HTML - Completed - Mercanoid [v1.0.8] [Pyksies]

MERCANOID easily has the best writing in any game, text based or otherwise, I've encountered on this site, and the gameplay itself is extremely polished. The scenes are incredibly good, the characters are interesting and endearing, and the lore (as well as the dialogue) could be from a sci-fi novel. The gameplay loop and interactions are engaging, and you don't have to lose to see scenes. I'd read a book by this author/developer if they published one.

This review is directed towards version 1.0.7, which is the latest version posted in the site.

This game has honestly been quite an interesting and fun experience for me. I was looking for new experiences to play here and there and this game was quite unique.

I don't often do many text based games but this was pretty charming from the get go.

The storywriting in this game is actually really really good, and I can see that there was a lot of emphasis in this aspect of the game besides others that I will soon mention. It felt pretty natural, pretty immersive and captivating.

The different characters you find along the way were pretty unique as well, with pretty different personalities from one another. Some characters I even got a strong dislike to (I'm looking at you Jii'Kii) because of their personality hahaha. The cast of characters is definitely very interesting and fun in their own way. I love the lightheartedness that appears from time to time, considering the situation the characters find themselves in, it has made me laugh as I'm sure the intention was, quite a few funny moments here and there which I have enjoyed.

And I also have to say that I love how Pyksies has gone for a more grounded-up story and impactfulness in the environment in general.

Characters are getting absolutely wrecked sexually by the outbreak yet there is not the typical trope that happens in games where: "Characters are taken by force, abducted, and transformed completely into nothing more than just a sexual doll that has no more desire to fight and has thrown their humanity away"... it's the total opposite, the characters here still keep their humanity and some of them are even traumatized by the events that unfolded there. I really appreciate that myself

And speaking of characters, character development is also pretty good I'd say. You are in the shoes of an android, so to speak, given birth recently that knows some things about life and the world itself, but still doesn't know many other aspects about herself, discovering feelings along the way that she didn't think she had, as well as some other characters there that have a similar thing happen to them. It feels very good for us players, or at least to me, to see these kinds of things happening in a game.

For me personally, the story is as equally important as the gameplay and the smut. It enhances the different aspects of a game a lot, especially when done well, it makes you want to know more about the world the characters are situated in, their backgrounds.. the different personalities that they can have, which you can opt to support and engage with or not. It just makes it a lot more impactful and meaningful, with the bonus smut included here and there, which I appreciate because there's quite a lot of games out there that lack this.

The artwork is quite good, I liked it. Despite the fact that you do not have character CG's, the world is quite well done I'd say. You see the utter chaos that has unfolded everywhere you look, with the slime covering almost every corner of the facility and even impeding the character's progress until you find certain things to help yourself with that, some of those places having the floor completely destroyed so you need to find ways to go through that as well.

There's of course a few things here and there that could be improved for better map navigation, like the fact that you sometimes can't exactly see certain pathways that are available to you. This is specifically a problem in the Monster Pen, it is not impossible to figure it out really but it also took a little bit of tinkering around.

UI and other design choices were pretty good and easy on the eyes as well. I'm a colorful person and I love colors overall but the purple with the black and white speckles is just beautiful.

What can I say about the gameplay mechanics as well. They were pretty darn well thought out, the fact that we can craft our own resources instead of having to spend money on iRIS or M4X is good.

I do have to say though, it would've been nice to have a sort of system where you can see which objects and or items are more important than others, and they could be highlighted differently to signal that. Like key items having a certain distinctive color, powerful weapons having a different one and so on. But it is still pretty good and does it's job as it is now.

Having different weapons to cater for the different routes players will go, if they decide to go for Agility builds they have a different set of agile weapons they can use, if they go for a Strength build then they have forceful weapons that they can use. Tricky ones, etc. This sort of makes me think it was inspired a little bit on soulsborne games, where you have a lot of flexibility as to how you can build your character depending on your tastes.

I'm not the most familiar, well, I have almost no knowledge whatsoever of how D&D works, so figuring out weapon scaling took a little bit of figuring out, but it is good and I'm sure it caters to those types of players as well. Being able to upgrade your weapon as well with the different resources you can scrap around the world, it is a really well planned gameplay structure that I have really enjoyed.

The different skillsets, which again remind me of soulsborne gameplay a little bit. Also the benefits you can get at certain levels, more evasion should you do a more agility based build, more strength, recovery etc... very very good system

I would also like to point out in this regard that, it would've been easier to navigate through the map if we had the possibility to use WASD outside of combat instead of having to click on the arrows at the side of the screen to traverse through the map. This is probably me just getting too used to games like CoC and TiTs, which have this system included and it made traversing through the map less clunky, but I would appreciate it if in the future, should the developer make any other games, this be included.

As for the smut, quite a variety of different kinks to find there, with the possibility to opt-out of certain kinks, like soft-vore, which in my case I did. It is appreciated when a developer allows you to customize, to a certain degree, your experience with the game.

All in all, a pretty darn good game which is definitely worth the time spent on it and totally deserving of the five starts that I'm giving it. Kudos to the developers for making such a good game, and I hope we can see more of your stuff in the future

Overall it was a lovely couple evenings of gameplay, the characters were well written, and many of them likeable, even the ones who weren't so friendly. The amount of worldbuilding within item descriptions and the conversations you could have in the safe room really fleshed out the setting and made it feel like something more than just smut. I'd heavily recommend picking this up and playing it if you have the time and patience, the effort in it shines through wonderfully, and I look forward to the potential of more from this dev. In short, great game, great characters, fun gameplay, good lore.

It's an absolutely awesome text-RPG.

A bit short in my opinion, and with several under-exploited mechanics (I think there's only one opportunity to use the "Perform" skill). Honestly, it feels more like a test run for a more ambitious project.

No matter what, it's still a very good little game, and absolutely worth your time. Certainly one of my favorites in terms of HTML-based games on this site.

Small lightweight HTML that delivers nicely what it wants to deliver: an easily navigable RPG with decent progression, choices and unlockables. The UI is mostly intuitive even if not perfect and the text content is well developed. For people like me who are not native English speakers, a TLDR mode could be great. The gameplay alone is worth it!

Marvelous, simply marvelous! I've always said that HTML games live and die on their writing alone. Some would try to compensate with hackneyed garbage like stock images and hentai sprinkled in to give the player some eye candy. Not Mercanoid, no sir! Its writing is so detailed, so expansive, and so vivid that anyone with the slightest bit of imagination is placed right into the scene!

My first playthrough was about 3 hours, I certainly could have bum-rushed right to the end, but you're REALLY missing out if you don't engage in the side activities. Not only are you missing out on detailed and entertaining scenes, but you'd also be skipping out on new and powerful equipment.

Easy 5/5 stars from me, I HIGHLY recommend it.

this is a completely finished game with various side-quests, play styles, and well-developed characters.

The second you see the UI is enough to tell you that the developer went all out on this game.

My only real complaint are that the protagonist can't have sex scenes or repeatable sex with the quest NPCs but given the amount of work already done, that is understandable.

I hope this developer can use this game as a springboard for their next project~

Well written, although sometimes the descriptions can get a little long and verbose as opposed to punchy and succinct, which isn't really an issue but does start to add up as you wander around the place. I have some misgivings about the game itself given it's attack or do X-Y-Z special attack for not-mana, but difficulty is adjustable and that's standard, if a little tired, and I won't hold it against it.

TL;DR = text based game with female protagonist about tentacle sex with deep plot.

Story: 5/5
+ I really liked the plot. It looks like the game is only about heroine getting raped by tentacles, but there is surprisingly deep plot hidden beneath.
+ Main heroine is Mio. She is an AI robot. She is on a mission. She is supposed to act like a mindless robot, but she is sentient AI with her own ideas.
+ You uncover a lot of plot by exploring the base and finding data journals and meeting new characters. It will keep you motived to uncover more.
+ There is also a theme about living beings exploting AI machines. Very dark.

Art: ??
- This is completely text based game so there are no pictures.
+ If you dont mind lack of art then this game is very good.

Sex stuff: 5/5
+ Main theme revolves around all sort of tentacle rape, slime rape, vore and lesbian sex.
+ Sex scenes are very well done.
+ A lot of scenes can be viewed by 2 ways. By really losing to the certain enemies and obtaining a bad end. Or by winning against said enemies and then later during masturbation heroine can "fantasize" about what enemy would do to her if she lost.

Gameplay: 5/5
+ English is decent.
+ The game has a lot of RPG elements. Heroine has stats, she gains levels, she has inventory, she can equip gear, she can craft new weapons and consumables. Etc. Etc.
+ You explore the base through minimap. You will often have to overcome certain obstacles to progress.

To sum it up:
I really like the game. If you can get over the fact, that it is text based game, then it is very good game. You should check it out.

Surprisingly wholesome for a game about tentacle sex. Love the system for seeing events that doesn't require losses. Love that I don't have to watch scenes that I may not want to. An overall enjoyable experience.

Very good game, very well made. The dev didn't cut any corners at all even when he could have still made something decent by doing so. The game has an interesting fighting system, inventory, crafting system, skill system, etc when It could have just been just a lewd text adventure. The amount of content isn't too short or too long, and the story is concluded in a reasonable timing. The lewds were tentacle-related things, as advertised. I would surely recommend it since I can't really find any faults, the only reason not to play is not liking tentacles.

I've played this game on Itch.io a month and left a review there, so I'll pretty much share my experience with the game here as well. I was quite pleased to see it was a completed text game for once, as usually most devs are just content wth posting a barely functional alpha before begging for money on their Patreon. Glad to see some professionalism with this developer who shared the entire game at once for free without asking for anything.

I find the pixel art style pretty well done for the very few illustrations in the game. I think the dev could have spared some time to make simple sprites to help us visualize how the enemies look, but that's a minor gripe.

It was a fun experience, and it was nice to actually have some real RPG and combat elements in it instead of just a few choices in an otherwise kinetic text game. I was afraid the story would quickly branch out and become overly complex for its sake, but it's actually a fairly short, straighforward and self-contained story that's easy to follow.

I appreciate the fact that you unlock the sex scenes on winning the fights, unlike all those Japanese games where you have to lose and waste your time doing the fight again, which always was mind-boggling and unfun to me. Some scene are pretty tame in my eyes, but most of them are kinda hot, I liked them a lot.

I hope to see more games from this developer, as this one shows a lot of promise.