Version 0.8.2.8
Although this review is going to be focused more on the negatives, I don't want you to think this is necessarily a bad game. For the most part, this is a pretty solid demo. All the groundwork for the gameplay mechanics are established properly, and while the full body art for the characters might be dodgy at times, it is always alluring enough to keep me going though the hassle of getting the sex scenes, especially with oviposition and insects as the main fetishes, which I'm a big fan of. The setting of this game is really captivating, with an atmosphere I've very rarely seen in other similar porn games. Unfortunately, there are quite a few game design issues that prevent this experience to be enjoyed at its fullest.
The first issue you'll notice upon booting this game, is that there are a lot of grammatical errors everywhere, not just in the dialogues but also in the info-bubbles for each item, making it difficult to fully understand how each of them works in combat. Perhaps the devs' native language isn't English, which might explain some of the oddities, but they really should have seeked for the help of a proofreader before publishing their game.
As for the gameplay itself, the next issue comes with the way you navigate in the overworld. The map is large, and the character's default walk and run speed are way too slow. Most locations look the same, making it very difficult to orient yourself without the map; map which, while pretty, is very obtuse to use as it conveys very little information about each location; the best it does is indicating the location of the warp stones for fast travel, and it has a legend for the important landmarks, but everything is drawn the same way without any color code, making it easy to mistake a specific spot for another. But the worst thing about this overworld is that most of it is empty, with all the important landmarks being spread widely across the map with no rhyme or reason, which I think was intentional to justify its size and the existence of the warp stones, when a smaller, more focused map would have had the benefit of eliminating the need for them completely.
Next, there is the combat. I don't have anything particularily bad to say about the combat mechanics themselves; the issue comes with the stuff around it. There is no leveling system in this game, and health doesn't regenerate between fights, meaning the only way to replendish your HP is to either find some consumables scattered across the map (very tedious and slow), spend a night at the inn (when the money in this game is technically finite, with a certain exception) or go all the way back to the witch's house to get healed for free, which isn't that much of an hassle thanks to the warp stones, but it is a problem that shouldn't be there, especially since not all fights give money as loot after a victory, meaning that some fights against animals are just a waste of resources for the most part. There is a vendor you can sell your items too, but you'll prefer keeping them for crafting anyway. The devs tried to adress this by adding the "well of gold" which basically gives you infinite mney if you're stuck, but in a well-designed game, that kind of thing really shouldn't be present in the first place.
Another issue with the combat is that all amor you wear will eventually be degraded, reducing their effectiveness in reducing the damae you take. Since there is no way to repair your stuff, the only way for you to regain some armour is to buy the parts in a shop, which is incredibly expensive without the well of gold (aka cheating), because you'll only get money from non-animal enemies, which are finite and dissapear forever once you beat them.
As for the enemies, it's really hard to gauge their power level without fighting them at least once. Most of the time, they have the advantage in numbers and will quickly surround you and spam double attacks against you, forcing you to save scum in order to avoid them as much as possible. Many of them ahve ranged attacks and you don't, meaning you have to waste a turn and deal significantly less damage, while they keep their double attack and hit you for a ton of damage.
Lastly, this game offers you some choices in the way the MC interacts with her entourage. Some of the choices do a stat-check to see if they fail or not, some others give you new passive traits or stat changes as you progress thoughout the game. The issue is, some of those choices just do not work properly (like in the inn when I couldn't access a sex scene because the button defaulted to another one), and some of the ways to acces certain outcomes are really opaque, with nothing telling you how to reach them. For instance, apparently you can recruit an NPC late in the demo as she appears in a future sex scene, but I just ended up fighting her and killing her anyway, and I'm not gonna spend 10 more minutes save scumming to figure out if it is possible to recruit her or not.
So overall, it's a mixed bag. The fighting is functional but a bit unfair, and walking around feels more like a slog than anything else. I think these two parts need some serious rework, alongside rewriting the shoddy mistranslated text. The art is nice, but not nice enough to warrant a full playthrough more than once. I'd wait until the devs fix the current issues before picking up again, but I'll keep an eye on it, because this has the potential to become something really interesting and unique in the long run.
Although this review is going to be focused more on the negatives, I don't want you to think this is necessarily a bad game. For the most part, this is a pretty solid demo. All the groundwork for the gameplay mechanics are established properly, and while the full body art for the characters might be dodgy at times, it is always alluring enough to keep me going though the hassle of getting the sex scenes, especially with oviposition and insects as the main fetishes, which I'm a big fan of. The setting of this game is really captivating, with an atmosphere I've very rarely seen in other similar porn games. Unfortunately, there are quite a few game design issues that prevent this experience to be enjoyed at its fullest.
The first issue you'll notice upon booting this game, is that there are a lot of grammatical errors everywhere, not just in the dialogues but also in the info-bubbles for each item, making it difficult to fully understand how each of them works in combat. Perhaps the devs' native language isn't English, which might explain some of the oddities, but they really should have seeked for the help of a proofreader before publishing their game.
As for the gameplay itself, the next issue comes with the way you navigate in the overworld. The map is large, and the character's default walk and run speed are way too slow. Most locations look the same, making it very difficult to orient yourself without the map; map which, while pretty, is very obtuse to use as it conveys very little information about each location; the best it does is indicating the location of the warp stones for fast travel, and it has a legend for the important landmarks, but everything is drawn the same way without any color code, making it easy to mistake a specific spot for another. But the worst thing about this overworld is that most of it is empty, with all the important landmarks being spread widely across the map with no rhyme or reason, which I think was intentional to justify its size and the existence of the warp stones, when a smaller, more focused map would have had the benefit of eliminating the need for them completely.
Next, there is the combat. I don't have anything particularily bad to say about the combat mechanics themselves; the issue comes with the stuff around it. There is no leveling system in this game, and health doesn't regenerate between fights, meaning the only way to replendish your HP is to either find some consumables scattered across the map (very tedious and slow), spend a night at the inn (when the money in this game is technically finite, with a certain exception) or go all the way back to the witch's house to get healed for free, which isn't that much of an hassle thanks to the warp stones, but it is a problem that shouldn't be there, especially since not all fights give money as loot after a victory, meaning that some fights against animals are just a waste of resources for the most part. There is a vendor you can sell your items too, but you'll prefer keeping them for crafting anyway. The devs tried to adress this by adding the "well of gold" which basically gives you infinite mney if you're stuck, but in a well-designed game, that kind of thing really shouldn't be present in the first place.
Another issue with the combat is that all amor you wear will eventually be degraded, reducing their effectiveness in reducing the damae you take. Since there is no way to repair your stuff, the only way for you to regain some armour is to buy the parts in a shop, which is incredibly expensive without the well of gold (aka cheating), because you'll only get money from non-animal enemies, which are finite and dissapear forever once you beat them.
As for the enemies, it's really hard to gauge their power level without fighting them at least once. Most of the time, they have the advantage in numbers and will quickly surround you and spam double attacks against you, forcing you to save scum in order to avoid them as much as possible. Many of them ahve ranged attacks and you don't, meaning you have to waste a turn and deal significantly less damage, while they keep their double attack and hit you for a ton of damage.
Lastly, this game offers you some choices in the way the MC interacts with her entourage. Some of the choices do a stat-check to see if they fail or not, some others give you new passive traits or stat changes as you progress thoughout the game. The issue is, some of those choices just do not work properly (like in the inn when I couldn't access a sex scene because the button defaulted to another one), and some of the ways to acces certain outcomes are really opaque, with nothing telling you how to reach them. For instance, apparently you can recruit an NPC late in the demo as she appears in a future sex scene, but I just ended up fighting her and killing her anyway, and I'm not gonna spend 10 more minutes save scumming to figure out if it is possible to recruit her or not.
So overall, it's a mixed bag. The fighting is functional but a bit unfair, and walking around feels more like a slog than anything else. I think these two parts need some serious rework, alongside rewriting the shoddy mistranslated text. The art is nice, but not nice enough to warrant a full playthrough more than once. I'd wait until the devs fix the current issues before picking up again, but I'll keep an eye on it, because this has the potential to become something really interesting and unique in the long run.
