Version 0.3.4
Finally... A game with pregnancy where you can breed your units... Thank you, devs.
So I've found this game a few months back, when the textures for the first few levels weren't finalized and icons to move from one room to another were just placeholder blocks. I've played it once or twice since they added textures for the environment, but I only got to the end in the previous version (although I don't think they've added a lot of content since, but it won't matter for this review).
Although I would like to say one last thing about the new textures: It seems to me the devs didn't have the players with slow PC or connections in mind when making them. Sometimes they take quite a while to load, which becomes really annoying when you want to move to another location and hove to wait a couple of seconds for the game to catch up with you.
STORY :
Sadly, I don't have much to say about the story. You play as a fully customizable dryad sent on a quest to contain the corruption spreading all around the world, and it's up to you and you friends to stop it. That's it. The rest is fluff text that is just exposition dump, and honestly, it's not that interesting to read. I'd rather read about the interactions between the characters and with their environment, rather than something that could be in a codex in a side page. To give an example, I think
Kobold Adventure does it best, where there is a few lines about what's going on in the land, but it's always used to push the plot forward and introduce new characters, whereas here it feels more like padding between fight scenes. The story is not bad, but there is definitely a way to improve the storytelling a bit. I know it's a text-based game, but in my opinion, the character dialogues are more than enough most of the time.
About the characters themselves, honestly I have mixed feelings here too. They are not bad, but they are a bit forgettable. You entourage consists of a few basic trops with legs: You have the dominatrix big sister, the young and playful friend, the innocent and smart friend#2, and so on. For the most part, they don't detract from their baseline, and it's fine most of the time, but a bit more spice wouldn't hurt. It's kinda alleviated by the MC, and you can make her say some extreme things to spice up the dialogues, like
Wanting to drink piss from the satyr? Seriously, devs... ... That's hot, I want more!
That's all I have to say about the story. It's not bad, but it's a bit boring, and I found myself sometimes skipping through a dialogue or two to get things going again.
THE ART:
I don't really want to talk about the art, since I'm not a "art guy" or whatever, but the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this game is "Wow... This must have taken a long time to put this in". Because all the illustrations for characters and the environments are all high-quality sprites that take the whole web page (which might explain the long loading times), and there is a LOT of them in total. I wonder how much time it took for them to reach that point, adding to that the fact the actual sex scenes in this game are handicaped by this lack of focus on them, as they are all in black and white with barely any shadow to give a sense of depth. Again, they're good too, but with more of a focus on them they could be even better than they are.
I don't know if that workload will be sustainable in the future, but that's a bold thing they did, and they have my respect for that, because the renders do look good and enticing.
As for the artstyle itself, it's good, but I feel there's something missing here. It's got a bit of inspiration from anime artstyle, notably the characters, but there's a sense of... Stiffness, I guess ? In the way the characters stand. Their traits are not exagerated, and while I think it looks good and colorful, I think they could have got them a lot further with just a few more details here and there. I don't know, maybe wider hips, a different head shape, just something to give them more character and differentiate them from each other, because they all look like the MC with different colors and hair.
It could have been a little bit more entincing to look at, in my opinion. But honestly, it's already really good, and it does what it should do well (ie. get me horny), so I can't compain.
GAMEPLAY:
The game itself is a traditional RPG with elemental powers, different types of enemies reacting differently to each elements, the classic. But the main reason why I decided to try this game : There's pregnancy in this game, woohoo!
No wait come baaa
aack...
The main gimmick in the game is actually breeding new monsters from the ones you've already beaten, giving you nice inflation sprites while you wait for the eggs to come out. These units can fight with you, but most of the time they're just here to take hits for you while you do all the work. What a good mom, I know.
It's not that much by itself, but there's a great deal of customization for your MC. I wish your units could also be customizable with weapons or accessories like the MC to make them more capable in combat, but it seems the direction for them is to be disposable units you can breed later (?), since there are multiple different NPCs that can lay eggs inside of you. For now, you can only lay eggs, but as the game is in development it remains to see how it will evolve. Although, the pregnancies take way too long in my opinion; by the time I left the manor and cleared every room in it, my MC had moere eggs but I only the worms from the previous level had hatched at this point.
CONCLUSION:
A really pretty game, and a very enjoyable experience if you're into RPGs with unit mechanics. The story is a bit on the weaker side for me, but it nevers gets boring or a slog to get through.
What I appreciate however, is that the devs seem to be really active on this site about their progress on the game, which is sadly quite rare nowadays. I think of supporting them on Patreon for their efforts, so we'll see where this goes.