Unreal Engine - Kalyskah [v0.23.3] [Nobre Lobo]

This is my second review on this website, I like to do my reviews in a configuration of The Good (pros), The Bad (minor cons, me just nitpicking), and The Ugly (Major cons that ruin the experience). This review will be a short one because I didn't play the game for a long time (more about that below).

The Good

- Graphics are nice

The Bad

- Character customization is limited, and you can't even use your customized character in-game unless you're a patron on Patreon. The lipstick doesn't look bold enough, it looks like lipgloss and not lipstick, doesn't matter how much I mess with the silders it still looks bad. The breast slider makes your boobs change between A cup to C cup, I wish I could make the breasts bigger.

The Ugly

- Now the reason why I didn't play the game for a long time is because it is a horribly optimized piece of garbage, I remember playing this game a long time ago, back when there was no set story and you just wander around a dungeon, back then the game had terrible optimization and it still somehow still has terrible optimization. That was about a year ago, you'd think that a dev could fix thebad optimization after working on it for a year since I last played it, but nope.

TL;DR
Game is a terribly optimized dumpster fire, avoid it at all costs for now, maybe the game will be fixed in the future, but I doubt it.

Like some other reviews said, this had a good potential, but still lots of bugs and problems. Despite that, I still decided to be a Patron even if I didn't think we'll have something close to a finished product anytime soon.
That was until they decided to add crossover characters from other games. Initially, I thought they were aiming to make a serious action RPG like The Witcher 2 or 3, or Bioware games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, but more erotic, and with a lesser scope and production value. Obviously I was wrong, they are also looking at things like Fortnite, with prominent products placements breaking the immersion and the consistency. Even with a character that I like a lot (Ciri, 2B or Shadowheart),it would be a very bad idea and I wouldn't want it, but they'll take a character from another adult game, and I'm very very picky about adult games.
So I'm dropping it.

10/10 potential
3.5/10 execution

Imagine you go out and source the finest, $200 pound of Wagyu and hand it to a chef that turns it into ground beef. That's what this game feels like. Clear effort was made to have a bunch of high quality assets and solid world building, but whoever is ultimately responsible for the code which brings it all together has completely fucked it. Nothing about gameplay feels smooth or intuitive, there are tons of rendering issues and cutscene bugs, etc.

Hopefully the team can cut out the weak link and polish this up because I'd really love to see it reach that huge potential.

The sex scenes are well and vividly animated. In general, it is noticeable that the game is good at motion animations. Only fighting is average. For me it is fine. There are small glitches that you don't necessarily have to experience. The only negative for me is that the world is constantly changing and you always feel like you have a new game in front of you . Where is the city? Hopefully they found their storyline.

Hate to break it to ya, but this game is a mess.

I downloaded this game on the first version that was uploaded to this site, and continued to check in a couple times over the years of it's development.

After years of (not very great) work, the developers have decided to redo the story, and have made the game practically unrunnable on anything above a 3060. Yes, I mean you need that or higher to run this on the LOWEST graphics.

The 3d animations are not very great, and the combat is pretty much a crappy replication of the witcher with a couple lame vampire powers thrown in there.

I don't think this game is going to go anywhere, not for a very long time at least.

Man, I have no idea why they decided to do a remaster. I remembered playing a long time ago, when there was a story, and recently (maybe 6 or so months ago) I came back and decided I'd grab the Patreon version, only to be met with a mediocre tech demo. I'm giving this 4 stars, since the original was good, but I have no idea what about it was so bad that they had to scrap it.

its even worst after this .20 update. There is still no map, its over 11gb big and no missions, barely a few npcs and now you cant even customize your character. It could be good but its so buggy and far gone that it will take huge turn around

Waiting until it comes to Steam. Played the Alpha when first came out, enjoyed even when it was very buggy and glitchy. I look forward for the game when it completely finish or if the devs keep an add on like DLC's in the future.

Well that was a pointless waste of time and drive space. The game engine is buggy AF, the textures flop through everything, there're no quests, there's basically nothing to do, it's possible to start going into fighting poses and swinging your sword in the middle of a cutscene, the skip key often just.... doesn't work at all, and the worst part is that the devs have the nerve to try to demand that you throw them your shekels on their patreon for the sole "privilege" of being able to make your character's nonexistent tits bigger. Which of course clip right through the armor in the gallery, which tells me that part of the game isn't done either.

This is a callous cash grab, and these developers will never see a dime from me.

(for version 0.19.3) Doesn't work 99% of the time. For the 1% of time that it does, it's still awful. Crashes constantly; in menus, in game, when you start the game, in the gallery. The official "fix" for this doesn't work. I was only able to reliable run at the lowest graphical settings (which look abhorrent) and I still had some stuttering. My computer should be enough to run this 6 year old indie game, this is probably the worst optimization I have ever scene. It is terribly overambitious, the aim seems to be to create the Witcher III but with porn. The problem with this is that the Witcher III was made by a large, experienced studio. There is no way this game will ever be fully finished. The combat is clunky and unresponsive, oftentimes I couldn't even tell that the enemy parried my attack until a couple seconds after when I tried to swing again. I've heard some praise for the voice acting; personally, I don't see what they like. It is amateurish, and the poor implementation doesn't help. For example, in the first level enemies will repeat one of a couple phrases over and over again. The noise isn't directional, so it sounds like god is speaking to you. The boss at the end of the first level will crash your game when you beat him. This doesn't matter though, because you can walk right past him and leave whenever you want. The cutscenes are full of clunky animation and clipping errors, and the dialogue is both edgy and cringey. There are no redeeming factors whatsoever. There is quite literally nothing good I can say about this game. Do not download this game. Even free, it is not worth the space on your PC nor the bandwidth and time to download it.

Kalyskah [v0.19.3]

Genuinely hard to play given how the game doesn't let me use or remap skill keys, the movement and combat feel sluggish, looted chests and drained rats look the same on v. vision, lack of skill descriptions, managed to get get stuck because the quest to free the devil appeared after freeing the devil, too many item duplicates.

The only good thing is the equipment: appearance is thematic and high quality, slot usage make it feel different and customizable.

Given how long it's been in development and how terrible it is, my only hope is for it to get scrapped and remade into something less ambitious and more playable

This game suffers from the same pitfalls that most other games do; poor planning, trying to do far too much at once, and constant redraws.

This game is more or less in the same state it was in a few years ago with not much to show for it. The initial tutorial level is the most fleshed out part of the game and has probably been revisited and reworked multiple times. Once you leave the starting dungeon, the game quickly falls flat. You are thrust into a open world with some NPC's scattered around with one liner placeholder interactions, with a few notable sandbox scenes. Aside from that, the depth just isn't there.

Hopefully the devs get serious about this, and realize that quality is far more important than quantity in a game like this.

I really like this game, it's very ambitious, and I hope it doesn't get abandoned, and it continues. The developers deserve a lot of praise, since it's not easy to work on this kind of games.

The game itself needs a lot of polish and patches to fix things up, but they are heading in the right direction, a lot of AAA developers can learn a thing or two from this team. Maybe after a year or two it will have more quests and bugs fixed, so it can be a great game. It's voice acted, which is always a plus point. People should keep an eye on this game. Good luck to the team.

is not bad but need a lot of polishing most things bug out or slide a cross the floor or the animation don,t play properly the dialog options are bugy to i just straight up punch the one you talking to the cutscanes bug out to most times dont know what,s heppaning the caracter controls are not bad just you use a lot of stamina to attack and most times you don,t hit the opponent even with the lockon other then that the game not bad just need a lot of polishing to put everything in place keep it up

An incredibly ambitious game with a few very very hot scenes at its current state.
Normally ambitious is not a compliment for the standard Patreon funded game on this site as I've only seen that cripple progress and stagnate updates in the past but in this case, the developer really does have a vision and a clear goal/roadmap for achieving it and delivers regular updates monthly.
What's more is the developer is very responsive to feedback from patrons.
Normally I consider Patreon subscriptions in terms of products I receive for the money I spend. With this developer I consider my contribution more of a declaration of belief in the developer and their vision. I give this game five stars to encourage others to do the same and support them as well.

As for the game itself, you play as a female MC vampire. The dialogues are voiced and the game so far has content to get you through the first dungeon where you start (genuinely fun gameplay, albeit a bit janky and lacking in any meaningful porn content (some sandboxed sex scenes on dying and a boring scene with a follower))
Out of the first dungeon you get into an overworld which shows the true ambition of the developer. Followed by some scripted story scenes and the start of a "Witcher 3" like quest to enter the nearby town (can do so via sex, money, or dialogue).

This game is the beginning of something great. Try it.

Elements of the game are excellent, so why 1/5?
A simple word

Scale

The game is hamstrung by scale. They are attempting far too much as the 5 years of development attests to. Their idea and the direction they’ve aimed towards is replicating a game like the Witcher3 or skyrim with (less) tits. Admirable, but a massive mistake that has doomed the game in it’s present form and trajectory.

The game in the ruins of the castle is pretty good. Combat is simplistic yes, you can’t get that mechanically deep with it, you don’t have any magic, etc. but it’s by far the shining pinnacle of polish and gameplay here. You have a solid early game progression of “tactical” choices in approaching enemies and the equipment lets you do some minor experimentation with playstyle. (and discover the estoc=win, but I digress) Culminating in a bossfight that is pretty underwhelming but hints at a soulsebornesque killing field in front of a boss arena type playloop.

Then you get into the main game and… they squander it. Open world sandbox paired with a massively discordant shift in game feel. You go from mowing down dozens of vampire hunters to squabbling with bandits over trinkets and suddenly the only solution is to suck cocks. They played way too much witcher, and like witcher they’re stuck far too long in the damn starting town (A starting town these devs have rebuilt multiple times, yet still haven’t managed to populate with quests or vendors) doing bitchwork quests for no discernable purpose compared to your grand quest. And then the game ends, there simply isn’t more of it.

The building blocks are here for something and yet the scale they’re attempting has 100% doomed it.

5 years of development doesn’t have to be wasted, but they do need to take a different direction as quickly as possible. To take the building blocks they’ve developed and cut back that scale into something that actually can be completed.

1. Design around a central hub
This should be a castle or “coven” or something. The gameplay loop begins and ends here. It has a place to sell loot, a place to meet and recruit companions, and various other side quests and intrigue to get up to. Have more vampires, demons, and monsters and make them optional romancable companions and rivals.
2. Radiant dungeon combat loop
Structure forward progression around “dungeons” instead of open world. Use hellgates/teleporters at the beginning and end that go back to the central hub. Starting with the first they already have, then the most recent crystal cave, then etc. Make these locations farmable and repeatable. Clearing one unlocks the next via information or macguffin and drops the gear you need to realistically progress. It also plays into point 3
3. Companion progression through combat/romance
Partying with an NPC and using them in combat should be the backbone of a companion progression system. This allows you as devs to stop focusing on forwarding content via forwarding the metanarrative and instead use a framework of companion interaction mechanics as a vehicle for pornography and romance. Succubi may be sluts but a vampire rival would be hard to bed. You can cut your teeth on the writing and VA of meaningful characters instead of voicing/needing to voice so many pointless one time use NPCs. These companion progression “quests” should be the true backbone of story building and erotic content within the game world.

These changes may seem monumental and may seem to change the overall game, but think about how much is actually here to change. A monumental change to what, 3% of the total game? In exchange that 3% of the game turning into the framework for a whole game.
It needs to happen or everyone backing this project will ultimately be disappointed; another 10 years of development on this track and you’ll still have fewer quests and fewer hours of gameplay than Witcher’s White Orchard yet still barely scratch the surface of kalyskah’s epic (scope) quest.

Scaling back her quest to something more direct, like a quest for personal power alongside rivals of a coven, would do well to rein in how much they need to tackle with her currently. Dungeons that give upgrades, upgrades that allow for more dungeoneering. KISS to lean heavy into the best parts of the game, the combat progression playloop, then integrate porn through a companion system so the sex elements would have actual meaning.

As is it's a 1/5 as it can't be given a vote of confidence. It'll never be finished if the devs insist on treating it's scope as that of a 200 man team studio project. The good in what's here is far outweighed by the fact if you picked up the game in 2016 you don't have much more game in 2021 and you'll probably be able to say the same in 2026.

Personal Opinion
>ditch the female protagonist framing
Sex on lose, sex through coercion, sex via being a dumb slut contrary to characterization and character framing. It’s always shit. The game as is isn’t any worse than any other female protagonist game, but they all suffer for their shortsightedness.

Make the player character user customizable and male or female (or futa) and a nonvoiced skyrim style protagonist. Make one of the first women you interact with be Kalyskah and actually dig deep into her as a character instead of “suck this guard’s cock or don’t” as she is currently. You have the models and modeler now, you have the male and female variants of the armor.
Make her the focus, but not the player. Give her push-pull about being given the slutty variants of all the dungeon loot. Make her resent or fall in love with the player-rival she dungeon delves with on a quest for power stolen from her. Then do it again with the next vampire, demon, succubus, etc. you can add to the game utilizing the same combat loop without needing to spend thousands of manhours forwarding game progression.

★ Chef's kiss: excellent dialogue and voice acting

+ Decent writing and plot based from what is given in the intro and the first few quests
+ Good quality models and animations
+ Has a great idea for gameplay mechanics and combat; a cut above most other games that use the same engine
+ Like I said: voice acting
+ RPG elements like character builds and multiple ways to complete a quest

- Combat and UI can be clunky
- Cutscenes and animations are often buggy
- Many NPC models/renders look the same

> Overall, this game has very good potential given time, dedication, and development especially with the 'planned implementation' of branching quests and different ways to complete missions. After completion and polish, this project can very well be more than 'just an adult game'.

I think with all 3D games you need so much polish in so many areas that if one is lacking it will hurt the overall experience. Fortunately this game is decent at many things and it doesn't have any major flaws. With some polish i could see this game going places.

I think the intro is the weakest part. The dialogue feels stilted here. It does improve later on. The voices acting is nice i think and unlike pretty much every single porn game, the recording quality is good.

The combat is good and could improve into "great" territory with more telegraphed attacks and if you could feel more impact with hits.
I think there are a lot of things to like about the game.

One thing i really liked was the variety of items that you could equip. The equipment system is very nice. The only thing that annoyed me was trying to close the windows at times, since pressing ESC falls like a natural habit, but you need to press I. Maybe that's nitpicking.

For sex scenes the game uses an animation system. It's not polished and it's a bit stiff. I feel like 1 custom animated scene would be better and probably a smaller workload on the developer.

I stopped playing once i beat the first boss. Which was ok. The acting is a bit hamfisted, but it works ok.

Overall, playable, ok game. With time will probably get even better.

Player be warned, as of 0.15.2 , the game is buggy. Whenever I load an autosave, my level resets to one. Skipping cutscenes too fast causes character models to do strange things, such as fall through the floor, and stairs are hard to climb down. There are many smaller bugs as well, however, despite all that, I thoroughly recommend this game.

The base of a great game are all here. It's combat, while janky, is interactive and fun. It's game world is decent looking and feels alive, void of awkward open spaces or empty rooms where assets should be that some early access games have. But don't expect anything fully fleshed out. There still seems to be plenty of placeholder text and characters. There's also a story that's mostly easy to follow, if you're into that.
I haven't played many Unreal Engine Adult games so I don't have much to compare it to, but the sexy things people do with their bits are easy to find. Character models look nice and the animation is fluid.

Overall, 4/5 stars until they smooth over the rough patches. There's a real game in here waiting to break out.

Version: v0.15.2

Review:
There are some things I liked about the game and many others I didn't, I played this game for the first time a long time ago and today I decided to test it again and nothing has changed much. But anyway, what I really mean is that it’s not just that, but of a difference that you will understand.
If we talk about an adventure game, that game is more recommended, but if we talk about a porn game, I don't see that it works well in Kalyskah.

History:
I didn't quite understand the concept of the story, but it seems that the protagonist was imprisoned in the dungeons of a cave in a castle and a guy comes to set you free. It seems that the castle has some connection with the protagonist, since everything around her has changed, all those people have been corrupted, and Kalyskah is trying to find the person who did this. As I said, for an adventure game it may work, but as for a porn game, it's hard.
Gameplay:
I thought the gameplay was good, the movement is good, the character can run, jump, crouch, climb attack, defend and even dodge. There is also the use of magic, but the combat is still bad. There is difficulty in this game, in which you can choose the most difficult option, but I doubt you would select it, since the combat is difficult to be executed, it is not very difficult but it is not solid. The items, as equipment works well, the RPG present in this game is good. Being able to equip armor, some clothing accessories and improve your skill tree. The customization of the character is not very advanced, let's say that the only things you will change are the breasts and hair. There is no mini-map, you end up getting lost, and the map is huge, giving you the feeling of a walking simulator. Some locations are far away, it is possible to find other characters or enemy creatures.
Graphics & Sexual Content:
Remember when I said that this game is more about adventure than pornography? I'll explain, but nothing against a female protagonist, but there are things that don't make any sense. The scenery graphics are good, but the female models all look the same as Kalyskah's model. What will change is just the color of the skin and hair. Talking about sexual content, I didn't think it very pleasant, this is because there is a mini-game that you have to satisfy Kalyskah in some choices in some actions during the sexual act. But you can also disable it, but the scenes, even though some of them are good, I didn't feel much pleasure about them.

Why I did gave 2 star?
This game has a lot of potential for an adventure game, but for a porn game it ends up being left behind. The game has a good structure, if the combat system and some bugs are corrected, and also, if there is an option to skip the cutscenes. But for a game where we control a female protagonist, I don't see much point in making a vampire warrior woman submit to make sex (unless it's specific cases). On the other hand, I think that little things should change, having sex will completely restore your HP bar, or, get EXP or something else like gold/money. After all, I don't see much sense, besides, the sex scenes are good but at the same time not very pleasurable, I didn't see much slutness, I don't see much content like that, which makes the protagonist a slut or something. But I may be mistaken. Anyway, if you’re looking to try, you need a PC with a great CPU and GPU, and that your OS is Windows 10, because I had trouble running it, causing the GPU to stop working twice even putting in the graphics settings on the low. So, if you are looking for 3D porn game, unfortunately I cannot recommend this game to you.