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

Review of v0.9...

I've only played a few hours, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there since I'm not sure if I will keep playing.

This game would have been so much better if StudioFOW took is seriously and tried to make a legit space drama porn game, but instead they clowned it up like Deadpool himself is making the game ramming in as much forth wall breaking and edgy humor and dialogue as they can. If they had made a legit serious game they would be taken more seriously as a development studio, but I guess they couldn't help themselves.

The character animations are good, but the cinematics are great. The voice acting is also very good.

The actual gameplay itself though is pretty dull. Grinding fight after fight for resources to upgrade your fighter or make new monsters for your army. The gameplay would be more manageable if the game had controller support, but it doesn't.

I didn't respond to much of the humor. The characters just sound like the try hards on 4chan. The one thing that did get a legit LOL out of me was when I came across their take down of Tim Pool. A lobster character wearing a beanie mocking Tim Pool reeing about not being able to use the Subverse name. I did really like that. Tim Pool is a clown.

The game isn't bad, but it could have been so much better. I'm not sure if I'll go back to it, but if I do and my opinion changes I'll return and edit my review accordingly.

StudioFOW has some of the highest quality content out there. And just like most who make porn games, they're output is slow. Having to trudge through some of the most awkward dialogue, jokes, and voice acting for the occasional sex scene is not great, but the few sex scenes there are are super solid.

Rating: 10/10

It's been about a 1.5 years since I touched this game(waiting on full release to replay the entirety) however I bought it on Steam after about a day of playing it.

It's easily in the top 3 porn games of all time.

This game does a great job of drawing you in with the story and getting your mind and hands ready with the battles.

The XCOM-like and Asteroids-like combats are amazing and challenging. I feel like I'm playing an actual game for once. I really enjoyed the combat and I feel that the game would hold up even if it weren't a porn game.

The sex scenes are amazing with fantastic visuals and amazing voice acting. The character designs are very unique and one of a kind.

I feel like the price tag on the game is a good deal and appropriate for the amount of content and gameplay. It still isn't finished yet with more to come in the near future.

If I were to recommend any 2 porn games they would be Subverse and Karryn's Prison.

I wasted an hour of my existence downloading this game.
It was very disappointing...the 'Deadpool' style MC character, was instantly annoying and unrelatable...the narrative was wet, moldy and uninspired.

The combat was of a 'Galaxian' style, which I love...however, the battles were fake and manufactured...everything was tied to a stretcher before being wheeled out.
Imagination was missing, creativity went AWOL...it was simply a disappointment.

Don't let corporations ruin our games.

If you love engaging gameplay, funny jokes, and an easy scene selector, this game is right up your alley.

The jokes are spot on, the characters are full of life, and the humor is great. The gameplay is fun and keeps you interested way beyond the intro missions, with waves that offer a good mix of variety and challenge.

The scenes are awesome. Each character’s intro scene is well done and opens smoothly in the game. Unlocking more scenes by playing missions feels rewarding, and the scenes themselves are cool and actually add to the story. They fit perfectly with everything else in the game.

The modeling, design, and animation are excellent. The game is well put together, providing a smooth and enjoyable experience from start to finish.

I love FOW!

I think the game sets a new standart to Adult games in regards of 3D Modeling quality, Cinematics, Voice overs, which almost no other games have. The Gameplay is very lazy and repetitive, i totally agree but the idea of even HAVING gameplay is sooo nice to me. The Maps are all the same so are the enemies, on ground combat you oneshot everything and it rarely has any strategy in it. But like i said even just having that instead of Clicking through 10000000 lines of dialouge is a crazy step forward.

It feels like the Graphics Team is 10/10 but the gameplay team is 4/10.

But anyway - Are there any other Games qualitywise as Subverse?

I've played all 3 NLT games which are similar in the sense that you can actually do something gameplay wise and i LOVED them. I also played Carnal Instinct which was great.

Do you have any other suggestions?
3D/Gameplay/Free roaming(?)

Story 2/5
Well thought i would try this one even with the reviews being quite poor but got to give credits to those reviews they arent lieing when they say this is just way to cringy and funny enough in H-scenes there arent any dialogs thats the one time it might be ok to be cringy but theres nothing...

The MC whos a wannabe deathpool type character just fails to be funny, hes to childish and to cringy, meaning dialogs alone can make game unplayable which is quite something.....MC is also the standard caveman thinking big tits and milfs is the best thing in the world which always feels idiotic to me, since im not into that shit my self.

And that creates another issue that game is a big turn-off when every girl is forced on you even those you hate and arent into like whores for one or fetishes/kinks you hate, i will never understand why devs dont put in a no option for sex scenes.
Its pretty much just a mindless fuckfest meaning theres 0 romance 0 build-up, you just meet and fuck whoever making it feel empty and pointless and without ever having any kind of emotions for anyone at all

Yet another thing that is absolutly fucked up is most sex scenes like 95% arent even part of the game, they are just in a gallery where you can pay points to open a scene so you can see it? i simply just dont understand why so many scenes are just left out of the story it makes no sense and makes them feel just as pointless as the game......
And alot of those gallery sex scenes would be considered as NTR since its not MC that does the fucking but other men or aliens or who knows what, also in most noone cums in them either so it really is pointless random animations.
As for in game sex scenes theres like 1 maybe 2 scenes in total for each girl and considering how big this game is its not worth playing for the adult stuff.

It does have a very good voice acting and hole game is voiced and animated, which are the best parts of the game really but it dosent help much when everything else is bad.

Its to bad game has no choices or romances and barely any sex scenes doing the game and yes i dont count a gallery scenes since its not part of story or game.
There is even a dating option on the ship but if you think you will romance or talk with them then think again, you just hand them items they say thanks and you get 0-75 points with the girl thats it nothing else.

With all the work put into this making it like a AAA game it could have been the best AVN of all times really, but when it has a shit story that are childish and cringy and without choices its worse then even a b-porn movie, just without the sex since there arent much of that doing normal game.

Also game just gets nothing right well story wise, even MCs nemesis the huntress is allowed to join hes crew even though she tried to kill him and the hole crew and kidnapped the mainframe girl and ofc MC will also fuck her, i get the story is absolutly shit but its like they are really trying to make it as shitty as possible, oh and on a side not the huntress was even killed by Fortune but like magic she dident die but ran away after getting killed....fuck its awfull.

Girls 2/5
Its pretty clear that its yet another bimbo focused game and theres very little diversity in builds.

Animations 4/5
Best part of the game but animations alone just cant carry a full game and since the H-scenes arent really part of the game at all or atleast 90% arent then you might as well just watch them on a porn site since its the same thing as watching them inside the game.....

Choices 0/5
You dont have any choices and it really should have kinetic tag since thats all it is, cant controle any aspect of main story or who MC fucks since he just fucks everything, so huge fail on not being choice driven in any way.

Music 4/5
Pretty average background stuff, nothing special and nothing with lyrics, but still giving it a 4 due to the voice acting.

What i dont get is why they even made this an adult game, if it was made with normal dialogs with a real story and dident have to waste time on all the animations that arent even part of the game anyway and those in game which are so few that its barely even an adult game anyway, so without them it would have been done alot faster and it would be playable for millions more people insted of the few who plays AVNs.

After playing this game again and again to the next update. I will write a review.

And I am extremely disappointed in this game.

pros:

+ The characters (I really like the characters design and the personalities from the different characters)
+ animations (The sex scenes animations are great)
+ voice acting (moaning sounds during the H scene

Neutral

o The plot (the plot is not interesting but also not bad)

cons:

- The writing from this game, this includes the main story, side story and interaction with the characters. (It is so badly written, that I also “cringe” towards the writing. It is so over the top that I started to skip all dialogs.)
- no dialogue during H scene (This is definitely missing in the H scenes)
- The humor is with the writing so bad (That I started to skip all of the dialog)
- uninteresting combat combat (The combat missions are all repetitive and boring. At least the main story missions are different)
- They casted a SFW actress for Kasidora and made her un-lewdable (It was a stupid decision from the start of the devs. And I am surprised how out of touch they are. It was clear from the beginning, that there are people that will lewd Kasidora. But it is now impossible, to lewd her in game.)
- H-content mostly not integrated in the story and dumped in a Gallery system (This is my main critic point)
- The game forces you grind as much as possible to earn points to unlock the Gallery


1/5 stars in conclusion. For me it’s a bad porn game and a bad game.

EDIT 2024.11.16


I looked at the Devotion Quest.
(Subverse-v1.0-Steam-Cracked\Subverse-v1.0-Steam\Subverse\Content\Movies\VIDDQ)

Lily = 5:58
Killi = 5:09
Ela = 4:35
DEMi = 4:31
Sova = 4:29
Fortune = 4:20
Blythe = 4:19
Huntress = 4:06
Taron = 3:39

What is this length?
Not only this, there are bad, just bad.
There is a little bit of talk in the beginning, then the sex starts and then only moaning, nothing more.


The Devotion Quest are a complete disappointment.

I shouldn't have bought the game... Complete disappointment...

It is really a 1/5.

ok so before i rate this, i should say that i didn't finish and barely played few hours before i got bored

this is very hard to rate and confusing to me, on one hand i realy love the graphics, animations, voice acting, while on the other hand i hated the gameplay, the stupid mini-games, hard turn based battles etc..

i guess if you like it or not will depend on what you seek, but for me it was a disappointment for the most part.

pros:

+good graphics
+smooth animations
+hot girls
+voice acting
+plot wasn't so bad either, its convincing at least

cons:

-repetitive missions
-unnecessarly hard battles
-sucks ass gameplay
-no dialogue during H scenes (which is the biggest turn off for me, c'mon was it that hard to add some dialogues?)
-cringe dialogues in normal scenes, seriously it gets boring after 5 mins
-so called ''humor'', idk maybe some would love it but it just didn't get to me.

Fun, mass effect style 'clone' but well done. Still clearly in progress.

Story is funny. Game play is mildly repetitive (but hey so was mass effect 1 lol).

If continues to be flushed out and more p0rn then perhaps will give 5 starts, at the moment it is just 'good'.

This was a great idea, back when was annouced.
But since then the flood gates of porn games had been open, we are no longer in the times where Hunnie Pop was a surprise.

While this game has been in developement games have come and gone that are better than what Subverse is currently offering, even on going patreon games feel more promising.

IronIcally Studio FOW doesnt seem to understand their target audience, they thought that their experience doing porn videos was transferable to video games. What i mean by this that video games are a time investment and with all the trash that floats in the world of porn games, this breed of gamers tend to be very picky. They know well what they like and are willing to discard a whole game if it has a big enought quantity of something they dont like.

So who is this game for? Harem fans? well those probably dont take kindly to seing the girls getting railed by big monsters.
For fans of super hard-core sex? they might think that the games doenst go far enought and probably dont care about the more vanilla aspects.

It tries to take its story seriously but the juvenile humor kinda ruins it. I tries to be funny and juvenile but it takes itself to seriously for it to work.

The gameplay is boring so out the window go the fans who want a good game along their porn and the gameplay consumes enought time to allianate those who want to just get to the porn.

and neither of those aproaches are revolutionary since are plenty of porn games that tried both concepts and even combine decent storytelling with humor better than subverse.

The animation on the scenes is good but not exactly revolutionary, you can find plenty of games that are on the level or better in this forums and personally i think that having sex scenes without some sort of dirty talk nowadays is just unforgivable

so i ask again, for who is this game?


The only reason this doesnt get a 1 is because of the voice acting, the only people actually doing something good and something that isnt standard nowadays. Sadly despite all their work, im fully convinced that subverse will launch without much fanfare or will just crash into the abyss.

ps: im more than willing to back and change my score if it turns out great after all this time.

I liked the game concept. The actual design is pretty cool, but there is not much variety in the attack animations. As for the kinky scenes, not bad, not good. That's all I can say.

The worst thing about this game is its core gameplay. It's awful. It gives the player no breather. It goes from fight after fight and so on, and all of them are repetitive. I saw one mediocre kinky scene, and the game threw me into a terribly boring loop of fights. It was a nightmare and rather extremely frustrating than fun.

The story is cringe and boring. MC looks a bit like Deadpool, and I guess the developer wanted to make him actually like that, but it failed, in my opinion.

Overall, this game is awful in many aspects. With 50 gigabytes in size, I expected something different. After finally beating one of the more difficult fights, I was happy to see some scenes again, but guess what? I got into another fight instantly.

I couldn't keep up with that any more and pressed alt + f4, removed this trash from my hard drive, and burned my PC.

The Steam trial period before refund is 2 hours. But in first 2 hours of the game there is barely 15 minutes of gameplay with 1 minute of looped NSFW content. Everything else is endless dialogs, without proper animation for talking characters. A game like this should not have such a long opening and a long tutorial. It supposed to be a tactical combat game, but not a linear visual novel. I was very disappointed that the game was so linear. I understand, its an early access, and there is alot of missing content. But I'm sure that many people will refund this game simply because it doesnt show its actual gameplay in the first 2 hours. It's been almost 3 years since the game was released and if this is what it is now, I can't even imagine how mediocre it was when it was first released. Obviously, the fact that it's in early access is no longer an excuse. In every good game story progression and cutscenes are a reward for successful mission, not the other way around, when you are rewarded with few minutes of gameplay for listening a long dialog. Its not so hard to add more random shooting or tactical missions between dialogs, to keep players engaged. I wonder if the developers of this game have ever played an RPG game in their lives because I don't understand why this game is classified as an RPG. You do almost nothing in the game except reading dialog. Even in the sex scenes in the game you have no control and that's not acceptable. That's the whole point of playing this game. The main story is boring and a Mass Effect ripoff. The main character looks like a terrible Star-Lord copy. The game's turn-based isometric combat mechanics are also terrible. I've been seriously bored for the hours I've played so far and I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. If this keeps up, I'll probably have to uninstall the game because it takes up close to 60 GB of space, which is just ridiculous.

This game is a 5-star game. I absolutely can't understand the review bombing and if people would adhere to the rules, it wouldn't happen.

I don't care how much money the devs got up their asses. The game is definitely amazingly professional, compared to most of the games on here. It may not be comparable to the triple a titles, on the other hand some of the later EA titles are worse than this here.

Now to the game itself:
There's a nice story available. It doesn't go as deep as e. g. Mass Effect, but I'd say you can compare it quite well regarding the setting.

The gameplay is a combination of movie sequences, dialogues, ship battle gameplay and turn-based gameplay. It surely isn't the most addictive gameplay, but it's good enough for me.

The scenes are quite well done in the classic StudioFOW style. There are a lot of scenes revolving around different kinks and characters. Some scenes occur during the story, a lot can be purchased without any direct connection to the story. Generally, the sex is not very vanilla, which I like. There's a lot of monsters, tentacles, etc.

Genuinely some of the most brain dead IQ takes I have ever seen on this site.

Objectively speaking, this is perhaps the most high quality porn game in existence that is not made by Illusion. It simply has no competitor. The only genuine complaints about the game are that the porn is somewhat removed from the rest of the game and that the space combat is kind of annoying.

Aside from that, it has an excellent story, great graphics, tons of high quality 3D animated porn, and a dedicated developer team that does in fact care about the game and the community. I have never felt that StudioFOW scammed its community with this game, I literally have no idea why people got so bitter.

This game is probably top 3 in terms of art quality. The rest is okay.
The only problems are the combat being too grindy and the scenes not being tied into the story. Some may like the story, some may not but it IS there.

Some have rated this lower than those games with static images of creepy 3D models from 2005 and that is simply unreasonable. Though more should be expected out of this project considering the budget, overall it's still a very good lewd game. Hopefully one day Subverse's quality animations, models and voice acting will be seen as the standard.

Edit: as of the completed 1.0 release, though the lack of additional content is disappointing and the updated pricing is a bit egregious, I still think this game outperforms most if not all other nsfw games by a VERY large margin, not just in terms of quality but also in terms of the time taken to deliver such a good product. Subverse is what you get when nsfw gaming is taken seriously and Studio FOW have done a great job. So again, within context, for its time, Subverse is a 5/5 and I'm hoping we get more games like it.

It's weird to see so many people passionately hate the game. I can understand to a point, but there's definitely a resentment bias to justify a less than 2.5 score. I could say some of the ship battles are frustrating, but there's a 3 try and skip option. The field battles are fun and short so if you loose for whatever reason, you feel like you wasted 15 minutes instead of an hour. I had the habit to resource grind that I didn't need to because the updates are cheap and not enough of them.... but that's kinda my own fault. The models are absolutely amazing, varied, original, sexy and seductive. The animation is great and I'd like a lot more of them to be honest [again, resource harvesting can leave you with dozens of point to unlock Pandora sex scenes, but there aren't enough scenes]. The tone switch between absurd comedy and serious plot advancement sometimes is too jarring. The goofiness of the main character's tattoos and always wearing panties on his face undermines the seriousness of a character talking about the tragedy of their origin, but there are some interesting and original sci fi elements that is so good.... it reminds me of a Roger Corman movie; "I'd have done it differently" is not an excuse to hate it. I'd say the weakest part is the humor. There are the sex jokes and their level of juvenile potty humor and the B celebrity mocking of people like Joe Rogan, Tim Pool and Gordon Ramsey [it dates the game however relevant it may be now] and the majority of companions are women so you're not going to find any humor there [joking]. Trying to be funny and the material's not that funny is the definition of watching a stand up comedian bombing and that's what it feels like some times, but only gets that bad a few times and some of the jokes like the manically depressed lovecraftian being and the prestigious games journalist got some good laughs out of me. It's so much better than a porn game has any right being and embarrassing enough to not talk about its quality to family and friends. I hope the next few updates are content [maybe alternate costumes/skins for photosessions] and in game upgrades based to spend the saved up resources and I'm hoping the companion quests flesh out the characters emotionally as they are voluptus.

Okay, Subverse

I don't know, I don't know...
I liked the game, honestly, but it can get boring quickly due to the monotonous gameplay and repetitiveness. However, I can't say it's a bad game because it's well-made, not perfect, but designed for players to spend just a few hours a day. You don't have to finish it in one day, you don't need to force yourself to play through it in a single evening. The project is crafted skillfully, and as for the sexual content... well, here I'm not sure. At least, it satisfies me, much better than I expected initially. At least, it's a game, and at least, you can play it. There's lore and silly jokes, in a good sense. Perhaps, the humor present here may not be for everyone, but I can confidently say that if you work all day without weekends and just want to unwind for a few hours without thinking about something serious, then this project is for you. But I could be wrong, personally, for me, this project is like a little relaxation after a hard day of work.

the framing of the game feels disjointed, with you playing a nonsense joke male protag that gets cucked by aliens for the entire duration of the game, which just plays as a glorified grind to unlock stuff in a gallery. i dunno why they couldn't have just done no protag or a female one with no relation to the cast & her own scenes as it would've fit 10x better with the content studio fow produces.

past that the writing is insufferable, but some people might find it funny. the animations and sound and presentation are still nice, but getting past the really weird design choices, the fact that it's basically just a gallery viewer attached to a mid game it all just feels like a huge missed opportunity. maybe just wait for the animations to get uploaded on a video site

Off-the-cuff-Review after playing [0.8.3.2] to Act 2 for now.

I myself have followed the development to a point, but not invested into it before. And as Steam has yet to implement age verification for countries who actually care to enforce their laws, I had to finally go the torrent route.

I will keep it short till I get back to it:

UI:
Good. A bit awkward and currently doing too much heavy lifting in terms of getting to the content, but the menus are quick and easy to learn.

Visuals:
Pretty damn fine. The stylized realism works well and atmosphere, light and bloom goes well with the NFSW subject. Dick-shaped spacecrafts do actually fit in quite naturally.

Gameplay:
Fun and satisfying in the short run. Difficulty is on the low end, except in the story missions. The tutorial will probably kill you in the first attempt, but after that there is little surprise. The "dodge" of the ship being locked to the guns instead of following the flight direction is a bit limiting.

Sex scenes:
The meat and potatoes of the game. Currently, very bare bones and suffering from the fragmentation that is my main gripe with the game at this stage.
BUT: The animation and ability to control the camera in most is AWESOME. Tell me which other game has you trace your sex partner's body and allows you to really immerse yourself into a moment, to watch her tits bounce, her pussy be pounded or look into her eyes while you reach the peak.
If you are a theater of the mind guy, you should have some fun.

Sadly the way you get to it is, as said, fragmented and quite dry, and the amount of content, especially if you don't like Futa and ESPECIALLY if you don't like your Waifus get gangbanged, knotted and bukkakked by alien mutant creature (Studio FOW goodness as I call it), you will end up with 6-10 scenes. Per girl. It is enough, just not expansive. Some also don't have a climax, and you get a bunch of sexy idles as bonus.

Character:
Some of the best in the business. Voice performance is amazing. Sadly, the amount of spoken word in the h-scenes is pretty small, but damn do they make a likable bunch. The camp of the entire setup, plot and humor is also part of their character. They are "larger than life.", which allows for a more expresive approach to their acting, which works quite well. Some accents are a bit heavy, some "sexy talk" a bit try-hard, but they are fine in most cases and regularly have their moments.

Story:
Quite solid. The world is VERY aware that it is a game and a sexy one at that. Interestingly enough: The story, somewhat campy and over the top as it is, is well-structured and tends to follow its own logic. That logic is not realist, main characters are demigods and lay and slay what is put in their way, but it is internally consistent and driven by character motivations, which some resent Hollywood flagship productions have failed at, so thumbs up.

Humor:
I like my Monty Pythons and Naked Gun movies. I like my ASDF movies and YT meme compilation. I like my 1960s black-and-white German Comedies. What I can't stand is what counts as self-aware, reference humor, today sometimes called Marvel humor, as well as gross out humor.

Now... Subverse kinda nailed it, though. It is not laugh out loud funny. There is some cringe. BUT: It works with the world, story, atmosphere and characters. It is a flavor that, like the story, is internally consistent.

Big surprise for me. I thought I would just like the gameplay and h-content and suffer the rest. But it is actually a solid product.

The Big But:
It has been mentioned: The game is fragmented. H-content is mostly dumped in a Gallery system, most screen changes have still loading screens and the music and scenes cut off. It is something that Studio FOW will have to work on, as it is found through in every minute outside of dialog and fighting. Especially the relationship/sex stuff suffers; Character enter, sex condition gets established. You meet it, you have a short talk, sex scenes with some foreplay happens (that is pretty new and a big focus of the resent development, so I want to spread some optimism here) you have a single take fuck, the scene ends. (Killision had some nice after-talk though) It is a buzz killer.

4/5, good, but with flaws, though obvious ones, which are more likely than not to be addressed in further updates. Might take a while though.

PS: Oh, almost forgot the Photoshoot feature. Fun as hell if you have an eye and interest for pin-ups and erotic photography. As everything else somewhat limited, but what is there, is quality.