Unreal Engine - Completed - Subverse [v1.1.1] [Studio Fow]

A fucking waste of time, with the depth of a shallow puddle. The story is like if it's written by a dumbass teenager, the dialogue is horrendous, and for a game that didn't want to be only a porn game, it sure as shit can't help but include dicks, balls, and tits into everything. The gameplay is fucking monotonous and repetitive, go to this galaxy and blow some ships, go there and kill some douches in shit turn based combat. Damn, this game is a bloated sack of shit. Just a fucking let down.

As games go, Subverse is in a rather curious position.

As an actual game, there are some decent parts here. Models are pretty decent overall, the Ships in particular are gorgeous - minus the sexbot ones, but we will get to them - and conceptually, the universe they are trying to work with has some interesting parts in it.

And then people open their mouths.

I, as a general rule, usually put story as one of the single most important things a game can do to try and interest me. I live for things like lore dumps, interpersonal conversations, and I've occasionally put up with otherwise dumb design choices for the sake of seeing where a story could and would go. So when Studio FOW made what looked to be a rather impressive looking sci-fi project, I thought to myself "Hey, this looks right up my alley. Sci-fi tends to be underrepresented among hentai games anyway." and decided to give this a whirl.

Now, I won't say it's 100% bad in terms of writing. I snorted a few times at various dialogue, especially the save warning they give you...but christ alive, I just can't take the games laser-guided focus on dialogue that, in their own words even, "Is bad by porno standards".

Every time I'm having a good moment, someone walks in and vomits out a mixture of "Tits arse fucker fucker I'LL KILL EVERY LIVING THING fuck fuck arse" like they are trying to outdo a southpark episode. Hell, I've seen better and more thoughtful writing from a southpark episode in the first place. Supposedly the devs wanted to make a "Game with porn in it" rather than a "Porn game", but they sure as shit didn't write a "Game with porn in it", because nobody actually talks like this.

The writing is the singular worst part of the whole shebang, it actively makes me want to avoid interacting with this game because every time I'm trying to groove with the plot, someone starts talking like one of the sexbot units. There is very obviously some subtext regarding things like censorship, government overreach, and puritanical culture as far as the plot goes, but it utterly fails in any capacity to make any of the people, whether the ones pushing it or fighting it, appealing in any sense whatsoever.

The MC has all the sensitivity of a corn husk, yet somehow every woman who talks to him for more than ten seconds is completely and confusingly in love with him and just waiting to fuck him straight into the floor. To say nothing about the panties over the face - I'm still not convinced that it isn't some sort of strange piracy cue and that mentioning it anywhere official is meant to reveal me as a filthy pirate - the only redeeming factor I can find about this man is that his voice is actually competently done.

Something that MOST of the playable and nonplayable crew can vouch for. The voice acting is professional grade and my props go to the people who did it, along with my sympathies for the vast majority of them for having to suffer through dialogue that reads like a teenagers first naughty forum fanfic. I repeat - NOBODY TALKS LIKE THIS, EVEN RED LIGHT DISTRICT WORKERS - outside of perhaps the senator dude who actually sounds like he is trying to run an interstellar coup among a troupe of idiots who can't keep the word dick out of their mouths any longer than it takes to catch a breath of air.

For the interest of full disclosure, I got as far as the Hydra sector before writing this, and when I saw space elves I was excited for a moment, thinking that we would get something noble or at least interesting after all the pirate blabber...Annnnnnd then the council cutscene happened. Whatever social commentary the Kloi are supposed to represent, assuming there is a social commentary here and not just some weird fetish with people talking like teenagers judging a mall fashion contest, is drowned out by making the dialogue so insufferable that I want to skip it entirely. Even if its supposed to be a parody, it just comes off as childish, alongside being an utter waste of otherwise good character designs.

The actual gameplay, when you manage to get beyond the cringy streamer jokes and actually try to do something, is somewhat competently done. The space shooter is easily my favorite of the two, as the music is pretty well done and the actual shooting part feels fun. As said before, all of the spaceship models are beautiful, making me wish they featured more in the game overall compared to the conversational cutscenes. As far as making a star wars esque special effects project, Studio FOW managed to do some excellent work...until the Sexbots get involved.

Evoking the image of teenage fanfic once again, the sexbots are reminiscent of every web comic artist talking about user generated content that has ever lived. With such imaginative ship design as "What if cocks could suicide bomb you!" or "Look, flying tits with lasers that come out of the nipples!", and they even manage to evoke what teenagers sound like on online games as they proceed to bombard you with a glitched out symphony of tits and arse, ensuring that they remind you "Hey guys, these enemies are sexual in origin, make absolutely sure you never forget this".

And one would think, given such an obsession with genitals and other overall obscenity trying to pretend its thoughtful or at the very least comedic, that there would be content to match with it, would there not? After all, something trying so hard to bring up a populace obsessed with sex would naturally be trying to fuck you at every turn...Nope.

Keeping in mind that this is Studio FOW, who have made some of the best monster content on the internet at a whole. A studio that has the likes of Beowolf among their numbers,a veritable genius when it comes to interspecies sex...and pretty much none of it actually triggers ingame. Instead, all of the sex that you got into this game to see in the first place is locked up behind the PANDORA system, tucked away nicely so that you aren't distracted from their lovingly crafted obscenity salad that is desperately trying to make you crave a machine translated hentai RPG instead.

At initial glance, the PANDORA system sounds pretty great. You take all of the sex and stuff it into a nice contained area where you can mix and match scenes to your hearts content. Neat, right? Except that it's essentially a gallery viewer where you have to level characters to unlock all their scenes.

Usually I would consider the lack of any real dialogue a negative point in the systems favor, but considering the kind of writing that infests the rest of the game, the gallery viewer is mercifully silent, simply letting you get on with whatever scenes you wish to see.

Except, despite being kings among model manipulation, all the scenes are simply hard locked, vague in location, and completely isolated from pretty much anything to do with the rest of the game. There is a camera movement feature, not that you need it because it just moves the camera about an inch left right or vertically. Want to get a good look at those monster models? Get an alternate position or even just see your characters face? Nope.

Which, in all fairness, isn't exactly unique to them either. It would hardly be the first game of its kind to have a gallery that isn't all that impressive, but for the kind of pricetag the game is asking for, alongside the legacy that the studio itself carries, I expect better. Perhaps this isn't entirely fair of me to demand of them, but I had so much higher hopes in regards to Subverse when I had heard it was being made.

Between the turn based combat having zero relevance to the games sexual content in the slightest, hosting a nice chunk of good looking enemy models that I had been hoping to see ravage our cast of Waifus (Their terminology, not mine), and just how grindy the mode itself is when you try to 100% sectors...I really can't give it any kudos.

Even the model poser mode, literally called the gallery, doesn't really hold much I can call useful at first glance. I profess that I haven't really gone far enough in the game to see if there is some actually decent posing you can pull off with it, but based on my initial impression, it just seems to be "Take character, put them in front of a poster in a vaguely sexual pose, take screenshot, voila". Hell, you can't even pose them with their clothes on, so if you like a characters given outfit and want to try and do something with it? Nope.

Honestly, if you are going to interact with this game at all, just go download a 100% savefile and save yourself the trouble. The plot isn't worth it in the slightest, the gameplay is middling at best, and the universe they are trying to sell you on really isn't all that impressive. I'd even go so far to say that the waifu's really aren't worth the disk space to begin with, as your cast of fuckable friends is:

-Sexed up version of the adjutant from Starcraft
-Your geneticist who apparently cannot build a basic dog
-Pirate Demon that, despite being supposedly more dangerous than you, couldn't whack the tiny goblin from the start of the game over the course of years.
-Space elf warrior porn star who is supposedly a fashion icon who has no idea what the hell to do with her hair
-A twi-lek wannabe, though I have no idea on her personality or voice due to not having reached that part of the game.
-Standard animal-ear girl, willing to bet all the males are full beast.
-Russian who feels the need to remind us of how dangerous she is every other sentence, with breasts so big that the cutscenes have to pose her in odd ways to avoid clipping.
-Ever wondered what would happen if Tali became a bounty hunter? Also likes to remind you of how dangerous she is, but doesn't give you the benefit of a break between sentences.

If any of these seem worth the gigs of space on your drive, go nuts. But I really don't think this game did any of the designs even the smallest bit of justice. Given what they are known for, I had hoped the Xeno content was a lot more widespread than it is, but to my understanding of the situation, the only reason this game has any Xeno is because it was a kickstarter goal, and the idea that Studio FOW of all people had to make that an actual goal is absurd to the highest degree. This game feels like its trying to be a parody of the idea of a porn game, rather than simply being one.

The next time Studio FOW wants to make a game, for the love of all that's holy, hire a writer who cleared puberty. Or at least one who has talked to another human for anything more than what it takes to buy groceries. I can't even reccomend this as a comedy game, it's just plain bad.

This is a good 3.5/5 or 4/5 game. However, it's a 1/5 Porn game.

The Gameplay to Porn ratio is about 20:1. The porn itself isn't very good. Aside from the few scenes per character you unlock by playing the game, other scenes are unlocked by using a character in combat to gain points and spending those points on scenes for that one character.

------------------------

Disappointing porn aside, the things I didn't like about the base game was the humor and the androids constant posing.

If you are in the minority of people that have played or watched the Deadpool Video Game, that is basically the main characters personality. And it got old pretty quick.

Clearly a lot of work went into this game. Unfortunately the end result is still boring. The dialogue is not very funny, the sex animations are dull, and the characters are too much of a self parody. If the goal was Mass Effect with sex, the result is a Playboy Magazine with spaceships.

Buying the game on Steam, but disappointed with it. I mean, with the size of almost 80GB, the gameplay is so boring. The graphic is decent, but it is not enough to satisfy us anyway. Rated 6/10 for me

This game is a mishmash of multiple different genres. You've got turn based combat, and then a space bullet hell shooter. Neither of which are very in depth in terms of mechanics and gameplay, both are really surface level. The sex scenes are good, but the grind to get them is super tedious and time-consuming . My main gripe with this game is the fact that the porn content and the gameplay are completely mutually exclusive, there's no porn content within the actual gameplay, you exchange sex scenes using currency you earn via gameplay, it's essentially just a porn viewer with boring tedious gameplay attached to it.

I finally completed it 100% - which absolutely wasn’t worth it, by the way -but I’m psycho and couldn’t stop. Let’s get to the worst part of this game: the writing style. I can’t begin to describe how much this overly sexual tone ruined the experience for me. I understand they’re trying to keep things from feeling too serious, but there should still be some balance. When the whole thing plays out like a giant circus, you lose all interest in the story and characters. Any hint of immersion vanishes, making the entire experience much, much worse.
Story - I’ll be crystal clear: I skipped huge chunks of the narrative because I genuinely couldn’t stomach the writing style, so I won’t judge the plot too harshly. From what I did see, it was passable. The ending felt rushed and messy, but overall it wasn’t terrible. I’m still baffled by how they completely dropped certain characters - like - into the void and never mentioned them again. I guess they just didn’t know what to do with her, so they swept her under the rug?
Gameplay - Now this is where I can really chime in. There are about 500 planets, and over half of them have combat missions. There are two combat modes: Space and Ground.
Space combat is a top‑down arena shooter where you pilot your spacecraft against waves of enemies. The arenas are virtually identical throughout the game, aside from about 9-10 story missions that add objectives like “defend this base” or “activate these beacons.” Outside those, you clear planets in the same arena over 3–6 waves of enemies from 3–4 factions that hardly differ. Your ship’s basic attack is a machine gun; your special attack depends on which crewmate you bring along - some are useful, some aren’t really viable. By halfway through the game, this all feels like a tedious, boring chore.
Ground combat is turn‑based and XCOM‑style. You have a grid and four units (your hero plus three mutants), and you basically replay the same setups every fight, because there's no real reason to change it. It’s marginally more interesting than space battles, but still repetitive and boring long before you finish.
Waifus can gain experience by either completing missions with them or giving them gifts that you get for those missions. With over 500 planets (the majority of them are combat) to clear, imagine how much you’ll grind - and for what? I maxed out my party levels long before I ran out of planets (like ~350/500), and the extra XP does nothing. And that, WITHOUT the gifts. Clearing the final 150~ planets was pure torture. I would’ve preferred half as many planets with more varied, deeper encounters. Both space and ground combat lack sufficient depth and grow monotonous fast.
Lore - There are intriguing ideas sprinkled throughout, but they’re never properly developed. The dialogue’s tone undermines immersion with cheap one‑liners and distracts from any world‑building they attempt.
Characters - Introducing new crew members right at the very end is weird af. You should have your full roster by the second act, save maybe FOW‑chan. Getting a new waifu in the last main missions feels completely out of place.
As for the main cast: some character designs (like Demi are pretty cool, but most are generic and forgettable. Each waifu effectively has two outfits - the base look and the one unlocked after her devotion quest. When it comes to their personalities, the situation is grim because they barely have any. Perhaps the writing tone is to blame again, as the characters' personalities blend together with only slight variations. Taron and Ela, for instance, might as well be the same character.
NSFW Content - Most of the erotic scenes live in “Pandora,” which is essentially just a glorified gallery where you unlock new scenes for waifu levels. Basically a porn slideshows with no dialogue or story context. The animation quality is solid, but that's all there is to it. The main story includes one scene per character unlocked at recruitment, plus a second scene unlocked after completing their Devotion quest. These devotion quests are hands‑down the best content in the game, gameplay and scene-wise. I also add that the first recruitment scenes that you get in the game were clearly made without the game context, because they don't make much sense in the context. Taron’s first scene, for example, makes little sense in context: the events leading up to it have nothing to do with what actually happens in the scene.
2,5/5

Well i actualy realy liked it.
GAMEPLAY:
It has a gameplay loop with basicly 2 types of missions space shooter, and turn based ground fights, there are a ton of these that are just filler missions for the player to unlock all the scenes. But for progression non of them is needed. during the main plot they have a lot of variations of the core modes like a space shooter mission that let you sneak into a base while avoiding security drones. Should a mission frustrate you after 3 loses ever mission can be skipped.
STORY:
It is packed with sequences and with story bits and often realy high quality cutscence it felt like game and story is about 50/50 of the play time, the humor might not be for everybody a lot of third wall breaking and you the captain wears a panty of the equivalent of a jpop idol on his face/mask. the goal to liberaty the galaxy again from the religious leadership so everyone can get high and fuck around again is as noble as the loyality quests ( one wants ot become the sluttiest pornstart in the universe ^^.
ANIMATION
all the cutscenes are very well made high quality fluid and noteably with much effort put into them still they are not realy interactive a slider to progress through the scene an large portion of the qute big size of the game are the 4k story scenes (as mentioned there are many of them)
overall
i had fun

This is one of the better porn games I've had the pleasure of playing - I know obviously this is a reflection of the amount of resources and money the dev has behind this game, compared to a lot of other games on this site, but it is still very good.

PROS
1. Excellent 3D animations with amazing and sexy models (well this really depends on what kind of girls you want but think there will definitely be something for you)
2. Fully voiced game - all dialogues are voiced and gives so much realism to the game (very rare in this day and age)
3. Well written story - a well-balanced storyline combining an actual fully immersive world like a movie, gameplay - some cons there though (see below), and sex content
4. Open world gameplay - once again a rarity in porn games sometimes. You have the ability to navigate to any parts of the game (if unlocked) and choose which mission you want to do next. Of course the main storyline restricts you to the next main mission, but loads of side missions for you to enjoy)
5. Highly professional game design, with ways to replay scenes and do actualy fapping stuff to the game - a big plus from me!

CONS
1. Extremely long gameplay - not sure if this is an actual con, but for me being a guy who just wanted to fap to a good game, this took me on-and off around 5 full weekends.
2. Very repetitive gameplay - despite a good variety of battle gamplay (space combat, land turn-by-turn battle and tactical selection gameplay - yea I might have made it sound better than it is), it becomes repetitive very quickly considering there are around 450 planets to go to and do these gameplay on. The only difference is where your enemies are a bit different so you need to adapt your strategy a little bit, but even there it becomes the same very quickly. Can't fault it though - but perhaps a little less planets might help.

FINAL WORD
A very good action/adventure game with excellent sexual content embedded throughout. Anyone who wants to play this should adjust their expectations that this is not your normal porn game/visual novel that you can finish within a day or two - you should consider this more like a full-length RPG game with porn elements.

4 year project, a bit too long for my taste. Here we are playing a real action video game mixed with sandbox and visual novel mechanics. The overall effort is very high. The final result is good but not excellent.

Excellent stuff, truly enjoyable. Just wish they keep on adding more scenes in the pandora, it has a lot of potential. FOW-chan is a really nice addition to the game as well. Truly fapping worthy game.

A porn game where the h-scenes are not connected to the gameplay is not a good porn game.
In this game, h-scenes are quite quality but the lack of camera movement which makes it boring even though there are a lot of them. The gameplay is too slow and there is nothing special to make me feel interested.
Personal review: The anus is not clearly shown so you almost never see it even though there are a lot of anal scenes, it is a pity for the quality models, this is annoying to me and is a big minus in the overall review

amazing game love it , great voices great animations , great controls , the music , everything is on the point in this game , i wish all games made like this , hope you continue making other great games i will be waiting for your other great projects

FOW Studio is a big name in the animated adult scene I follow, so I was curious to give Subverse a try. Here's my honest take.

From the very beginning, the game makes it clear that it's not meant to be taken seriously - at all. One look at the main character, the Captain, was enough to disconnect me from the story and cast. The humor and tone felt too over-the-top to build any real connection with the characters or narrative.

Gameplay-wise, it's okay - not terrible, but definitely not engaging. I found the mix of gameplay types a bit confusing, and the adult content even more surprising, but not in a good way. There are some story-integrated sex scenes, but they felt flat due to a complete lack of buildup. Most of the adult content is tucked away in what’s called Pandora - which is essentially just a glorified Gallery Mode.

Pretty quickly, I realized this Gallery Mode was the core pillar of the entire experience. It’s the main reward for slogging through the rest of the game. If it had delivered, maybe the grind would’ve felt worth it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

While the animation quality is top-notch - as expected from FOW - the actual scenes lack any real context, progression, or interactivity. They’re very short, and you can’t even view them in 3D or engage with them beyond basic playback. That lack of depth kills the payoff entirely.

It’s a real shame, because the game had the budget and technical polish to be something more. But in the end, Subverse feels like a collection of disconnected ideas, loosely held together by a mediocre Gallery Mode that doesn't live up to expectations.

im trying real hard to play thru this for the first time and its kinda crazy

90% slapdash worldbuilding with pretty good voice acting and really boring characters with cartoonish idle animations moving their mouths

8% cute vanilla mini games including lite bullet hell and tabletop minifig combat

2% nice prerendered porn

so i care about 2% of this game but that 2% is pretty good

One of the most disappointing games I've born witness to. No promises were met, no expectations met, it was a floundering mess that didn't succeed at anything it set out to do, and in the end, didn't really succeed at anything either.

Subverse is a bold, unique experiment that blends genres in a way few games have attempted. Its strong visuals, humor, and engaging—if somewhat shallow—combat make it worth checking out for those who enjoy adult-themed sci-fi adventures. However, its slow updates and repetitive mechanics may limit its long-term appeal.


⭐ Final Score: 7/10 – Great potential, but needs more polish and content.

The characters and setting sell this game. Best VA work in any lewd titles, sexy fun characters and writing. Each fufills a different niche and fantasy. A variety of lewd content and I feel the new outfit system gives pandora a LOT more replayability, same as gallery. I also feel the pinups and audio tapes are underrated. I've lost my computer recently but damn I miss this game.

This game is a true masterpiece, combining stunning graphics, immersive gameplay and a captivating narrative. Every detail is carefully thought out, providing a unique and immersive experience that keeps us hooked from the very first moment. Simply amazing!

From time to time it might get tiresome and repetitive if you try to level up and unlock as many of those planets as possible but the story and the rewards are really nice/worth it. If you got the time and love a good story teeling with fun, also sometimes cringy dialogues, give this game a try!