First of all: the following is not an objective review and should not be treated as such.
With that out of the way:
OK art, OK audio...
But the fact that the "game" was unwinnable NOT because the AI is insanely good at it, but because the game literally cheats, ruined it for me.
Spoiler/mathematical explanation: You lost the game the second you end up in a position where the remaining amount of coins is a multiple of 4. That's because, if there are 4 left, you can only pick 3 max and there's one left to take for her, making her win (a cycle the AI makes sure repeats meaning it doesn't matter whether there are 4, 8, 12 or whatever on the board, you lost, that's it).
You might, at the beginning, think that who, between you and the AI, starts playing, is random. And that would be fair, because the game wants you to believe that. But it is not.
The number of coins at the beginning of the game is (as far as I know) random. In most cases, when the number of coins isn't divisible by 4, she plays first (you don't get a say). Meaning she puts you in a position where there are 4 times X coins and you've already lost.
But then you might think "oh, so if she starts when there are 4.X coins, and I play right, I win". NOPE! Then, and only then, YOU start playing. Metaphorically speaking, when she's in a winning setup, she just decides she's playing first before you can say anything, and when she's not she just gives you the first turn instead, with a big smile on her face. That kind of shit might work with your 5 years old sibling/child, but to me, as an adult with enough neurons to understand what's going on, it can't NOT feel like a massive insult.
I know this is an erotic game, I know that the mini-game isn't supposed to be important. But no game that just baits the player into thinking there is a point to trying, when it just fakes randomness, is and ever will be enjoyable.
Coding an AI that calculates all possibilities in a mathematically solved game, meaning coding an AI that never makes a mistake and wins every time, wouldn't have been difficult, yet it would have felt hundred folds less frustrating, because as a player, I would have thought: "OK, this is a complex game, I could win by doing a perfect run but the AI is just insanely good and I'm not smart/motivated enough to beat it, that's fair."
But the author did not make that effort and what happened was:
"Hum... This is an insultingly simple game, yet I keep losing... What's the winning strategy? OK, I should force her into a multiple of 4, alright... Of course, she usually starts so she just puts me in that losing setup, fair enough... So if she starts when in a multiple of 4, and I play correctly, I win! Well here's a multiple of 4, perfect! Oh! Oh... NOW I'm the first one to play. You're just faking randomness to make me lose. You fuck."
It's dishonest, it's lazy, it's infuriating. They could have made the game such that winning was extremely difficult and unlikely, but possible, and added a very rewarding cutscene in that event; they didn't bother to. They decided to just create a mind-numbingly simple game and cheat - the end, get my game, enjoy your illusion of consequentiality and fuck off.
Bonus: The game has 4-5 different endings, which of course can only be reached by playing ALL of the game again - y'know, all of the mini-games that you've already understood are completely useless, the same uninteresting TF sequences, the whole thing. And don't go thinking those endings have different art, it's the same pic every time.
Pretty useful, when you want to trick people into thinking your whole 2 minutes worth of actual content have 2 hours of life expectancy.
Pissed me off so much I ended up needing to write a review to process.
Overall, I do NOT recommend that game. The art is, as far as I'm concerned, below average, the transformations nothing more that a lazy fade, there isn't even enough unique dialogue for me to rate it, and the gameplay doesn't stop at being nonexistent, it even makes you the insult of tricking you into thinking it's not.
Fucking lazy/10, talk to me when you don't disguise your 2 minutes visual novels into actual games and sell them for 10$.
