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

Going to have to contradict the poor reviews here. I wasn't expecting after such a long absence to come back to this abandoned then revived project and see such progress.

Make no mistake, it is still very bare bones, there is much work to be done, and the devs seem to know this. I still question the need for a combat system, and it does seem a bit more complex than it ought to be, but the progress made so far from where it was, as well as the quality of the assets that are available have changed my mind.

I was struck with the similarity it had to the prior LoK game, which is what I was looking for all along.

When you're wrong, you're wrong. I will be keeping a closer eye on this one, and consider pledging to their patreon. Before you judge this game too harshly (as I did), give it a try yourself. You might be surprised by what's there.

Faith is a terrible thing to waste. In 2016, an artist named Kuja had a dream. He saw the endless flood of unfinished games based upon the coveted Legend of Krystal demo by Playshapes, and decided that a fresh attempt with new art assets might break this seemingly endless trend of unfulfilled dreams. In stepped Abelius, a strange programmer from Spain, and the two set out to begin the project that would be known as LoK Rebirth.

Things seemed promising at first, as they often do with ambitious projects such as this. The initial updates lacked content and the gameplay was padded with obnoxious busywork, but progress was slowly being made. However, as time went by, Kuja grew silent while Abelius continued to post more about his personal life instead of the game itself. Someone named Vlad was mentioned in passing. The exact funding that the project was getting on patreon was hidden by Kuja one day, never to be seen again, leaving people to wonder how well things were actually going with it all. Then, near the end of 2018, something major happened: After two years of work, the project was going to be reset.

The exact reasons for this sudden change of plans are still unknown, owing in no small part to the conflicting testimonies from all of the involved parties in this debacle. From what can be pieced together, Kuja wanted to bring in a bigger team for the project, including the aforementioned Vlad, and Abelius refused to share his work with these people. To circumvent this issue, the new team simply started over from scratch, leaving Abelius to meander on the sidelines. He would eventually try to start up his own project, with art assets by Kuja once again, but this too fell apart once Kuja completely severed ties with him around the dawn of 2021.

Back at LoK, ambition took the helm once more. The rebirth of Rebirth was going to be bigger and better than anything the previous version was aiming for: 3D maps, eight-directional paperdolls instead of the simple two-directional models of yore, a KOTOR-style combat system, and less of an emphasis on the pornographic side of things. After nearly three years of work, the 3D maps were completely thrown out, the extra directions for the models have utterly bottlenecked the progress on animations, the combat system is nowhere in sight, and there’s less explicit material available in-game than ever before.

As stated earlier, the seeds of this project were sewn by Kuja in 2016. This was going to be the game that broke the trend; the one project that didn’t ride on the coattails of the now decade-old demos by Playshapes. Now, it’s just another unfinished brick in the wall of half-baked demos, sitting shoulder to shoulder to High Tail Hall and The Rack. Some curses were never meant to be broken.

So, another remake of Legend of Krystal filled with the same empty promises as the last but with even less content? Remind me why the previous game was abandoned? The previous game had better art and animation compared to this. The walking speed is slow, level design is godawful, and bugs galore. I don't know why, but the game devs are also tip-toeing around penetrative sex scenes like it's the plague. Unless there is penetrative sex in a PORN GAME with heterosexuality as a focal point, what is the point? On the dev's Trello page, they have 8 animations for a male character that are lined up, but none of them are even close to penetrative, vaginal sex. Listen to the audience, we really don't care about lesbian scenes with the lizard girl or blowjobs and handjobs, we want penetration, whether it be anal or vaginal.

Thats a 1.0 version?

Cons:
-Movement is way to slow
-The auto scrolling got me stuck and I could not get anywhere neither left or right.
-Sometimes hairs, and clothing miss from a certain angle.
-The map is shit. I could not even find the chiefs tent because of the awful level design. You dont know where you can go, heck you dont even know where anything is and no fast travel that could prevent me being stuck.
- Everything feels like being stuck in mud. The game does not flow, you feel yourself crawling through it searching for the reason why you play it.
-The rooms and enviroments feel dead. Nothing except chests.
-Boring generic music with no connection to where you are or what is happening.

Pros:
+This game is making progress
+The art design is good.
+Character Costumization is cool yet nothing to be found in a 1.0 version.

Calling this a 1.0 Version is dumb in my eyes, it feels like 0.226 version of the previuos one with the awful 3D background.
So 1 star you get for the maybe good future. I cant play it. Even the dead version was more clear in where I can go and where not. There needs to be a lot of polish to grind yourself to the maybe sex scenes that are there somewhere.

remake with all the content removed.
Currently it looks like their 'asset' design is using art designed for a flash game.
Why are the peni the size of the characters fingers... No real gameplay, would be interesting if this actually gets somewhere. That'd be a first. Hah.

To be honest when i saw the dev team abandoning the previous project i was very sad, the game was going places it was fun and hot a bit grindy but overall it was going good places.. then they decide to make this one...with 3d and some weird mechanics (looks great on paper but making it work is another thing) and to be honest i have yet to see anything that was better than the previous project .. so far it is very poor , buggy and raw experience.
Hope it gets more love but right now it's not worth it, might as well play the last one .

Updated 01 2022

Too much ambition on the part of the developers and an attempt to cover too much and shove it into one game, with all their budget - unfortunately - does not benefit the project, and may also be the reason for its non-completion. It is better to take not quantity but quality, yet many people want to see a game for adults, and in the coming years, while the development of the project has already dragged on for too long, and even now does not have a large amount of gameplay




Updated 24 February, 2021.

Well, if ignore all the bugs and shortcomings - I definitely liked what I saw in the demo version of this project. The avatar's visual and physics of motion are not badly done, and although of course some movements still need to be finalized - the picture looks as a whole - very nice. Although sometimes I would still like to be able to zoom in and out of the camera from the main character, but I think that the developers themselves plan to introduce this in the future.

A controversial point is the deepening of the game in RPG, although in general - with proper implementation - everything can turn out pretty well, but still there will be many complaints from many players that they will not want to delve into the gameplay, but will immediately want to get * the most interesting *, but ... Devs can't please everyone.

It remains only to wish the developers not to slow down the pace of work, and, perhaps, they will still be able to surpass the success of their previous game project that was abandoned. Time will tell.

P.S. It was especially amusing that player can feel like a witcher and rob all the chests around, and no one will even say a word against ...

Review for tech demo version 0.0.1:

This tech demo is not representative of the upcoming game, which will use 2D backgrounds. All others assets and animations will remain in use though.

The art is beautiful, Kuja is doing an amazing job both for characters and backgrounds. The animations are high quality, not simple loops but real complex movements, which is the 1st time I see with characters and rigs that complex. The UI is still work in progress but seems on good tracks, fluid and well designed.

By discussing with the writer, the story and lore they're making seem interesting and captivating, with a great attention to details and character development, but that's too early to tell.

Overall a very promising project, very ambitious. Only time will tell if the small dev team will manage to pull this out, the animations and art taking a lot of time due to the high quality.

This game can not be noted yet, but I put 5 stars to counterbalance the 1 star reviews.

Not a very enjoyable start to this game. It is extremely buggy with Krystal disappearing/falling off the map when moved to certain locations and unable to load back in. You have to quit the game and restart from the begining when this happens which is rather annoying. The drawings are still a major WIP and the animations are missing/bug out when trying to progress the scenes with the snake.

Controls are not the best and sometimes you cannot tell which plane you are in when attempting to move the boxes.

Looking forward to the progress of this game as I really enjoy the Krystal series and this is currently a Tech Demo, but so far it is unplayable. Will happily change my rating when appropriate!