Well, many people commented on SoB and Darktozz in general already, so I'll just throw in my 2 cents as well. I played both "Captured by Dark Elves" and "Femdom city" really early on (when the latter was only at "demo" stage), and also remember trying "The Asylum" and getting stuck somewhere early on in the story and not knowing what to do, after which I think I abandoned it. He was the first western femdom game dev I have ever found and tried before I even had an account on this website, with the only femdom games I played before his being the 3 part Monster Girl Quest VN, "Discipline: The Record of a Crusade" and "Bible Black". I was a patron for a while back then, but I very much second this opinion:
I did actually talk to him before about ren'py and writing out more scenes rather than doing the 3d models, I'm sure I wasn't the only one. So maybe I'll look more into his stuff again. Writing does take time but it can also come much quicker, and when the art is then done to enhance it, it can go a lot further.
and this one:
Character writing is also pretty weak. He does a good job making the various mistresses feel different, which is good, but all of them feel like caricatures more than actual characters.
Darktoz was amazing back in the early age of English-language femdom games, but I often found the writing for his sex scenes rushed and his characters lacking in depth. On the other hand, his plot writing was pretty good, especially early on (some of the endings for CBDE could've been better), and I would say the same thing about the atmosphere he built for his games! (I really liked the soundtrack he used to paint the desolate picture of the prison-mine in CBDE, which is something I don't often say about porn games) While we're on the subject of CBDE, also,
I can honestly say I had fun with CBDE and its characters/story - the only thing that ruined it for me was the grind, and the utterly nonsensical combat encounters.
One of the best ways to avoid too much of the grind is to use Cheat Engine to gift yourself a boatload of experience after you reach the 3rd level of the mine especially, as it works and saves you a lot of boring fights with spiders and giant centipedes. Also, always save before you're about to mine a higher quality stone and f5 the game if it gives you a random fight encounter, so that you don't lose the ore you were about to get!
I know you said you finished the game so my cheating advice is probably a tad too late, but hopefully if someone else decides to try out CBDE from what they've seen on this thread this'll help them!
Because his games are fetish fuel. You have to take the characters for what they are. I don't expect the quality of writing present in
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if I'm looking at
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. Some things are just beyond the scope of a product; just like how you shouldn't expect the complexity and politics of D&D Menzoberranzan drow to be present in a porn game featuring dark elves... especially when said game was made by one dude (who by the way has to do everything from writing to scripting to rendering to play-testing). Like I wrote above, I played CBDE and found it entertaining for what it was... and Darktoz's writing is quite good when viewed through the lens of a femdom-fantasy RPG!
Agree to disagree on this a little bit - as I said, he built a really nice foreboding atmosphere to truly evoke the feelings of being a prisoner to a group of ruthless cultist dark elves with no regard for your life or that of your fellow prisoners in a mine crawling with dangers, and the storyline itself was pretty engaging and captivating, so CBDE is definitely a good game, but I would say it could've been even better if he gave more nuance to the personality of the various mistresses, somewhat protracted more of the erotic scenes, (even just the dialogue for them to make the scenes feel less fleeting or rushed, not the renders - I actually tried learning some basic daz 3d skills since last week, as I have a pretty good idea for a rather unique femdom fantasy VN, and now I recognize even more how hard it is to make good renders in the daz studio,
even if you're open to pirating some of the really expensive assets you need...) and also if he gave us more complex endings for a few of the characters. (if I remember correctly, for Arachna or the matriarch of the dark elves, the only ending is you getting eaten and dying) It was a good game, but it being more complex in some regards wouldn've only inproved it in my opinion.
And when it comes to the complexity side in general, (your point about "Vampyr" vs "Vampire survivors"), I dunno, maybe it's just me being a sucker for writing quality above all else and even enjoying text porn games or rather basic VNs more than daz 3d sandboxes with excellent graphics and animated sex scenes if the former have better characters and storytelling than the latter, but I actually think you can write a porn game with better world-building than some triple A games. Obviously it's a difficult task, as you're just 1 person, and you'd have to divide your attention between the porn scenes, the main plot, different romance paths, gameplay, rendering etc, and an open-world environment is far more condusive to adding external lore building to the narrative (like Skyrim could just throw at you 200 plus books the Dovahkiin can read...) than an RPGm or ren'py game, but I would say that if your focus is on delivering a good story and you think long enough about your universe, you can give it many unique political, historical or societal aspects that will make it feel more alive and realistic than the universe of some triple A games.
I don't expect this either from a porn game, as it's hard to pull off well, (probably I wouldn't manage it either even if overnight I'd just get TessSadist's daz studio skills from the Goddess of femdom game-making...
) but I'd say some of the best fantasy femdom games out there, like Mistresses of the Forest, MGQ or MGQ paradox (even the lezdom game "Mistress vs Slave" when it comes to politics and court intrigue - the lore and world building is pretty basic/standard fantasy in that one, but its politics are definitely more thought out than in some AAA games) managed it quite well!
Anyway, the trailer for darktoz's new game definitely looks good and now I can't wait for the public release! (also
Mister_M, is that Jeanette from Santa Monica out there in the middle of the main menu characters?
) He might not be my favourite femdom dev these days, but he's definitely good and experienced, and it looks like he's put a lot of effort in SoB, so I'm (cautiously) hyped about it! Sorry for being a little bit late to the party (I've been pretty busy these past few days) and thanks for sharing the trailer Mister_M!
