Unreal Engine - Subverse [v0.9] [Studio Fow]

First Impression(s):
They really should've put the bread back in the oven before selling it like hotcakes.

Review:
[Update 0.3.0] At this stage, the gameplay remains the same with added 5+ hours of discovering the Hydra Nebula for Pooter Points (and there's a lot of planets, too!). Nothing has changed other than the Kloi armada and the Chutts as the newest roster in the enemy pool.

[Update 0.3.0] The scenes? Well... Reminds me of The Green Website back in 2015 or earlier. Some of the scenes now are showing some changes and have some variety to them and actually have descriptions of what "happened" in the scene, I think it's yet another welcome change in this update. Is it "good enough" to "get off to?" It's passable, still, in my opinion.

How FOW proceeds with the PANDORA system in the future (with the promise of 3+ minutes of scenes and all, I've heard) remains to be seen. I shall look forward to the 3+ minutes scenes.

[Update 0.3.0] Overall performance is quite solid and noticeable lags here and there on slower and older rigs, the option to switch from 4K cutscenes to regular ones is a welcome change.

[Update 0.3.0] The VAs? They're executing their lines pretty well and actually give each character different and most of the characters in this build alone are domineering than others.

One thing I'd like to advise everyone is that some may feel Elaisha Sorn (or even the Kloi as a whole) is a hit or miss in terms of how they speak and the intonation -- as if Talissan itself is made from the purest of Valley Boys/Girls since beautification and perfection of self is very important than anything else.

As for Commander Blythe? I'm actually surprised that they employ the voice of Russian Femboss from Saints' Row the Third. Or so I've listened to her voice.

How about the dialogue? Full of sexual puns and references to many cultural happenings (e.g. V for Vendetta, Tim Pool, that "magic trick" scandal) as the cherry on top. For me, it's a hit or miss. At best.

Conclusion [per Update 0.3.0]:
Subverse is a promising game that somehow got into a very bad start.

At this state of play, I'd recommend people to reconsider their choices before purchasing the game either with a discount applied or at full price. How long until the game is worthy to play thoroughly? In two or three years, assuming that FOW has no other project to work on or that they didn't suck themselves into the development hell phase.

By a studio known for sex scenes the game is a disappointment in this regard. Since it is an early access game, there is still time to correct this fatal error.

Sex Scenes: 1/5
Cgs: 5/5
Dialogues: 2/5
VA: 4/5
"XCom Combat": 3/5,
SHMUP: 4/5
MC: 2/5
Waifus: 3/5, same body type , no one is petite or thicc with a phat ass.

Subverse tries to blend porn, story and actual gameplay together, but some terrible design decisions, very much hit-or-miss story tone and baffling decisions regarding blending in the actual porn with the game causes this hot mess.

- Gameplay

Subverse has two "mini"games baked in. Barebones Shmup and barebones turn-based strategy (Think XCOM with 90% of its features and mechanics cut out).
Now don't get me wrong here. Both minigames are functional. They're just extremely barebones and don't match up in terms of gameplay style. What I'm trying to say is, they're a bad match together and people that like shmups may not like TBS games and vice versa.

This isn't helped by the fact that both gameplay elements are horribly barebones and bland. There's little variation, hardly any progression and no reason to "git gud" for more rewards/success.

- Story
The story isn't good, nor is it bad. It's tongue-in-cheek, kinda fourth-wall breaking at points and overall fairly lighthearted. The problem is that the story and its delivery is VERY much a hit-or-miss. Some people will appreciate the tongue-in-cheek references and low-brow humour. Others will find it extremely grating. The actual story bits of the story do get occasional bouts of Loredumpitis, but its main plot is serviceable enough I guess.

- Porn
Most of the porn is hidden behind a token grind and unlocked in gallery only. Actual in-story smut is few and far between. The quality of the smut is good enough I suppose, but a hefty chunk is fairly niche. It just baffles me that for all it spouts about being an actual smut game with great smut and great gameplay, the game doesn't really deliver on either.


Subverse, in short, fails to deliver compelling gameplay for the amount of resources and time available. While it's not -bad- gameplay I can, with absolute certainty, state that other smut-with-gameplay games have delivered gameplay unfathomably more enjoyable and complex than this game.

Likewise; Story wise there's both far worse and far better floating around on the web. This game just disappoints me more because it has a budget far in excess than most smut game devs out there.

And finally smut-wise it's a letdown in some ways too. Again it runs into the sad truth that it's not bad, but it SHOULD be so much better given the time and resources available.


TLDR: It's not bad or unplayable/broken. It just should have been so disappointingly much better than it delivers at this point for the time and resources the devs have access too.
It both saddens me(For this could, and should, have been great...) and gives me hope(For others did, and do, hit it out of the park) that others have done so much more with so far less in terms of making great porn games.

Not worth my time if the gameplay and sex scenes are away from eachother. The scenes themselves arent good either, for the amount of budget they got. They pre recorded SFM quality sex scenes which is very dissapointing and misleading for the supporters. No protagonist customization and no scene controls, very bad choice.

- 3 hours in and you can only move around and do stuff like 30 minutes. This game plays like a visual novel, a lot of story but then story gets killed by a simplistic MC and overused sex jokes.
- Characters looks gorgeous in cinematics but cinematics =/= scenes.
- Both bullet hell and turn based combat styles are OK. Not the best ones and nothing unique but they do work.
- Scenes are locked behind currency that comes from lvl'ing up said characters. No story (in a game where 5/6 of it is story), single scene, 3 speed. Physics and texture quality are good but animations are really short.

There are like 3 different games where each of them are OK at best with little to none connection between them.

Considering the state of the "games" and the money they got from kickstarter I can't recommend this game at this point. Just don't.

This ain´t a porno this is a porn GAME.

Made in nearly 2 years from studio FOW who never coded a game like this befor.

Humor:
Not everyone is going to like it but it´s their humor, if you like their puns and 4th wall breaks in their movie you´ll enjoy the same in this game. If I had to describe it, it´s a bit childish but lewd and filled with references to pop culture. This humor drips from every part of the game, so if you can´t stand it maybe look for something else.

Gameplay:
Think of the first Mass Effect titles just cut the exploring of planets and replace it with bullet-hell space battles and tactical turn-based grid combat. Especially the boss battles in the space battles make a lot of fun, cause every boss has his/her own ship and fights in a different style and the arenas have a nice changing pace from arenas to side-scrolling and others. Between battles, you can interact with your waifus and engineer on your shit and learn more about them and their opinions on the mission. There is even the obligatory gift your waifus present system with doesn´t do anything atm (or at least I haven´t found the reward).

Story:
You start as a pirate hunting smuggler with a Sexbot (DEMI) you stole from a pirate fleet commander. Multiple cutscenes between missions introduce you to the world and show what kind of conflicts and power structures are already in play. This gives you a nice glimpse at what to expect in the future. The voice actors did a great job and I´m excited to learn more about the empire, their new queen, the rogue Commander and future plot points. ATM ( V. 0.1) not much on the plot side but a nice introduction to the world, the possible villains and your growing crew.

V. 0.1:
All in all, I love what studio FOW did in these nearly 2 years. They made a solid groundwork for a fun porn game. The story ends with you finding a pirate treasure and defeating a bounty hunter. Currently in your squad is DEMI, Lily and Killision.

First of all, I would like to start by pointing out that, for years, Subverse branded and marketed itself as not just a quick game to masturbate to, but as a proper adult game, emphasizing the game part. They also raised two million euros for this game, and supposedly put over three years of development into it.

So, what do they have to show for it?
Not a lot.

First of all, the gameplay. They put a large emphasis on this being an actual game so let's start from that. To put it bluntly, it's bad. It's Xcom, Chicken Invaders and a visual novel being poorly mashed together and it's really obvious that these people are not game developers. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is not terrible as it's simply the games I mentioned being mashed together, but there's none of the quality or depth that makes those games great so it simply falls flat here. It's enjoyable for about an hour until you realize they're not going to build on it anymore and it just becomes a chore. The developers really don't seem to have any ambition besides subsisting on bits of crust they can scrape from the pimply underbelly of nostalgia, lest anything as dangerous as a new idea appear in their brains and give them a fucking seizure! But as the disbelieving friend said to the inventor of the feces-powered helicopter, ''This shit will not fly!''

Now, the meat of the burger, the porn.
It's alright. It's on par with most SFM animations on Rule34 and it's pretty good for what it is, but there's a lot I cross with it. The game is just littered with bad design choices, like Worthy Farm after the Glastonbury festival. Just as an example, most of these scenes are not integrated into the story. And I don't mean this as in ''Oh these scenes are poorly integrated into the story'' You have to grind for an in-game currency to unlock the sex scenes. Now look, these are a hanful of looped animations with pretty awful voice acting and honestly I just found the scenes posted on a /vg/ thread and simply uninstalled the game. I wasn't going to grind to unlock a looped animation of a woman getting fucked by an alien that borderlines on beastiality. Also again, there's only a handful of animations, I'm not sure why there's so little after several years of development even if this is early access. Early access doesn't mean ''We have a slither of a good concept, now give us money.'' it means ''We have a pretty feature complete game with some rough edges.'' so why the hell does it play like the former FOW Interactive?!
This is about as simple as games get. There isn't even the paltriest context for what you're doing; you're not exacting revenge on limbless pigs or feeding your pet bitch-lizard. I have to admit, though, the story is to be congratulated for taking the fiery, thunderous personalities of some interesting characters and somehow turning them into a bunch of boring, self-righteous, robotic twats with all the warmth and emotion of a glass of water.

Overall, Subverse is not a game I'd recommend playing. It's gameplay, while not terrible at the start, is not built on at all and gets repetitive and boring after, well I'm saying 'after' as if there's a point where it's thrilling and exciting. I want to clarify on that, when I said ''Not terrible'' I didn't mean fun or exciting, I just meant not boring. This game is by no means fun, quite genuinely one of the worst games I've ever had the displeasure of playing.

In summary it's bad. I prefer Stellaris, but then I'm one of those hopeless mutants who genuinely enjoys playing Minecraft by himself. That's it. That's about as far as I can review Subverse because that's the entire extent of the game, Xcom and Chicken invaders mashed togehter with a visual novel. I don't know what FOW Interactive's mission statement is, but I'm betting that it's something along the lines of ''Use pretty sparkly women and as few gameplay elements as possible to make the gaming equivalent of premium porn magazines.''

The game has nice graphics, an entertaining story with distinct characters, decent gameplay and it feels very polished. I backed the kickstarter, and am happy with the result. I give it 5 stars, because it deserves it. I'd prefer some random on-ship sexy events and encounters, but it's a minor niggle.

Voice acting and the lines are horrendous. This is what happens when authors take their work too seriously. Gameplay is lackluster and the 3D art leaves a lot to be desired. The jiggle physics are way over the top as well.

Its okay but at this point in time I don't think it's worth the $20 price tag. (Yes, I actually bought the game on Steam)

The battles are repetitive but all the controls and mechanics are well designed enough so that it doesn't feel too tedious.

The sex scenes are pretty good UNLESS you're already familiar with StudioFOW, then by comparison to the rest of their previous work, this doesn't feel like it has the same standard. That's to be expected though considering a lot more time was probably put into planning how the game works, writing the story (which is also very mediocre at this point) and programming the gameplay.

Another complaint I have is that there is only 1 actual sex scene with each of the 3 girls, not counting stuff like foreplay or monster scenes. Majority of the unlockables are just short looping teasing animations which doesn't make grinding the optional missions feel worth the effort when you already get the girls' sex scenes just from playing the main story.

That being said, it's still an unfinished game and I look forward to more updates. Hopefully they focus more on new scenes in the next update otherwise I expect there to be a lot more dissatisfaction as the battles will likely stay the same but will definitely start to feel a lot more tedious the longer the story gets.

Player has no agency in game. Gameplay is just a filler to time gate porn content, as few as it is.

While not having investment in gameplay it is really annoying and repetitive, you cant fail or you will not progresses only drive to make you preform better is getting what exactly? PP?

Porn itself is just gloryfired gallery with disconected sceens that you buy for PP. Scenes itself are just video loops with slider just like flash loops, where flash loops require more effort to make than renders.

As for story, I would explore it more but boring gameplay prevents that.

In short it is linear VN with no playerr decision and non interactable short porn scenes.

I gotta give it 4 stars since the visuals and dialogs are polished! The plot is terrible, don't get me wrong: You're thrown right into battle action, no build-up while this game hopes to keep your attention span with witty dialogs, excellent voice acting and a few systems. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold up for long no matter how well some aspects are crafted. The problem is the plot, huge mistake to jump all over the place demanding too much player attention.
Imagine what they could have done if they carefully used their skills to cause emotional care in the right moments and thus true engagement. Humor alone doesn't justify walls of writing. And this is really all this game wants to be: A funny, erotically themed space adventure with diverse characters.

Although I can't say much about the game length, you can feel some money was poured in it. Does the money make you care for this game, though? Unlikely. But compared to the endless sea of shitty RPG maker & gobbo games that placed a prickle in my heart, this game leaves a little tear in my eye. It can be done, we're getting closer to what erotism could be.

This game is getting unfairly railroaded on here and it's a shame, because it's actually pretty enjoyable. It's not perfect, but there's fun to be had. I think the real problem is with the hype. People bought into the hype train, set they're expectations high and feel burned that it didn't live up to it.
There also seems to be some confusion that this is a full release and everything in the game is final. It is not. Even in its unfinished state though, it's still a hell of a lot better than most games on here. It's not the AAA quality it promises, but it's way better than the standard F grade games on here, probably at least a AA experience . And personally, I never expected it to change the face of porn games or be better or even on the level of the games it takes its inspiration from. It was never going to be as good as Mass Effect or X-Com. It was never going to have the best shmup combat. It was only ever going to be passable in those categories.
People talk like it's a big budget game and should be held to those standards. I'll give you two reasons why it absolutely shouldn't: budget and staff. This game had a budget of about $2 million, the average AAA game has a budget generally no less than $50 million and in many cases in the hundreds of millions. Big studios generally employ around 50-100 staff members, while a small studio like StudioFOW probably employs around 10-15 at most, though I’m not 100% sure how many people they personally employ. Video game development is incredibly costly, time consuming, and labor intensive. Some games can spend up to 15 years in development.
Also no one takes into account the relative inexperience of the team. This is their first game and they made animated shorts before this, which is actually a bigger leap than people seem to think. For a first attempt this is actually really good and shows a lot of passion and creativity.
And the amount of content? Pornographic content? It's by far the most I’ve seen in the first update of a game. It's mostly only loops and only the first scene with each girl has any context, but I’m fine with that. I actually think the no context sex kind of fits with the theme of the game. I’ve seen it called a regular game, but with a porn stash and that actually describes it pretty perfectly. I can see why this would make people a little upset, but I personally really dig it because it reminds me of Mafia 2. You play the game and as a result, you are rewarded with porn. And the story feels more natural because of it. Theres no awkwardly trying to work sex into a scene, no out of character spontanious group sex. It's nice.
And the quality of the porn? Superb actually. Some of the smoothest animation I’ve seen, in or out of porn games and I think their rather short length actually works to their benefit in that regard. And the fixed camera angles may sound like a curse, but to me it's what makes the scenes come alive. To me they feel a lot more curated, intimate, and lifelike than most free moving camera games I’ve played.
Lastly, the NTR complaint. You do NOT get cucked. Since almost none of the scenes have any context and the beings doing the “cucking” have no character or character development or even canonical sentience and in general no malice in the act, I’d call it distinctly not being cucked. Also the captain and the girls maintain a strong aversion to commitment of any kind throughout the story. Maybe it's still too NTR for some, but it's definitely not going to be NTR enough for people who are into that.
In conclusion, just lower your expectations, don't listen to the bullshit all the cynical, horny nerds are saying and give it a try for yourself and form your own opinion. It's free on here and if you happen to like it, pick it up on a steam sale and throw the boys over at FOW some support. They really did put a lot of love into this game.

Apologies for my english, in advance.
I would like to start with the fact that I did not expect much, but it turned out that the gameplay and technical aspects of the game turned out to be good, and brought a lot of positive emotions. It's fun to play. Even apart from its NSFW content, it, in turn, is technically well done in this version (I emphasize the 0.1 release version).
This is not a Steam review, is it? Therefore, at the moment the project is on fire, we are waiting for the continuation, of course.

TL;DR Has potential, but needs to stay in the oven for a little longer

To put it bluntly, my expectations of everything on here is tempered by knowing these are predominantly games to jerk off to. But if you're going to advertise this as a proper game first that also happens to have porn, then it's only fair that I judge this with the same standards as a normal game.

And that's where this falls short.

Gameplay
As a normal Shmup/tactics game, it feels clunky/lightweight. Despite shmups being a 40 year old game genre, this feels like it was made in a vacuum without any of the basic features that even the older games had. While every stage largely consisting of flying backwards in a large circle holding down the fire button is true for basically any game in the genre, the lack of enemy variety and weapon patterns means you can get away without having to think about dodging. There's also no change in your primary fire besides a percentage damage increase and a slight fire pattern spread. There's no temporary weapon pickups or support fighters and stage hazards are just a bunch of asteroids scattered around with no variety. There's plenty of potential to introduce things like space mines or static enemies to vary the stages, but the current game feels like you're just playing the same level over and over again with no increase in difficulty.

The tactics aspect isn't much better either. Since hits are guaranteed and there's no damage modifiers for flanking or cover, you're heavily incentivized to just bumrush the enemy. This would be less of a problem if you knew where the next wave of enemies would spawn, but they just warp in from nowhere, and often in the middle of your team as well, meaning the lack of a cover/defensive system means you just get destroyed with bad spawns. And for some reason everytime you restart the level, the terrain changes slightly, which I wouldn't otherwise have a problem with, but since they serve no purpose other than to restrict movement, why bother implementing it in the first place? Other minor gripes like having melee attacks that restrict movement on AI that just prioritizes the closest target just highlight an inexperience with making games like this. And the fact that each planet just uses the same level asset makes the whole thing feel cheap.

Story
For a game that places as much emphasis on the story as it does, it falls short by the standards of both professional Japanese and Western indie releases. Even if the character isn't some sort of self-insert, and the story is linear, there should still be choices for the player to make, either to unlock scenes or develop different relationships with characters. Go play Rance instead if you want a good plot and better rpg mechanics. The voice acting is nice and well-done by Western standards, but Japan's been doing it for years, so while I give it credit, it's to be expected when you have the money to pay for VA's when every other Western indie dev only has a fraction of the budget. As for the plot itself, it's not nukige levels of porn-convenient/lazy, but not exactly literary award levels of writing either. It's cookie cutter and serviceable, which isn't something I hold against it necessarily, but at this rate it just feels like a poor man's Mass Effect, and that says a lot given how that trilogy ended up. The humor is the really obvious self-aware "haha, you're playing a porn game" kind of style, which some people might enjoy, but a lot of them didn't really land for me.

Porn
Maybe the jokes would be funnier for someone who had just experienced post-nut clarity. I wouldn't know, because the porn itself is so detached from the plot that by the time I'm done I don't have an incentive to resume the story. I'm surprised that Studio FOW didn't just subcontract the gameplay to another studio so they could focus on what they were good at. And by a porn game's standards, the porn on offering is pretty poor. I guess since they thought that if they made the porn completely detached from the plot, it would justify them adding the kind of scenes that they were known for with the tentacles/monster shit without overtly compromising on the plot. But what we get instead is just a reason to wait for all the video rips to be uploaded instead of having to download a 17 gig file and sit through a few hours of tedium to unlock. I guess I expected more than a few relatively tame 3 second loops and a variable speed slider, given their previous work. Most of the enjoyment of the porn comes down to the settings anyway, otherwise why have a game at all if you could just charge us to download the videos and save all that time making the rest of the game. And since I'm griping anyway, there's something about the blur and post-processing making it look like everything's covered in radioactive Vaseline that just rubs me the wrong way.

Verdict
Unfortunately, Subverse falls short by both the standards of a standard game and as a porn game, at least in its current state. *If* most of the money went to the VA's, it makes you wonder where all that time went since there's not actually much here at all in the first place. I'd respect it more if there was an option at the start that just let you skip all the game parts and go straight to the porn. Without it, it just feels like they're trying to pad out the game with busywork like a stressed out university student under the word count. Honestly at this point you'd be better off reading a space fantasy book for 5 minutes, playing Ikaruga and XCOM for an hour and then just looking up porn on the internet.

Neither the game nor the porn is worth the 17 gig download, at least at this point. Maybe it'll get better in a year or so, I'm just glad I didn't spend money on it this early.

You know it's not a particularly good game when the 4-5 star reviews are short and say basically nothing while the 1-2 star reviews are the constructive ones.
People waited years and after the early access version got delayed once or twice all you get is some mediocre shoot-em-up gameplay and very short 2 second-loops for sex scenes, but then again it's not the first time Studio FOW ends up disappointing people...

Honestly, don't bother. For all the money and time they got to make this game with, it's just a huge disappointment. Constant delays and dumb excuses just to get some shitty gameplay and 2 second sex loops. Meh
It probably won't be much better even after it gets out of Early Access after a million years of "development".

17Gb for basically nothing? Nah, stay away. All the scenes are uploaded on other sites already anyway. Don't waste your internet bandwidth on this.

I really liked this game. Models and music are great! Dialogs are voiced and it is very helpful and refreshing for English adult game. Story was quite entertaining. Combat is a bit too hard but it is possible to beast this first act.

bruh this hella dogshit lmao
how this game got so much money for production is an actual crime, so many white knights defending this absolute crap of a game in this thread, renders are dogshit, looks pixelated
ppl called this the new pinnacle of adult games, get out of here, this game doesnt even waft a fart compared to BADIK or any other ACTUAL top game
1/10 dogshit story sucks, renders are ANCIENT
theres ZERO content, for 17gigs, took so long to come out, cost so much money, absolute robbery, gotta hand it to the devs, they got a nice payday for this cus they havent invested a single dime on making a good game.

Not sure what everyone is crying about, but for a first version release, this game far exceeds what most adult games on this site accomplish. The cutscenes clip (for me) and admittedly it was hard to care about the story, so I skipped a quarter of it, but again, this is the first release.


Even if the story wasn't for me, the dialogue was funny and every character had their own voice. Also, every character was voiced. Loved the voice acting.


As far as audio goes, the sound effects, music, and voice acting mix/mastering job was good, which is amazing when most adult games don't know how to at least keep gain levels around the same, so that there aren't dips or spikes on volume. I've mixed and mastered many projects and while the mix in this game didn't blow my mind, I'm telling you, it's far beyond what most adult games offer. The music and ambience was nice and fit well in the background. The different effects on voices for robotic characters and the perfect amount of reverb did not go unnoticed.

As far as menu and navigation, I did notice a lot of loading screens, but they were short lived and will likely improve in the future, along with some of the bugs I've run into. All in all, it's great to see a good menu with a ton of options. Not once did the game's navigation feel clunky; flying through space from planet to planet was simple and straight to the point. Love it.


Some people that make adult games forget to ask themselves about the game loop and play patterns. I can't count how many games I've played where the gameplay is me CTRL skipping through boring and unnecessarily lengthy text. Either that, or I'm clicking "kitchen", "room", or "other room" and finding repeated dialogue until I trigger an event. These aren't gameplay loops and they aren't fun. The ground and space combat was fun for me, though. Not overly complex and straight to the point coupled with fluid movement and animation is a big + for me.

I will say that the erotic scenes, in comparison to the clear effort in everything else, felt like an afterthought, but only for there being so little of it. The scenes themselves were hot and the animations... I don't have words for how hot the animations + sound effects + voice acting came together for great scenes.

While there aren't many erotic scenes, I'm excited to see more introduced. I will say, though, that I was hoping to find NTR in this game and didn't find any. The girls getting fucked by other creatures when MC doesn't even care isn't NTR. Still, I enjoyed the hell out of this game. The scenes were hot, the gameplay was fun, and while I didn't care much for the story, I liked the characters and found myself laughing from the funny dialogue.

I think people missed what this game is.. it's a game with pron elements.. It's meant to be an adult comedy with some seriousness sprinkled in places.. This game isn't a visual novel.. People who talk smack about steam reviews are full of shit.. People like what they like. If you don't like it, it doesn't mean it's bad. Imo the game looks good, needs some improvements, but that might come later on since it's still EARLY ACCESS..