Java - Cultivation Spiral [Release 1j] [CSdev]

Good:
- These types of games aren't my cup of tea, gave it a shot at least.

Bad:
- Too much crap on screen to pay attention to.
- 2 hours in, no porn to speak of.

Ugly:
- The UI REALLY needs a rework.
- Resizing UI breaks it almost completely on Linux running OpenJDK, keep in mind i've run other Java games just fine.

This is the worst possible implementation of a time loop in a game.

Grind. Die. Become slightly better at grinding. Grind again through the same scenes you've already seen or go on a tangent. Die. Become slightly better at grinding. Grind again through the same scenes you've already seen and don't go on any tangent because you've already figured out the best diet/items/stance to have to progress the story as efficiently as possible, then die again, and again, and again.

The game features several parallel storylines, each tied to different characters. But the requirements to progress the storylines are set arbitrarily high as to force the player to grind over several loops. Why ? Why not make every story and characters accessible in a single playthrough, and let the player explore the ones they want ? That would make each loop more unique and interesting. That would make the sandbox and the actions the player takes more meaningful.

I gave up on my sixth loop. In over 6 hours of playtime of release 1i, I saw almost no porn except a generic AI anime girl masturbating (she was clothed and nothing explicit was visible) and some underboob. I don't see the appeal of going through the same scenes over and over again, and neither does the game as you have the (mandatory) option to skip them. I can't help but see this option as the game admitting it knows it is fundamentally broken.

Porn and gameplay aside, the game isn't very pleasant to play. The UI is unintuitive, though it gets the job done once you understand it. Characters sometimes go on big philosphical tangents out of nowhere, completely ruining the mood. These talks feel so awkward and mechanical that I wouldn't be surprised if they were "written" with prompts like "You are a rich female philantropist. Explain what effective altruism is in a conversation with one of your employee."

It may not feel like it at this point of the review but this game isn't trash. Thoughts and work have clearly been invested into its production. However, I can't recommend anyone to play it until the inter-looping grind is reworked out of it.

TL;DR: I would recommend this game outside of my "aware of my perversion" circle, if I had any friends. Gameplay wise, this is a VN where choices are made using time management gameplay. Story wise, this is a grounded slice of life (until it is not), with different characters representing different philosophical ideas (transnationalism, "self-improvement above all", rational anarchism , enlightened capitalistic self-interest), with their points clearly presented in best light possible and at the same time subtly undermined. Visually, this is probably the best use of AIrt I've ever seen, but it is still very clearly AIrt and there are a couple of scenes where it really shows. I suspect the game at later levels will require calculators, spreadsheets, and deep understanding of the gameplay mechanics. H-scenes are hard to get to, but oh so delicious for it.

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I hate Visual Novels.

That is a bold way to start the review, not gonna lie. But it is true. I hate the structure the story has to take when it is broken down into those tiny text boxes. I hate how the story either you are given a choice between two flavors of smoothie to have for breakfast and, for reasons you could not possibly know your first way around, choosing banana kills your waifu 2 hours and 10 decisions after you made this one... or they don't matter at all and it is just a linear story. Most of all, I hate repeating scenes, either having to re-read them again or have a possibility to misremember the context of what is happening.

And this makes it all the more fascinating that I enjoy this game this much.

This is a cleverly disguised VN. There are girls and girls have scenes and when you unlock the scenes can impact the story. But the fact is is that the way you unlock those scenes is basically a time management RPG game. The concept of using gameplay, even time management gameplay, isn't anything new. What is new is how it is implemented: splendidly.

The "gameplay" VNs usually have this tendency to separate gameplay and story. In those games pretty much nothing you do gameplay wise will change. But here there are so many small differences, that make it feel like the world is responding to you. It is mostly flavor text changes, like people commenting on the "stance" you are adopting, or same events (on different loops) taking place in different locations with minor changes. But it make the game feel alive despite the outcome being the same.

Moreover, the gameplay makes it feel like you are clawing success out of the jaws of failure. Just like the developer's previous game, there are several variables that you can engage with at different intensities. It is always a question between going for a Goal to unlock a new scene and some perk, going for an Attribute to boost a specific aspect, or going for Relationships, boosting specific Attribute and Goal progress gain.

The story structure also solves the "you need to restart" problem, in that it doesn't actually solve it, but simply makes it part of the gameplay. This is a time loop game and learning the routes, remembering them on the next go around, planning for the future is all there and justified.

Speaking of story, the girls you will meet and date are just great. Each one has her own unique voice that makes them feel like radically different people instead of a hivemind with different colored hair. Each girl also represents a real world philosophy, like transnationalism or rational anarchism. As you go through the girl's scenes, she will expound on her believes, complete with reasons to adopt her point of view. Very compelling reasons.

And yet if you pay attention you will notice how the entire circumstance around the girl undermines her point. The transactionalist has fallen in love and is struggling to rationalize it to herself. "Self-improvement above all" girl can't adult for shit until it is literally pointed out to her. Rational Anarchist (who's points I find the most compelling) is struggling to do anything meaningful with her life.

These flaws are rather subtle. Or rather they aren't directly brought up in response to the ideologies, allowing the player come to the conclusions on their own. Which, I feel, is a much more impactful education into the ideas presented than simply explaining those conclusions to those who will hear (and pay no mind). If respects the intelligence of the people engaging with the writing, which is quite rare, I find.

Now, let's talk about the visuals. It's AIrt, with all the horrible things that it entails. But it is a well used AIrt. The sprites look decently well, with several different expressions that generally keep on model. The sprites are also not just "white/chaos background with girl in front", but actual cutouts that roughly stick to the same style. There are also a few events with crowds that really impressed me by populating the AI background with more cutouts of NPC's. Yes, this is simply a few hours in Photoshop and clever layering, but it breaks up that feeling the AIrt usually evokes because of the purposeful human guided alterations.

I can't really comment on H-scenes. I was only ever able to get to 1, arguably 2, and both involved only looking at each other. I suspect that getting the actual H-scenes will involve some understanding of the game and clever routing, locked behind high level events. Honestly, I don't expect much, not with AIrt and this being a VN, but I would expect the writing of the scenes to be at least decent, judging by the rest of the game.

To conclude, I will say that I am beyond glad I found this game. In fact I would recommend this game to all my friends that don't know about my crippling addition to hentai... if I had some. The game also features options for gender and sexual availability of the dating interests, one that can be changed on the fly, if I understand it correctly, so, by cleverly setting it up beforehand, you actually can share it like that and just claim that you didn't know there were options to enable sex. XP

This is a good game. Go play it.

The best combination of VN and Incremental gameplay I've seen.

What begins as a seemingly shallow "choose options until bars fill up" game quickly turns into an optimization struggle, where you're stuck planning out routes in order to efficiently get from point A to Point C, and not knowing what in-between steps can get you there.

What goals to shoot for, what relationships to build, and what attributes are important can change drastically over the course of the run. Traditional guides fall short because depending on the exact set of boosts and bonuses you have, the best way to get something could be completely different.

And then the game resets after a point, with you having some bonuses to show for it that alter how your run pans out.

Right now Act 1 is basically done, and given the kind of game this is I'd expect content to be slow coming. But I'm already more than happy with what's there.

It's a great beginning of an idle game, that I would honestly play even if you entirely removed the H aspects. I'm excited about where the story is going, and enjoy the premise. I am looking forward to release 2!

Ouy of my expectation in a good way!
First, you may seems a little bored and lost, but once you keep play a little more, it's story draw you in the world and You will want to dive in more to get to know those people's different side of them。

Gameplay, it's the incremental feel , if you like it, then you will like it .
story: good one, let you choose your own direction .
visual: seens it's mostly text base, and it's in early development, seems need more , but it's ok for me,as the character and style feel good, and consistance.

Its like playing an excel sheet. You just pick "do X", "Do Y", "Do the macarana" and click "set actions", "resolve day" and then "continue" to read what you did.
Actions take stamina, fill X bar.
They'll just say the same exact flavour text over and over again.
The limiting factor is stamina, so you just either ignore that because cost isn't high enough for it to matter or pick "sleep" once or twice a day, which effectively just means you make less progress that day. Its functional not actually different to just clicking more times. There's no real schedule, time-limited events or anything to actually make you care about being efficient at all.
Very, very occasionally, you'll get a scene where a static png of a girl talks at you. When? I dunno. You fill the girls exp bar, then it adds + 1 and resets. But that doesn't always give you a scene.

So you just mash click spam through identical text boxes to fill bars that mostly do nothing in the hopes that at some point something will happen.

The writing is mostly fine if we ignore "Tanaka", a girl the mc literally barely knows and actively avoids interacting much with they're willing to involve themselves with shady characters, take up a job and hire a "fixer" to rescue. Bit much for someone you literally barely know.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about the game. It is certainly an interesting one with a nice story and characters. As it is still early development, I think it can improve a lot.

Biggest issue currently the gameplay loop. It gets really repetitive for very little to give. Only time we get some sort of story development or scenes when the player fills a progress bar and even then sometimes it is not much. Wish each action would have a series of small random events, give some eye candy or more later on to keep things interesting.

It's still early days yet, but I like the optimization challenges this game presents and the incremental-style progress. The characters are distinct and fun, if a *little* too soapboxy about their individual political philosophies. The H-content is sparse and vanilla so far, but not bad. The UI is still something of a low point (especially the lag), but I trust that will improve.

For a game this early in development, I think it's got a solid foundation. I hope to see it expand both upwards and outwards going forwards.

One of those games where I came expecting an h-game but stayed for the story. Obviously this is the first release so things are a little rough around the edges, the UI being pretty user unfriendly and some of the actions getting repetitive eventually. However this game has some real potential. Got drawn in by the novelty of the story, and on top of that I simply adore games like these where you are going through some sort of a loop but slowly get stronger in between them and retain abilities from the previous once, and especially ones like these where differences are actually acknowledged. Giving a 5 star because I know this game can end up being something great eventually. Looking forward to the next update.

This game is one that I feel has a lot of potential.
The High Point of the game is its story, which does a very good job of making all of the Love Interests very sympathetic and interesting, while also containing a surprising amount of high quality political and philosophical commentary.
The Low Point of the game is its gameplay. Like many idle games this one contains a looping mechanic which starts you back at the beginning. While the first loop has enough novelty to keep you going while intriguing you with its story, subsequent playthroughs become a slog as the complexity of the settings and the unwieldiness of the UI constantly halt any automatic progression.
As this is the first release of this game (1c) the lack of polish is understandable, but in order for this game to become truly great, which I think it can, it will have to fix these issues.

It's too early to say if this game is good or bad. At the moment, the content is very limited, the gameplay quickly becomes repetitive, and the poorly designed user interface gave me a serious headache