Unreal Engine - Breeders of the Nephelym [v0.761.52] [DerelictHelmsman]

(v0.761.52)
Good
-Jiggle physics
-Breeding
Ok
-The sex animations
-Character models. Most of them do kinda look the same, especially the faces, but at least the look isn't butt ugly all the time like so many other 3D games.
Bad
-The world is stupidly big and 90% empty
-The player's max movement speed is a third of what it needs to be
-You have to hold sprint at all times or you go even slower, and there is no important reason to ever slow down. There is no "always run" setting.
-The only part of the game that gives you any specific directions is the quests. Unless you're following an external guide you pretty much have to pray you stumble into what you need. The first 10 minutes or so is the hardest part.
-Most important interactive systems in the game are managed by specific NPCs that are spaced anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 minutes apart from both your farm and each other. You will have to waste a frustrating amount of time running between them. And the ones in Hedon Township can be randomly unavailable because of the stupid stockade thing.
-You don't unlock fast travel until relatively late in the game, and it's not even that useful once you do. You can't initiate it from a menu, you have to run to a portal every time, and the one at your farm is a 20 second walk from the important parts. And even after finally unlocking it, you have to manually go from portal to portal repeating the same pointless interaction to actually open them.
-The sex animations have to be unlocked, and the process for doing so is incredibly obnoxious. Like the portals, it involves going from far flung location to far flung location repeating an interaction with a specific NPC, but in this case you have to expend "Favor", a resource you get by sacrificing your breeding material to a different NPC, and this NPC is of course a 45 second walk from your farm, if you're quick about it.
-The NPC mentioned above is so badly implemented it deserves it's own bullet point. It has two functions, sacrificing breeding material for favor, and sacrificing breeding material to increase Essence. And every time you want to do one of these things, you have to go on a short hike. The game would be substantially improved if all of this NPC's functions were just menu buttons you could use at any time. It doesn't even tell you how much favor you'll get from making the sacrifices, it doesn't even show much favor you currently have in the menu, and you can only sacrifice one at a time, slowly; no bulk option.
-You can only check what you need to upgrade Essence from the barns at your farm.
-Essence level (which determines the quality of wild Nephelym) is set per variant instead of per species. If variants were things you could specifically breed for that would be fine, but typically in this game there's just a male variant and a female/futa variant for each species and which one pops out is completely random. Shameless padding.
-There are stats, which don't seem to do anything at all other than serving as requirements for quests and essence upgrades.
-A lot of traits are broken or placeholder
-Once you have a specific thing you're trying to breed for, the game consists almost entirely of RNG and waiting. And by waiting, I mean spamming the sleep button at your house until your pregnant nephelym (or self) give birth. This gets tiresome almost immediately.
-There is no fanfare to birth whatsoever, once the pregnant% maxes out the offspring just quietly pop into existence in your barns. Not even a notification or anything like that. This seems to be by design, and I think the dev said way earlier in development that there are never going to be birth animations, which is disappointing to me personally.
-It's painful to organize. While there are filters for species, sex and traits, at your farm, there are no sorting options whatsoever. Whatever order your nephelym display in is what you're stuck with. You can rename them (of course, only from the barns) and that's your only real organization tool. And you'd better, because otherwise past a few generations they're all going to be named "X's offspring's offspring's offspr-"
-There are no detailed graphics settings beyond quality (whatever that means) and resolution, and even on max quality the render distance is tiny.
-You can trust that many years from now, all of this will be the same or worse.

This game is basically a rollercoaster of emotions. It starts off great actually, then you soon realize how shitty and repetitive everything is. All the different types of creatures you'll come across, they're all basically the exact same. Sex animations are repetitive. Breeding is redundant. And the quests aren't really quest, you basically just pray to the rng gods that you'll breed the right creature you'll need in the first couple tries.

The development of the game is being milked simply for that sweet patreon money. So I don't really see this game going anywhere tbh. Between how pointless it feels to play, how un-hot and vanilla the sex is after 30 minutes of gameplay, and how progression is tied to mindless rng grinding, I would pass on this.

Love this game, bought it on steam and have played it for over 30hrs so far. ive unlocked all gates and portals, and have a large collection of nephelym. tho the fact that incest is not allowed, does make breeding difficult sometimes. especially if you cant keep up with who is whos parent, grand parent, child, and so on. it does tell you who the mother and father are of each Neph, but if they are simply named wild neph then you got problems lol. but other then that the game is amazing and i hope to see more areas, more Nephelym, and more Quests! keep up the good work

game is cozy, music is awsome, idea same same, but there so tiny content. Bruh non futa on male? Too bad, too bad :/ Futanari need male cockslave, there is failure. i make to that woman without tits and add masculine but this is bad, not right, and awful T_T

At first glance this game always "Looks Good" to new players, But,

The good looks wear off real quick after playing the game for a little while,

Then you realize is the same face on all the NPC's
Its the same sex positions for all with the same face,
Its the same repetitive task with the same sex and same face's..
Not much is done by the Dev to fix any concern for paying players..

You goto the devs Patreon page, and ask questions about why the lack of content, Point out that he promised a "High quality game" Why not hire some talent to help with the project, as its getting more funding than most game development company's, watch as that wording was changed on the main page and get your valid inquiries ignored..

Even unpaid modders on skyrim LL makes better animations, Hire those guys...

The game has such an ENORMUS potential to be absolutely amazing, But falls into the patreon scam pit that so many enter...

Lacks transition animations, You just "POP" into position,
Lacks refinement to the existing animations
(Check Wildlife for reference see what I mean)

Frustrated you cancel your patreon funding, Realising the scam...

Then you google, find a community like F95 and see everyone complaining about all the same things you noticed,

Its the incompetence of this dev that set my standards for who I support now..
And thanks to this Dev I now love F95

3 stars for the game (as is today)
5 stars for helping me find F95 community
Negative 6 stars for being such a useless lazy and arrogant dev...

Best game ever. Played it for houres with out end but you need wiki to help because its not that intuitive.

I was realy amazed about th e quality. Huge content to explore and more.
5/5 stars every day.

Basically this a must play game if you didn't tried before.
Right now it feels polished and there are quests to complete.

I like playing it for the second time but it's not so exited as the first time.

Most of the negative ratings comes from people that are angry because the game is still not finished. And to be fair Breeders of the Nephelym feels more like a actual "game" than Wild Life.

I have already spent so many hours on this game, it is so much fun I will definitely spend so much more because it is great to have a fun time.

You can collect characters that you meet throughout the map and they join your farm, you can harvest milk and semen, it is really fun!

For fat lovers only who also loves futa, I'm OK with both but don't like when it goes too far and those devs are probably like how it looks so much.
It's been about 7 years since the first release and it's been a lot changes we've been through but the game won't get much better, shame. I like when it starts but not now, boobs are too big, races are too fat, gameplay goes boring after few hours of playing, no animations and almost nothing about immersion

Good game, shit developer. Play this! Don't beat it.

So, it's free on Steam. You can play an earlier version of this on steam, you breed your slap me monsters and you release them and that makes your new monsters stronger.

THIS version contains more stuff, yes. But it also contains the dreaded essence system: You have to find or breed specific unknown monsters and go to town and give them to a lady to advance their species' level.

This would be fine, but there are no tips, and the only way to learn how to progress is through the game's Discord.
Upon entering Discord, you'll realize that everyone who isn't a paid subscriber to the year-long dead Patreon will accuse any non supporter and true believer of being a piss baby that must support to get the info on how to up their level.

The start of the game is great! Very nice models, interesting colours. The more you progress the more humans with big teeth you get. It's a dead cash grab. Play it, don't beat it, don't you dare pledge.

So far, this is probably the best-optimized game of all. Not without problems, but it looks like a real full-fledged game. It was through this game that I fell in love with 3D games. The breeding system is just imba. The character editor is great. It has a cool gameplay that other games don't have, and that makes it special. It's just a shame that updates come once in 10 million years. I would like more interesting story tasks.

Should you play this game? Yes.

Is it good? Myeeeh...

So, this is an obscenely long-term project by a singe dev, witha good amount of content that's been drip-fed way too slowly. Some core-features, such as a working gameplay-loop, in-game descriptions to keep track of hybrid- and variant-names are still in progress, but the fact that there were key improvements released as late as last month does give me some hope.

What we have, is a surprisingly robust game, with most of the design-focus in the environment-design and character-models, which are both rather pretty. There is also an in-depth genetics-system, which is good enough that it could carry the game, if it's fundementals were even a little bit more in order. The breeding is best done with some kind of goal in mind, so setting your own limits to the sandbox, or trying to engage with the game socially are ways you can elevate the experience.

I cannot physically comprehend I live in the reality where SsethTzeentach speedran this shit and uploaded it to YouTube....

We truly are living in the best reality.....



As for the game it's alright, a bit boring and aimless but that's the whole issue with open world games. Isn't as open as you'd think too with all the locked off sections. Still with the traffic I KNOW will come to this game in the coming weeks I'm sure we'll see a shift in quality as more people come. (hehe 'come' XD)

I love this game and I hope you keep up the good work and i will buy this game on ever website and i will follow on and i will rate this game everywhere and i well be around when you update your game and make it better and fun and make it a ever good to play and make more beautiful to play.

Edit: February 19, 2024

There are some good aspects of this game, such as the graphics. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous in a lot of areas and a lot of the biomes host to the various different Nephelym are stunning. However, graphics alone don't automatically make a game good or bad, as there are plenty of games that have lower quality graphics that are really good games, and games with beautiful graphics that are downright horrendous.

BOTN isn't horrendous, in fact, it's far from it. It's a decent game, but as it is, it leaves MUCH to be desired and has a TON of wasted potential. It's obvious to everybody that this game is a spiritual successor to H-Bomb's Breeding Season, with many Nephelym taking inspiration to their counterparts in Breeding Season. So, what are my reasons for giving BOTN such a low score? Well, it ranges from poor game design, all the way down to personal preferences that many share and are frustrated with when it comes to the game, and I have a lot to cover.

Poor Quality of Life and Gameplay:
BOTN doesn't have much going for it when it comes to quality of life, user friendliness, and gameplay. Fast travelling to locations that you've been to, especially with a map as large as this one, is absolutely essential, and should be available from the onset. To use Skyrim as an example, once you discover a map location, you can fast travel to said location whenever you so please. There is no level requirement or discovering a way to fast travel; it's right there from the beginning and makes gameplay much easier and more enjoyable. BOTN has the portals locked until halfway through the game where you need to unlock the portals to be able to fast travel. Meaning that for the first half of the game, it is a painfully slow slog.

Breeding mechanics are absolutely pointless. As another reviewer pointed out earlier, even if you breed two Nephelym with high trait levels, you are often left with a Nephelym that is weaker in traits than both of their parents. How does BOTN deal with this? Well, what breeding effectively does is help level up that species of Nephelym so you get better ones from the spawner. So instead of getting a reward for breeding two high trait level Nephelym, instead, it's about leveling up the species.

The Updates:
One major issue that this game has is with the updates. Not with the lack of updates, but rather, the lack of meaningful content within said updates. The majority of the game's updates can be classified as bugfixes and minor tweaks, with even some updates TAKING AWAY content or making content harder to access. Some major offenders that I can think of when it comes to removing or making content harder to get are:

• The update that moved the NPC to unlock the portals near the end of the game
• The update that removed the male Titan
• The update that locked the breeding poses

Lack of male Nephelym:
There is a grand total of 21 normal Nephelym species in the game that you can capture, with an additional 19 hybrid species that you can acquire. Each species has a female and futanari gender that you can get, meanwhile, there are only 6 normal Nephelym species that have male versions, and none of the hybrids have a male counterpart. Meaning that for the vast majority of the species in the game, you have to use a futanari to breed them. On the wiki, almost all of the species' male options are listed as "NO PLANS ANNOUNCED", in the case of the harpy, "DISCONTINUED", or the titan, which has had its male version removed for over a year now.

Futanari isn't everybody's cup of tea, and there are quite a few that don't like it, period. I like it, so this isn't a complaint from me, however, there are quite a lot of people that would simply just prefer male/female stuff exclusively. With there hardly being any male Nephelym, for those who don't like futa, their progression in the game is essentially kneecapped. For as long as this game has been out, quite honestly, getting at least every base species' male version done should've been one of the first priorities for the developer. However, this also leads as a segue into my next point.

The developer only wants the porn HE wants in the game:
One thing that many have been complaining about over the 6 years that the game has been on this site, and even earlier since the game's inception, is that the futanari don't have balls. While it is a personal preference, many, not just here, have all but been begging for the developer to at least add a toggle for this particular thing which would quite honestly be extremely easy to model and even code in. However, the developer outright refuses to do this, despite the community and even his backers wanting it.

There are also no male-on-male scenes whatsoever, as well as futa-on-male scenes. Again, despite the community and even backers wanting it. There is a high demand for this content, and yet, the developer refuses to budge an inch on this topic. This is, quite honestly, disappointing, as this game's predecessor allowed for male-on-male scenes as well as male-on-futa scenes. Even another one of Breeding Season's successors, Cloud Meadow, allows for these kinds of scenes. What this results in for BOTN is that your options for sexual content in this game are extremely limited and vanilla.

Poor Development in General:
Now, I have seen many game titles over the years, and the need for having a development team cannot be better exemplified than this game. This isn't some game where you have 3D still-images that you can pump out of Blender like an assembly line and working with a simple game engine like Renpy, this is a fully-fledged, open world, 3D game. The developer is adamant on the fact that he can develop this game alone without any sort of team, however thus far, he has only proved the opposite.

The developer has also admitted that he doesn't even really play games himself, barring Dark Souls, and wants to make this game function and handle lore in a similar way. The only problem is, he was just a 3D modeler before, and like most Souls-like fan developers, he has no idea how those games function in their design. Considering the fact that he hasn't really developed a serious game before this one, and with the scope of what he's aiming for, this is the equivalent of trying to build the Empire State Building when you've only ever built a shed or trying to recreate the Mona Lisa when you've only worked in basic watercolor painting.

To everyone else, and even to some of his backers, the need for a development team is paramount. The excuse of not wanting to do that because he's afraid of them taking advantage of him or betraying him is an argument that he's been using for a very long time, and frankly, it's starting to wear thin. This game is teetering on the edge of abandonment, and at this point, I'm convinced that the only way this game would ever get completed is if he had a team to hold themselves and him to setting and maintaining deadlines. Before this last update, it was almost 4 months of radio silence from his end, and the update we got was again, just some minor tweaks and bugfixes. It's high time that this game finally has some content put into it, and the only way this can happen is by the developer accepting the help of a development team.

Conclusion:
BOTN has a lot going for it, but it also has a lot holding it back. From poor game design to updates that aren't meaningful, to updates that remove content, to a lack of progress when it comes to the in-game species, an extremely vanilla taste in porn which the developer refuses to budge from even when his community desperately wants him to, and very poor development in general. BOTN has a lot of promise and could yet to become a far better game than what it is, which, everybody wants it to be. As it stands though, this game has a long, LONG way to go.

The developer really needs a kick in the ass, and I'm saying that not as an insult, but more as an observation. There is so much potential that this game has that it could easily live up to, but the fact of the matter is, that potential is currently being squandered. DerelictHelmsman really needs to wake up and take the initiative to get a development team and push this game to its fullest potential, and it needs to happen now. If not, I have a feeling that we will never see a completed product, and a potentially wonderful and beautiful game will become yet another piece of abandonware.

Breeders of the Nephelym is a game about breeding, duh. Currently, there isn't any end to the game, and there probably won't be one for a while. You could stop as soon as the game opens, when you unlock every area, when you max out each world level, or when you have all hybrid legendaries. But anyways, alot of the major flaws of the game come down to the core of the gameplay.

What to expect:

• A relaxed adventure game.
• Quite a bit of grind.
• Decent graphics.

Gameplay Summary
The game opens up, you create a character who is either male, female, or futa, and you begin your journey. As I've said, there is no end-game goal, but you can still progress the game. Most progression is done by unlocking new areas via keystone gates. To get those, you'll almost always have to do a quest of some sort, often involving, you guessed it, breeding.

The breeding mechanics themselves have a lot to be desired. You don't have much input over them besides who fucks who and then hoping for the best. The traits you are breeding for are also not very interesting, only effecting breeding itself or slightly changing the shape of the body.

Let's just move onto the highlights.

Highlights

Great Graphics
While graphics alone don't make a game, they are certainly an element to the game's quality. Some areas look really well-made, and the animations look pretty smooth. But honestly, that's the most positive thing to say about this game.

Anti-QOL
This game has a habit of what I call "Anti-Quality of Life". Instead of some things being designed to make the game more user-friendly, the opposite is done. Here's some examples:

• Fast Travel is only unlocked when you reach the desert, about halfway in the game. You'll have to walk just about everywhere, which takes up a considerable amount of time.
• "The Daily Toy" is a pillory that has a random town-NPC in it once every two days. Sex aside, if the NPC you need to talk to is chosen, you're out of luck. Just plain irritating.
• Recently, a lot of mechanics are no longer visible. World-level, and quick offspring release, are now basically hidden.

While I don't think the developer was trying to cause as much anguish as possible, it's clear they're not the best game designer in the world.

Bad Breeding
Time to talk about the elephant in the room, the breeding mechanics. Despite literally being in the game's title, it's one of the games biggest weak spots. There's not much input besides choosing the giver and the reciver, and praying to RNGesus. Using yourself as the giver/reciever almost guarentees a low-level offspring, since you don't have any traits. The best advice I can give is to choose based on how similar the traits are.

But as well as that, there's not much of a reason to do breeding besides quests or some personal milestones. The nephelym (the creatures you breed) don't actually do anything, they're pretty much just trophies. The most use you can get out of them is through quests, but eventually you'll have bought everything and done all the quests.

Summary
Normally, a game that sells itself on graphics and blunders the gameplay lands itself a 3/10. However, I'll make BoTN an exception for one reason, it's genuinely one good update away from scoring a 8/10.

Perhaps in the future someone might make a balance mod, or maybe the creator will finally come to their senses. But until that happens, this game remains a 5/10.

Overall an interesting game with lots of variety for the creatures and a good variety in animations. Also easily it is one of the more polished of this type of breeding/farming game.

The downsides? Some mechanics are very tedious, lots of empty space on the maps to slowly run across, you gotta grind a lot at times, and progression to get new creatures is very unevenly paced. For some areas/characters/creatures to unlock you are at the mercy of RNG which can be very frustrating.

What was good was the ability to name and level up all your creatures with personal care and attention. That leads to my biggest complaint, your saves never carry over to new versions, so after my first play through where I got very invested in the creatures on my farm and their relations I lost all my progress and never wanted to get attached to my creatures after that.

Still I rate it as a good game because it is worth trying for fans of these tags.

I've spent about 10 hours and opened 4 of the regions. Overall, the game is rough, but has enough interesting breeder mechanics to draw me in and keep me invested so far.

SCORE BREAKDOWN

Animation/Graphics: 7/10 -
While the game is no 4K RTX showcase, it has solid graphics that don't overly impress nor disappoint. Overall good for the genre (based on other open world h games I've played so far).

Progression/Gameplay Loop: 6.5/10 -
Early game progression is quite good (albeit lacking some guidance beyond the very start). As you progress and have more monsters available to capture and breed, the amount of daily breeding attempts you will need to make and the lack of any way to quickly retry (instead requiring sometimes 20+ spaced-out clicks to breed one pair of monsters which can take 10-20 seconds. Multiply that by about 60-100 pairs as you hone in on desired stats/traits, and it quickly feels like a chore). This is saved by the fact that the breeding functionality is actually quite good if you don't mind reviewing some guides.

Where I'm tempted to call the game plain bad is in world traversal. Traversing the world is frustratingly slow (even using cheats and until late game where ).

Despite some complaints and design I'm inclined to call downright poor, the gameplay is fun for me. Something I find particularly rewarding is hunting down desired visual traits or colorations for each Race/subclass and then breeding to max them out stat/trait-wise.

H Content: 6/10 -
An extremely basic set of H-animations with some jankiness to them (based on what I've unlocked thus far) are quite underwhelming. Despite the lackluster animations and graphics that are hardly hyper-realistic and detailed, the art style for each race is actually pretty nice and reasonably diverse within individuals of each race (varying height/coloration/body/animal & human appearance balance/sub-species). This variety in the art and good race/sub-species designs make it worthwhile fapping content nonetheless.

OVERALL SCORE: 7/10

I like the game and I know it is still a work in progress but it needs a more understandable and easy quest guide or something like that so that it'll be more fun and less stressful when you continue to mid or late game but everything else is super good tbh I like it a lot

Meant for a very specific audience, I am not the target group for sure.

Mechanically somewhat tedious, animationwise underwhelming, sounddesign half baked. Functional, but not great, best described as slime rancher for Furries.

Only try it, if you don't mind the big download, are curious and/or like Furry culture, because on an axis between monster girl and Furry it's far towards the latter.