HTML - Course of Temptation [v0.6.2g] [Anthaum]

Great game with many options, funny dialogue, lots to do. Very hot descriptions, with many different options of clothing and kinks. Very nice exhibitionist options. Titillating without being obtuse. Very promising, will be keeping track of how it progresses.

Good stuff but it’s in desperate need of more content.

It’s a text based sandbox rpg which attempts to simulate college life (but also porn) in the magical land of the US and does a pretty good job at that… mostly. The tl:dr is it has a good skeleton but really needs more flesh, which looks to be coming in future updates. But to go into more detail:


-ART / MUSIC-

There isn’t any. Well there’s a couple of maps but no visuals or audio to speak of. This is a purely text based game, which is… cool, but also a big ask for most people to even consider trying it out. Adding some form of art to the game is probably its most requested feature and I’m inclined to agree it would be a huge boost. Grabbing an artist (paid in exposure) certainly couldn’t hurt. Even adding AI art might not be the worst idea here as characters are all randomly generated. Point is, some visuals to accompany the text would really improve the experience here but I get that it is fundamentally a text based game (and again that’s cool).


-GAMEPLAY / WRITING-

I would like to compare this to other lewd games of varying… degrees. But that’s sort of, maybe, against the rules here so I’ll refrain. On its own merits the sandbox elements are solid. It’s cool how you can create your own stories with npc’s and there’s different relationships you can trigger with each of them, like becoming friends, rivals, fuckbuddies, boyfriend/girlfriend etc. But the best relationship is unquestionably hatefuck, which can be a little hard to trigger but really fun when it does. Imagine like the nemesis system where a rival appears to slap you in the cock and get nasty.

Unfortunately these relationships are also lacking a ton of depth atm. Most events can only really be triggered by having them happen to you and the game can be really stingy with that. It can also be really annoying to raise some npc's friendship & lust to get these relationships to even happen. And then there’s some really bizarre situations you can end up in because the game doesn’t really account for prior events and sexual encounters. You can have had sex multiple times with someone but try to flirt with them even once and they will say they just aren’t interested in you. Do this at the River Rat bar and then wait around afterwards until they proposition you anyway for maximum hilarity. I’d like to petition the developer of the game to add dementia and tsundere as traits to the game so this can be an intended feature. There’s some other stuff like having relationships with professors, helping someone cheat on their partner (the no.1 cause for most relationship jank in this game) or cheating around in general which just feel painfully underdeveloped at the moment. Relationships in this game have a solid foundation but they ultimately feel very flat, which is a shame because it’s such a core part of the game.

The game is also very grindy, it can be really slow trying to raise some skills especially assertiveness and compliance (aka dominance & submission). There’s also a bit of a disconnect there as certain things have no impact on these skills, where I would argue they should. Side bets at the arcade for example don’t raise your dominance or submission. You can literally go down on nine people in a row as a punishment for losing and it has zero impact on your submission skill. Similarly as mentioned before relationships are also really grindy, raising an npc’s bars can be an absolute slog of repetitive events. Don’t even get me started on trying to raise an npc’s dominance or compliance. Having sex with an npc seemingly doesn’t seem to change friendship or lust. Being submissive or dominant during sex doesn’t seem to affect dominance or compliance (or it’s barely noticeable) and it’s all kinda disconnected.
The grind will probably become less of a big deal as more content is added along with more ways to increase these skills and relationships. But for now. If you dislike the grind. I honestly recommend going into the options and changing the skill and relationship multiplier to 2x or even 3x. I’m gonna be real with you, I don’t think there’s enough content in the game currently to justify playing out a full college year, in which this level of grind might be more tolerable.


-CONCLUSION-

If all that sounds harsh and that I must hate the game, I don’t. Truthfully I played this game solid for a couple of days and found it pretty addictive. The events in the game are good, the relationship system is a great foundation, the customisation options are cool. The special npc’s are really cool (love the D&D storyline in particular) though suffer from the same grind and rng issues the rest of the game has. I do think the direction the game is going in looks promising and I genuinely want it to keep going. Honestly my biggest problem with the game is; I want more of it. And that’s a good problem to have.

It's good shit so far but needs more time to cook.

Quite the perfect blend of everything. The game has nailed a lot of the slice of life elements and allows you to explore it's quite large world if you wish, or remain mostly within University.

The developer has a pretty extensive road map for what they're wanting to do.

I do have a few criticisms though, which I believe are easily fixed, these only drop it to a 4.5/5, and since they're nothing too embedded in the game I still gave it 5 stars since there is no actual 4.5 option. On to the problems I have:

• The urination system. Wish there was an opt-out decision for this one, it makes a lot of stuff quite tedious. I get it's going for the Sims vibe, but this one just adds unnecessary clicks (making it option allows that fetish to stay for those who want it though).

• Sex. It's quite short? Your partner gets off and then it just ends. Of course you can cum multiple times but I believe making it last longer, have multiple orgasms will make the lustful side all the funner.

• Building Exhibitionism sucks. That skill is a chore and a half to build. I wish there were easier moments to simply gain that opportunity.

Outside those 3 major gripes, a lot of it is just teething pains and adding more content as the game is of course only halfway there. However for what is currently there, oh boy is it an incredible game. My rating of course is on the game as it stands at v5.2 not the potential.

Great future ahead.
This is a sandbox game, like Degrees of Lewdity, with tons of customization and a brilliant future ahead. I'm surprised by the amount of content it already have and this is the type of game that you can play in different ways.

Great sandbox rpg with decent character creation, things to do, and a solid turn based sex sim. One thing I wish was implemented was an image system where I could add a jpg for the pc and npcs. Great framework so far, loving making different characters so far

For context, I'm a few in-game weeks in my first playthrough as a nerdy streamer dude in v0.5.2c.

• Really good replayability, custom protagonist, world generation, interactive sex and freedom of choice for most things, including what type of content you will see.
• Writing's alright, nothing extraordinary so far, but it works and the porn's good.
• The game loop can be a bit grindy, but I expect the feeling will be lessened as more content is added to the game and/or more settings are made available (There's already a slider to reduce grind on skills, needs and relationships, maybe they should add one to increase random event frequency?).

This will be a game I watch closely, already a cult classic, five stars.

The concept is decent and things get interesting when events actually trigger, but the general daily game loop is just incredibly boring. You get up, you eat, you go to classes, you talk to some generic NPCs, and if no events trigger that's it. Repeat until something worthwhile happens. It's still an early version so I can't be too harsh, and unlike most Patreon games cheats are available in-game without any bullshit.

by far the best and most expansive text based experience I've ever had on any erotic game, there's so much to do already in this version, with much more to come, you can clearly see how passionate the dev team is about this game, every month on the 7th without fault the game gets updated, generally being a really big update, all of that without counting the bug fixes that come on the following week, not to mention it's all free and you can give direct feedback and get real answers in the discord server, i think this is one of the top games on this website.

Great Game. It has tons of things to do to not be bored if one cares about story. As an RPG fan this game hits everything even my fetishes.

Version 0.5.1f

Grind- which for the most part it is a CON for the non RPG fans. They can get bogged down with it, BUT there are cheats and options that change just that which can turn this into a PRO. The options are good if one wants to limit cheating, but there are cheats for that instant satisfaction.

Story- This is tricky. The story that can be found is good. There are a few story arcs, but over all it is what ever you do becomes your story. For a person like me who enjoys sandboxes this is golden. If one plays far enough they just skip some breaks and repeats the year over like ground hog day.
As of now there is not much of any main story line. There are a bunch of side story arcs that are done for the most part with avenues to continue for the future.

PROS:
1. Replay Value- You can try all types of pathways for the MC even gender.
2. Gender- You can mix up the NPCs to anything. Though I have to admit it does let in undesirables in the extreme settings, but that is life in general. It works for a realism look.
3. Game play- UI works and everything is explained if one chooses to listen.
4. Fetishes- They are mix of things that are earned through your actions. Plus you don't even have to accept them if you stumbled upon one or two you don't like.
5. Clothing- There is a lot of it, but that is normal in these types of games, but the thing that sets this game apart is how we can change how we wear them. For instance a zipper hoody. We can change how far to zip up from total coverage, cleavage, or totally unzipped. We have the choice of having the hood up or down, and we don't even have to go into the closet to change such things. We can even wear the scarfs over our faces if we wanted to.
Love it
6. NPCs- They have their own things to do. They are all unique wither it be gender or inclinations.


CONS:
1. Graphics- There isn't much of any besides the city scape and menu. Given that it is story based the amount of graphics is normal, but it doesn't stop a guy for wanting some sort of dress up in the closet at the least.
2. There are more, but this is a work in progress. I can't fault something that isn't here yet or might be addressed.

I'm gonna have a bit of a controversial take in <modern year> but heyo here we go.

This game has a lot of the cis/gender/pronoun/non-binary/everythingelse stuff. And you can't turn it off. Even if you set all of the sliders to 0 and m/f to max there will still be randomly generated nonbinary, trans, etc. characters. I even made sure, several times, that I had the sliders for those as far down as they could possibly go.

I, personally, don't care for that stuff and when a game has it I really appreciate being able to fully turn it off.

Content wise it shows promise but a lot of stuff is half-baked with loose ends. I do like that it doesn't really have the dark side that DoL and other such sandboxy HTML games of this style tend to have. There's not really any combat & molestation/rape can be easily evaded or turned off.

As others have said I do wish there was more for male characters. Especially in the clothing department. I do like that you can be a male cheerleader and there's specific event lines that acknowledge that.

I hope they expand upon the available teams. Archery/rifle, basketball, hell even bowling.

I seriously considered joining the patreon because I want to see this game go places but the above mentioned, and a few I haven't mentioned, hold me off from that.

Really solid game so far. I hope the dev keeps working on it. I would like to see more skills and skill levels I love leveling up my character. More things to spend money on, a private dorm or apartment, a car. I hope impregnation, is added so you can impregnate your harem of subs. An impregnation strap-on so your girl can do it herself. And IUD options for yourself or those you don't want to get preg.

An interesting sandbox game, it looks like it's inspired by other games of the genre but tries to stay more vanilla.

Pros:

• It has a decent amount of things to do and control in interactions.
  
  
• The monthly payments and hospital bills are well-implemented and add some interest to the game.
  
  
• While extremely grindy, the game offers difficulty options to make it faster or more challenging.
  
  
• The world feels alive with NPCs moving around and "doing their own stuff."

Cons:

• The developer added more needs than the games it took inspiration from, without understanding why those games lacked those needs. For example, bladder is mostly just a tedious stat that forces the player to repeat the same action every few hours, distracting them from engaging in more interesting activities.
  
  
• The game has a lot of interesting systems that are held back by the UI. For example, you shouldn't have to pop out new windows just to see if any interesting NPCs are in the same area as you. A second sidebar could alleviate the use of pop-up windows.
  
  
• More limited character types: most games of the genre offer deeper customization of the character's femininity/masculinity. This game just offers a couple of genders with no physical attributes to complement them.
  
  
• The game could explore darker themes. It can get a bit bland without any adversity for the main character. A few dangers in the college would definitely make the game more exciting and force the player to make interesting decisions.

*edit yeah. After playing a bit more, its getting hard to tolerate the tedium of repeated shower/bathroom actions every morning/evening,

it requires way to many clicks to take a shower.
1. go to the shower.
2. enter the shower.
3.take shower,(for some reason grooming is above showering),
4. select clothes to wear.
5 leave shower.

This combined with the bladder need (in addition with everything else) are taking a significant amount of time.(it really stacks up)

just for that reason I can't really put a 4 at the moment, since I consider this a serious obstacle when it comes to exploring the world/content that also affects the replayability.

Good game with lot of potential. But I have some suggestions for the developer:

1. Why is it when I choose a male protagonist, almost all the events still seem to be kept with female protag in mind? Give us some male exclusive events where we dom or harass others. Male protagonist is really lacking in content and realism. Dating and sexual market for males is completely different than females, give it unique but achievable hurdles.

2. Sex actions are not interesting after 10 minutes of having tried every option to see what the underlying text is gonna be. Make it different. Add options of freedom, example controlling what your right hand does while left hand does something else. Add options to talk, degrage, whisper dirty things or sweet things to the partner and vice versa. Sex mechanic needs a overhaul is what I am saying.

3. Money making options are too sparse. Please add some more like a cashier at a rundown shop, option to set up your own business with its own unique set of flavor events.

THis game has the potential to be a really good college sim. Developer, please don't take my suggestions if they feel too demanding, you're doing completely fine as yourself. Just give my suggestions a thought if possible. Thanks and 4/5

Vast opportunities, fun ideas of the DEV, great story lines in general, NO PICTURES in here - use your imagination. Nice clothing option - should get a bit hotter though. Most story line are pretty fresh in a sense of being totally unfinished, which is a bit frustrating, BUT PROMISING.

Game is great with tons of storyline stuff to do and sex to be had. Only reason I cant give 5 star is that the sex is lacking a lot, sex related to main npcs is fine but outisde of that the mechanic around it feels almost pointless. The character customization could also be more expensive, the clothing system is amazing but the dev could add way more to the actual character description.

I've now put a good number of hours into the game, albeit in the early game because I keep wanting to make a new character once I learn of different features, and I'm extremely impressed by what I've seen so far.

This is the dream game for a certain type of exhibitionism fan that embraces it as a bold and exciting rather than demeaning experience. This is the first exhibitionism game I've encountered that gives you the option to take it in my ideal direction: the activities available, of which there's a good variety even in the early game, are presented as fun and exciting rather than degrading and shameful. While it's certainly possible that I just haven't been hit by the brunt of the rumor mechanic, the setup we're given for other characters gives me cause for optimism: our initiation into the college during the campus tour involves flagrant exhibitionism that everyone seems pretty into, casual toplessness at parties is celebrated, and most of the random encounters I've bumped into while streaking were either approving, sexually excited, or eager to look the other way.

The casual sex dimension is also great. Characters are open and into it in a way that is grounded enough in reality to sustain an authentic fantasy, the setting maintaining just enough 'naughtiness' around sex to keep my disbelief suspended. This is an extremely hard act to balance: typically, games either go too far in the freedom aspect to point where the act is evacuated of all of its transgressive qualities (public sex being no more obscene or rare than publicly eating, etc.), or lapse into parody. It's particularly hard for open world sandboxes, where the balance between player freedom and sustaining a believable setting is extremely difficult; this is why games like Degrees of Lewdity, Lilith's Throne, and Corruption of Champions respond by making their worlds into open-air fetish dungeons. Only Lab Rats 2 managed to create something approaching a similar tone, and even that, my old gold standard for open world sandboxes that strike a good tone, is blown out of the water here. The world's consensus seems to be that sex is obscene and fun, and it's a joy to play in.

Character growth and the ever-expanding pool of activities it sustains is the meat of the game, and it's extremely well-implemented in the games I've played so far. It follows the standard format (do a thing to get better at it, open up more advanced options for doing it), but the options themselves are exciting and compelling.

In terms of complaints, I do have a few.

First, the conversation system is pretty weak; you randomly choose a topic, which gives a small bump increasing or decreasing your relationship with characters, or you can flirt using a menu. At no point do you feel like you're really in control of the situation, or that a conversation is taking place. I'm not asking for massive dialogue dumps or the like, but some additional flavor to make it feel like you're dealing with a person.

Which brings us to the second, and in my eyes most substantial, weakness in the game. You meet a ton of characters, and eventually they all start feeling the same, and you have to trudge into their descriptions to have any idea of who they are. This quickly becomes true even of your friends. The game already tracks a lot of information about NPCs; additional fields with specific content would really make them come alive. Give characters an identity; it doesn't have to be extremely deep, but just some details to latch onto. Maybe they're a cinephile, who loves a certain director or genre that you can discover over the course of your conversations, and then that becomes a recurring topic of conversation for you. Or maybe they're a music lover, and obsessed with a certain band or style, or a gamer a particular game or developer. Let the player decide how much your interests overlap, and create a sense that I'm dating this girl because of our shared enthusiasm for specific things in addition to her body or broad archetype. I won't remember "a somewhat-short redhead with a nerdy style", but I'd *definitely* remember her if I found out she loves Olden Ring, has been playing ForSoft games since Black Souls I, and her favorite movie is Spaceship Troopers. That "eclectically-dressed toned blonde" who spotted you watching Twin Promontories, her favorite television show, in the lounge and gave you her number after you tell her you love it is suddenly a real character and not a random blip that happened to agree that "photography" is a topic worth discussing and gave you her number accordingly during a session of greeting spam at the dorm. A list like this could be filled out with minimal writing effort, and it'd really make the characters feel a lot more realized, better simulate what it was like to make and have friends in college, and justify the huge number of NPCs: your match is out there!

Second, the sex system. It goes with the menu-style sex system you may be familiar with from Lilith's Throne, though similar systems exist in Degrees of Lewdity, Lab Rats 2, and other open world games. It's honestly a terrible system. You end up repeating short, dry descriptions of the same act a bunch of times, and eventually just spam your way through encounters. Fewer selections with more variables are 100% the way to go; dive into the details of how you and your partner are responding physically instead of just mechanically asserting "You trib your wet pussies" or whatever. Keep it short-ish, but make the choices feel meaningful. A solid pool of variables that can slot in strategic locations in a description can really keep things feeling fresh, and it's a shame that this wasn't the approach taken. Quality over quantity, show don't tell, and the usual cliche tips really heavily apply here.

Overall, an extremely exciting game! I'm enthusiastic enough about what's already here that I'm tempted to sign onto whatever crowdfunding platform to share my suggestions, which is a rarity for any adult game.

If you liked a certain other popular life sim game, but don't enjoy getting assaulted every 5 minutes (or would prefer to top for once), this is the game for you!
I first started the game in v0.5.0I, so some of the criticisms from earlier reviews no longer apply.
The big knock off for this game is the general lack of options for making money. You can work in a burger shop for less than minimum wage or be a whore. Expecting this to be resolved with future updates.
My one personal complaint is that I wish it was possible to directly proposition specific NPCs without having to hunt them down in the local bar or wait for RNGesus to bless you with their phone number for a booty call.
All in all fun and satisfying game and the 5 star review is in hopes that the game lives up to its potential. If it doesn't, you'll hear from me again.

While I do agree with previous reviewers on how great of a concept and the implementation of said concept of this game is I just can't bring myself to give it anything more than two stars. Here's why:

First of all, I don't understand the point of having the wide selection of genders when 90% of the content in this game is geared towards cis female or MtF trans characters. Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for female protag games, but if someone wants to play this game as a male character then they'll have a pretty terrible time outside of randomly generated relationships with NPCs. Most of the scripted events are made with female character in mind, imho.

Secondly, while procedure generation, different seeds and random NPCs sound fun on paper - there needs to be a level of control from the player, especially when there are key NPCs in scripted events which happen on every playthrough. Yes, there is an option in custom generation to customize some NPCs, but they are, for the most part, play either no or little part in the game itself, like a librarian for example. You can't customize your roommate partner's gender before you start playing and that's pretty bad, honestly. Same goes for most key NPCs. You just can't make the game playout like you want it to. As an example: I wanted to play the cheer squad storyline, but after every first competition, when it's time for the free-use scene, the game paired my character with FtM trans every time on four different seeds (default included) and I don't want that in my game due to personal preference. It's hardcoded, I assume, but why that is the case in a game supposedly about procedure generation is beyond me. Same goes for teacher's sexual assertiveness and other such stuff.

So, overall, while the concept is great and the game is pretty much bug-free, I can't rate it higher than two stars because sandbox games should let you tailor fit the experience to your liking while having randomness. This game doesn't have that.

Really fun game. The developer has done a great job creating this simulation. On a technical level it is very good and very impressive, I didn't encounter a single bug.
The inclusion of "Special Characters" is genius, which adds narrative to the sim aspect.

Really not a bad word to say about it.

There are a lot of Twine/HTML games that attempt to be a life sim. There are fewer which attempt to have even moderate amounts of depth to that simulation, fewer yet that do so and manage to get past the early building blocks and start delivering content and barely any that manage all that and still feel hot to play and not overcomplicated.

Course of Temptation is definitely one of the select few that passes all those tests already, and yet it feels like it has heaps of untapped potential still.

Already, you have build variety, a shitton of content with many different types of lewd events, dynamic NPC interactions and so much more. It's tough to make fully text based games hot to play, but this one can get you hard and keep you that way with no trouble.

There's a lot more coming on the roadmap and the pace of content delivery is quite high, so the future is bright too. Has genuinely become one of my favorite games on F95 since I've discovered it.