Unity - LOK: Rebirth [v0.2.0.1 SE] [The Tribe Devs]

v0.2.0.1 SE

found this game just recently and took a look at the reviews left by other people. Most of them are crashing out about the fact that the game has half a decade of development behind it with barely anything to show for it. After playing through what i can, i sadly must inform that the haters were right. The game has all the hallmarks of a game plagued by feature creep. It's dev(s) were far too ambitious in the scope of the game and created a foundation for a mansion, yet there is practically nothing here but the foundation for something greater. The ghost of Yendere Simulator has struck this game.
Would i recommend you to play through what this game has to offer right now? Eeeeh, my answer leans towards a nay. There are too many bugs that soft lock you and force you to start from the beginning of the day. The game has a confusing map layout and the gameplay shows potential, yet at the moment there is little of anything to “play” right now. I can only recommend it if you really like Krystal inspired games (woe to all Krystal projects) or if you really, REALLY like what you see. But if you don't mind wasting some bandwidth, the sexual scene quality is above average, with a decent-ish amount of content.

I'm saying this as a serious review of the game.
They had years of funding and devs working on this and this feels like a Alpha 4...
Bugs that I thought were fixes are still in the game and, not counting new scenes, there is almost no new story or combat or anything.
How has this been getting money for this amount of work?
Again. Not hating, from a gameplay standpoint, there is so much missing when they have years...

What can I tell you that the other people in here did not already ?
Well I spoke to one of the developers which I won't say who in 06.01.2025 (7 months ago of this review). To me the following was told:

They claimed that work has been ongoing "every day for years", but acknowledged:
6 months were lost due to an animator who did no work.

Health issues and team disruptions (people quitting or scamming) have stalled progress.

Some team members were also affected by floods, adding further delays.

Lack of player feedback is seen as a major obstacle.

They say the art, music, and dialogue are all high quality, but admit that “the assembly is lacking.”

My Concerns:

These explanations sound familiar the same excuses have been used for years with very little visible progress.

Despite claims of having assets and lore “ready,” there’s no real gameplay or adventure content to show yet.

There's a heavy focus on lore dumps and ideas, but actual implementation seems slow or unfocused.

The developer says they’re passionate and working hard, but based on the output, it's hard not to feel like the project is being dragged out—possibly to continue accepting support or funding.

He mentions how 6 months were lost but this has been an ongoing NOTHING project for way way longer.

Make of it what you will, I am pretty sure after the interview that some of the team want to make the game but most of them do not care for it.

I was a fan of this project forever ago. Unfortunately like most projects, they completely forgot about scope with it's reset to a new format. Now it's a half baked rpg and I can not support the project anymore. It's been in development for so long. The porn is good, but it's not worth what feels like years to progress towards somewhat decent game.

Game has been in development longer than my grandma has been alive and it's still nowhere near an acceptable demo. I don't even know what to call this really. It killed my boner and my spirits.

If you want a good game with a similar character, check out A Vixen's Curse. That dev is at least trying.

Step 1. Open game, be wowed by the UI. Seems nice.
Step 2. Start game. Immediately hit some bug halfway through UI
Step 3. Stuck unable to progress. Use skip to village (come on, that's what we're here for, right? Who cares about the ship)
Step 4. Wake up -> visit chief -> end of content.

wtf?
10 minute of bug free gameplay consisting of only walking and dialogue

Right now, it's not even alpha. It's not even a proof of concept. It's so barebone that there's no gameplay. Just an UI demo at the moment of writing. Maybe wait 2 years. (Based on past track record, more like wait 10 years)

I am shocked this is over 3 years in development and has a total of like 10 scenes if you remove duplicates, and half of them aren't working correctly. No skip for conversations. The map of the ship is useless and confusing to navigate. Conversations are stilted and boring. Acronyms and history that aren't explained and make no sense.

Cut out the ship section, the point is she's crash landed. Remove the incredibly tedious amount of "walk A to B". Why does the movement feel so sluggish? Why do scenes in the memories room not layer correctly for H scenes? If you want to make an H game, why are you developing everything avoiding making the H scenes?

I've enjoyed other variations of LoK games that have been a lot more fun, complete and full of H content with half the development time this has had. I think it's just preying on furries on Patreon.

It hurts me to say but at this point this game and all the ones like it are scams don't play aaaand most importantly do not buy or donate for it as it will never come out nor have any meaningful update.

Releases are always unstable, bug riddled messes.
Animation quality and style are all over the place. Even in their own made gallery some H animations fail to load properly.
Writing is atrocious, using the same tired phrases every other sentence.
We get it, you can't write, you can't draw, and you can't code. Just stop.

v0.1.7.2

To begin, I do like the old v0.8 better. That game, for what it is, is a 4/5 for me. I'll try to avoid any personal drama, Patreon drama and look at the development of the game and the game itself in what I think is fair.

Gameplay: 2/5
The gameplay is lackluster in that you kind of just walk around an empty map slowly and talk to like 5 people. It would be fine if that was how the game was advertised, but the gameplay has been the same for the past 4 years with some mini games. The mini games include pressing on the QWEASD and arrow keys at the right time for the tanning game, and memorizing 12-16 drink combinations whilst walking slowly across the tavern carrying only 2 things at a time. If that sounds fun to you, then I guess that's good? One other problem is that the game glitches, a lot. Like some scenes just don't play or progression gets messed up. For example: when helping Vanlen the quest 99% of the time I played glitches out and the progression never happens. Even after completing a day cycle, which isn't integrated well. Only positive to this would be the gallery feature in the menu screen, which is what saves it from being a 1/5. Again, if it wasn't advertised as some grand RPG but a walking simulator, it would get a higher rating.

Story: 2/5
There isn't any. I personally find the dialogue boring and lifeless. It would automatically be a 1/5, but to be fair the game hasn't even developed enough to be able to add the large story the devs want. Does it have potential? Eh. It's personally not for me, but it seems like I might be in the minority based on how people in the Discord seem to be interested enough to have a "lokr-spoiler-talk". I won't knock it down too much since the game is so underdeveloped to have a story.

Art: 3/5
The art in this game is nice. As good as the old v0.8 one? Personally, no it isn't. I feel like half the supporters or fanbase still prefer the old one since that one keeps getting visitors after 4 years of being abandoned. Hell, there are some fans ripping the art off the old game to make their own animations. Anyways, art is subjective and a lot of people seem to like this game's art style. Which is fair, I find the backgrounds nice. But it's getting knocked down due to it being one of the main causes of the lack of development. I don't blame the artist, but I don't know why they thought making a 2.5D game or whatever it is with only ONE artist (even the artist admitted he was slow at one point) was a good idea. Why have one guy draw 8 different frames, for different faces, limbs, clothing pieces for EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER. I heard they hired new artists, but the development pace is still the same. I don't expect it to get any faster unless they hire like 5-10 artist. It still gets a 3/5 because the art is nice, but the slow development it caused is such a huge problem for the development of the game. Hell, I think they haven't even finished drawing or animating all of the frames for the characters you meet in the BEGINNING of the game.

Sex scenes: 2/5
The meat and potatoes of the game. It's lacking. That's pretty much it. For a game that's been in development for 4 years, the amount of sex scenes is disappointing. The point of porn games is so you feel rewarded or kind of just escape into the game's world to give the sex scenes more context, more weight. But with how glitchy this game is, you're better off viewing the scenes in the gallery. Although, that kind of ruins the purpose of the game. It just becomes a gallery viewer. Comparing the old game to this, the animation is not bad for this one. It's just due to the amount of layers this game requires and how complex it has become, it feels clunkier than the older version. This game does have CGs that were promised to bring more sex scenes faster (development is still slow despite them stating CGs will make it go faster). So, when the sex scenes hold no weight, is clunky at times and glitches (Vanlen's dick just kind of just layers itself through her legs), and the art is still coming in slow despite the promised "faster" CGs, but with decent art: it gets a 2/5.

Overall: 2/5
The game is just too complex for its own good. Despite being in development for 4 years, the devs promising to code the groundwork to be more stable and allow them to bring out content faster, there isn't much to show. It is a small team that has big ambitions, but with the resources they have, development will be incredibly slow for the foreseen future. The overhaul seems to have affected the support for it as well as from 2021 to 2023, the Patreon has lost around 1000 Patreons. I personally wish they just went back to the old game to develop it, but it seems like some fans are doing so already. I hope for the best for this team, but maybe they'll see their success one day. With the scores tallied up and divided, it's a 2.22/5 or just 2/5.

Just came here to rate this beautiful game two (or maybe even 3) years after I last checked it, seeing how the devs promised that they will in a few months release a better version of LOK v0.8, which was made by the same team, except for one "small" programmer, who got replaced by a AAA games development guy. 2 years ago, they were saying that they have to delay content releases because they are making a very stable and flexible code, that will allow to do all the remaining work much quicker. I even believed them when one of the guys started to post some WIP game screenshots. Then i forgot about this game.
more than 2 years have passed, i come back. and I see... maybe one new update
So yeah, come, join the patreon, get a single snake's dickpick, and then pay them $ every month and hope for another WIP screenshot on next Christmas

More as a consensus with the rest of the reviews here than my usual in-depth reviews.

To say that the development of this game is lackluster is rather putting it nicely. To still be stuck at ACT 1 for 5 years is unprecedented for such game to receive such high budget. To do so is to appear in KiraTV's "overpromised and undelivered" series, teetering between Identity RPG and Chronicles of Elyria.

Next is the gameplay. It's not completely awful, but for a game that has now accumulated half a million dollars in donations, this is extremely underwhelming. 2 years they have to fix over the transition from 3D to 2D, and it feels like a demo in the making on their second draft. Thankfully, there aren't as much bugs as before, which would've been a positive if they had just started out a month ago. 2 years, however, demands a reason for the tardiness of ACT 1.

Is there even a story to begin with? Layers of text of potentially interesting plot hampered by its development progression since it's still ACT 1. I'm not sure where act 1 even ends, as there seems no confirmation to begin a new chapter.

The porn scene could be considered its least worst part of the game, if you were to only take the cutscene animation. The in-gameplay animation stands no different than its flash predecessor, which actually has a better frame rate over this reboot.

And then, the patreon. The fact she had to set her revenue privately already gave speculations to many. The patron subscription numbers, however are still visible and are the only thing that we can estimate. From a peak of 2600 last year, they dropped far below 1700 as of writing this. For one to lose around 1000 patrons should be an indicator of even the insider's opinion of the game.

Overall, it's overpaid, overrated and overspent in relevance.

Now, it would be disingenous to say it's a terrible game without a standard what an "average Legend of Krystal" game is. Unfortunately for this game, we have both Playshapes and ShineSL's version of LOK, both overdelivering, underrated and underpaid. To make a comparison by comparison would be too off-topic, but it's best to play all three versions to see which LOK actually is better.

This is a S-C-A-M
There's no other word for it.
Don't waste your time with this one.
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I've been watching this game since the beginning and can confidently say over the years there has been no real content added in respect to the time which has passed and proposed gameplay. Incorporate in this same idea the funding they have at their disposal and it becomes clear there's something not quite right. The discussion section here has more development than the actual game and is the only real reason I rarely come back at this point. Admittedly, I had forgotten about this game for a good 6 months or so, but thankfully I didn't miss anything. If this game somehow manages to roll out a solid 2 years worth of playable updates in the near future I will gladly give this a much better rating, but if those 2 years here have shown anything for itself it's that nothing will change with this review.

team leader should take a step back and see how the development is horribly flawed seems to be milking patreon for all the money they can get with minimal development. better rating when progress is up to par many other games get 100x more done in the time these guys have spent doing nothing

A lot of time has passed and in this update the game has become even worse. There is no optimization, the graphics have become worse. The first part was the most interesting. And this is just a miserable copy of the game LOK
In the first part, we could explore the world, the interactive was in the game, it is here but it is not needed. Too many lags. The plot is strange, the heroine has become dumber or the dialogues are written crookedly. It's a pity but 0 star would have been given. And so terrible

Been "worked" on for over 2 years now by a team people. Nothing to show for that time. Booted Abelius off the team and his game now has more content in half the time. Don't bother with this in its current state.

Can someone remind me how this is better than the original?
The original was a glorified VN with solid presentation and super sexy scenes, what little was there anyway.

This is just...what? I understand the first project had to be scrapped because of dev politics and the code needing reworked, but this is objectively worse than the original, and I think it's far enough along in its development to make that assessment.

Why does this need to be an RPG with combat? Why stats? Why does everything feel so clunky? Huh, I can't get out of the starting room, guess I'll skip ahead to the village from the in-game PC option. Oh there's two dialogue scenes (dialogue is clunky too, did they playtest this at all?).

I can't help but get the impression this is made my people that don't play H games, or they have really shitty taste. It's not to say there isn't talent or skill that's gone into making this, it's just incredibly misused.

Devs, if you read this, you REALLY need a director. Whatever you're doing now isn't working, and I doubt it will work. This far along in development, this demo build should have felt smooth, the walking shouldn't be so awkward, there shouldn't be loading screens for every little thing, yes I know I'm babbling.

Nothing about this feels good. The good part was when I was customizing Krystal (why do we need to do this even?), and I just went with the default because why would I want a green Krystal?

I don't really care how coherent this review is, I'm just here to vent my frustrations. I don't have to take the time to make sure this is a smooth and enjoyable experience, unlike the devs of this game, who failed to do that.

This game did do ONE thing really well, it made me remember how good the original game was and how total dogshit this one is by comparison.

I've played the previous builds shared here and I can say that it'd be best for you to wait until every foundation of this game is laid perfectly and solid. At this state, with how the forum thread goes, it's a good enough foundation though maybe needed more than three to four patch releases to be considered as a semi-solid one.

Would consider the branding into Kay's Adventures or something so that it does represent what the product offers to the potential customers and avoid confusion for the newbies going forward since this is Kay, not Krystal...

or a way to avoid the banhammer hitting the devs' heads on the Star Fox franchise, which is more than likely to be the worst possible case. Whichever the case might be, who knows?

Visit the forum thread every once in a while for more info and some consideration if you're stuck on whether to support the game or not.

A bugged mess with no content after years on work, normally I prefer not to rate games so early in development but the LoK curse has claimed another attempt and some are still milking it.

the little content there is somehow managed to be worse than the original LoK flash game, controls are laggy and movement slow, no clear direction of where to go or what to do, just get throw into an empty village where you can noclip and fall off existence. Honestly just go play the original unfinished playshapes version.