It's February 2023, a year after my initial review, and seeing this game on the update page had me wondering if my initial impressions were a bit harsh.
Upon revisiting this game and playing through a few runs: No, they were not.
First, the good: The game's renpy port has far less wasted time than the online version, as there is no longer an imposed pointless delay between scene transitions, and you can click through text. Also, the fact that it's on Renpy means you can make use of the save editor to bypass all the trash gameplay design this game thrives on.
Now for the bad: The trash gameplay design remains terrible. Further, the Renpy version has far less content than the online version so people who actually like the gameplay loop must deal with the extraneous time-wasting features of the online version, such as unskippable text and aforementioned mandatory transition delay.
it's quite clear that the developer's design philosophy is focused on pointless grind and rng mechanics, with a few bits of simply wasting the player's time thrown in for good measure.
Some time during the past year, this game implemented a stamina system that adds nothing meaningful to the gameplay loop. The system serves only to artificially extend an encounter by reducing a player's attack power the more stamina you expend. While this sounds inoffensive in theory, a player only has three options in combat:
Attack
Attack harder
Wait
As there's no method of damage mitigation, defensive play, or even items to heal, stamina serves strictly as a way to extend combat and guarantee more damage on the player.
Meanwhile, enemies have no comparable system, and will always do full damage when they choose to attack. This is offset by the fact that enemies each have a set order of attacks they use, but there is no way a player can mitigate an opponent if they arbitrarily choose to impose status effects on the players, attack the player's lust score, or permanently increase a player's addiction.
Addictions themselves are another a terrible gameplay system, acting both as a damage multiplier when enemies of the addiction category attacks you with lust, as well as a skill check system to evade powerful enemy attacks. Unlike checks in other games however, the only progression a player experiences is an increase in difficulty the more addiction a player accrues. Failing a check results in a situation where you can no longer fight back, will take constant damage, gain more addiction, and require another check to escape.
See the issue?
Ultimately, the actual process of playing through game is a waste of time and effort.
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Old review below this line.
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Simple sandbox game with a completely garbage gameplay loop.
The primary design goal of wanting the player to constantly replay the game is undercut by the simple fact that constant loss due to pure randomness is not an example of enjoyable replayability. Arousal system means that every encounter only furthering the danger of the next.
Nothing about the actual gameplay loop is fun enough to encourage repeat playthroughs.
In summary, garbage game design.
