Others - Completed - In the Nest of Dominator [v1.18] [Dasaku Laboratory]

Played version 1.18

Good

1. Idle animations are good pixel art
2. Opening a chest spawns a Whammy-like roulette
3. Main character’s animation has her nipples bouncing in and out of her shirt
4. Viewing the map is a live view of the entire level, including monsters, chests, doors opened and closed, etc
5. Enemies can be run past without being damaged by touching them

Issues

1. Controller support in the main menu is bad. Face buttons move the selection up/down unexpectedly, there’s no ‘confirm’ button to start the game.
2. Controller support in the game is broken. Can move the character left/right but nothing else. Right stick moves the mouse.
3. Leaving a location lets you select where to move to. You can select the same location you just left, instead of “go back” or “cancel”.
4. Moving backwards through the air doesn’t make your character visually turn around
5. Jump is X instead of just arrow up
6. When your character can interact with an NPC, there is no on screen indication that this is possible. You just position yourself close enough and press Z.
7. The character has a horniness level or status effect, but that’s not a bar in the UI at all and the effects of the status are not explained. It seems to make you move and act slower.
8. When a conversation with an NPC ends, the conversation window lingers on screen without text
9. Unclear what bar in the UI is the magic shield. I assume it’s the blue bar. Normally I’d assume that was a mana bar, but spells don’t seem to cost any mana.
10. There is a Map button on the UI greyed out I can’t click. It shouldn’t be shown if I can’t use it yet.
11. Suddenly I had access to the map but the game didn’t tell me that
12. Have to hold the confirm button on the Save Game screen
13. Character has equipment slots for Weapon, Armor, Relic, and Device. The inventory doesn’t say what type each item is
14. The character’s shield can be actively powered up, but there's nothing on the UI saying it’s powered up state. Actually it is shown by a changed Shield ability icon. But using the ability to power the shield greys out the icon.
15. Standing on a moving platform moving upwards reduces your side to side movement speed
16. The character’s stats UI in the top left (green health bar, blue bar, EXP bar, etc) don’t instantly reflect changes made in the inventory. Drinking an energy potion doesn’t affect the energy bar until leaving the inventory UI.
17. Areas of the platforming level are accessible that should be considered out of bounds
18. When interacting with the Table Demon and selecting No, the screen goes black before giving control back
19. Text is too long and is clipped in dialogue box
20. Can’t wrap around scroll the inventory e.g. by pressing down when at the last entry
21. Losing combat isn’t game over
22. Recovering from a lost combat fully restores HP
23. The down attacking spell is keybound to the up arrow key + attack, instead of the down arrow key + attack
24. There is a bounce pad but nothing visually indicating so
25. Clipping level geometry
26. Items in the inventory can be organized by pressing V, but the UI doesn’t say that’s possible. You have to learn that in the Controls screen
27. No main menu gallery

The game still feels like an alpha without an objective or story. You can fully rebind keys for one-handed wasd play which is a godsend. Mechanically combat feels great with responsive controls and a good balance of melee, ranged spells, dodging, and countering. Unfortunately those spells are useless until you're already so late into the game that you don't even need them. This is because of the incredibly grindy progression system which incrementally levels and improves the damage, cast speed, and size of each attack with each use. Spells need literally hundreds of casts before being useful. There are few enemy types though they have very unique designs with variations in movement, attacks, and openings. The only exception is the generic pink pig orc which is just a dumb brick shithouse enemy.

The sprite work and animations are phenomenal which is expected with how few there are. The developer made the smart decision that sex scenes are only triggered when the player is in an aroused state or if they're grabbed by an enemy after the shield breaks. You can easily spam sedatives or stimulants to cycle through these states whenever you wish. Escaping from grabs is as simple as mashing or holding a key till the escape bar fills, and if you're far away enough from enemies then you can recover your shield before being grabbed. No real ending, but there's kind of a bad end. It's the gallery mode which unlocks if you lost to the boss.

Sound effects are incorporated well, but I think they're from a popular library just like the extremely limited soundtrack of royalty free music which is quiet enough that it doesn't become grating but does need more variety for 15 whole levels.

There's also a forgettable level drain mechanic when the player orgasms against an enemy, but the levels are recoverable at a shrine and there's an item that prevents it. Player level has very little impact on combat, and it's not thematically important because enemies also drain mana. I dislike it because I need to occupy one of both the limited equipped item and inventory slots with the protective charm if I want to watch a scene without trekking back to the out of the way level recover shrine each time. You can slowly build up inventory space with rare bag size upgrades, but you'll probably have finished multiple times before it's helpful. The only reason it's bearable is you can finish the game in like 1-2 hours regardless. Why? Because base difficultly is a joke, and there's a single main dungeon with only 15 floors. I actually didn't notice the last 5 floors on my first playthrough and beat the final boss with barely any progression or items. There's 5 tier enemy difficulty you can adjust on the fly which scales enemy and drop item level, but even after NG+3 anything above 2 is still just hitting your head against a wall of enemy HP for incrementally better items.

Tried the DLC for a bit and I'm pretty disappointed. Adds very little to the game. A single roguelite dungeon with like 3 floor layouts and nearly identical enemies and rooms to the main dungeon. There's 2 NPC encounters, but I'm 10/30 levels deep and have seen no follow up with them so they may have just been one offs. Of the 4 new enemies, 2 are bosses and 2 are generic humanoid enemies that are added to the small roster of randoms. 1 is the weak goblin which has an annoying grab and the other is the gargoyle which has unique vertical movement and spells but is another HP wall like the orc with an equally boring sex scene. The hypnosis debuff is fine I guess, but if you already have other status effects it doesn't change anything really aside from flavor text and eye color.

The best thing I can say is I really wish there was more. Sadly the developers output is snail paced. Following his blog page, he's consistent and updates his backers regularly, but other people have finished multiple full games in the same time span with comparable graphics and gameplay but much more ambitious narratives and scope.

- good pixel art
- no big map, only map of the current level, makes dungeon confusing
- almost every h-scene is to let enemies do stuff on purpose
- no skip/speed up button on animations
- very few side character interactions, when i saw 2 female characters in the forest i had my hopes up but they never appear again
- bad tutorial, balance: i found out that i can dash back by pressing down X in the middle of the game. the parry is completely useless, in order to level up my useless abilities i have to use them which is not explained, energy is useless, difficulty levels just increase enemy level but why would i do that in this game

Not the worst platformer but some enemies are annoying. Attacking things get tedious as the best way to do it is use jump attacks because it doesn't lock you in animations

Sex content is okay, but the variety is limited. Enemies should've gotten alternate attacks to spice it up. Drawn well, I actually would have loved to see CGs which are not present

I have mixed feelings on this game, on one hand I love it, on the other I dread it.

It's Dark Souls. You run past enemies to the boss because killing said enemies does nothing but waste your time, your resources and your patience, then spend a significant amount of time learning boss attack patterns, when to parry or evade, the usual DS experience essentially.

Which added with some clunkiness makes it a bit annoying to deal with but I managed to beat most of the game without a single death/loss, so unless you purposefully lose, you can't really lose, especially since it has Halo health mechanics. Shield blocks damage and regenerates. Once 0, you enter incap state where enemies can perform H on you, which you can escape and get a full shield back.
You only lose Energy, aka the real HP, during H-scenes, slowly at that. Get a couple energy drinks and sedatives and your only remaining resource is patience.


The animations are nice, quite nice, specifically the H ones.
Which bothers me because there seems to be a lacking amount of it? Except for the bosses, there arent any interesting H animations going on somehow.


My biggest annoyance however? Huggy tongue guy, mf will spam grab you, drain a good amount of shield and you cannot dash past him, only jump or fight. Unless it's skill issue. Either way, no matter how skilled you are, god forbid you get grabbed and theres 2 more grab enemies around, you will be stunlocked until you enter the H-animation and escape from it, which turns off their AI for 1-3 seconds. Luckily theres only 2 grab enemy types and the most annoying ones dont appear until later.



TLDR:
3/5 gameplay, it's nice but the time between bosses is boring.
4/5 animation
idk about story, didnt care to read any of it
3/5 H-Animation variety
Fuck the Huggy Tongue guy

It is by no means a bad game, but it's not going to be memorable either.

The art is fine but the gameplay is terrible.
The controls, as usual in many of these games, are tied to jump = cancel and, for some reason here, walk = ok instead of attack. I can bear with pressing the wrong button often but moving around feels like playing in an ice level, sliding around. The jumps are way too tight when you aren't even jumping to a secret place (talking about the height, timing rushing and the full height of the double jump). Somehow you already start with abilities that could have been from leveling or finding them. The way you cast skills is strange, holding up or down and pressing attack or the special skill button. Nothing on the UI clearly tells you what is what so I had to memorize which one was the ice dagger, the explosive spear and the thunder sword.
No actual navigation, just showing you the current place pressing M, with the dungeon being based on pulling levers to open doors. Levers, levers everywhere. Supposedly there is a teleporting system but no matter how many screens I went through there was just the very first one next to the vendor girl, who is needed to buy sedatives since being in estrus mode makes your movements even more awkward and slower if that was possible. And for some reason some enemies seem to be able to beat you in 1 hit from full health, maybe bugged.
I saw fairly bad reviews here but Dlsite has thousands of 5 star votes so I gave it a try since I like side scrollers, but it's not enjoyable for me, neither the gameplay nor the hentai part. Sad.

Very nice pixel Animations But the gameplays is kinda boring

It needs more level more content more animations
It has some bad optimized places in general
The music is repetitive and is just annoying
lacks of gameplay
lack of content
lacks of animations
The story is meh but the concept was nice
Still BAD GAME BAD WANK
3/10
(Sorry for my bad english)

Decent game, Great Pixel animations like top tier. Needs more monsters and some more animations. Boss (Medusa) is super hard but I think that is by design. More levels or monsters and It would be great to revisit in the future. Also weirdly good music.

Interesting concept and cute artstyle but game becomes repetitive and lacks of original soundtracks.

I mean, i played the game down to level 15 and it was the same bgm since level 1. Also, level 15 has terrible frame drops. The inventory management can be rough too...

The controls are a bit jank which makes it limited. Janked controls are not new to me but this game def lacks in gameplay.

This game seems like a proof of concept, rather than a full game.

The art and animation is doing all the heavy lifting in this game. The way you can cancel attacks and movement animation is wonderful. Downside is, that you have a very limited move set to work with, so creativity is vastly hindered.

Gameplay: You will get very lost in this game from the sheer amount of hidden switches, obscure jumps and walls. I've spent close to 3hrs playing this game and I would say 2/3 of that time was spent begin lost. Enemies are kind of a joke besides the orc, which hits like a run away ice cream truck. The parry mechanic is bonkers. Why would you damage the player for correctly timing a parry? Sometimes I take damage and sometimes I don't. Items are for the most part useless fluff. Nothing is really worth buying besides a teleport stone for saving time.

Story: Meh...2/10 The main quest feels like a common NPC quest you would go on in a MMORPG for beginners.

H content: It's alright. I wouldn't go into this game just for the H but its more of an afterthought. I thinks there are around 8 different scenes, which around half are groping.

I feel like the Developer rushed this out the door. The next game should have a bit more content and story than what this one has.

Easy game
It's an action RPG. Change difficulty with a single button and level up to fight in a harder difficulty.

Sex is…good?
It's all pixel sex, all animated well
but
some of them are relying on player's imagination too much about what monster and curse tentacle clothing do to the girl. It's not bad, but we want porn because we grew tired of our own imagination.

But bad porn game design…
Punish player for having sex with a monster?
This is not the ruin your heroin game. It's defied the purpose of sexual contents existence.

And not well planning
what curse tentacle clothing would add on top of anything.
It just there and so does the purpose of it.

Story?
Porn level story, so It's not as deep as the dungeon.

Overall
It's not bad but also not so good, not the price what I would pay for.

As someone who reached an ending (not the best ending, but an ending nonetheless), I would say this game is between 3 and 5 stars depending on the player. There are some flaws but definitely not worth the 2 stars it presently has.

Neutral:
1. Platformer Elements: Like most 2D platformers, you will find some jumps that will take a few tries. They can frustrate you but you also feel accomplished when you get them. 2. Puzzle Elements: The game has some puzzles, and two of them were more frustrating than the rest (Looking at you room 5) but they definitely deliver when you do find the solution. 3. RPG elements: At the end of the day, this is still a game ruled by bigger numbers, better person. You do need to raise your level to beat some of the stronger enemies but unless you want to button mash against the bosses, you don't really need to grind all that much. Just passing through the rooms is enough to get you to a good level for all but the two bosses. When you first encounter a new enemy, it is scary and you often don't have what it takes to handle them but that changes pretty fast after a few more rooms. You also have to manage your bag space which forces you to make choices but there are bag expansions that can help with that.
4. About 3h of gameplay: I reached the ending within that time. It's not that long but also not that short.

Cons:
1. Bosses: There are two enemies that I would call actual bosses and they are frustrating. The first took me around 10 minutes to beat and I gave up on the second. Someone else mentioned how they could not hit the boss without being hit. That is half true. The weapons have different hit rates. With the fastest weapon and an accessory to hit faster, I could do one hit and retreat before they hit or 3 hits when using the shield reinforcement. It was still a chore to do so this is certainly a con. I even gave up on finishing the last battle because I saw it taking a ton of time, especially with the boss having multiple attack patterns.
2. The lewd state didn't seem to give you anything good so it was something you just wanted to avoid unless you wanted to see the porn, which isn't great for a porn game. I should also mention that combat H is the only content in the game, so not that much diversity there.
3. There are some teleportation devices but they are very limited. They are either stationary in specific rooms or consumables. You can run out of the second type, which forces you to find an exit to continue the story since the entrance is one-way.

Pros:
1. The progression feels good. Yes, your numbers go up, but the real progress comes from your knowledge of the game raising. I went back to the start of the game and it felt like I was flying through. I could make jumps that I didn't even think I could earlier and I could defeat enemies without being hit at all because I knew how to handle the character. I don't often have that feeling, but it's definitely worth playing, just for that.
2. once you find all the leavers in the room, you can access a map that shows all the chests, enemies, and terrain. If you are a completionist or if you are trying to move around a room you already finished, it's a pretty nice addition.
3. Most of the rooms have their own unique mechanic but without being completely new. I didn't feel like I was going through the same room again and again.
4. While there are only 6 enemies, including bosses, their lewd attacks, and even their attacks, feel unique. It's not different coloring of the same enemy. They each have something to bring and they all require you to take them on in a different way. They also each have at least two sets of animations for the lewd attacks. You will want to wait before you break free from them once you are captured if you want to see it all. It's also nice how you don't need to be captured multiple times to see all the scenes. They alternate between them in the same capture if you just wait.
5. There is a set of 4 cursed pieces of equipment that can be found in the dungeon. At first, they don't seem to do anything besides making your negative statuses permanent, but once you are defeated while wearing all 4 of them, they start to transform and it seems like they may have some effects as they grow. Sadly, I got soft-locked while testing it and failed to see what it did at the end, besides the changes in the menu. 6. There are also two "neutral" monsters that can help you but they are presented as unknowns, which is really interesting from a story point of view. Should you believe them and accept their help or should you ignore them? This ambivalence made them really interesting to me.

Overall:
As a porn game, it's not that high unless the fetishes interest you, which they did for me. It got me going a few times but for me, it was the setting that really made them shine, so I can't recommend it to just anyone. However, purely as a game, I can't recommend it enough. I actually had some "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" vibes from it, both the good and the bad. It has parts that can be infuriating, but once you get through it, you can't help but have a grin on your face and as you learn more, you become much more efficient than at the start. It just felt good to play. It is not a perfect game but it's enough for me to keep an eye out for any future projects from this dev and spend two hours writing a review on it on this website. If you do download it, I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

very bad designm boss hp is overtuned, got more range than you (more range than your dodge too ...), attack faster too, you can't hit without being hit in return .... so you just face tank then run away when shield is low. or stand at one end of the room using the range dagger once every 10sec for an hour ....
monster are no threat whatsoever you can just facetank everything

i guess you are supposed to grind slime by having them reset when you exit/enter a room ? sound boring ...

counter only work once in a while due to dubious hitbox

animation are fine, but the game is to boring to care.

theres no in game hints in progressing through the level 5 and up, asked for help, but no seems not bothered in helping out, So I might as well just not play this game. It would be good to have direction in the game and not be just a typical puzzle game.

Pixel look is done very well. So pretty much fuck all for H outside of letting enemies grab you. Having lust does nothing but slow you down and make you go down easier. It's alright not bad and not great just alright

Art on character is good but there very few of it, combat and exploration are terrible, H-animations are just fine i guess, there's not enough enemy variety so there's not much to see, overall very bland game