Unity - Spooky Starlets: Movie Maker [v1.0b] [TinyHat Studios]

there really is a story here, and for a game set in hell, it's pretty damn wholesome. but i came for the art, and then well, i came for the art. the animations are a little rough, but there are a wide variety of monster girls here, and they do a lot of different things, and in a few cases, each other.

the game changed at least once while i was playing it, but honestly.. it's just something to pass the time between content drops. the final version gives you a few ways to win a round, and you just have to figure out which goals are easy, and which are statistically impossible: the over/under point goals are your best bed, the suit matching goals are almost pointless.

it's been a year since I played, and I still remember almost all of the characters fondly. that says a lot about me i guess, but also the game too.

The event art may be decent, but the regular animations and the fact that most times the UI bugs itself into not being able to play anything, cards stuck in the air... just makes me want to chop off my hands. Needs some reworking, otherwise, an interesting concept

Edit: oh hey its "completed" and nothing has improved at all. It's still all really bad and low effort. The cg animations are still like 4 or 5 frames and just unpolished, the card game wasn't improved at all, and it still feels like you have literally no power over what happens and are just along for the ride.

Overall it just feels clunky and terrible. This game has gone through several different concepts and it still feels like they're barely figuring out what they want to do with it. At one point it was a huniepop puzzle game and now its like a deck builder visual novel where everything seems to clash.

The UI is fucking awful with two hands of cards at the bottom that is a pain in the ass to play with because they're pushed so far to the left due to buttons needed on the bottom right which makes selecting cards annoying. They're constantly moving around when you're trying to select something specific and the tutorial doesn't really do much to help you understand how the game actually works. It basically forces you to play specific cards and tells you to go nuts not even really explaining the different styles and such. Still it's relatively easy to pick up once you start but overall the actual gameplay comes out as pretty boring. Play characters, play random positons to achieve specific goals for the shoot, done, now go do some visual novel shit with no skip button, to my knowledge.

The actual card part of the game is a mess. Its entirely RNG if you get what you need and the only cards you can draw are event cards that affect your actual hand of playable cards, all while juggling a limit amount of time required to play every card and draw extra events. You might need to play a lusty combo but literally never get any lusty cards, or need to play a classy starlet but oops they just literally never come up. With no way to control your deck you're basically just throwing things against the wall and hope it sticks while you're strapped with event cards that do literally nothing for you.

As for the VN part I don't entirely care but thats my own personal problem rather than the VN itself being a problem. Visual novels these days are dime a dozen so unless it really grabs me I always want a skip key so I can skim the story a bit faster and piece it together but currently there isn't one that I know of making it just a pain mashing left click.

As for the content itself it can be hit or miss depending on your tastes. The starlet part is all flash puppet type of animation similar to that of legend of krystal and such. The VN portion uses CG to which the art style is nice. Both have their merits but they all come together in a mess of a game that is still trying to find itself. I don't really have much hope for this game given how old the concept is and how it took so long to get where it is now and still feels like they're trying to buff out the details.

The art is pretty good, but there's no animations in the cut scenes (two or three frames doesn't count as animation). The gameplay is barely worthy of being called a game. The "story" is totally disjointed and it's difficult to follow. This is an interesting concept, but very poorly executed.

For version 0.7p
This is a cool concept.
there are nice smooth sexy animations, pictures with nice art and
a good selection of girls.
Problem is that there is no real goal and its too random.
the card thing is really cool and i can see a lot of potential in it
but its also a problem as the scenes are based on the "Luck of the draw" and its kinda annoying if you want to see a specific girl doing specific things.

I can't recommend this as this is not a game at all. It has pretty pictures, but that's it. No story, bad, confusing management game, everything fails.
Since I'm rating a game that has terrible gameplay mechanics and offers nothing else, I rate it 2 stars until it gets better. Is this game worth your time now? No. There are not even enough pictures to enjoy. Six or eight scenes. Basically, it's a game where you waste your time with terrible management mechanics to unlock those pictures.

The art is this game is great, but unfortunately that's all it has going for it. Gameplay is dull, and the game is unfappable. There is potential though.

The game could be great in time if after filming you actually got to watch the film you created, with animation, and the positions and starlets you chose. The "films" should then be added to the gallery for re-watching.

As for gameplay, the starlets having favorite positions basically takes any choice away from you as a player. Honestly, the game should forget about "losing" and just make the game about finding the fastest and most efficient ways to make money, that can be spent to hire new girls, unlock sets, costumes, etc.

I'll check it out again in 6 months. Hopefully it will be more interesting then. I like the art and the concept, but definitely needs polish.

I have to change my review because the latest version of the game have gone way down hill. I'm honestly pretty disappointing because the earlier versions seemed like it had a lot of potential.

The art prominently featured on this game's page wasn't even in version 0.7, except for the gallery at the beginning. Instead there was a bunch of super low quality sex animations- which were glaringly bad. I've seen flash games form the early 00s with better animations.

Even if the management elements of the game were phenomenal, and the story line somehow managed to be super interesting I wouldn't bother because I know I won't be able to look forward to quality artwork.

This review is based on my experience trying to play the game on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9.
Rating system explained:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - excellent, adds to the playing experience greatly.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ - good, adds to the experience.
⭐⭐⭐ - average, does not add but does not subtract from the experience.
⭐⭐ - bad, subtracts from the experience.
⭐ - terrible, subtracts from the experience greatly.

Categories explained:
Art - what I see when I play the game.
Story - the progress of events during gameplay, what I learn from playing the game.
Audio - what I hear in the game
Mechanics - what I do during gameplay.
UI - how I'm able to do the things in the game. The interface in front of the mechanics.
Fun - how I feel when playing the game.

The review

Art - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
From what little I could see the art is original and clean, good use of colors and lines to create distinct separations and characters.

Story - ⭐⭐⭐
Did not get enough story in game to make a decision on this, has potential but the UI issues prevented me from being able to dive deeper into the story.

Audio - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sounds effects sound clean and original, professional level sound design and implementation in the gameplay.

Mechanics - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I was not able to grasp the entirety of the mechanics due to issues with the UI, that said the concept is cool enough for me to say it's above average.

UI - ⭐⭐
I had severe issues when trying to play this game on my phone, the entire game is cut off making it impossible to play, as I don't have access to buttons to progress. That said the interface holds promise if that gets fixed, the buttons and overlays are clean and understandable.

Fun - ⭐⭐⭐
I was excited to play the game and would probably have lots of fun if it actually worked on my device.

Overall I'm rating this ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The game has great potential, original character design and unique gameplay, with good audio. I really hope that the mobile experience is fixed so I can revise my rating to the five stars that this deserves.

v0.0.5 review

One of the most entertaining porn film games I've played.

The graphics are very nice, cutesy and just a little sexy.

The gameplay, while not very well detailed in the current version is very solid once you understand the mechanics. That means a lot to me to have a game that actually has game mechanics. As you play and figure out how the game works you'll find yourself trying to maximize profits and then curse bad die rolls or cheer when a long shot pays off big.

The unlockable CG scenes seem to have little to do with your actions, but as I was playing, I didn't really mind overly much. I may have missed something obvious about unlocking them as I was focusing on getting my business rolling.

Of course, being an in development game there's points where you find 'coming soon' and have to just clench your jaw and keep going. But over all I think that this was an enjoyable way to blow through half an hour of game play. I'll look forwards to future updates.

Overall? Very tight little game.