Unreal Engine - Breeders of the Nephelym [v0.761.53] [DerelictHelmsman]

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.

in all honesty, this game is too long, too difficult and not enjoyable at all. it's a chore to progress through, even more so if you are doing it with one hand. the rewards you see and what you get are absolutely not worth the effort at all. if you want to have fun plying a game, then this is not it. if you want stimulating visual content that is worth all of the time and effort you put in, this game is not it at all.
i would absolutely not recommend this game. please be prepared for absolute misery and continues disappointment if you decide to play this game.

This game has several decent things going for it. The visuals and design are nice, there are some animation elements that are pretty impressive and interesting, and they clearly put forth a lot of effort making some unique biomes and areas that fit with the kind of creatures you'll find in those areas.

The gameplay is the weak point though and it kind of ruins everything else that feels good about the game. This is clearly an homage to Breeding Season, but rather than encouraging you to breed the creatures, it wants you to capture them. And unfortunately the capture mechanic and the traveling you have to do to get to some of the areas to make the capture is uninteresting and tedious.

If you've unlocked a portal to where you want to go the travel bit is a little bit less annoying, but once you get there you still need to capture the creature. Capturing consists of sitting under spawner while random creatures of that "race" spawn with random attributes and traits based on a player's level tied to that race. You then walk up to those spawned creatures to see their stats and see if you want to capture them. To do so you have to mate with them. Meanwhile some of the creatures are attempting to mate with you so you have to avoid them if they don't have the stats you want. The result is usually that you end up walking to the same creature multiple times because they are all running around shuffling positions so you don't know who you've scanned and who is new unless you see them spawn in. A tedious and uninteresting process to find the trait combination you want.

What really made this game's predecessor appealing was that if you did enough selective breeding with the right traits in your relatively weak starter pool of creatures, the offspring would mutate those traits into stronger versions making each generation you breed better than the last. By end game, your creatures will be so powerful that the majority of new offspring would have high trait level versions of every positive trait without inheriting any negative traits. This made the breeding very rewarding and seeing how each offspring turned out was like opening a present.

Breeders of the Nephelym is the opposite, if you try to breed two really powerful characters, the result is almost always an offspring that has fewer traits than either parent, and the trait levels tend to mutate weaker rather than stronger. The result is a breeding game that discourages you from actually breeding since the offspring are always worse than what you started with. They tried to offset this by making your level for each "race" tied to how much you've bred that race, which nets you better characters when you go under the spawner. But again, that makes the breeding mechanic just a level grind that in and of itself produces nothing of interest.

Cool looking game don't get me wrong, but if we're talking about actual sexual content this is strangely vanilla. If i'm playing a game that's allowing me to fuck or be fucked by anthropomorphic wolf futas bunny girls nekos and long schlonged bulls, you would think that the sex wouldn't be limited to 99.9% vaginal/oral(Can't excuse the single anal scene with the snake..). Plus there's no male/male or futa/male. Why make these absolute dieties of creatures to only exist to top Vaginally. Whoever made this has a hyper obsession with hetero breeding.
I also dislike the non-packaged futas and there not being an option to keep those. Always looked weird when they don't have balls.
Game looks beautiful don't get me wrong because of my rating but honestly idk what's worse. A boring onestar game nobody cares about or an uneccessarily high rated game that wasted all it's potential. Feels like the developer wanted to make a game just so they can play it and posted it incase anyone else had such specificly limited tastes. Wish that one scene with anal wasn't even in the description so i didn't waste my time installing or seeing this game on my search.

Try to be adequate, so let's score 0 to 5 - gameplay, graphics, plot, sound, and considering it porn game, need to compare sex scene - customization, interactivity, manipulation, animation, physics.

gameplay / plot - 3
sound - 3
graphics - 4
animation / physics - 2
interactivity / manipulation / customization - 3

3+3+4+2+3/5=
Total score is 3

Very versatile game that can be modified just how you like it. Takes a lot of time and contains a lot of grinding, but has genuinely fun and interesting mechanics that snowball over time. Only thing that might improve it is better automation of the breeding process itself.

TL;DR: Still feels like it's not even 50% finished, I would say it has potential but how many years has it been since I last played it and the content didn't really change all that much. Ideally, just use gallery mode and save yourself the hassle.

Pros:
+ Decent-looking game
+ Nice models
+ Decent animations
+ Spirit forms are good and the customization options are alright
+ Plenty of different species to collect and hybrids to discover

Cons:
- Same-Face Syndrome is strong with this one, all females/futas have a very same-y facial structure and it gets bland after a while.
- No clothing options for MC
- Extreme lack of QoL options (Automatic breeding, automatic harvesting, spirit form presets, teleports are unlocked way too late to be that useful)
- Futas don't have balls (Personal preference)
- It takes way too much time and effort to unlock sex animations, why?
- Animation variety is sub-par, and most animations are too vanilla
- Lots of clipping animations, feels a bit jank
- Gameplay loop is extremely repetitive
- Breeding is completely reliant on RNG with no way to play the odds like in PoP for example
- Quests are all the same, gets very boring after a while
- Extremely slow updates from what I'm seeing


I'd keep going but I think that paints a good-enough picture, don't jump into this game expecting a masterpiece or something amazing, it's a decent experience if you're itching for a breeding game with 3d models, but that's about it, maybe in five years the dev will have turned it into something better.

Expected better.
-Not fluent interaction of bodies and there aren't a lot of appearance options, as well as animations.
-The map is huge and empty.
+The graphics are nice though.
+Addictive gameplay with progression

Great premisse, some nice gameplay, decent progression, you can cheat your way if you want a quick wank. By the name of the files It's a demo, but have so much gameplay already, the only thing missing is some trans/gay sex, just for science!

I want to like this game but after giving it a good amount of time I don't think it's for me.
My main issue with the game is the world, it seems well made and is very pleasant, however it feels very empty. Additionally when you're walking the same route day after day before unlocking the pussy portal gets old fast. That brings me to my second point, I don't believe that games should hold the player's hand and tell them exactly what to do and when to do it. However, some degree of pointing you in the right direction would be helpful.
Secondarily, it's a bit unfortunate that the dev said that they'll never do male on male or futa on male content. I understand not everyone is into that type of content, though that is why other games let you toggle stuff like that in options. Additionally, it seems as though the dev caters to their fetishes first and foremost, and while I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that as it is their project to decide what to do with it may be a bit of a turn off for those that aren't into it. In this case for me I'm not into large breasts or chubby women, and I'm unsure if it was just rng however those traits seemed to show up more than any trait other than huge. Along with this point the jiggle physics seem a little extreme and I wish there was a slider for how "jiggly" you wanted them.
Finally this game could use a little more optimization, I'm running a 3080ti and a 5800x and still run into fps drops and stutters every once in a while. Further it seems as if the game is capped at 70fps and it would be nice if that could be upped.
In the end, I may just not be in the target audience of this game. However that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, in fact some may find that this is exactly the game they want, it's just not for me.

This game is just gorgous. I really like the WOW style and all the possibilities and features the Dev has introduced in this game so far.
Its like a fantasy fairytale porn .
Wish more devs would have such a serious approach in developing games
with unreal engine. Of course there are Wild Life or Carnal Instinct also which have more realistic and polished graphics but there are really times i prefer this style like in Breeders of the nephilim. Its just beautyful made and with a lot of nice features and activities.
To experience the full potential u will need a stronger machine of course but its worth it.
Wish the Dev all the best and good luck with further updates.

one of the best x game i have played .
a big open world with a lot of potential. I will closely follow the future updates
I hope for new additions in the future in terms of possibility and functionality. I wish a good continuation to the author of this game (I'm bad at English so google trad sorry)

Really good game and Graphics. Possibly the best f95 game ever.

Pros;
Lots of very rich characters and environment, Love the artwork.
Cons;
Many of the Tasks are either tedious or very grindy to get to the next stage .