Certainly an interesting and ambitious idea, but it's very obviously quite early on into its life.
I generally play games where all the characters are distinctly non-human, so when I chanced upon this game and realized I was going to have to dive into thenightmare world that are adult games made primarily for relatively normal people, and not degenerates like myself, I steeled myself for what horrors a culture shock I would be diving into. And, overall, I would say that, while Course of Temptation is alright, albeit not quite my cup of tea, it's very underdeveloped in general as it stands.
If you want this game summarized in a sentence, it would be "Degrees of Lewdity, but a college life sim sandbox". Both of these games have very similar gameplay loops: you have a wide host of skills to improve, which in turn serve to let you pay a steadily increasing sum of money every week, which pushes you towards situations and arrangements you might otherwise avoid, and there's a small handful of bespoke NPCs among the numberless faces you encounter that have more curated content. It's also dramatically less grimdark -- after all, you're playing just a face in the crowd, not someone who fell through a crack in the system -- and refrains from the hardcore fetishes that DOL has in spades.
The game, as far as I experienced, has two additional spins on Degrees of Lewdity's base formula: it's a life simulator, so every generated NPC is persistent in the game world and can be repeatedly encountered, not just the curated NPCs; and the climbing weekly payments are slowed with good school performance, providing a reward for people who try to play on the straight and narrow.
After a couple hours of playtime, however, I found that the game has a few particularly standout problems to me:
1) The sex is not very interesting. It's similar to DOL's sex scenes, in that it is turn-based "combat", where you select actions to do per turn, repeat until cum. However, I found it lacks particularly interesting writing in them, with altogether "meh" descriptions of what's going on (although I do like how the UI itself is condensed from "what are all of your body doing" to being a list of actions to affect either yourself or the other person) nor any visual component to contextualize it, which DOL has at least sprites for. On top of this, unless you manage to chance upon a "Forward" NPC that's down to fuck regardless of relationship status, you need to do a lot of relationship grinding to get to that point, which ultimately makes it feel kind of underwhelming. Ironically, it actually pushed me back towards the sandbox side, and away from the porn aspects. And, while that's not bad, it kind of brings into question why this has to be an adult game to begin with.
2) It's just lacking content -- the only special scenes I hit was the tutorial bits along my path to woo the "best friend" character; a couple bits with the one verbal harassing character where I said to myself "literally who are you"; and a couple of negative exchanges with the roommate character. This is a problem that will definitely be solved with time -- Degrees of Lewdity is heading towards its sixth year of development. Granted, I didn't do a lot of things (I basically never touched the internet mechanics, and I just flipped burgers to make my pay for how early on it was), so I won't rule out having missed a bunch of stuff. Overall, though, the game just feels extremely grindy without any real payoffs to the grind.
3) It's very spotty with its quality of life features. Being able to click on the map to travel (and, more broadly, the fast travel system that's explicitly labeled with pressing points of interest (i.e. class, parties, home dorm)) is nice, and the reminders of events and situations that you're anticipated to attend (e.g. hangouts, dates), is nice, but there's a few random changes I like: a) some more persistent reminder for hangouts/dates, maybe put it on the calendar which so far seems to be very underutilized so I don't have to open a notepad document to keep track of any of this; b) the map to be labeled by default, since you can already open a labeled map with a specific button; c) there's no auto clothing rebuy, so if you lose a specific piece of clothing for an outfit, it breaks, and you need to wrangle with the clunky wardrobe UI to replace it; and d) maybe better tracking of special events you can miss; I distinctly recall there being a special "photo challenge" on Elkbook where you could take a selfie in front of the school's statue while not wearing underwear, but despite wandering the entire campus I couldn't find where it wanted me to go -- although I distinctly remembered a statue being mentioned in the prologue bus tour thing, so I assume I was intended to find something.
TL;DR: A solid sandbox with a good backing simulator. However, it's very underdeveloped, and past that has surprisingly weak adult aspects as it stands. It doesn't really work for me, but at the same time, it's not bad either. If you're interested in a game like Degrees of Lewdity that dials down the dark, hardcore aspects in favor of expanding the life sim side, you'll likely enjoy this, as undercooked as it is right now.
3/5
I generally play games where all the characters are distinctly non-human, so when I chanced upon this game and realized I was going to have to dive into the
If you want this game summarized in a sentence, it would be "Degrees of Lewdity, but a college life sim sandbox". Both of these games have very similar gameplay loops: you have a wide host of skills to improve, which in turn serve to let you pay a steadily increasing sum of money every week, which pushes you towards situations and arrangements you might otherwise avoid, and there's a small handful of bespoke NPCs among the numberless faces you encounter that have more curated content. It's also dramatically less grimdark -- after all, you're playing just a face in the crowd, not someone who fell through a crack in the system -- and refrains from the hardcore fetishes that DOL has in spades.
The game, as far as I experienced, has two additional spins on Degrees of Lewdity's base formula: it's a life simulator, so every generated NPC is persistent in the game world and can be repeatedly encountered, not just the curated NPCs; and the climbing weekly payments are slowed with good school performance, providing a reward for people who try to play on the straight and narrow.
After a couple hours of playtime, however, I found that the game has a few particularly standout problems to me:
1) The sex is not very interesting. It's similar to DOL's sex scenes, in that it is turn-based "combat", where you select actions to do per turn, repeat until cum. However, I found it lacks particularly interesting writing in them, with altogether "meh" descriptions of what's going on (although I do like how the UI itself is condensed from "what are all of your body doing" to being a list of actions to affect either yourself or the other person) nor any visual component to contextualize it, which DOL has at least sprites for. On top of this, unless you manage to chance upon a "Forward" NPC that's down to fuck regardless of relationship status, you need to do a lot of relationship grinding to get to that point, which ultimately makes it feel kind of underwhelming. Ironically, it actually pushed me back towards the sandbox side, and away from the porn aspects. And, while that's not bad, it kind of brings into question why this has to be an adult game to begin with.
2) It's just lacking content -- the only special scenes I hit was the tutorial bits along my path to woo the "best friend" character; a couple bits with the one verbal harassing character where I said to myself "literally who are you"; and a couple of negative exchanges with the roommate character. This is a problem that will definitely be solved with time -- Degrees of Lewdity is heading towards its sixth year of development. Granted, I didn't do a lot of things (I basically never touched the internet mechanics, and I just flipped burgers to make my pay for how early on it was), so I won't rule out having missed a bunch of stuff. Overall, though, the game just feels extremely grindy without any real payoffs to the grind.
3) It's very spotty with its quality of life features. Being able to click on the map to travel (and, more broadly, the fast travel system that's explicitly labeled with pressing points of interest (i.e. class, parties, home dorm)) is nice, and the reminders of events and situations that you're anticipated to attend (e.g. hangouts, dates), is nice, but there's a few random changes I like: a) some more persistent reminder for hangouts/dates, maybe put it on the calendar which so far seems to be very underutilized so I don't have to open a notepad document to keep track of any of this; b) the map to be labeled by default, since you can already open a labeled map with a specific button; c) there's no auto clothing rebuy, so if you lose a specific piece of clothing for an outfit, it breaks, and you need to wrangle with the clunky wardrobe UI to replace it; and d) maybe better tracking of special events you can miss; I distinctly recall there being a special "photo challenge" on Elkbook where you could take a selfie in front of the school's statue while not wearing underwear, but despite wandering the entire campus I couldn't find where it wanted me to go -- although I distinctly remembered a statue being mentioned in the prologue bus tour thing, so I assume I was intended to find something.
TL;DR: A solid sandbox with a good backing simulator. However, it's very underdeveloped, and past that has surprisingly weak adult aspects as it stands. It doesn't really work for me, but at the same time, it's not bad either. If you're interested in a game like Degrees of Lewdity that dials down the dark, hardcore aspects in favor of expanding the life sim side, you'll likely enjoy this, as undercooked as it is right now.
3/5
