This is a Renpy game about Marvel Heroes and the non-hero player character trying to break out from DC comics Harley Quinn's prison. I played version 0.4.6 from episode 1 onward for about 6-7 hours. Episodes 1-3 are contained in one executable and episode 4 in another. Episode 4 seems to have received several mechanical improvements and a new art style which no longer matches the art style of the original three episodes. This is a review of episode 1-3 until I could no longer bear the grind.
The game play consists of doing prison chores, operating an illicit prison storefront to sell contraband to the other prisoners, assisting prisoner cam girls, helping Harley develop a big dick serum, while trying to break out of the prison. It's standard Renpy fare at this point, you have a number of time slots per day. Morning, which is only used for breakfast story events, afternoon during which you work to gain money, evening when you can stroll around the cell block buying stuff or eventually unlocking some actual porn, and finally and most importantly the night during which you interact with the hologram Tony Stark to escape the facility, as well as operating your store.
You need a lot of money in this game, as you will be buying all kinds of stuff from the online store and the cell block dealer. Providing your customers with their needed goods will provide most of the funding you require. However not all clients are equal, selling dumb-bells to She-Hulk will provide a lot more money than selling soda cans to Quicksilver. To improve your money-making enterprise, you will be updating your tablet at significant cost. This is the primary goal for the first several hours. By upgrading your tablet, you gain access to longer lists of clients, your stock order capacity increases and the delivery truck becomes faster. There is no in-game explanation for these game play elements or the fact that you have access to a warehouse inside a high security prison, or why there is a cam-girl site on the prison intranet! The whole thing is a bit silly. There are two kinds of money used at this prison. Money you earn will be placed in your prison bank account. Yes, you have a prison bank account, there is a basic banking system in place. You may ask the guards to withdraw or deposit money from and to your account and they will drop off the money the following morning. When you operate the store, the bank account will be used. The fact that other prisoners transfer you funds in return for contraband raises no flags whatsoever. I would have scrapped the cash mechanic myself, it just doesn't do enough for the time being.
The most frustrating thing for episode 1-3 is the unrelenting repetitive grind that you have to endure to get anywhere, you will cleaning prison walls forever to earn money, so you can buy magic invisibility potions, so you can get clients, to whom you can sell your contraband so you can earn enough to buy the next piece of plot mcguffin that hopefully can get you access to teh pornz. Simply operating the store is frustrating, you have to wait until night, then click your secret stash, then open the tablet, then the store interface, then purchases, next browse a tiny window containing available and unavailable merchandise. Plot crap that you can only buy once or twice never disappear from the lists. Using your tablet consumes batteries, which you can buy more of from the cell block dealer, but doing so forces you to go the cell block, withdraw cash from your bank account, wait a day, go back to the cell block, buy the batteries, and then stash them in your hiding space or the guard will confiscate them the following morning and toss you into the sauna. It's supposed to be some kind of punishment, but you're losing a bit of time and money at most. Nothing would be lost by getting rid of these unnecessary batteries altogether! Having an interface button to go straight to the tablet would be a godsend.
Another frustrating thing is the lack of a todo list (remedied in episode 4), you simply have to remember what you're supposed to do. And if you forget, you'll have to click around until you discover the next bit of plot that moves the story forward. This is a linear game, there will usually only be a single thing or two at a time that moves the plot. And when you discover what to do next, you probably have to wait until the following in-game day to actually do it, then you discover you need to buy something from the dealer, but now it's nighttime, tomorrow you'll be able to withdraw cash, and then finally the day after that you can buy the stuff you need, and then get told to wait a couple of in-game days while the NPCs do stuff.
The original art is the only thing that raised this game from a poor score to average. It was what initially caused me to test this game. The new art style that starts to come into being after a couple of hours doesn't really seem to fit, it's not bad but clashes with the original. Currently there doesn't seem to be any animated scenes and there are very few girls to chase. Also why is One-punch man's Tatsumaki a cam-girl in this prison?! She clashes so hard with the setting, it's like putting legos next to armymen.
The first few episodes seem like a confusing mess of mechanics as if the developers tried to make a more mechanically involved prison game but failed and didn't remove the attempted game play elements from the code, then changed the direction of the game, improving as they went. The original episodes however, have been left to languish as they are.
In conclusion, skip episodes 1-3, you're probably better off browsing the game folder for the pictures than playing the game. The developers seem to want to improve their code but it surprised me that the episode 4 changes required a new executable. They might have thought that it wasn't worth the time to upgrade episode 1-3 which tells you that it's not worth your time to play them. But if you intend to, use a money cheat.
4 / 10. Maybe trying this again much later.
