This is a review long overdue. The earliest version I played was 0.4b, but this review will be the game in its current state: 0.6.
Sorry for the upcoming block of text, but it needed saying in its entirety.
But tl;dr If this game was a burger you ordered; it would be 4 times the size you wanted, and have very little flavour. It had, and maybe still has potential, but the current projection leaves a lot to be desired.
This was the first HTML game I played after transitioning from playing primarily Ren'Py games. As my first foray into HTML games, it showed me how open world these types of games could be. At first I loved the characters, the story, the sandbox. I finished the game very quickly and couldn't wait for the next update. At the time, I would have rated it 5 stars. But that was a long time ago, and my position has changed.
We should probably start with the positives, the clear sky before the storm.
- The initial setup and premise is good. The character is thrust into a situation that they can't ignore, and has to find a way to adjust to a new way of life
- The characters you initially meet all have their own character, and feel like genuine people.
- The means by which the world is changed is an interesting concept, and allows for seamless explanation for the actions of the NPCs. Why are you naked? The corruption. Why is the church devoted to sex? The corruption. Why is anything happening? The corruption.
- The open world is expansive and every location has different characters to interact with. The map makes it easy to traverse around quickly.
- The format of a week of free-roam and an event on the weekend works well at first to generate a sort of routine for the player
- The first and second week should be particularly noted as having clear progression and goals
- The command ability. Giving the MC the power to force people to comply with his commands, regardless of whether they are human or ancient goddess is a unique and interesting idea.
This was the game that inspired me to start making my own games. No joke, every game I've played from this site contributed to my path towards game development, but Realms of Lust was the game that made me finally decide to throw my hat in the ring, and is a big part of why I prefer to work with HTML games.
However, with an objective mindset and looking back on my whole experience, particularly with the context of update 0.6, we have to talk about the negatives, of which there are plenty.
- Let's start with the obvious: Game Size. 0.6 is 13.3GB. I had to download 0.6 in the 4 separate parts, and then try to stitch them back together afterwards. After I decided to play the new update, it was another 24hrs before I actually got to sit down and play.
- The amount of goddamn characters in this goddamn game. The game is 13.3GB. 13GB is for character assets. There are 178 characters (trust me, I counted). The initial burst of characters all felt genuine, and were well written. But it seemed somewhere along the way the developer decided that more characters means more interest, and now has an obsession of cramming as many characters as possible into a relatively small space. This results in each character having almost no real content for them. Maybe you talk to them once or twice, complete an event, then it's off to the sex.
- Optimisation. In the past I recall the developer talked about shortening all the videos in the game to try and save space, but the game is still 13.3GB. Why? Because the images have not been resized. Looking into the game code, the developer has tagged each image with a label that defines how much of the screen the image takes (e.g. 25%, 50%). I was not aware of this method, and it makes sense as the developer can easily define where and how the image is displayed on screen. However, the resolution of the image is not taken into account. If the image is only going to take up 25% of the screen, then the image doesn't need to be full HD. Let's use the "banner.jpg" on the very first screen as an example. It's coded to take up 70% of the screen (not the whole display, just the area with text in it). Using the Snipping Tool, I determined the image displayed to be around 800 pixels in width. The source image is 2236 pixels in width. The image is around 580kb. Resizing the image to 800 pixels to match the display resolution results in the image becoming around 112kb. This doesn't sound like much, but when you have literal thousands of images, the amount of storage space saved would be vast.
- The story. The story got off to a good start. Get used to the world, corrupt the council, face the council elders. It was all going well. But recently the story has just become too complicated. Trying to write this review I realised I don't even know what the story is after that point. Multiple dimensions, ancient history, secret organisations. On paper it sounds great, but it's implementation into the game is quite shoddy. It's not show and tell. Other characters just tell the main character everything and we just sit there reading paragraphs of text.
- Which brings me on to the main character. Remember when I said the premise was good, and that the main character would have to adjust to the new way of life. Other people have already pointed this out, but the MC is just too passive. Things happen around him, and he reacts. Or at least he tags along whilst others do all the work. That command ability I mentioned, it's rarely used to its max potential. Other reviewers have already talked about the issues with the main character, so I won't dwell on it.
- Gameplay. HTML games need a good balance between story, sex, player choice, and gameplay mechanics. And probably more things I've forgotten about. Player choice in this game is lacking. Most choices are meaningless, and the choices from chapter 1 don't even carry over to chapter 2, you have to tell the game what choices you made (so I decided to change my mind, or make choices I missed the first time). The bulk of choices are usually about whether the main character does or does not impregnate another character. But what about the wider gameplay. For the most part you go around the map and interact with characters, and for such an expansive open world, there are practically no other activities for the player to do, and when the next major event is at the end of the week, slowly moving the time forwards becomes tedious.
- Saves. The save system in this game is like no other I've seen. It is unique in a bad way. I've completed the game around 3 or 4 times at this point, because whenever the browser's cached data and browsing history needs clearing, the save games go as well. But wait, that's the same for all HTML games, why is it so bad here? Because other games allow you to download your saves and store them offline. I recently had an issue upgrading my PC, and all data stored was wiped (the game was stored externally thank god) but all my save progress was lost. This seems like it's a limitation of the software more than anything, as the game is made using Harlowe in Twine, whereas most other games use Sugarcube in Twine. When writing this review, I would have loved to look back at the game to double check my facts, but I wasn't about to restart again just to check a few details.
- The Ending. Since this is considered spoilery, I've placed it in a spoiler tag. But I was disappointed.
Sorry for the literal essay I've written as a review, but it needed saying.
This review got a lot more negative than I had initially intended, but hopefully it can also be used constructively to improve the next stage of the game. Despite everything negative I've said, I've still given it 3 stars. Because I still love this game, and long for the feelings I had when I first started.
I don't know, what can I say, it's already the best game, what I play! Great work!
