do well, navigation. Clicking through going downstairs to leave the house to cross the bridge to approach the fields to keep heading to the fields to go into the forest is just really not conductive to knowing where things are. I know the author wants to incorporate artwork at some point, but really just a 2D representation of boxes would be an improvement right now.

So like I said, an "outline for the idea of a game". It's one I certainly hope works out, but right now it, well, it needs some polishing up even at this stage, before it moves onto the next.

v1.0.2
Significantly more bugs introduced in this version. Grocery quest is broken, inn job quest is broken, interruption events don't work, others report that sex partners are broken.
Bumping it down to 2 stars for now.

v1.0.1
This game seems to be on track to be the next recipient of the "Great Sandbox with Terrible Sex" award. A prestigious award given to the likes of Lilith's Throne and Course of Temptation.

I cannot express how unsexy it is to read the same subject-verb sentences over and over again during what is supposed to be an erotic encounter. I really hope as things progress, we get some well written fixed scenes that unlock via quests or relationship thresholds. Also, the sex system really needs a "Continue current action" button. How are you supposed to settle in when you have to keep jumping around to get the encounter to progress? Spend three turns getting to deepthroating and then immediately have to find something else to do.

Aside from my frustrations with the adult content on display, the UI and other systems seem to be shaping up quite well. The character customization is nice so far, but I don't really see any indication that any of it actually does anything yet. It takes forever to get anywhere, but I'm sure that'll be somewhat alleviated when the map is added. It takes 11 clicks to get from your bedroom to the village inn where you can start your shift.

There's also a fair few bugs that really make getting deep into the game frustrating. If you rent a room at the inn in the city proper, you'll wake up in the morning back at the village inn. If you decide you want to try a different character, due to a combination of a strange design choice and a bug with the name box, the only way to start a new game and be allowed to actually name your character is to delete/export all your saves so that the game forces you to start a new game from the main menu.

So overall, I'm interested in where this goes, but right now I have major concern that the erotic content will fail to be erotic.

Review of 1.0.1

tl;dr - I love the concept and I enjoy sandboxes, but I feel as though this is more of a simulator/sandbox than an actual adult game. There's a decent amount of content but it's awkward to view and fap due to how the scrolling works and how convoluted it is (in my opinion).

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Pros :
Fantastic sandbox
Great UI (almost entirely, couple of flaws)
Massive amount of gameplay and options
Great writing

Cons :
Somewhat difficult to achieve adult content (in my experience)
Awkward to fap to due to how the game works
No graphics (not really a con for me, I don't care that much but it'll be a major put off for some).

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The sandbox itself is fantastic, tons of options, lots of different ways to do things, the writing is great and there's just tons to do.

The lack of adult content though sours it a little for me - it's somewhat complex to just even have sex in the game, lots of clicking around through various options (positions/action etc) before you even get to sex and in my experience it's quite hard to get a guy to fuck you (as a female character) which was a novelty for once, but somewhat detrimental to an enjoyable porn game in some regards.

I wouldn't necessarily want the developer to change that, but it's something to consider.

The biggest flaw I found in the adult scenes is that they seemed to be somewhat hard to progress. Even making my character submissive still meant I had to basically take charge of what was going on for the most part and there was only occasionally an option for the other characters to lead in any form.

It's a really great concept in my opinion and the UI and gameplay is fantastically done outside of the adult content, but that's sadly a lot of what I'm looking for.

Will keep an eye on this one though to see if anything changes.

Very Promising. I wish to see how the development continues and where the developer takes it.
So far it's a smooth experience with clear and stylish UI, something that games like these take for granted.
Maybe more clear direction on where and how to progress, a map of sorts would help.
A sandbox like this would benefit greatly from mod support later down the line.

This looks to be a promising sandbox RPG.

You have a variety of options with character customisation and starting point which is a must for RPG games.

There are numerous quests and ways to follow your own path and play style.

Unfortunately there are a few bugs and lack of content in certain areas of the game, but to be fair the game has only just been released.


Hopefully in the near future there will be visual representations of the characters, MC and of course the erotic situations.

Impressive for a first version, though a bit empty as of now. Nice interface and lots of systems planned. Hopefully this game won't be abandoned in a few months, like many games of this genre and scope.

EDIT: I must note that I've only played online version on itch.io and that attempting to download the desktop version indeed leads to a warning about potential scam, as the reviewer above mentions. Don't know what's up with that.