DISCLAIMER: Review written for game version 0.6a - I am NOT a supporter of the project at the time of writing.
TL;DR upfront: While the game only received an "Average" rating from me, don't let that stop you from at the very least checking it out. Even though the game has its problems in places, it feels like a breath of fresh air and that alone is a good enough reason to check it out. Despite that the grind can be abhorrent in places, the characters are pretty well done and even though the graphics take some getting used to, it all in all is quite endearing. The progression through the story is surprisingly well-paced, even with the grind you will inevitably encounter and a whole lot of effort went into the presentation, but I feel that this did not translate as well in how it all pans out when it comes to the moment-to-moment gameplay, which is why for me the game sits at an uncomfortable "could be better, could be worse" spot.
But regardless, we should take it from the top shall we?
The story - at the time of writing - has a pretty simplistic setup from the outset, with your main goal being survival after the titular mist strikes and causes some cataclysmic event that conveniently didn't reach you where you decided to be when it struck, while the plot tries to build intruige by gradually widening the scope from our main characters struggle over to the state of the world as you uncover more of your surroundings, all the while meeting more allies and enemies alike, with you trying to puzzle together what happened. It all works nicely together to keep you interested in pushing forward onto to see what comes next. However, the presentation of the story falls flat in places, to which we might as well come now...
The overall Looks and Presentation takes a somewhat unique aproach to say the least. The characters all have a unique look to them from both a graphics and stylistic direction. If you can't get much enjoyment from how the characters look in the thumbnails, this might just be a dealbreaker for you. Gladly it wasn't for me and their personalities won me over - though more on that later. All of that is coated in a UI that is both easily readable and easy to navigate through, that also gives you all the necessary information without requiring a ton of digging through submenus which is a great help. What did however not help me was how it was all presented from a cinematic standpoint when playing out: having animated cutscenes played at you in certain moments of the game can either be extremely impressive or extremely annoying. That one depends on you. Sadly, even the buttery smooth framerate of said animations doesn't hide how stiff and wooden some of these feel to watch and I get the creeping suspicion that it's trying to draw attention to distract from some of the issues that the gameplay provide.
But, with all the uninteresting nerdshit out of the way, let's have a look at how the game actually plays, or moreso the mechanics: Well, you are supposed to survive first and foremost, all the while exploring your surroundings and broadening the areas you can explore to uncover more of the story by finding upgrades along the way. So far so sandbox, but like I mentioned just prior, there's some cracks showing: The mechanics surrounding exploration and combat are extremely simplistic with barely any depth, meaning there is generally only one real way of approaching any given situation. Even the upgrades you are aquiring along the way do actually nothing to feel like you are improving. The enemies progress by basically the same rate as you aquire more upgrades, meaning they just send bigger meanies that you needed the just gained upgrade to even remotely beat them. So while one can easily advance, you never actually get a leg up on those enemies and you can easily feel like being stuck running on a treadmill. This isn't being helped by the resources and stats one is expected to collect and inevitably grind for, meaning the game stretches out its runtime horribly in places. So if you want a laidback experience with very little grind, you might wish to proceed with caution here...
...On the other hand, the characters are so far pretty solid in their writing. While they do feel clichee at moments, they nevertheless pull their weight and have enough layering and nuance to them so that you always feel compelled to see where they will go next, helped along by pretty well-written dialogue that manages to be at times funny, intruiging or just coming of naturally. For the sake of spoilerness I will not go into too much detail here, but the characters all do feel pretty human, which is not always easily done. Tieing into the characters are all the lewd things that you will do with them along the way: The scenes themselves are nice and smooth in their execution, with enough variety in the smut-department along the way to keep you playing, though given that the progress with girls is tied to the main story, it will all be sprinkled throughout the game, which as we established already can feel dragged out.
So with that, I will close this review by saying that the game has not just some solid groundwork to work with, but is definitely showing the potential to be a great hit, but feels awfully padded at times. The style and story themselves are what kept me playing through the (at times) unnecessarily grindy mechanics. To me it feels like the game skimped on gameplay and depth of the core mechanics to impress the player with visuals and the story, which is definitely one approach to take, but not one I personally enjoy. Yet I tried giving this a fair review regardless. This game seems to have a problem of not finding a middle ground: What positives there are stand out do so in a shining light, but whatever sticks out negatively marred the experience for me when compared to those positives.
