Well, I tried this game for the first time, and it’s a mixed bag. There’s definitely some good here. The scenes the game delivers are genuinely well done, and the overall vibe is solid. What little plot there is manages to be intriguing, which is more than I expected going in.
Unfortunately, the bad drags the experience down hard. The game is extremely janky. Why does the inventory arbitrarily lock out two rows? Who knows. Why does the game even have a weather system? All it does is tank performance and hurt visibility. It feels completely random and unnecessary. And the “prologue” is a flashback, so narratively speaking, random weather makes no sense. (Also, I am not convinced the dev knows what “prologue” even means.)
And speaking of unnecessary, the pseudo-survival mechanics are awful on a fundamental level. You can game over from hunger while in the comfort of your own home during a flashback. Again, narratively speaking, it makes no sense and is just extra nonsense for the player to deal with. But the real dealbreaker is the time system. Certain tasks arbitrarily fast-forward the clock, which practically guarantees you will not have enough time to explore what little content there is. That problem is made even worse by the abundance of “trap tasks”, pointless time-wasters that do nothing but burn the day for no good reason.
The time system should be scrapped or completely reworked. A simple solution would be a static clock with manual progression, morning → noon → afternoon → evening → night, so players actually control how their time is spent. This issue directly ties into why the camping mission is broken. After finding Stuart, there is literally no time left to explore the house at all. It is janky, frustrating, and entirely avoidable.
Finally, the dialogue system is a mixed success. I really like that the game lets you choose between acting foolish or competent, submissive or dominant. That part is genuinely fun, and it sometimes has a real impact on how things play out. However, the RPG-style stat requirements completely undermine it. Why are RPG elements even here? This is an adult game, and I do not want to grind stats just to make my character speak the way I want. It is unnecessary, restrictive, and does not mix at all with the already broken time system.
I do have high hopes for this game. But the longer it takes to reach a final build, the more awkward it becomes that it is still running on a pretty old version of Unreal Engine. Hopefully the devs cut the useless stuff and focus on the sex scenes and story content.
