Star Citizen is actually a good comparison since both suffer from the same thing - complete lack of direction. Subverse just doesn't have any meaningful game design and fails at both being good adult game and being good game in general.
They asked for money not knowing exactly what they want to make and how to make it so it was just a huge money sink on unnecessary stuff. This game doesn't even need to be in 3D and rendered in real time because no scenes aside lame photo mode even have free camera. They could've make it on something like RenPy ffs with sprites made of renders and sex loops being just video files and the game would be very similar while costing a fraction of what they spent.
With a proper direction this game could've been absolutely goat and a great example that (relatively) high budget adult games can be successful but instead it's just another warning sign to not give your money to back early access products.
‘Lacks proper direction’
Well considering the director is the same guy that cofounded and has led FOW FOW and kept it alive the last…10 years, I’m gonna say they’re fine in that department.
“Could’ve made it on something like Ren’Py”
And been like more than half of the games on this site? Pretty much exactly the opposite of what FOW does. Could it have been smaller scale? Sure if their Patreon was still up, this would’ve been the thing on the side as they kept delivering films.
But they got what they asked for and so much more. Bigger budget and milestones, the bigger the scale. But they were also smart to not add more than they needed. That is the
very big difference between it and Star Citizen. Not being bogged down by feature creep.
“Instead it's just another warning sign to not give your money to back early access products”
Yeah don’t know what you’re smoking, cause this has been the most transparent development for a game. I’ve seen so many game devs go dark for months, barely updating with content. Like the golden example is right here, one of tne most viewed and replied threads on the site, Milfy City. There’s your small-scale Renpy game that took
years to ‘complete’ (the game is still adding routes as we speak, so if you think about it that’s been in early access this whole time without saying it). Compared to Subverse, which was penned out with an actual script, is fully voiced in every part of the game, not just the smut, delivers high quality cinematics in 4k (which btw is likely what the devotion scenes will also be at), and has actual gameplay in it beyond some basic clicker, and I just do not comprehend how people see this as a bad thing.
And that’s without mentioning the blog posts that have been monthly since the EA launched, you couldn’t be any less in the dark about what they were doing and what was coming next unless you were blatantly trying to be.
^pretty much summary what is game is. A game with porn without a porn.
Not to mention absolute mess to mix shrum and turn-based. Even worse than some fps/rts mix.
Simple thing to add some value to gameplay will be win/lose scenes with actual stuff and not only that 'captain' room thingy.
Gameplay wise they elected for something simple but fun. What exactly is messy about ship shooting and grid combat? One’s been around since the arcades and the other’s based off Final Fantasy Tactics’s style.
There were never gonna be any losing game over scenes like in other games. The sex in Subverse is consensual.
You say simple, but that’s extra stuff they cannot be doing right now. Post-launch, who knows maybe enough money is made when it exits EA.
