Unreal Engine - Project ARK [v1.6] [Nekoboxgame]

Ok, the game is good with a lot of potential, BUT....

Here the issues.

First things first:

1) This game need a seriuos tutorial, in terms of mechanics and quests. I spent almost 10 hours until now, and only now i'm starting to grasp few mechanics. I still don't know how to progress in terms of stats/skill points.

2)Certain comands need an heavily remake, especially when you're doing the class attendance, or other duties. Is quite humiliating fail simple questions because i can't lock the right solution, but i have to rely on clicking fast a certain mouse key and hoping to get the right timing. At least this game need an option menu for setting alternative keys from keyboard/mouse.

3) the machines at the arcade need a serious restile: the grabbing arm had really tiny and thin fingers, which makes instead of a good experience, a really frustrating one. Other thing, the arm at least need to have a little bit of shadow, in order to give the player a little hint about the direction of the arm, basic thing which is in every other games, even indies, which have this kind of arcades.

4)the time progression is quite confusing: you need at least to know how much time certain activities take, in order to be a bit more organized in your game progression.

5) still don't know how to get the points for improve the h-skills, or if there's a way to gain the skills directly.

The lackness of a good tutorial is, in my opinion, the biggest problem of the entire game. Players who come for the first time in this kind of game risk to abandon the experience not because the lack of possibilities of the game, but just because the game doesn't give you a goddamn hint/explanation of what to do and where.

At the moment, if we consider this game a "simple skeleton", the rating is about 6.5/ 7- , because there is a lot of room for improvement.

Otherwise, this game is just the last of many good projects with a lot of potential, but lacking will to improve that.

I'll keep it short, chief. This is a somewhat scuffed amalgamation of A LOT of stuff. There are A LOT of references, either just straight up pulling the whole layout out, or a somewhat familiar character. Why 2 stars? There is very, VERY little original things going on. Some references are just the entire f'ing building's layout and/or core gameplay mechanics.

Beware of scuffed English. Mine and also some places in the game.

And that, my boy, is my main gripe. This is obviously based off Illusion's games, mainly Artificial Academy either 1 or 2, since I was born a few years too late to totally legally play the first one, but just enough to totally legally play the second one. You might know this company as those who made Koikatsu and Honey Select.

A moment of silence for those lost in the cleanse of the HF forums..... Godspeed....

Regardless, I told you this to inform you that I know my stuff. The dorms? Looks quite like Danganronpa's 1, could be a coincide. Rei, Asuka, that girl that isn't pinkhead from Gridman, the stylst makes a stark contrast to Pomato, a Vtuber, just with a few things changed.

I like the references, I really do, but this lacks its own soul, its own ideas.

I played 1 minigame and instantly gave up. Who makes a rhythm game that ONLY allows for Perfects!? Yeah, it's legit skill issue, but man, I wanted fresh stuff.... I should work on that, though....

If you haven't played the masterpieces of Illusion of old, this is actually a 4 star for you. Why not 5? Because it's very, VERY easy to break stuff, like the camera and NPCs, it took me less than 10 minutes for me to find out how to look outside the walls and into the very boxxy, very high-rez sky.... Galaxybox? Yeah, I'll call it that.

Personal gripes asides. I wants this to the AA3 Koi never was until we modded it into kingdom come.

*Played on version 0.4*

(TL;DR right at the end if you don't care about reading a shitton of text)

So where to begin with other than just summarizing and saying that the game is basically a proof of concept, it almosts feels like I'm playing a VN but in an "open world" environment which isn't inherently bad but the main problem is... the sheer lack of content and the misleading thumbnails.

I was half expecting combat or even better interaction, at least, with what I assume is the main heroine but... no, you don't even get the pleasure.

The pros:

- Concept of the game is kinda interesting, I'm not a big fan of VNs so the way that the game plays out whilst still having an interactive VN aspect to it actually makes me enjoy it a tad
- Minigames are a fine addition and can contribute to a further "enjoyment" of the game
- Basic character creator but somehow doesn't feel bad at all, alongside some of the customisation options it offers, character design is not bad at all so to speak
- Some of the cutscenes implemented, albeit a bit janky, show some love put into it which made me enjoy them a little bit (i.e. the ones in the coffee shop)


The cons:

- Although I said that having minigames is actually fun I'll also have to contradict myself a bit here and say that they're not really the best, I'll divide this into 3 points:
1. The claw minigame leaves you with 0 depth perception (If you played any of the Yakuza games you might know what I'm talking about) thus making it a pain in the ass to deduce where the claw will land + the game lacks shadows which make it even worse.
2. The gym minigame is dependant on RNG, the only way you're gonna be able to beat the NPC is if it starts screwing up, that and you can't fail 1 single attempt, I ended up beating it 19 points, the NPC finished with 17 even after it failed 2 times (saw it doing 24 points in one failed attempt).
3. The "class" or math minigame gets boring and repetitive after a while and also has a poor choice for commands, I'd rather being able to click onto the answers than having to hold the mouse button and click with MMB to select which can lead to errors, other than that the minigame is just piss easy so my main complaint are the controls, at least it's not making you do anything other than summing/subtracting things up, although mixing multiplication/division could work just so it's not way too easy but nothing further than that.
- NPC interaction system is barebones as hell, I know it's still in an Alpha state but talking to the NPCs feel like it does nothing + there are only 2 NPCs you can actually interact with and "build" the affection meter as of now.
- The H animations are just... too weak, you only get two (like mentioned previously, nothing with the main heroine like on the screenshots as of now) animations after completing two quests for NPCs, one which you have to carry a box around to the other side of the map which by itself is annoying but not hard to do so it's pretty middle ground which rewards you with a footjob animation and another one where you speak to yet another NPC, bring her a soda (there's literally a soda machine not even far away from her) which rewards you with a paizuri, and... that's it, nothing more than that
- There are customisation items but you can't really afford them given the game isn't finished, same with the food items you can acquire, they have literally 0 use given the battle, which I'll assume will be the main "campaign mode" or whatever you wanna call it isn't even implemented in the build (there's even swords you can acquire but they do nothing other than being just for show)
- Speaking to the nurse NPC and choosing the part time job option will softlock the game and I also found places in the headquraters section where you can fall off the map yielding the same result
- Autosaving on the game is practically a manual save, don't expect the game to save after each period passes, no, you gotta get back to your bed in the dormitory which honestly feels more like a manual save than anything else

And that's pretty much all I have to say for build 0.4.
Played it for like 3-4 hours, there really isn't any extra content after you do all the quests, you can still level up and shit but other than that you're gonna get rewarded with absolutely nothing. The game has potential, that I cannot deny but honestly it feels more like a "clickbait" game if I'd have to say myself, the devs implementing stuff that correlates with things that aren't even in the build is a tad stupid/tacky if I'd have to say so myself, what they should've focused for now would be perhaps working on the H content and on the character affection system (which reminds me of AA2 in some sort of way but pretty much unfinished).

TL;DR:
I do hope this doesn't end up being abandoned or stuck in dev. hell because I honestly like the concept but I can't really recommend playing it right now and if you plan on doing so, after you finish all the quests in the build the consider yourself done, you ain't gonna unlock anything extra (and yes, I also tried making one of the girls follow my character to the dorm to see if anything happened but... no, nothing).

Hallway walking simulator. I think the idea is cliche but passable, the NPCs are boring, and the majority of the game is trying to decipher the map in this station that is no fun to run from event A to event B.

This game really need updates

+
Story rich
Lots of girl choices
Tons of potential
Wide map
Different items and weapons
Clothing system

-
Poor animations
Buggy af



I will change my rating depending on the future updates but I really think that this game is obviously ambitious for combining the game elements of Illusion's Koikatsu and some other 3d combat games

Prologue v4 Review (This is before Version 1. Do not confuse with Version 4)

I enjoyed the prologue very much. It is a very polished game with things to do. Nothing sexual so far, which sucks. Not even sexual dialogue. The male player avatar doesn't have even have a penis when he takes his clothes off. So maybe it attaches itself during future hentai scenes? The gamma is way too bright in the ARK area. It looks like everything is glowing, bright, and washed out. The females would look good or better if they weren't so bright. I hope that the developer fixes this in future versions. The lighting in the first mission area is good. Everything looks normal and realistic there, although I don't think that the ARK should be that dark. Everything should just not be as bright and have more shading. That's all. The voice acting is very decent. Combat is good. I like this game a lot and I'm excited for more releases. I already submitted all of my feedback and bug reports on their Discord. Five stars from me.

Very early stage but has potential. I just played the initial release and was impressed by the amount of effort that went into this game already. I think it’s going to be big in the future.

That said, the game is begging for a fast travel system. Walking everywhere is way too slow given the level design and slows the game down way too much.

Progress feels a little slow