Version: v2.9.9
I've had this game lying around among my links and I've never got around to play it until a few weeks back. I'm glad I did, because this game has a really strong foundation and uses its strengths very well.
STORY :
The premice is the first thing that caught my attention when I discovered this game. The story, while not much at this point of the developement of the game, is very intriguing. You play as a kobold trying to live day by day in a society where kobolds are treated as vermins, and you character dreams of a day where he or she can become a knight of the queen, despite their not-so-great upbringing. Unfortunately for the MC, they accidentally get caught in a conspiracy to overthrow the king in a coup d'état, with the MC, being a kobold, becoming the scapegoat at the start of the conflict.
The MC, in my eyes, is very well written. Despite his kobold nature, he doesn't want to fit into the role of the bad guy society tries to force his species into. He's just a kobold that lives in poverty due to discrimination laws and wants to live a happy life fulfulling his dreams, but continually struggles against the injustice of the world he lives in.
And what I really like about this game is that it doesn't just show this to us though dialogue; you get to experience it firsthand with how limited your money and food are, how the other NPCs berate you and try to scam or kill you as often as they can, and with how many accidents your character get into. At the end of the story, you really start to fell sad for him when he gets hurt, and on the other side, I genuinely felt happy at the end of the demo when he somewhat managed to gain new friends in prison, because I knew how hard it was for the MC to go through all those hardships.
Overall, I've had a really good time discovering the world the dev put us in, and I really appreciate they didn't push us through exposition dumps one after the other, because the settings, while already done, is at least really well done here, and I much prefer discovering it step by step rather than being spoonfed wall of text after wall of text about the stupid politics and economics and whatever of this world.
THE ART:
The artstyle is very eye-catchy, and for a good reason. The dev (I think it's a one-man team?) really knows how to draw. And don't get fooled by the thumbnail on this game's page, it's not a game about bondage or mutilation. It's actually a very small part of that, although there's quite a bit of humiliation fetish going on.
I also like the fact that the character sheets are publicly available on the game's website, where you can see the artworks for a lot of characters (implemented or planned) with a lot of lore and backstory about them. Gotta be honest, I didn't read everything cause there are quite the walls of text, but the drawings for the characters are just eye-candy.
If you like the toonish artstyle, then you'll just love this game. It doesn't have that much drawing in game, but what's there is at least good, so I'm fine with it.
GAMEPLAY :
Being in development (and mainly, being a text-based game) this game doesn't have that much gamepay going on, it's mainly a small management game where you have to monitor your food, health, and sanity. But for once, I'd say for what it is, it is fairly well tied to the story in a way that makes sense : Since you play as a kobold in a world inherently hostile to you, it's really hard to keep your meters high enough at all times to not attract problems on your way, and it makes the MC's victories, although small, all the sweeter because you know how hard it was to piece it all together and save on your resources, to get there. But the game at least never gets hard enough that it becomes frustrating or softlocks you into a game over. It's surprisingly fairly well balanced, and while some of the routes to lead you to a sort of game over (because the game isn't finished, remember), you never lose a ton of progress because of a single mistake.
CONCLUSION :
It's good. It's really good. I'd adivse to try it at least for the character and the art. It's dark, but it doesn't get grimdark and it has its own faire share of hopeful moments, although scarce. Unfortunately, it seems the dev is not interested any longer in developing this game, and it's radio silence for a while now.