Unreal Engine - Carnal Instinct [2024-06-01] [Team Carnal Instinct]

Quite enjoyable. Not quite perfect yet (map/quests sometimes require quite a lot of back and forth) but great models, good character customization, the furry aspect isn't all that pronounced, a few interesting setups.

Based on a slightly older version: 2021-10-28, v0.3.14




This game feels lifeless, like you're in a prop world of no substance A lot of empty buildings without NPCs anywhere close and a generally dead city. It plays like a running simulator mostly. Neither the gameplay aspects of it are particularly interesting or fun, the sex scenes are pretty awful and there is no story.

This is a large scope open world 3d game in early development, so this is to be expected, but I can only base my review on what is and isn't in the game and not what is planned or envisioned by the developers (before someone screams at me pointing at the developers roadmap).

• The good
  • Textures. They’re very high quality, even considering that fact that there is no fur to speak of when this is a FURRY game (most likely optimization reasons for this and not something I judge the developers on while the game hasn’t fully released yet)
  • Non-sex animations. Running, walking, idle etc are pretty decent I suppose.
  • Graphical and performance benefits of UE and its repository of tools.
  • Audio
  • The devs are continuously working on the game and seem commited for the years of development this game will require.
• The bad
  • Sex Animations. The animations have this weird tendency of moving the camera far away from the scene making the scene out of focus. Randomly panning the camera in hoover mode like an idle screen. There is very rarely visible penetration during the sex, and when there is its mostly clipping through the models. My favourite example was when I got to watch two characters fucking and the camera was placed behind a fence AND a bush. Like, why? Is this some attempt at creating an immersive “voyueristic” feel or something? Did not achieve that, just let me watch the sex close up thanks, not interested in watching a blurry animation far away. Note that this might not be an issue for someone that can palpate these types of less detailed sex animations though, since they exist in many other 3d games especially from Japan and they still have large player bases. This might also be a positive for people who likes creepshot pov scenes, even though I'm uncertain that was the intended goal of that animation.

• That leads to my next point, no free control of camera during sex scenes.
• The world does not feel like a living world but rather an empty exhibition. NPCs lack idle pathing, idle interactions/voice line loops etc. They simply exist as static mannequins. The devs need to work on making the world feel more alive by adding some hardcoded paths for NPCs to walk on when not interacting with the player, some random interactions between NPCs etc. Anything really to make the world feel more alive and immersive.

• No story, it's just a bunch of fetch and delivery quests currently. The rest of the gameplay can be summarised as “find a piece of costume hiding in a random location”.
• Gameplay consists of a running simulator, and easter egg hunting in a huge city for costume pieces. That's about it. Not very fun unless you like running around and collecting things I suppose.
• Lack of physics in regards to characters' breasts, genitals etc. Lack of soft body animations. The characters remind me of mannequins, the breasts aren’t affected by gravity and look solid, the characters look kinda plasticy. While the textures are good, textures alone can’t really create a good looking model in an interactive 3d game.

• The neutral
  • Being a 3d game, you need a good graphics card or you will be forced to run it on lower settings which will result in the game looking like garbage, but that’s the case for any 3d game so this is something to be expected. I would probably not play this on integrated graphics.

Conclusion. If I could I would give this game a 2.5/5 in its current state. The game seems to suffer from a very large scope and being in early development. Most of the game feels very underdeveloped and shallow currently. It’s still early in development, and this can most certainly be improved upon as more time is spent on developing the different aspects of the game though. But in its current early iteration, the game isn’t very compelling, interesting or fun and I can’t recommend it. I’ll personally try it again once it reaches 1.0 in a few years, and that would be my recommendation for people interested in this game as well. I,e. Wait for further development. I’ll update/rewrite this review once the game is fully released.

i really want to give 4 stars, played 5 hours
graphic and all around are magnificent (some point birds kill your ears^^)
i had really much fun to play this game like a normal rpg, but the short sex scenes........ and then u cannot interact with most of the people......
its early accses i know, but a "real" main quest would be nice ( and intro)
(in a year i look again and update my rating)

Version: v0.3.22

Its so weird to see the unreal engine get so good, so much so that great looking and stable games can be made like this. By far this is one of the more ambitious unreal engine game made on this website.
A free-roam open world with quite a good amount of content as of the pre-alpha phase which i played. Combat is pretty basic but uninspired, which i dont really see much of a problem, this game to me is an open world adventure game with some combat. I can already tell that this game is laying some great groundwork, camp customisation, armour, weapons, and transformation of character are all currently pretty basic, but there is so much potential to be had with due time.
The sex scenes are all mostly furry focused, even though im not really a furry i was able to overlook that fact considering that this game is mostly solf-core furry. I do really like how beautiful the characters are in this game, well defined and smooth textures really make this game punch above its weight in terms of graphics that involve sex and the game overall.
Im looking forward to more content that adds more and more to this game.

Great stuff, keep it up team.

Updated Review for v0.3.42

This game is going to feel more "in development" and like an alpha than most other games on this site. That's because it's an Unreal Engine free roam RPG. Not a steadily progressing visual novel. You're going to run into unfinished content. Things are probably going to be buggy. There's not a whole lot of depth with anything yet. You'll probably play through most of current content in a day or two. But what's there shows a TON of potential and I think this can turn into something really good as far as "porn games" go.

There is pretty good character customization to start out. As you play, you unlock different humanoid forms (feline, dragon, etc) as well as skins for lack of a better word that further modifies those forms. Bare in mind 90% of current sex scenes are tailored more towards female/futa.

Sex scenes are pretty well animated but there is no free cam currently, which I know some people hate. Scenes are basically looping gifs until you progress them to the next angle or climax. Though there's not a ton of scenes yet, they are pretty varied. Have sex with a naga, tentacle slime, centaur, void demon (the list goes on) with some more vanilla stuff mixed in as well. The issue I've found with no free-cam is that scenes can end up being rather underwhelming when no angle actually lets you see the penetration happening.

The dynamic sex scenes ended up being a bit underwhelming as well. Yes the animations are good, but they are just scenes with a larger amount of prebuilt angles with a very limited camera rotation. It didn't solve the problem.

The game part is decent so far imo. You roam around in a pretty good looking Egypt-inspired environment. Combat isn't perfect, but probably the best of any Unreal/Unity porn game I've played. I'll admit most mechanics are a bit barebones right now, but it's the idea of them and future plans that make this game really stand out to me. Things like camp mechanics fit with recruitable NPCs, customization, and prisoners as an example. Just check the roadmap to get a better idea.

This breaks the mold of most games you see on here. It still feels like an alpha however, and it's not something you're going to get super invested in as it currently is. But it's a fun play for a couple hours and shows real potential. Given time and development I think this could feel like a AAA porn game, or at least close to it.

I'd like to give this 5 stars, but there's a few things that's killing it for me in its current state.

The game is heavily sexualized at every end, except that when it comes to the actual sex itself, it's over simplfied and feels static. It's basically just looks like a single thrust motion that's on loop, real simple. When I say "static" I mean the sex doesn't change in any way based on things like stats (of which there are no sex-related stats), orgasm meters, relationship/disposition, or anatomy features. Cum itself is just a baked animation that doesn't reflect any anatomy or stats either, which is odd considering the amount of anatomy changes you can go through.

Otherwise I'd of given it a 5 star rating because it has a lot going for it right now. I love the fantasy races they're including (eg maybe the only rich 3d game with full snake characters?) and the overall sex-casual atmosphere is great.

So, basically 3 stars for the worldbuilding/setting, graphics and presentation, but 2 missing stars for boring sex system and the fact that it could only hold my interest for all of a day in its current state.

Cool concept but the entire game is completely one sided as of now. There is almost no male character creation and basically only 1 interaction with a male NPC availible. Kind of dissapointing considering how much money they pull in

Technically the game seems to be very well made with the UI, 2D/3D assets, effects, music, sounds and animations.

But as others already stated, the game design is still lacking a lot which makes the game boring after the first 15 minutes or so. There is not enough rewarding content for doing quests or exploring the well crafted world. I mean the building blocks for that kind of stuff are already there, some chests can be found by exploring and sometimes some NPC enemies appear, but this is not only rare but also pretty bare bones in the execution. The chests often only contain a single uninteresting item and the fights with enemies all feel kinda like the same. The looting experience isn't really rewarding as of now. I believe with some minor changes here and there the game could be much better in it's early state.

The sex scenes are animated pretty well, but I dislike the current approach of getting most of them by just talking to an NPC who straight up is down to fuck. They could better be used in quests and light story encounters then by going there and starting the animation with a single dialog option. I believe this is something that will be changed anyway since the game still is in a early development phase. As soon as all technical stuff is there and the content adding phase begins, I'd imagine the devs to add more purpose to these things.

The furry aspect of the game doesn't bother me as much as in other games because the bodies still are mostly human and the PC can be human male/female as well.

The character editor doesn't offer much cusomization as of now. It seems like there is no way to adjust the penis size (also why are all penises always erect? ), body height and the face / head of the PC also isn't customizable except from a simple morph between two head models (played human male).

Issues I encountered while playing:

• Its very annoying that the PC often puts away the sword when drawn in situations I as user don't want him to. I can draw the sword, sneak towards enemies and the PC puts the sword away in the worst moment without me triggering it. This is dumb.
• When running and opening the world map to look for navigation points my muscle memory is trained to hold W and shift to keep running after closing the world map again, but it seems like the game discards / blocks the input until I release and press the keys again. This interupts the flow of the gameplay & just feels bad imo.

I also think the game lacks a proper introduction to the game world and a purpose for the PC. I just pop up at the docks, naked, and started doing my usual open world routine.

Overall I'd say the game is good, but not complete enough to be enjoyed just yet. It's a cool tech preview but for it to be truly enjoyable a lot of content still needs to be added.

Massively underrated game, it actually plays like it could be an legit AA title in terms of world, combat , quests, animation (not even sex), etc. I mean it even has proper bossfights,....Don't be scared away if you're not into furries (I hate it), you can play as a human and while you will encounter a lot of beastily features, the quality of the game more than makes up for it.

As of v0.3.14, the game is looking amazing. It's very obvious a lot of time and effort went into the creation of this game. And even better, it's being actively worked on. But that's not even the best part. The best part is the game is being created by professional artists, programmers, and the like, all of which have worked in triple-A studios in the past. All of this put together, and you get a game like this, which even though it has a few bugs and unusual bits, I'm willing to overlook that due to the quality of the game.

10/10, would recommend.

Great game, really surprised by the quality of the animation and choice of 'toys'. Right up my alley. We need more quality games such as these, I look forward to the other updates. You won't regret trying it and playing it.

I'd like to give it more stars, but honestly, I got bored to death.
My personal experience with this game was bad, aside of several other issues.

I saw the pics and said "holy crap!" and rushed to download. Looked around a bit before playing... and was a bit underwhelmed by the lack of scenes.

-Started to play, and after jumping some boxes literally at the beginning, my character got stuck. Close, start again, because of course, I didn't saved.
-Spent nearly an hour trying to reach a point in the map that suppossedly had some good item. The map wasn't accurate to my real position.
-Spent another hour going in and out of every single house, trying to find something, ti'll I remembered that is in development so there's literally nothing.
-Then started a quest. Typical "go to X and say him this or that". Spent another half hour going back and forth without a single interesting line of dialog or event.
-I got stuck behind a door.
-Trying to reach the only sex scene I found interesting, I got stuck on water. Twice.
-When I finally, after nearly 3 hours of pointless, empty runs around, finally reached the sex scene... only for the game to glitch and halt mid-dialog.
-Wheeeen fiiiinaaallyyy did the scene... it was limited. Just a couple points of view, of a decent, but bland animation. And apparently the scene is half finished too.
Have in mind: every stuck, glitch or halt means closing, restarting the game.

Also... yes, the bizarre mask/skins system.
There's no explanation, just "go and find a penis, the're usually lying around. And don't forget to buy a skin at a merchant". What?
(not to mention the juggling trying to match a face, with a skin with a clothes set or an item)

-The map is great for a MMORPG. It would be hot to find a couple players-npcs funcking inside a shack. As is, it's absolutely pointless.
-Dialogs could use more personality. Everyone talks with his character sheet personality: "What do you want? I'm the bad grumpy guard", "hello cutie, I'm the sexy slut" or "oooh, shiny, I'm the cute bimbo".
-Sex outside scenes, for Bastet sake. A dozen scenes just ensures than 2/3rds of players won't enjoy 2/3rds of the scenes., making the game -coupled with the above mentioned- absolutely boring after the few minutes of graphical awe.

To resume:

Pros: graphics.
Unfinished neutrality: everything else
Cons: getting stuck, lack of sex.

As of v0.2.8,

The animations are amazing. The setup is interesting. The game has a few bugs but is stable.

However, it's insanely boring.
You meet NPC. NPC gives you a quest : Go to point A.
When you get to point A after 5 minutes of pressing your W key : Go to point B. 5 minutes later : Here is your reward : 3s H-animation!

Now you have to get a new quest, and it's the same all over again. And the story does not make up for its flaws. Also, characters feel lifeless, like true NPCs. I guess that was the purpose? But I really dislike that

This game have great potential, for now is just a pre-alpha (if i'm not mistaken) so it's still rough around the edges, but, it got a decent amount of content.

A medium/big map to explore, some quests, basic combat, plenty of items (for customization) and a decent amount of sex scenes.
Sex scenes are well made, really smooth, my only complaint about them is that sometime the camera angle is not really the best sometimes, but this is just nitpicking. Combat is serviceable, not great, not terrible.

So in the end, if we take in account that this game is only in pre-alpha (again, if i'm not mistaken) i can only say that it's excellent.

i really hope this game don't get abandoned for whatever reason (the updates are frequent so i don't think it will, but you never know) I'm really curious about the features they will add in the future and really suggest you to checkout their patreon.

Awesome game , so far I have been enjoying playing it, quests are OK in most part but maybe from what I saw missing more SEX scenes in some quests , waiting for future updates on this one.. Graphics are very cool , reminds me of Assassins Creed some few years ago, Loved the way they implemented The Futanari lore, great game am surprised by it really in a good way ! Thanks

I was surprised at the mechanics and graphics in this game. It really surpassed my expectations.

If you don't follow the storyline the gameplay can be a bit stale after encountering all sexual encounters.

The variation and choice within customization is amazing, and even better than some of the larger games on Steam. Huge turn on with the options I was given. ;-)

Awesome game. The best unreal engine game i've ever tested, and it's still in 0.2.8!
The best: great gameplay, upgrades, items, skins and furry lovers.
The worst: you cannot move freely the camera in the sex scenes.

Version 0.2.8

Carnal Instinct right now is one of the plethora of games that fits the bill as 'having potential.' The game is decent, with nice graphics, an okay combat system, a good-looking world, an interesting theme, and a lot of POSSIBLE greatness to come. As it is now, however, it is only a shell with a handful of sexual encounters, little story, and not a ton to do.

Keep in mind this is an extremely early build of the game, so I don't mean to sound overly critical. I wish them a lot of success and am eager to see the future of the game. It has tons of room to grow, but I can't review what 'might be', so here are my thoughts on how things are.


"Transforming":
Your character begins as simple woman, but you are able to equip and remove body, head, and cock parts. The head and body can change you to the various species - human, feline, drake, or void IIRC. The cock parts have a bit more variety, and removing it completely leaves you with a pussy. These parts of mostly cosmetic, though some sexual encounters require specific genitalia (one woman wants only a pussy, another won't use huge cocks, that sort of thing). There is also a male transformation, allowing your face/body to look like a man's. However the game seems to mostly still think of you as a woman, with sexual scenes still use your female sounds and much of the equipment can't be worn on a male body.


Sex Scenes:
There are a number of sexual encounters dotted across the map of the game where you can go. Each one has at least one scene, some made up of two or three. Some require a quest to be completed, others immediately available through dialogue. The scenes themselves look pretty good and are somewhat varied, though they are pretty specific. That is, one NPC might want you to use a lizard-like tail to fuck her, so there aren't any uses of a cock.

Also, there is no interactivity. You see a scene play out before you, only able to choose when to move to the next scene (when available) or when to finish. There is also a camera angle button that toggles between a couple of views. Unfortunately, sometimes these alternate views are partially blocked by terrain and the like or at bad angles, making them not all that great of an option. Likewise, the game uses whatever local lighting is available, so some scenes in the dark have no torches close enough and you don't get to see much of anything happening. And making the trek to a teleporter to go back to your camp and rest is a hassle to be certain.


Combat:
Combat is adequate, and little more. There are some baseline options available, being a light and heavy attack, a block and an evade. A stamina system is in place to keep you from swinging too much in a row, though it seems to only matter if you fight more than one enemy at once and it returns very fast if you stop swinging. There are also potions you can get to heal your health or stamina from shops or found in chests. Enemies will see you and charge in to attack you, but rarely offer any real challenge between the simple combat and abundant health potions. There are a couple bosses which seem to have awkward movements/hitboxes, but end up actually being easier than some standard combats.

As for equipment, besides the body part modifications, you do end up with a few weapons and a couple of shields. They don't seem to matter much in the current build, as your basic starter item can deal with everything save for a specific quest. But they are there at least and being implemented.


World:
The world design is both great and frustrating due to the way the game works. The layout is nice, with a good variety of things to fit in the Egyptian-styled theme. There are barren areas, rocky cliffs, large stony mounds, rivers with some greenery clinging to them, ruins, simple villages, and temples - all fitting the theme and of fairly good graphical quality. Nothing to blow you away compared to today's graphics, but for such a small team really nice and the layout of things and actual design is good.

That said, because the game is often little more than moving from place to place, back and forth, it gets to be a slog quick, even though what is available of the game is very small right now. They added waypoints/teleporters that allow you to jump from one to another once located. But even with these you end up just holding the forward button as you slowly sprint from one destination to the next. Quests often are just going to get an item or speak to a person, then return. Some quests have you do this several times, sometimes fairly far from any teleporter.

And in its current state there isn't much reason to do anything between these jaunts, so it becomes quite an irritating facet of the game. Quests with multiple parts only give you one 'part' to finish at a time, so you can't even go out and finish them all before returning. Because leveling doesn't matter in this particular version, even fighting enemies is pointless other than those you might want to get off your back while looting a chest for transform options.


Characters / Dialogue:
It sort of fits in the same vein as the world in that there are enough random NPCs about to make it feel lived in, but almost all of them are also boring. The ones with voice lines are well done, to be fair, but they are mostly just there to nab a quest or immediately have sex with, with no real personality to the characters themselves. Only a couple stand out, and those are mostly due to their physical appearance. It could be because it is just so early, but I'd really like to see some of them fleshed out in the future. As of now they are desposible quest givers like in an MMO and nothing else.

The game is obviously focused on sex, and dialogues often lead to this almost immediately. Or they will give it to you right after a quest. It would be nice to see some of these more drawn out and not so sudden, building up characters and their relationships slightly before the pay off.


Saving System:
On the bright side of things, you can save pretty much whenever you want.
A neutral point, but like many games (especially ports) you don't get to name your save, only getting a tiny picture and a timestamp.

On the bad side, it only seems to allow 'quicksaves', which create a new save file every time you hit it. The game even has an in game hint to tell you how to bring up the load menu so you can manually go through and click one, press delete, click one, press delete, over and over as you end up with a huge list of saves.

Near the end of my time with the game, I also had a sudden huge spike in saving times, from a brief second or two pause to upwards of ten seconds (this is on a normal HDD). I worry if it is a bug or an issue that will grow as the game expands, but hopefully it will be worked on. As well as proper 'regular' saving.


Final Thoughts:
All in all, as I said when I started, I think there is a lot of potential. Like all such early access games, whether that comes to mean anything all depends on if the developers keep pushing at it and put those steam sales and patreon bucks to use so we actually end up with a fun final product sometime this decade. Not a shot at them, just we all know the climate of EA games.

What is there is promising and a lot of fun, but you can easily blow through all the content in an evening, and afterwards there isn't much to do other than repeat the short sexual scenes, which end up looking nice but not being anything really more advanced than your RenPy novel with DAZ3d animations - you're a spectator to a generally repeated motion and a finish. Not a bad thing, just doesn't give the replay value of more sandboxy games or options-matter sort of titles.

Definitely wishing them all the best and can't wait to come back to this well down the road and enjoy what they come up with!

Solid early access game, decent quality models and animations. Surprisingly large amount of content for EA too, which is always appreciated.

That said, I can't give more than 3 stars while this awful mouse smoothing/acceleration is present in menus. I thought we collectively agreed as a species never to use mouse smoothing after Skyrim.

Honestly feels like I'm moving my mouse through molasses whenever I'm in a menu.

Everything in this game is great but there is a major flaw. Towards the middle of the game, the game tends to freeze and not respond. Then it responds again but does this cycle every 30-40 seconds. It got really annoying after awhile. Then I couldn't finish the void mission.