Edit 2024
Well, I totally forgot I ever wrote this. Now the game's released, I'd give this a 3.5 if I could. Original review below.
There was way too much story and dialog - much of it background or side-content - with the actually important information buried halfway through a bunch of dialog lines you have to advance through individually. There's no "hold button to skip dialog quickly".
The quality of the writing varies a lot - some of it is interesting and even funny but often overstays its welcome. Even the game-over sex scenes are overflowing with dialog and voice-acting, it's rare that they just shut up and (get) fuck(ed) outside of gameplay animations. The voice-acting is consistently good in technical quality. I'm not sure if I can really comment on it further because my view of it is colored by the lines they're reading, and that's not up to the VAs. All I'll say is that overall, the scenes and many dialog sequences were over-written, and when encountering it in the adult scenes, tended to detract from them. it kille me boner
The amount of H-content is just about satisfactory; At least 3 enemies, 1 trap and 1 boss with associated game-over sequences for each of the 4 levels - different animations for clothed/naked with each normal enemy -with a handful of side-events that have animations, roughly 1 per level. The animations are a slow > fast > finish loop and the art for them is nice. However, they don't really tie in to gameplay at all, rather only serve as an interruption. There is a "sexuality" stat but this only affects the endings and maybe some dialog options in the side-content.
I will give props - the game is quite ambitious in how your choices in dialog affect your other interactions with NPCs later on in the game, and the endings. An adult game, where the content of those dialog sequences isn't sexual, is an odd choice for it though.
Besides all that, the gameplay is decent. Movement and platforming are tight, the level gimmicks can be entertaining, if sometimes frustrating. You just get teleported back to the hub following the defeat scene if your HP reaches 0, you don't lose any progress except your physical location on that particular path.
Each level has several series of rooms each making up a path, and your objective is to get to the end of each of them to unlock the boss. You solve puzzles and find crates with upgrades along the way - as well as the terminals which contain lots of voice-acted log-entries and such, and those pieces of side-content like finding Faye being fucked by an enemy or getting yourself into a situation. Some of the upgrades put an entertaining twist on your abilities.
As of 1.0, large chunks of side-content in the last 2 levels are missing, and the gallery is a half-baked animation viewer.
Original review:
Future Fragments is a fem-protag action-platformer, backed up by excellent spritework for its diverse (but not
too diverse) adult content. There are also puzzle elements, open-ended level-design and power-ups/equipment for the player to use.
This is on top of a fleshed-out story/universe and (voiced) characters to match, with plenty of dialog and background fluff sprinkled throughout.
Each of the five levels has its own theme, enemy and trap-sets, puzzles and gimmicks, topped with a boss.
The environment art is extremely cohesive and just plain nice to look at, in addition to clearly-readable platforms, pitfalls, hazards and buttons.
All enemies has at least two animations - one clothed and one naked - while some also have gangbang variations. Most levels also have traps.
My main criticisms are how awkward it can be to swap between and use the different abilities. That and that fighting some enemies on some levels, and some of the puzzles and platforming can be tedious, frustrating or challenging.
Of course the game does fall victim to the "lose to get (most of) the content" conundrum, but it's equally forgiving of failure.
I've followed the game's development since early on, and little has changed except the amount of content - that's a good thing, it means the developers started with a good concept and haven't lost sight of their goals, or let feature-creep get the better of them, like so many other crowdfunded projects before it.
The developers have been very open and transparent throughout the whole process, and iirc, put themselves out-of-pocket to make the game as good as it could possibly be.
But those are relatively minor concerns; The game is otherwise very cohesive, has high production-value and isn't un-fun if you strip away the adult content.
If you enjoy adult action-games and alien/monster-on-girl, Future Fragments should be top of your list.
The developers recognise that piracy of their game can only help them, so you can try it out from right here. If you do enjoy it please consider supporting them on Patreon and/or buying the game, because that's how we get more high-quality adult games. And if it's not your thing, nobody has lost out.
So yeah, get it downloaded and have a go, I doubt you'd be disappointed.
/end
Well, not so sure I stand by that last sentence anymore. On the scale of things, it is a decent game - just not quite to its potential.
