Unity - Strip Club Wars [v1.09] [Total Fluke Studios]

I really enjoy this game. It appeals to both my simulation and my management needs as well having some very well done AI art. I have already spent hours on this game and it just doesn't get stale. I highly recommend if are a fan of either simulation or club management games, or like me, like seeing realistic adult art. I look forward to further features from TotalFluke.

I want to love this game but I just cant. Somebody else said you get almost the same experience by scrolling through the picture folder and I kinda have to agree. The game dangles these hot bodies in front of your face but there's not much more too it. At least not much fun

The good
- The concept of randomised and interchangeable real porn bodies is genius and I'm baffled that this is the first game (to my knowledge) to do that. It makes for a huge variety of characters and most of the models are hot (with some older / overweight people and - to me, sadly - lots of dudes thrown into the mix for realism)

The bad
- The UI. It's as barebones as they get (MS Paint?) and has too many options where you don't need them and too few where you'd need more. It's unwieldly to navigate the club and the world, which is exacerbated by the fact that you usually have only a tiny amount of stamina to do things (see randomised stats)
- The writing. There just isn't very much of it. You get an intro and its a sandbox from there with most texts being purely descriptive ("you talk about various topics")
- Opaque club management. I only got to the bar stage before giving up (and i played hours) since all the options the game gives you is to hire barkeepers (which might not be very good) and buy different qualities of alcohol. Unlike in the game that inspired this there is no easy to understand input-output here and no way to help out yourself (other than with maintenance)
- Randomised stats. You have to reroll a bunch (or cheat) to get decent stats on your main character. Some are plain impossible to change afaik, and the ones you can change take *ages* to do so. The same is true for your employees (of which there aren't very many options) so you might be stuck with terrible barkeepers and an anemic income
- Opaque stat system. With most of them it is unclear what they do or if they actually do anything. Again, IF they do anything you better hope you got lucky on the RNG because they're hard as hell to change (on yourself or others). It's not like you can just reroll and check though since even just knowing the stats takes a lot of running around and probing people about it. Which brings us to..

The ugly
The grind. Oh god the GRIND. This is where all the aforementioned problems meet and have an orgy to create the worst possible experience. So right now the core gameplay loop is stat padding to build relationships. Eventually (allegedly) to influence policy makers on the city council, but initially to make yourself half competent and to build relationships with other half competent people that might become your workers. Also for any kind of sexy time because there is no corruption mechanic other than talking to people. And it takes *ages*.

To give you an example, lets say you roll a random dude with not too great stats. Chances are most of the town finds you anywhere between unattractive and horrifying. To slightly increase their opinion of you or find out what they like you have to
1) find them (you can invest 3-4 more clicks to text them first to find out where, but in any case just getting there will cost you stamina)
2) Talk to them which gives you a bunch of nested menus (see UI) that at the end of the day all do the same thing; raise the relationship stat. With one outlier changing their opinions about various topics (which with the exception of sex stuff is again just an inroads to making them like you faster)
3) Alternatively (you only have stamina for one of these) to make them find you not horrifying you have to change their likes/dislikes to whatever the RNG decided you look like (good luck finding that info on the UI)
4) These steps will usually take up all of your stamina after which you have to sleep. Oh but you didnt raise any stats (going to the gym and raising strength by 1 (up from -100 if youre unlucky takes all of your stamina too). And maintenance is piling up. Also time is passing and most city locations are only accessible once a day.
So you have to spend a few ingame weeks repeating this just to get one character to maybe like you. The grand reward here being that you get to cycle through their picture files a bit

The supposed core gameplay (corrupting the city via election officials) totally passed me by because it took to long to set up the basics that they just voted on stuff without me. Most of it passed anyway, guess i got lucky on the random lewdness rolls or something. I wouldnt know since I couldnt be bothered to talk to a bunch of old dudes about their traits, stats, likes and dislikes for two weeks.

There is some potential here, mainly in the variety and thus replayability but i urge the dev to take a long look at the games that inspired this and what made the gameplay work. Less grind

The game is good but if it would have explicit porn images/videos(either generic or custom) for different actions(fingering, handjob, blowjob, deepthroat, cumshot, creampie) it would be one of the best porn games ever made.

The idea is not bad.
The graphics of the ladies are good and there is plenty of variation so there should always be some that really does it for you.

That's where the good news stops.
The UI is clumsy and very rough around the edges.
The tuturiol gives lots of feedback on stuff that you could figure out yourself by playing the game but next to none to the direction you should take to build stuff up.

On top of that comes the writing which is just jarringly bad.
Not being a native speaker either you'll notice to my grammar is not the best and that I tend to make errors in punctuation but then I'm not writing the text for a game.

On top of it comes the fact that no matter what lady (or guy if you swing that way) the text loop is pretty much identical. Sure the things that they like or don't like differ but seeing that you don't have depictions of any sexual acts the writing has to do the heavy lifting to make it appealing.

So if at best a full frontal nude AI generated depiction of a person does it for you while reading a text that pretty much matter of fact states that you made her cum... you might enjoy this.

In the state that it is in at the moment (0.4g) I wouldn't bother. I played it for a few hours even with a restart of character to see if I missed something in the start... and there is a path forward for it but at the moment all I can advise is download the graphics packs and scroll true them if you are that desperate to have something to get aroused by because watching paint dry is more enticing than playing this game.

Review of version 0.4d

Strip Club Wars (SCW) is a amazingly solid early release with mechanics and content that kept me entertained for a dozen or two hours and I still haven't stopped playing. It's one of the rather particular genre of management sims with only a few other entries of the same quality. I can't name them due to reviewing rules, but at least one is mentioned by the author as an inspiration and is a game I do love.

This genre is generally less about art assets and more about creating an interesting and erotic headspace. That said, SCW makes good use of AI CG and varied photomanulations of it to produce some nice eye candy to populate that headspace. Some are a little rough but most are quite good and the sheer devotion to racial, age and particularly body-type inclusivity is astonishing. Oh my beloved toned abs!

The underlying mechanics are what really matter most, however. It needs to be a fun game above all, and I feel SCW has already accomplished that. While I love forming my harem and having all the sexy times, I'm even more interested in crushing my competition. In. To. The. Dirt.

I will say that the author's leaving some of the code available for modding played a pretty significant part in my enthusiasm for this game. This is mostly because I could tweak gameplay to my own liking, something I adore. But it also gave me a glimpse into the quality of the developer's skills. I like it when I see good programming skills in our beloved smut games. It's pretty rare. And I see it here. It always bodes well.

I'm very much looking forward to future releases. Great job so far TotalFluke!

Sloppy start.

The UI seems like it was made with too much haste and not a lot of skill. It's easy to get lost in it.

The graphics are AI-generated but there are some cuts and edits here and there. The editing is even sloppier than the UI. To make it better the dev can use better checkpoints and a post scripts (I think there is at least one that creates transparent - no background - png files, just need to look into it. Some of the faces are outright ridiculous and can be easily sorted with adetailer or similar or just better prompts. All points towards either haste or not enough prep work/know-how.

I like the mechanics.
I like the game generates the world every time you start a game, sometimes you get a brother, sometimes you get a sister and everything else is different: the locations are different (same map tho) the people are diferent and the competition is diferent.
Pro: replayability,
Con: you have to restart the game until you get some decent stats as on some rolls my character was close to -100 on pretty much all skills.
The skills themselves are unclear on what they do and how you can raise or lower them
The interactions with various characters is pretty repetitive but I like that it doesn't do dialogues just narration. Still, very unclear on how they will react and your stats and brazenness can affect characters in different ways.

All in all, this is kind of a rough diamond. It will need a lot of work and polishing before it can shine.

Edit: If you don't like the art it's quite easy to change it once you get the hang of it. I did for my self and and happier so adding 1 star. Looking forward to mods.

*Update 05/2024: Added another star for the admirable continuous development of the game by dev even without a Patreon/SubscribeStar sponsoring. We have obviously someone at work who loves to develop his game further and deserves all praise for it.*

Damn you, Total Fluke Studios. You had to publish an addictive builder game, did you? I must have easily spent 20+ hours with this release now and am experiencing that Civ/Anno effect of "let me just complete this girl / build" which drags you into the game for hours.

But before me loosing it, I did hold mainly two grudges against the game in the earlier v0.4b release. There was an issue with US vs European number format which was fixed with the Feb release, so I raised the rating by 1*

The other issue and this is worth at least 2 rating points is that there are no lewd or even sex scenes available. If you take a girl home or engage in sexual activties, all you get is a text description and a series of pictures with the girl (and you) stripping down to naked. That's it. Sorry, but that is way too text-heavy in my book, especially for game that misses the "text-based" tag.

On the plus side, the foundational game mechanics with various locations is indeed there. So if you're looking for a management game with a sexy background without the need for many NSFW scenes, Strip Club Wars' latest release offers you an enjoyable, ready to play gaming experience - see above.

Also on the plus side, the image packs contain not only a wide variety of women physiques in built and race but also in character traits and preferences. It is a very refreshing approach compared to most NSFW games. Added 1 star.

Overall I hope to update this review to a plain 5 star rating soon as more NSFW content is added. I really wanna have fun with this one and would hate to see the game mechanics only on some barely naked PG16 pics. We should keep in mind 0.4a was only the initial release so 0.4d is like the 4th iteration. This shows the dev pretty much worked out the bulk of the game engine and a good part of the image packs for the initial release already. Cannot say the same of too many other devs here and I'm happy to follow this project further.

Very good premise and good gameplay base so far. Bugs are present but not game breaking and there are a wide range of dudes and ladies of all types for all tastes. Room for improvement but for a .4 first release, its very very good.