Game version 0.1 DEMO.
[CAUTION! I give long reviews!]
Decent start so far. Like many other games revolving around the deserted island theme, e.g. Stranded with Benefits, Lewd Island, etc... this one has a pretty standard beginning. Your character wakes up on the island already, no images of any of the people who were on the yacht with you, where you came from, or what happened the night the accident occurred. This may mean we'll see those details later in flashbacks or the dev simply never will reveal it. I actually like that we don't know what the other people look like until we actually meet them, it adds an element of anticipation. More of that when I discuss the story.
Firstly, the graphics in this game are really nice, what few there are of them. The main character looks like the nerd he's supposed to be without being disgustingly unattractive or an over-the-top douchebag the way you see in other games with teen MCs. He looks like a regular guy but reliable enough that one can accept that his female classmates might start being attracted to him without the distraction of other dudes. Rachel, the only other character in the game so far, has an attractive model. Neither her face, her hair, nor her body are completely unique but the dev put enough work into her that I didn't mind. She looks pretty hot, she doesn't have over-exaggerated attributes, and her poses look natural and lovely. She looks a bit too old to be in the recent-High-school-graduate category but what the hell, it's an adult game with "Dick" in the title, she's hot, I'm not picky. During the scenes where she's relaxing on the beach or bathing she looks pretty incredible and I'm looking forward to seeing what else the dev does with her and the other girls to be added later.
Backgrounds wise, the game looks good as well. The island, what little we see of it, looks authentically like a deserted jungle setting. Thus far there are only a few locations, the beach, the inner jungle, and a pond / stream but they're all varied and lovely. In between there are individual scenic renders for when your character forages for supplies and they look good as well, though I got a little tired of seeing them after a while. More on that later. One of the things game devs using DAZ assets tend to overlook is the importance of lighting. Thankfully, that isn't an issue in this game thus far as every scene looks great lighting wise, no matter if it's morning, noon, sunset, or night, each location looks realistic. It really helps to set the mood.
Speaking of mood, the one thing I really liked about this game were the ambient sounds. Each location has its own sound effects and it really helps to give the impression of the island setting. On the beach one can hear the surf coming in and occasional gulls. In the jungle there is exotic bird call and the sounds of crickets, and by the waterfall and stream you can hear trickling water. It's subtle enough that one can appreciate it without feeling distracted and actually quite relaxing. There isn't much music in the game besides the Title page mood music so there's not much to say about that.
Gameplay is sadly where this title shows signs of being a nuisance in the future. Simply put, unless there are some changes soon, this game is going to be a grind fest. The main objective for pretty much every quest in the game so far is to forage for items. Mostly, the difficulty lies with finding food as you're basically required to eat and drink twice a day regardless of what your stats say about hunger and thirst, so most of your time in-game is spent Searching. The game is sadly realistic in that sometimes your foraging efforts come up with nothing, so there's never a moment where you can sit back due to a surplus of food, relax and look into other things to do (there aren't any yet, really). Rachel can sometimes find food as well, but it's so rare it's not reliable. Also, for some reason, when you Search in the jungle, you're required to see the same two images of Rick walking around a fallen log every time. It gets really old, really fast, so I'd humbly recommend the dev make these two images only show up the first time Rick goes Searching and maybe later for story purposes. Grinding is not my thing, I'll say that right out. That said, I have enjoyed games with a grind to them when they weren't incredibly repetitive. If there are separate objectives as the game goes on and you're working on something different each time you look for things, it can be fine. That's not this game. In this game you look for blueberries, bananas, wood, and rocks, period. Likely this will expand in the future but, unless things changed as I mentioned before, finding blueberries, bananas, and wood is ALWAYS going to be the majority of what you're doing and that is just not fun. This is just the Demo and I'm already tired of it. I urge the devs to find an alternative to this down the line, a better way to get food especially, as it seems water won't be as big a difficulty once you can make fire and boil water from the stream. I implore the devs to lessen the grind or at least vary what Rick needs to forage for and how often. In a similar vein, there needs to be more balance in the stats. I'd actually recommend the devs get rid of the Hunger and Thirst stats altogether as they don't seem to do anything, and make them only viewable during the required feeding times. The energy accumulation needs some boosting as time passes as I found myself beginning to tire more as the days went on and Rick didn't get enough from blueberries.
The UI in the game is adequate and that's about as good as I'll give it. There wasn't anything tremendously difficult about it and navigating the locations was easy enough. Inventory was a nice image with the contents of Rachel's pack spread out on the sand. I liked that rather than a RPG-like list of items and their quantity you see in other games. There's a lot of options and such that weren't really used but I figure they'll be more relevant down as the game proceeds.
The game has a quest system with its own Tasks menu and the layout's pretty nicely set up. There's a little image and a Status label that shows you if there's more you can do to advance the quest in this version. The quests aren't complicated and mostly revolve around foraging, so it wasn't a big deal to advance them. If you think you're stuck... just advance the story. Got a quest to find sticks and rocks but can't find rocks? Just gather sticks until the story advances and shows you a new area where you can find rocks. Easy enough.
While there are a few text choices that can be made that affect Rachel's attitude and closeness to Rick, they're few and far between so far. Thus far the correct choices were pretty obvious and that's fine. Sometimes I like choosing the wrong ones on purpose just to see if there are any funny reactions. This game has no Back function so it was necessary to Save frequently in order to check out how options turn out. Not a big deal but it could become one in the future if there are an increasing amount of dialogue choices with consequences that affect multiple characters.
The Story of the game is pretty bare bones so far, which is both expected and fine. Not a lot of back story is given about pretty much anything, which is realistic when you think about it. How many people washed up on a deserted island suddenly begin thinking about who they are and their life so far, really? You're given the impression that Rick isn't the most popular guy with the ladies, and most of the people on the yacht seem to him like friendly acquaintances rather than close friends. He clearly has known Rachel for a while and hasn't given much thought to her being an attractive woman until they're both stranded in close proximity. His worry for the others who had been on the yacht with them seems kind of low priority, though, leading me to believe they were just people he went to school with. It begs the question, though, why was he invited on this wealthy-persons trip if he's not close with any of them? He doesn't show a lot of concern for the yacht itself, so I doubt it was owned by his family or rented by them. I'm looking forward to learning more.
Rick's interaction with Rachel is interesting. So far she pretty much treats him like a handy piece of furniture. He's boosted her mood a couple of times, unless you make boneheaded choices, but otherwise she kind of ignores him. Even though they're on a deserted island together and scantily clad, she doesn't feel threatened by him at all. On the flip side, she doesn't cling to him for comfort or seem attracted to him, either. Other than their initial meeting on the island, she hasn't shown any awareness of him as a man at all. While this might be frustrating for players looking for a quick fap, I actually like a slow burning attraction. The Peek system advances as Rick's awareness of Rachel increases and gives us a good idea of how he's thinking of her. At first he's all, "I can't peek, that would be wrong!" but as time goes on and he sees more of her he finds her beauty hard to resist. It's a realistic and gradual change and while peeking is a bit on the shady side, he's not a complete creeper about it. At least not so far. Hopefully as more female characters are introduced, there will be more dynamic interactions. Maybe Rachel will get get jealous if another girl shows proper appreciation for Rick's foraging skills or his willingness to be helpful and protective. I'm hoping for some romance angles as well as harem aspects, so we'll see. Regardless, there's a good base for the devs to work from here. Personally, I'm hoping for mostly girls showing up as the game goes on as I don't really see Rick shining too much if Rachel's boyfriend Steve appears, and the whole MC vs. Alpha Male Rival jealousy thing is a tired plot device. As I said, we'll see.
The worst part of the game was the editing, or lack thereof. This game has an APPALLING amount of typos and other errors that just made the OCD reader in me wince. While everything was understandable, the errors were just very distracting. It was clear the devs put the majority of their time on the bones of the game's system, the visuals and peripheral details, then typed up the text very quickly and just shipped out the Demo without checking it. Hopefully, once they have the foundation finished they'll pay more attention to the story and how it's scripted out.
So, sum up:
Graphics: A
Sound: A
Gameplay: C
Quests: B
UI: B
Story: B
Editing: D
It's a v0.1 so there's not a ton of content to be had so far. What the game has is a very solid, if not completely original foundation on which to build an enjoyable experience. It's a very attractive game with two decent characters and room to both add more people while deepening the relationship between the existing ones. The story has some elements of mystery that can be expanded to make things really interesting and I'm looking forward to finding out more about who Rick is, why he was invited on this trip, and what exactly caused the accident on the yacht. I'm crossing my fingers that the devs will tweak the less interesting, grindy aspects, spend more effort on the story, and tighten up their script writing a bit. In the meantime I'll probably wait a few versions until a sizable amount more content is added before trying it out again. I can only forage for blueberries so much every month.
Good luck to the devs and I hope you continue working on this game steadily. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out in the future.
) the renders are awesome, Rachel is just so freaking hot that I personally almost don't want other characters to be added and I want to see the relationship between the MC and Rachel develop isolated on the island.