Is it better to be born without talent, or to never be able to fulfil your potential? I ponder the question as I lay down the last bits of content in this game.
I reckon that my attitude towards erotic game might be different from you, who reads these words of mine. I do not play them to be relief physically, I’m more interested in intricate working of the creator’s mind. At time, the surreal and bizarre elements of this game made me feel at home, strangely absorbing into the world it is trying to build. But, be warn O’reader, for this is yet another case of unfulfilled potential.
The game starts by introducing the player to the player character, a young woman named Kate, who has just moved to the city, into a new apartment and about to start her job as a masseur. Surprisingly, the game quickly introduces the central conflict of the plot, how a young woman can rise above her financial status in a society structured to lead them to the dark path. The player character runs into sexual deviants at every turn, all of which tries to take advantage of her vulnerability, men, and women. In turn, there is a multitude of options for the player to do the same to other characters for her own financial benefits. The player will quickly realise that thanks to the stamina mechanic, the player character will not be able to earn enough tips from their customers to pay the rent at the end of the week, eventually driving the player character into other more dubious but less tedious options. I had a feeling of being plunged into an adventure game in the early parts of the game. While the masseur work was tedious, it was there to drive the plot and provide more motivation to the player to explore the world and the options to earn more cash. This sort of game design is sorely lacking in the world of erotic game, though I am aware that perhaps I am missing the point. I would argue that this motivates the player to play more and explore the options rather than just trying to get to the next erotic scene. It was very absorbing when I was able to unlock the gym and the bank through a series of event, just like the old adventure games.
Unfortunately, as the game progresses, it reaches a sort of a halt. The more I play, the more I realise the game is more linear than I initially expected. There are many ways to earn money, but to open the next part, there is only one part. Though certain things can be done concurrently or any time, some are locked behind progression of another events. The progressions are entirely based around other characters. The game had to hand us a check list to ensure we do not miss events. I don’t consider this good design. If we had to be led by an in-game walkthrough, something hasn’t been done right. It took me a while to figure things out by myself because the clues are rather limited without resorting to the online walkthrough, the check list, and the hint. Unfortunately, even with those, the game has a significant number of bugs. The flags are sometime not set properly, and some events should have been locked behind others to ensure unity in story progression. This causes much frustration and by the end of the game, something horrible happen. I realised; the game was unfinished.
I won’t go deeper into the latter parts, you can decide if it’s worth the trouble, but there’s a building that took you about 45 minutes of gameplay to unlock that’s completely empty except for a single floor that you have to unlock as well (though this was a plot device, but symbolism can be done better than this). That is just a symptom of the myriad of unfinished plot lines that I shall explain later, and features. Many other things that are not related to erotism and more plot heavy can be quite confusing and frustrating. The gym training is structured in quite a strange way but the worst feature in my opinion is combat. Combat is confusing and seriously underdeveloped. You can play through the entire game without having to win in combat. I found myself questioning the importance of its existence. The prison is also a nagging problem. The idea itself isn’t very bad, and while I was able to figure out the routes by myself through trial and error. I agree with the consensus that repetition in that part to convey the feeling of being imprison don’t make it interesting nor fun. It’s especially irritating when there’s no clear sign of progression being made. I think more colourful dialogues with spaced out would have changed the prison for the better, but it seems the team lost interest in improving it.
Together with the unfinished features and levels, the plot has many missing parts. The surrealism starts to set in with some characters disappearing, merging, and appearing in strange ways. A good surrealism experience in my mind is something like The Holy Mountain or David Lynch works. Surrealism is very much about experience and interpretation. All of this sounds great in theory, but when gameplay is also affected by the surreal elements, it can cause frustration. One such thing is the barber shop being locked, preventing you from being to change your hairstyle. Still, there were moments when there is a bit of a spark of that in the plot with a previous event replayed with a different character. Though because of the unfinished state this is in, the surreal realm can be lacking. I really like that they were trying to tell a bit of story in that realm through simple and brief dialogue, as well as blending in some gameplay with it being used as a gateway to different parts of the game. There are so many good ideas cramped in, and the ending is quite an experience, albeit a little predictable to me. I can see the passion behind the writing and design, but the lack of interest to preserve and polish the rest of the elements, to me, made the ending quite a hassle to reach, albeit being quite satisfying for an erotic game. Compound that is part of the ending shows a missing piece in the story thus far, hinting that this part might have came to play at some point before being relegate to a small part of the ending experience.
I won’t comment much on the visual, because the nature of erotism is subjectivity but also the lack of a budget will result in lacklustre visual. I do find that the art is serviceable, and the UI is simple and straight forward enough. Character animation deserves some praise to me. They are simple but don’t feel very stiff somehow. I didn’t mind it for some reason even though they don’t actually look good. They must have done something right to fool me. The rest of the art can be clever in parts, such as the room reflecting the state of the player character’s current mood and can be quite dull at others with the street being relatively boring and flat. Still, it is not the worst, but I do wish it can be a little moodier. The visual when it comes to surreal parts aren’t as impressive if I had to be honest. They are alright, but I don’t appreciate them as well as the dialogues and writing. I can tell, however, there was efforts. Commendable, as it may be, I do find the visual to be more serviceable than imaginative. I would have taken more radical designs like what the writing did over this rather mundane look. I do not consider that to be that vital to the experience.
Having played through the game twice, I do think that subscribing to their Patreon is recommended. I was shocked at the game daringness and attention to gameplay design. This is becoming a rarity as walking simulator and mundane visual novel games becoming the norm. The passion is there to me, even if the latter part of the game fall short of expectation. This sort of effort should be treasured and nurtured. I hope that their next project will be better than this. If anything, I hope they can hire someone to exclusively map out the automaton or the flowchart and squash out all the bugs. As someone in com science I was itching to look and fix all the damn bugs.
Sidenote: why is all the stranger and criminals white while the only decent romance is black ? Also why can't Don impregnate the player, and why is pregnancy treated rather strangely? What's Mark's deal? Why is the bus's stalker got so little limelight? Lucy also lacks a bit of limelight too. The monologue about women's in modern society kind of missing the point a little as well, and rather self-righteous.