HTML - Female Agent [v1.20.1p] [Crushstation]

Let's address the elephant in the room - this isn't version 1.17, it's MAYBE 0.17 alpha and you can pay for the privilege of testing it. In its current form, it's a Twine CYOA that's pretty much linear; wish Crush could show up regularly and finish one story, even if that's fairly linear like this.

What's good - the writing and story made me fall in love with version 1.6.3
What needs improvement - Amount of content because this game has been "reset" several times already. We get railroaded HARD in this one.
Gameplay is decent, but let's be honest, it's a distraction. Playing dress up and rolling dice do not matter much in game with a back button.

Just a guess that each reset is because dev realises each branching choice means MOAR WORK writing? My evidence - dev's Patreon has more word count after 5+years than version 1.17 of his only TEXT game. The real magic is the smoke and mirrors illusion this will be a game someday, because just read this thread; slow, irregular updates are now a feature of this game.

In closing, there are 2 demographics that would love this game, I'm sure:
1) Those who love foreplay more than sex, because FA teases much potential BUT it has been 5+ years. Science says average male only lasts 5+ mins in bed.
2) Masochists - Because you can keep hoping for a finish, but nah. Come back to this thread to punish yourself like I do. Might take up self-flagellation in between updates.

Oh Female Agent... Oh the Humanity.

Female Agent is a game about an intelligence operative going undercover in a Bangkok titty bar. HTML-based and playable online in your browser, the production values are sky-high and I'm pretty sure that the entire system is based on a bespoke mechanical engine that has been stripped-down and rebuilt from scratch at least three times so far.

Had Female Agent 1.0 dropped without any precursor then it would be universally praised: The writing is slick, the tone is really consistent, the dev has a real dedication to accuracy and everything feels just really well-polished. The problem is that Female Agent 1.0 did not appear fully formed. It is actually a much simplified and truncated version of a far more ambitious and likeable game.

Originally, Female Agent was a game of absolutely dazzling scope. You didn't just create a character that looked a specific way, you created a character from a specific place and a specific social class who looked a specific way and you started playing them as a teenager and so you chose their friends, their favourite subject at school, they hobbies and their early sexual dalliances. Before the game's plot had even started, you'd already built a very specific character with literally dozens of separate skills.

You then got recruited by your specific country's intelligence services and went into training. Again, you were free to choose your individual areas of expertise and skill before being unleashed on the plot.

For ages, Female Agent was all back story. For literally years, the game stagnated at the point where the actual plot was due to start as rather than adding to the plot, the dev kept re-writing the system from scratch and every re-write stripped away another element of the original game. Sometimes it was an early side-mission, other times it was a nationality or a background. Again and again, everything was simplified and nothing ever advanced.

The current build is basically a crude mockery of the original game. It looks better but all of that back-story stuff and the sense of building your character by making choices? gone. All the different social classes and interests? gone. The nationalities are still there but they have virtually no impact on play beyond the odd reference and the fact that you start the game by going to a different building in a different country.

What's left is a well-polished game where you have no agency and no choices. You get to click stuff from time to time but the plot never forks, and the only thing that changes is a bit of dialogue. For all the agency you have, this might as well be a visual novel... which brings me to the root of my problem with this game:

What is the point of re-writing a game from scratch if every re-write results in lost features, lost plots, and lost mechanics? Female Agent has been re-built from scratch three times and while we started out with a really cool RPG we now have a very basic (although admittedly well-written) visual novel that could easily have been handled with a renpy/twine engine and even then, most twine-based games have more complexity and depth than Female Agent.

I'm giving this game two stars as the production values are still pretty good. This being said, I genuinely grieve for the game we once had. I would also point out that the updates on this game are insanely slow... at the moment, the game is a couple of months late on a very modest publishing schedule because the dev had to work on three tiny side-missions and got completely overwhelmed. At this point, there is no chance that this narrative will ever amount to anything of any substance.

Given that he is currently earning close to £60k in patreon subs a year, the dev really needs to hire some additional writers. Dude: Spread the love and approach some of the people on this site who are better with words than code and you'd break the log-jam and be able to focus on the stuff that actually interests you as watching you write an erotic game is like waiting two months to maybe read about two old people fucking only for the publisher to announce that he needs to completely rebuild a new printing press from scratch.

Excelent story, writing, premise, details. Very believable and with many elements from a spy's life. Not written in the flash y hollywood style, but quite precise and true to real world spies. What can be improved: Sex writing is a bit short. A little bit longer scenes (not too much!) and juicier descriptions can make text game better. Next is visuals. Clicking Next slide can get quite boring. Adding a casual small picture of some of the characters in green links (at least when you first meet them or when they change clothes) will make it much more enjoyable. The stats page is still WiP I guess, so you have no way of checking character's body and mental state. A small graphic showing when her pussy is wet or nipples are hard can be fun! I know Thailand is a hot place, but adding more clothing and accessories can make the game a bit more life like (stockings, garter belts, jewelry, accessories, etc). Combined with stats screen it can give you an idea how you look like with different clothes (if there is any difference except visual).
Since you eat spy pills for hightened perception and reaction, you can add more scenes where this matters. Example - if you have perception boost - you can see stuff in locations or on people's clothing which you usually can't.

It was very fun playing it so far. I hope the dev continues to develop it and make it even better!

Playing this game is like getting into an oven with a future decent meal and trying to eat it before it's done. And said meal suffers from an inordinate amount of attention going to the garnish instead . There's a lot that with time and effort and attention will be great, but absent those things really makes you feel the lack of their presence. I really wish devs that were talented at writing were more frequently talented at making themselves write.

I'm glad this dev is passionate about something odd, like trying to make the spy part of the game seem authentic - but that comes at the cost of the actual game currently. I'm immersed, but its in boredom. And it's not this content's fault - once it is fleshed out it is a unique and interesting addition. I keep hoping I'll come back to this game in a year or two and it will be way more than the current state. That's the most accurate thing I can say, "you will wish you played what you're supposed to play."

Hook: Go undercover in a nudie-bar/brothel. It's a erotic novel elevated with clean visuals, titillating scenarios, and solid pros. Really makes you feel like James Jane Bond.

Best:
+ Titillating and kinky scenarios. Coomers rejoice.
+ Good editing: spelling, grammar, pacing, and dialogue pros.
+ Realistic spy-like tone. Serious but not boring. Dark but not too edgy. Fun (and optional) hyperlinks for learning jargon.

Meh:
/ Simple paper doll graphics. Lots of superfluous clothing and makeup options.
/ Possible to miss scenes on first play though.
/ Sometimes reads like a travel brochure when setting the scenes.

Worst:
- What appears to be a branching narrative, C.Y.O.A. story, actually only has one critical path. Your choices amount to "do you want to be an unwilling victim or a willing victim?"

Score: 8.0 /10
Ver: 1.16

The writing and world building are excellent, developer obviously spent a lot of time reading up on subject matter material. Makes you really feel like you're in a bond film.

The prologue was great. It's refreshing to see a game where the protagonist has agency, however the game railroads you down the oft-trodden path of becoming a sex object. Perhaps it would have been a poor allocation of work to add a path that would have been only been enjoyed by a minority of players, but it seems a shame to reduce such a well written character to the misogynistic dribble prevalent on this site.

In terms of immersion, an ambient spy music audio track would perhaps be a worthwhile inclusion to double down on the bond cliche.

Decent game, art has improved over time and story is pretty spicy. Very linear however with most of the choices just changing the dialogue outcome slightly and not effecting the main story. Fun to play as a total whore character, but if you want anything else then its basically just Unavoidable Rape tag. Seems to be like dislike values based on choices but they don't seem to affect anything much like the decisions themselves.

Although Female Agent is really a slow burner, it is one of the best text novels I know. The main reason for this is that the dialogue is well written, the spy language blends in well and you even learn a bit about how intelligence agencies operate and what it might feel like for an intelligence agent to go undercover. Even though it is of course dramatised for entertainment purposes, you just feel like you are really experiencing a spy story.

What this game perhaps doesn't do so well is make decisions seem really significant. Many decisions seem more like flavour and not really as if they change the plot. That's okay, but it's text games that could really shine here.
Many of the secondary characters are also not sufficiently illuminated for me. Interesting characters seem rather superficial, their motives, backgrounds and motivations are hardly taken into account.

I give it five stars because I see the potential of Female Agent. There are not many text games that build up a plot so convincingly, and now the only question is whether the arc of suspense and the depth of the individual characters really come about. The ingredients for a near-perfect text adventure are definitely there.

Here's my review for v1.16.1

I'd give this 5 stars if only there are more visual accompaniment for each scenes especially the sex scenes aside from just a standing avatar of my character having different facial expressions. Aside from that, it has a great story which is very interesting, engaging and enlightening. It is also well written and feels realistic.

I remember playing this years ago and I've always really liked this one a lot for an HTML game. Fairly deep character customization with a ton of choices to be made, and a true slow-burn corruption path. I have a soft spot for HTML games and Female Agent is in the top-tier of those, for sure.

4* could be 5 if I had a bit more content to work with.

After a night of trying to keep my interest in this only to fail to fucking cum by the end, I felt I should write this.

Despite it fucking up the main damned reason I'm here, I initially wanted to give 4 stars for the quality writing. Care is put into the setting and the characters feel like actual people.
But there are 2 major problems. One, for a text-based game years in development, it's lacking in all areas. You'll be scrolling, searching, and pointlessly rolling dice to find the next inconsistent bit of linked text to move on with only to reach an abrupt end. Two, and this one's far more damning, it's straight not sexy enough.

The realistic setting does not lend well to text alone. You got 2 somewhat customizable images of your avatar to work with and a single good pic of some random stripper if you bother clicking around. Otherwise the most stimulation you'll get is imagining a sexy spy slutting it up for clubbers and for that, lots of boring intermission that's a pain to click through.

A lot of love and effort has been put into the game and it shows. It's very linear, the choices are mostly for immersion and I'm perfectly fine with that. Avatar and clothing system is also great. Definitely worth playing and looking forward to future updates.

Engaging and surprisingly well researched story with lots of well written sexual content. Really got me going despite it being fairly vanilla compared to some other games on this site. I think it's the great setting that really spices it up through proper context.
The relatively simple avatar system looks great and the UI is pretty simple, without a need for excessive and repetitive clicking.
One of the best HTML games on the site. Well done, looking forward to the updates.

There are strong advantages about this game, such as good concepts and excellent writing, but the extremely slow update tarnishes all of those things.

Fortunately, the dev seems to have regained his motivation recently, so I will watch the game with more expectations.

Version 1.16

Wasn't a fan of the original story for the game. It was "Fine" but a bit vacuous. In it you were recruited to be a whore in brothel. You started having sex on camera immediately.

With the new engine the writer made small, but important rewrites. Now your original cover is a bartender (topless). It makes the gradual corruption and the way you sink further into the underworld more impactful.


Its perfect. Its the sort of change that takes the game from a 3 star experience to 5 and is a perfect example of how important context is for story focused games.


Edit:
Have taken a star off, simply because subsequent playthroughs kind of proved 2 things:

1. Most of your choices are an illusion (at least at this stage).
2. The game is not friendly for playing through again where you've already seen most of the scenes. *Click**Click*Click* etc. This could be alleviated a lot of the maker could bind a key for "Next" as 90%+ of screens, that's the only option you have. It'd make is a lot easier for subsequent playthroughs.

The author is not concentrating on the story but I hope he keeps going with it instead of concentrating on vast mechanics that he will probably not get to implement because it's too much work. It's really story driven and the story is pretty good now, really keeps the reader interested. You do need to be into the tags, I imagine not everyone will enjoy this.
The art always felt a little off with this one, even with the changes, but it's so minor and not worth time to divert efforts to it unless it's being done by someone that has nothing to do with the working on story.

Honestly one of the best games on this site.
Ignore the haters who act like they have all made AAA quality games with no budget in record time when they've all likely never done anything creative in their whole lives.
This developer did in fact restart the game which stalled forward progress with the story, but they did that with consultation with their patrons and have consistently communicated their roadmap and production plans.
If this upsets you, by all means, don't support them and play one of the millions of other games on this site.
If you can understand a creator needing to restart because they want to create a product that they are proud of then I strongly urge you support this dev-- if you can afford it of course.

This version of FA takes you through a somewhat linear story so far that is filled with little details and flavor that make sex scenes incredibly hot. There are plans to eventually have your choices lead to bigger variety in the story and and eventual open world but I'm not reviewing that because that hasn't been done yet.
What I am reviewing is the existing story in version 1.16.1, which is superbly written and one of the hottest on this site, especially if you're into submissive/exhibition/masochism kinks in a fantasy written from the female POV.

An Outstanding Game!
The game mechanics are refreshing, the story is simple yet terribly exciting, the graphics are gorgerous, the paperdoll system is on point... And I spent an entire game wanking on it.
You, creator, deserve a round of admirative aplause!

Love this game. The story is great and I love the setting. The updates take a while but when they come they are very dense with content. I'm always looking for new updates to arrive, probably one of my favorite games on f95.

Honestly, this is one of the best games I've discovered here by a long shot, both for the sexual content and otherwise.

Sexual content:
Visuals:
The art for the MC is great, and so are the portraits of the NPCs. It's a realistic artstyle that really lends to the setting, as well as the eroticism. Sure, all you see is the MC as far as the sex scenes go, but the way that she is shown to blush, sweat, and even have an afterglow meshes is a great effort. The fact that you can view her from behind to really appreciate the myriad customizable dresses and makeup options is also a big plus.

Actual sex:

So far it seems pretty vanilla. The MC can get with several guys for 1 on 1 action. The MC, however, always cums (sometimes multiple times), which is a big turn-on for me.

The MC also gets groped A LOT (Though I think you can minimize it through gameplay choices) and it looks like there will be some SERIOUSLY juicy content as the updates continue to roll along.

The corruption content is fantastic and, as mentioned, looks like it will lead into some seriously intense sex scenes.

Non-sexual content:

Holy fuck, what can I say. I've yet to see a game on this site where the creator so clearly loves to do their research, both on secret services/spec ops and the setting. It's incredibly in-depth, but also presented in a very digestible way.

The fact that the MC exudes so much professionalism (At least for now) while slowly going down the route of corruption is so fucking hot - and this is all due to great writing for her line on work and thinking by the creator.

Overall, so far so great! I know some people have rated this poorly because of how long it's been worked on/restarted, but just having jumped in and witnessed the content presented thus far I am seriously impressed.