Java - Corrupted Saviors [Release 53] [CSDev]

Don't let the outward appearance fool you, despite lacking any art this game has a surprising degree of mechanical depth, with solid writing overall. The gameplay, while seemingly simple at a glance leaves a lot of room for clever strategy (Incidentally I strongly suggest reading the manual included, the tutorial misses certain important elements). I will note that the writing does get a little repetitive once you get to the later stages, but overall it remains pretty strong throughout. I strongly suggest this to anyone looking for more "game" in their porn game as this one is a cut above the norm mechanically

Theres a concept here for sure but its drowned beneath a mass of unnecesarily complicated gameplay. Not really worth it in the end. Neither the guide included with the game nor the tutorial explain anything, making it a grindy, repetitive experience. While the flavor text is good, from what ive seen the events and such are varied, but ultimately it is too grindy for its own good.

edit for version 32 i think? It got a bit better but the dev keeps adding new features instead of fleshing out the existing ones, making it even more complicated and tedious

another edit for version 37: i appreciate the fact theres an atual hint system within the game about aversions so i bump the rating up to 3. Still barely understandable mess of a mechanics but at least one thing is now explained a little bit.

edit for version 43: bugs, previous saves dont work, still no cheat option from the get go which is equally retarded and cunty. We are back at one star boys.

Found the Gameplay entertaining and yet with a good bit of reasonable difficulty. Once you figure out the gameplay mechanics (and there is an extremely detatiled tutorial note in the files) it can be very entertaining. Additionially the Dev seems to have the right mindset of properly completing the main gameplay mechanics and setting a rock solid foundation before becoming overwhelmed with side additions like so many other Devs. I am looking very much towards the future developments of the game and eagerly await further updates.

A very promising strategy game with DIY corruption of 3 procedurally-generated (or customized) heroes/heroines. The idea is great and the implementation is... good where it is possible for it to be good, considering the shaky foundation that is the gameplay.

Pros:

- The game is about corrupting characters through internalized physical, mental and sexual abuse, and it does that well. There are quite a few different personalities the heroes can have, and you can see how each vulnerability break affects their personality in a way that is consistent with how the character is described. E.g. if you have a heroine who uses a cool public image to cover up her deep insecurities, you can tell how much it hurts her to lose that due to a public humiliation.

- An insane amount of scenes, and permutations to each scene, based on broken vulnerabilities, personality types and relationships between the characters.

- Rewarding strategic gameplay, at least in that window between figuring it out and completely breaking the game.

- The writing is appropriately grim; whoever is narrating knows the futility of resisting the player's efforts, and you get the feeling that the Chosen are like lab rats being observed in a sadistic experiment.

- No RNG. The combat is 100% (or almost) deterministic, so you can savescum and try out different tactics without RNGsus muddying up your results.

Cons:

- The learning cliff. The gameplay is unconventional, with a lot of mechanics to take in all at once. Some of which really aren't that important or worth agonizing over, like the pitiful amount of Angst the Chosen burn off with their extracurricular activities. It doesn't help that many of the ingame tips are use flavor text (e.g. "she's come to associate sexual pleasure with defeat in combat") rather than game terms (she's had her Pleasure vulnerability broken). To be fair, there is a tutorial and pretty detailed manual.

- Pacing. Once you're good at the game, you can destroy it within a few ingame days after around day 10, when you've got your basic upgrades. This is because snowballing in the form of exponentially-increasing damage is at the game's core. The more vulnerabilities you break, the easier it is to rack up more circumstance levels, which have a multiplicative effect on how much damage you're doing. The combat is all about racking up multipliers, and it very quickly gets out of hand if you know what you're doing. It's not even that there's one broken strategy that can be patched out, it feels like the problem is fundamental and you need to purposely play poorly if you want to have control over the corruption arc. I'd say there needs to be more stuff pushing against the exponential damage increase, though ideally a game should not be designed around snowballing in the first place, especially in a subgenre where you want to savor every step of the process.

Nitpicks:

- While you can play male Chosen, it largely seems to be M/M / sissy-themed, as well as some pegging and such. Would be nice to have hetero corruption as well.

Its a weird game to rate, as I'd say the strongest aspect is the writing, but at the same time, that is its weakest aspect. Because what is there is well written. It presents an interesting (if overly grimdark) world and gives insight on the minds of people who are being judged harshly by the overly selfish public for daring to try and hide from the literal monsters trying to fuck their ass so hard they'd literally die if they weren't immortals. Monsters that casually break their arms for giggles while raping them.
I find the violence kind off-putting myself, because its so over the top sometimes, but you can turn that off. And be left with the lewd stuff. Which is similarly well written (if extreme) and hot.

But this is speaking purely of the quality of the writing. What about the quanity?

Quantity is... lacking. You can and will, once you get a hang of how the game works, see every scene within a day, very easily. You will see most during fight sex scenes within the first 2-4 actually good rounds you have v the heroes.

The girls seem like they'd have a lot of personality variance since there's this little quiz you can do to make a team, but they really only seem to come in 3-4 flavors of identical girl.

But that brings us to the next point. How does the game work? Is it fun?

Its... a game that presents many options, overloading the player in choice, while ultimately coming down to doing the same thing over and over again, for the same few reactions, to get to the acts you actually want to see.

How it it works is, to simplify, like this:
You choose to attack a girl
You win that first fight and do shit
You buy the ability to scan her weaknesses
Do that

OKAY
Now you can actually play the game without wasting half your actions probing weaknesses. This scan feature should be baseline. It being 1 point means the first fight fucking sucks and is a terrible first impression.

Now that you have the scan, you use it and see some bars. One side corrosponds to shit you can do now, the other to shit you can do later. So pick the action with the biggest line on the side you can do now.

Once that stat says 'level 1', do it to another. And repeat. Until the girls evac/extermination is nearing max or you feel like it.

Now surround, check the bars, do the same thing again but looking at the stuff on the other side.

At some point other girls will arrive, and surrounding their allies debuffs them in a way the game doesn't even attempt to explain that doesn't matter. Just know it does this. So do the same thing to the next girl and she'll go down faster. And then a third one joins.

So you just do this. You look at bars, you hit the biggest one, then the next.

Why do you do this? For EVIL ENERGY. What is EVIL ENERGY. Its grind. Mindless grind for the completely game-breaking I-win tools that are commanders, which not only consistently 1 shot surround girls, but actually SUPER SURROUND them, which does vastly higher damage, making all other girls get destroyed faster while its happening.
It gives other shit, but 90% of the tree otherwise is stat padding. Only commander adds actual new dialogue, sex and the like.
This means until you unlock commanders, and their higher forms, and their (to go EVEN FURTHER BEYOND!!) combined or super combined forms, you won't see most scenes. You are stuck with just the basic shit. And the basic shit is itself harder to see without commanders.

But summoning commanders costs evil energy. So does using their best forms. And extending duration. And extra summons per match. You pay to unlock these options, then again to use them.

I don't understand why this is. It just means the game is more boring and repetitive if you don't use them, but you are paying your progress if you do. And repetition, because of the aforementioned lack of writing, and extremely simple gameplay loop, is the games core issue to begin with.
It doesn't need to feel more repetitive.

And even when you are at max rank, with a super duper commander, can consistently gain enough EVIL ENERGY to use it every match, it can be a struggle to see the scenes you want, such as making your commander actually fuck a girl. Because eventually they'll just fly off and effectively be invul regardless of what you do. So you may see it once, then the round ends, and you go back in. To go through every step again. To see it once more on the same enemy.

At that point the rounds ending feels entirely arbitary.
There is no functional difference between rounds beyond a certain point.
All them ending does is reset progress towards the scenes we are playing the game to see.

There is a cheat option for evil energy at least, although I played it without using that, but no option to prevent matches ending arbitarily or being able to use commander infinite times to truly enjoy their scenes without having to wait 30 turns for your guys to stop anal probing hero number 15235

Oh yea, that's another issue with the game. Succesful matches last VERY long. But as mentioned, text is very samey. So you just start skipping everything, as you can't just end the round when you want, only when they do. And it won't end if anyone is being molested.

So in summary;
The game is well written, but there is little to read
Its mechanics are poorly explained, but so absusable you don't need to understand them to break the game
The games progression loop incentivizes playing the game in a less fun way to progress faster
The core gameplay loop feels completely meaningless once you get to a certain level of strength, as you are so overpowering the girls actions lose all meaning (not that they meant much to begin with) and you are just racing against an arbitary number to see the scenes you want before it closes


I originally gave this a 4 when I was going to write this, but after writing it, honestly, its just too fundementally flawed to rate it higher.

The gameplay is... not the best. But its kind of fine for what it is. Could use the aforementioned options for inf commander/ending round early/preventing them from running away. Its not technically a well balanced system or anything, but as a method for the writing to be presented, it functions well.

The problem here is the writing. Its just not there enough. So the writing this gameplay loop presents to us grows stale very fast. Within a day or two.

Imma drop it a star. Most of the focus of updates for like a year has been on the 'forsaken' system and its a complete mess. Without cheats you basically need to beat the game to get these, which you then train to act like commanders. But the way they work makes no sense.
To even have a forsaken, without cheats, you'll have already repeatedly brutalized, raped, live broadcasted etc cruelty to the girls. They're used to it. And when like this they'd still fight you every single day.
As a forsaken? You can make them, after spending an entire game to unlock them, completely worthless and only able to gain 1% stamina (of 20 needed to act) per day in 2 actions. 2. 2 actions comparable to any given turn in a fight when they're the 'good' guys.
The only reason this system is useable at all right now is because everyone just cheats it to spawn fresh ones. And even then its just completely nonsensical and bad. A mindless repetittive grind of the same scenes and skipping days to find the special number where you can make the girls do anything without having to wait multiple days between use (whereas commanders have their full suite unlocked via the simple ee system and can be used every day)

Was a little dubious at first as am usually not a huge fan of text based games, but I have to say this game is fantastic! The writining is excellent and the combat system keeps things interesting by making you think about how best to attack each Chosen's weakness.
I cannot wait to see how the game develops in the future.

This game is good. Despite steep learning curve and slow start it gets really good when you start understanding mechanics. Corruption is made well and description are really good and varied. It's fun to watch heroines get corrupted more and more.

The only problem I found is snowballing at endgame - if you manage to get good combo and break heroines game gets really easy, but maybe it was intended.

TLDR: Quite a good game with much potential. But vanilla-lovers beware.

Very rich in mechanics to the point of actual strategy. Good H-games tend to be good games first and H-games second, and this ticks the boxes. Helps that I'm quite a fan of text-based simulators and this game certainly is that. More systemic and involved than your pages of paragraphs Choose Your Own Adventure.

However, the corruption themes are not only of sexual nature, but also that of the degeneration of your three heroine's mental, physical, and social health. You'll rape them, beat them within an inch of their lives, and watch them turn from pure-hearted and well-meaning to abusive, self-destructive, and suicidal. You'll watch as their friends abandon them and their social lives crumble, and as the optimism and hope drain from their eyes as you break them.

So unless you're a fan of ryona or are otherwise a sadist, you might be turned off. I know I was.

Fantastic game. Most fun I've had actually playing the game and exploring the mechanics on this site. Fantastic theme as well. I think this is a unique method of corruption and it really appealed to me.

So far so good. Steep beginning.
Plenty of room for upgrades but as far as a WIP, this already provides hours of fun.

One of the things that could be improved upon is the clothing system. Maybe a bit more descriptive of the damage / clothing that changes as the hero's become more corrupted.

[Rev @ Release 10b]

Yes please.

No art; don't care and doesn't affect my personal enjoyment or rating.

Writing is as strong as you'd want a text game to be. Scenario is familiar but welcome, voice is strong, narrative is limited but provides structure by being such without making me feel like I'd be better off reading a static story. I do have quibbles with the characterization: the engine is super neat and effectively mixes randomization and customization but still has continuity inconsistencies ( ).

Porn content has some scaling issues. Maybe I'm a thicky bobo but I struggle trying to get a given girl's shirt off with the dialog making it seem like she thinks showing skin is the end of her virtue, and then as soon as the fight ends the text tells me she's sucking off groups of random strangers on her own volition. I like corruption (one of my main kinks), but I don't feel like it's brought across as a consequence of my actions. Thank you for letting us toggle between ryona and tickling, but I don't get off with either. With the tickle-toggle set there're some janky text moments that read like a strong hint at violence that somebody crossed out 'beat to a bloody pulp' and scribbled 'tickled' underneath.

Gameplay could use polish. The learning curve isn't helped with the unclear stat abbreviations and randomly changing text colors; this is a good system but needs an unobtrusive explanation or brief rework or somethin'. It's also super annoying when they randomly take off: ramping a girl up to massive multipliers should open an ability to knock her ass out of the sky into a tentacle bed.

TLDR: I bitch about it cuz I love it; I hope you keep this up. Fuckloads of potential.

If you can handle text-only games and want to play something different, this feels like a breath of fresh air. It would be a 5/5 if I were smart enough to actually fully understand the combat mechanics, some stuff feels a bit off (but that may be because it's not finished yet)