Unreal Engine - Completed - Subverse [v1.0] [Studio Fow]

reviewing game, not thread. Being a Mass Effect and sci-fi fan in general, I wanted to like Subverse, but I can't. It's all shine and no substance. The story is poorly told, confusing, and full of unfunny, childish humor, and the gameplay is monotonous. It looks pretty good at first, but there's no depth or complexity to any of it. I like Demi and the JAV girl, the others are pretty boring, and the catgirl has chest hair. Why would they make a female character with chest hair? It's a pity, because the voice actors are decent going on good, and the game looks great. But it just feels empty. And most importantly, I tried jerking off over it but quickly lost interest, quit and just watched porn instead. Which is the most damning inditement of a game like this. It couldn't hold my interest on any level: gameplay, story, character progression, or sex. Sure glad I didn't pay for it.

I feel as though people are unjustly harsh on this game because of its kickstarter campaign.

Is it flawed? Yes. Can the writing be cringey at times? Absolutely. But you cannot deny that the clear amout of time and effort that has been put into this game render it leaps and bounds above anything else on here.

Honestly if this popped out of nowhere by an unknown team everyone would be going nuts at how good this is.

I personally love this. Sure some scenes aren't for me, but I love what theyre doing and fully support this sort of thing being a profitable avenue for the gaming industry, as should you. It's bombastic, fun and sexy. Whats not to like?

i gave this game about 1 hour, befor i alt+f4 out of it.

the fun thing was that it was not even the gameplay that made me Quit.
the narrative is so much in your face it is ridiculers. like a 80's porn movie that just cant get enough of it self. this game literally succeed to talk me out of playing it.

and sins the narrative is as bad as a 80 porn movie, you just end up skipping it. and after some time you ask yourself way you are just not on porn hub.

my advise is.
if you have a good connection, download it, and try it yourself. so you put this one in a early grave and never look back.

Trying to get the gold medal for the stealth mission was a better experience then the sex gifs...
The missed opportunities...We are half way through, but keep getting the same boring copy pasta. How many months of development takes just for three hours of gameplay...
Basically every mission is a repeat of the tutorial. Both the space and ground combat don't change from the start.
What is the point of playing? Getting 30 devotion for few lines of text that doesn't bring anything to the table.
I could unlock unlock Lily to level 30...Gold rank on every quest...Not enough to do for the other three...
The game is completely non interactive...We can't even upgrade the waifus. Remember the first Dawn of War? Just upgrading our commanders was insanely satisfying and addicting.
What is the point of gifts and dates? You need several thousand xp for a level up. How does a 45 or 60 one time gift make a difference. What is the point of 30 point gifts? I only keep them around for future installments...
The sex gifs...my god. I don't remember any of those...Just looking at them makes me sad. You wish you could dabble with them. Film a porno, change the choreography, lingerie...anything...All you can do is just watch and be bored to death...
Again the skyrim sexlab and sims wicked minds mod comes to mind. How interactive they are.
After several months of waiting the gallery update was a slap in the face. The poses are even completely unprofessional. Most of the them are standing up positions. Buy a professional photo album of go watch how real photo shooting looks like for fashion magazines. Where is the lingerie?!
Apparently there were supposed to be scenes with mantics fucking the girls arround the ship. With dialogs and everything. Triggered steam snowflakes ruined another game...

Subverse has nothing going on for itself...And time flies...

This has been a down right banger of a joy ride. I absolutely love the deadpool-esq humor and the top quality animations. The gameplay is fun to me as I enjoy tactics games and bullet hells.

If you aren't absolutely laughing your ass off in the first few minutes of the game, then thoroughly turned on with the sex scenes, you don't know quality.

10/10, can't wait for more updates.

Probably the best if not one of the best lewd games to be out right now. These guys are pros who know what they're doing and are putting their money where their mouth is (compared to other lewd games). It's a great start for the future of AAA lewd games. Highly recommend!

Nice game, very complete, and very good animations. It is quite big anyway. The comic style is fresh and art is interesting. The only inconvenient is the text, the story is way too long. I also would include a real 3D interaction. In any case I give 5 stars as the efforts on the game are huge

This is a crappy not-even-a-game stapled on to a badly balanced xcom clone that takes up way too much drive space, all with SFM-level sex scenes and writing that sounds like someone who watched deadpool one too many times and thinks they're being edgy and cool.

I really like the game. The characters are fun, the story's a riot and has some surprisingly deep moments, and the space combat can be challenging and rewarding at times. There's clearly room to improve, and I think the dev team really gets the message. The October 2021 update really surprised me in a positive way. The devs clearly put in some work to improve where the game was at, and it's very much appreciated.

It has to be said that the excruciatingly lengthy waits between updates are the biggest issue plaguing this game right now. I can't say this with certainty, but I believe that a lot of this will be rectified in the near future. The team underwent a restructuring over the past few months, and this should hopefully speed things up in the months to come. Ultimately though, updates desperately need to come faster. I can tell that people are losing hope in the team's ability to live up to their promises. I still haven't, and hopefully the Taron update can garner some positive press.

All in all, the foundation is here for a great title. It's just a shame that it's still a skeleton 11 months in. Improvements are there, but whether this game is worth it to you depends on your tolerance for wait times. Here's hoping that the internal roadmap can change in year two.

I had hoped that, after months of development time, things had changed, but the 0.3 version continues just like the first release.

Subverse is a disappointment. It tries to be an epic adult story Sci-Fi RPG with turn-based combat & arcade style space shooter mechanics that rewards with 3D sex scenes. And yet, it utterly fails in all aspects. I'll try to give some ideas as to why.

1. The story is badly designed.
This isn't a criticism aimed at the humor, or the voice acting, or any of the like, but specifically that the devs don't seem to understand how to pull the audience into the story.
Much of the story so far can be summarised as: things are happening to the protagonist.
We do not get a immersive opening that puts us into the protagonist's shoes and makes us sympathize with his course of action (so instead of experiencing OUR story, we experience someone else's) - which is not ideal given the whole gratification sex stuff that kind of is based on that.
Characters aren't developed and grow to be a part of the story, but rather just fall into the story and then are sexable. There's no buildup, no getting to know characters.
As a result, you don't connect with the protagonist and you don't grow close to the rest of the crew.
This lack of connection bleeds over into other parts, because you lack the feeling that you're paired against enemies. The hurdles are just mini games, the enemies don't feel like threats that endager the protagonist's plans (mostly because he has none).
Contrast this to any good story RPG, and you'll see the difference.
Games like DAO or Mass Effect start with a getting to know phase, where characters have an element of mystery to them, have their own plans which may put them at odds with your character's plans, and slowly build up who they are and - in so doing - why you should desire them as allies or companions.
The question of "why should you care about subverse character X?" is always answered with "sexable". When instead, it should be an intriguing character that draws the player's interest and makes them with they were sexable.

2. The Sex Scenes lack meaning
This problem bleeds over into the sex scenes. They're visually appealing, albeit a bit sterile, but well animated with great VA. But there's nothing there connecting you, the player, to the action.
You don't make decisions, you don't communicate, you don't further character development or advance or progress anything. You're just watching a looping 3D scene.
Beyond their physical appearance, the characters don't benefit from a story dynamic that makes you desire them and the ubiquitous presence of sex in everything dulls the effect of actually seeing a sex scene.
Which is weird. There is this prudish empire where you have all the elements to make a game where you can increasingly corrupt your companions and get off on the descent into depravity - but instead, the weirdest fetish is just a monday afternoon to them.
If a story is on a constant sexual high and has no lows, then you're in a landscape where everything's a mountain and there are no valleys. How does such a landscape look? Impossibly flat.

The game would have benefitted HEAVILY from actually having dialogue in the sex scenes, and to have them progress not through a slide-scaler, but instead player decisions or actions. If you're making NPCs with a story, why make the most intimate space the one where you CANNOT interact with those NPCs?

3. The Combat Progression is awful
The combat could be promising, but it grows boring and repetitive very quickly. Every bit of understanding the last 2 decades yielded in game design, this game entirely ignores.
You can gain resources and xp from both combat minigames, but for what?

The space combat is a top-down space shooter where you control a ship to defeat waves of enemies. The basic design is promising, if a bit simple, but the game does absolutely nothing to create variation or anything interesting.
You can't find & pick up power ups that change the combat and allow the combat to go through escalation phases that change the dynamic and switch things up.
You can upgrade your ship, but the upgrades are bland, boring and not really noticable. You increase the hp, the dmg, the spread. None of it is really noticable or can be experienced. It may just as well not exist at all. You never feel stronger, never feel the gameplay changing, it's just a couple points of damage more here or there.

This violates every principal of a progression system, where the whole point is to have the player get gradually stronger, feel the gameplay shifting with new abilities and decisions to make, that has the player stare and upgrades and sallivate about what they'll do once they get it.

The identical problem exists in the turn-based ground combat, where you lead a small force (up to 4 characters) against multiple enemy waves. The basic combat system is sound, but you never feel as if you're getting stronger, or as if the gameplay is changing. Tedium sets in very quickly.

You can gain new companions to take into combat - but only one can ever join the engagement, allowing no synergy, character interaction or otherwise interesting dynamics.

You can unlock new minions of which up to 3 can enter combat. But they don't have synergies or anything remarkable that makes them really interesting. Since you never really know what types of enemies you face, and since enemies usually come in all kinds of shades per mission, there's no reason to pick deliberately or to build strategies around your team. There are also no challenges or special reward conditions you need to fulfill, that might challenge you beyond the rote combat.

Xp gain is slow, but eventually characters level up - and gain increased stats or improved skills - which do the same thing, except with a bit higher stats. The fact is: you don't notice whether or not you got upgrades. Your minions never gain cool new skills or develop synergy effects among each other, or allow clever tactics or anything that might mix things up.

And because you never feel pressured, progression is meaningless. There are no big baddies you need to content with, no combat engagements you're afraid to lose. In other games, the player sympathizes with the protagonist and is encouraged to gain strength in order to defeat enemies - but here you never really notice the enemies growing stronger or dangerous - so you don't need to get stronger either.
Getting resources, xp, new levels and upgrades, feels incredibly meaningless and unrewarding.

And none of this was necessary.

The story is admittably beyond the point where you can redo the beginning or try to create highs and lows to not utterly desensitize players to sexual content, but the sex scenes (at least the story based ones) as well as the combat?
Those are salvageable, especially the combat.
But it requires an actual confrontation with what good gameplay is, and how to create it, not merely mimicking gameplay mechanics seen in other games.
The mechanics are there, both in the space shooter as well as in the turn based combat. But the devs don't seem to understand how to evolve them, or how to reward & encourage the player within the gameplay itself.

Ultimately, I hope that the devs have some wake-up moment to realize that the game design needs a severe change in direction, to actually create a satisfying gameplay loop, rather than time-consuming minigames - because if they don't, Subverse might be the shiniest "high" budget disappointment in the NSFW genre for years to come.

So finally got around to trying this game out. Overall, just very disappointed. While the graphics and sound quality are great, I think what disappointed me most was two things:

1.) The fact that the monster sex content isn't optional in terms of the story - no matter what, you're going to hear about it when the characters talk to each other even if you don't unlock the actual scenes, so it's happening whether you want it to or not. It's also in the Codex entries and I saw that thanks to some actual in-game screenshots that were shared in the Subverse thread here (thank you to those who posted that as there are a couple of guys running around in the thread who are intentionally misleading people about the game with the intention of trying to drum up sales for it)

2.) The looping GIFs don't seem to have much in the way of a story tie in, so they don't feel like they are really connected to what's happening in the story at all and as an add-on to this, the Captain doesn't partake in the away missions on the ground, and since the girls just basically screw everything on the ship it doesn't feel like there's any attachment to him at all.

Had high hopes for this game, but ya, definitely not going to be buying this one unless there are some changes made. Saddest part about this is I have plenty of money to spend on games, and I genuinely like supporting studios when they make something I want more of to the point of buying copies for other gamers on Steam during sales and the like just as a way of further donating to studios I like. This one will have to remain a high seas exclusive, though unless some significant changes are made which I don't expect to happen.

Happy sailing, all.

People seem to have gripes with the writing a bit? But it seems as jovial as most other big title hentai games; Huniepop was pretty excessively joke-ish too. Not only that, I'm pretty sure from the character introduction scenes and what not, there's some borderlands inspiration in the overall tone. The MC's Australian accent really fits the story where mankind came into this universe on a prison ship. Then they came together and made Nu Vegas which is essentially just space Australia. The Deadpool humor fits the whole over-the-top theme.. Hell, you even fight corrupt sex droids piloting penis ships. I don't think it was ever meant to be serious. End of the day, I look at this game and damn I'm impressed. Gameplay is fun and challenging, hentai scenes are well done, and great quality. Voice-over is great. It's the most polished hentai game I've played yet, and I want an environment to be fostered where more great animators and developers feel like they can make money off of a hentai-game without resorting to patreon and their rules, y'know? This is a good step towards that.

As a porn game, it's mediocre. The porn part is separate from the story and other interactions with the 'waifus' and is just a series of looping gifs. They're not really making much use out of the unreal engine.

It definitely has more game elements than other porn games on here, but looking at it as a game, it's really tedious to play through, because you need to in order to get points to unlock the gifs to watch.

The ship combat is fine, the grid combat is subpar, but it's couched in this annoying scanning 'minigame' where you have to fly around scanning planets to initiate the combat stuff. There's also multiple waves of enemies, which they've bumped up to stretch out the grindiness of the game.

Music and visuals are good.

Wish I could give this a higher score, but FOW have really missed the mark in their transition from animators to game devs.

As always, the model quality and animation smoothness is there. I'd expect nothing less from FOW. That got them a second star from me.

Unfortunately, that's where the quality ends. All scenes are just 1-3 second porn loops with a speed slider. That's the kind of interactivity I'd expect from a 2011 Zone flash game, not a 2021 FOW production.

And don't even get me started on the strategy-game-layer. Nothing kills my horniness like having to master a turn-based, grid-based strategy game between every (1-3 second) porn loop.

Maybe if they go back to the drawing board and really rework some of what's here, it can be great. Unfortunately, I can't see them dropping the strategy layer, so I'll probably have to pass on this long term.

It is a really good game. The gameplay is fun and the H is solid. It reminds me of Sid Meier's Pirates except with porn instead of dancing. As of 0.3 there is a solid 5 hours of gameplay with some really great cutscenes. If you like ecchi humor than you will enjoy the game even more.

Really like the direction of the new update (0.3.0). Animations and Voice acting are top notch. I like the ground combat (it's a very simplified XCOM, which I'm sure will get more features over time) and the space battle - even though some of them could be a bit shorter, feels like there's always one wave more than needed. Pretty good filler content between the nasty stuff for a game of this kind.

Good game.

Game is better then most hentai games. It has an actual world/world building even if it is goofy, it has gameplay that is decently fun: both turn based tactical combat and space SHMUP if you are into those things. (But they are entirely skippable.) Fully voiced with characters that have more personality then a generic hentai girls plus a system for custom creating your own hentai scenes with more unlocks each patch (I think they are at like 40 clips you can mix and match with each girl so far with more to come)

Some People complaining about getting NTRd by mindless alien drones both seem to not have seen any prior Studio FOW/work and thus didnt know what they were getting into somehow or get caught up in the waifu collecting enough to care anyways. All the "NTR" scenes are in the optional hentai scene maker, you have to unlock them intentionally and use them to even see them and the "aliens" are mindcontrolled drones in the setting of the game, that being said having the girl have sex with something other then the MC can upset some people. Also to throw this in here the MC skin colour is customizable if that is your thing. (Game also has unlockable stapon/futa Girl x Girl scenes if that is something that annoys you)

Overall massively better then almost all hentai games I've played in terms of quality, content and actual gameplay, only thing it lacks is scripted story scenes which they have said they are adding with 1 existing in current update. Certain gameplay mechanics may not be your schtick and certain scenes may not be to your taste but both are entirely skippable. People complaining about "too much talking" or "too much gameplay" are either talking about their taste in game-porn ratio or just so down bad they have to use porn games instead of just flat out pornography.

Given I think it is better then 99% of porn games I've played (and ngl I've been kinda addicted to porn games for the past 5 years) gotta give it 5/5.

Played through and finished the main story for this game and it is really, really disappointing. FOW makes really good animations but everything else about this game kind of sucks. The grid combat get tiresome, the space combat is more entertaining but feels disconnected from the rest of the game. The characters are alright but the H-content feels so shallow and empty. The overall story isn't that great either and the dialog can get very tedious. Overall it is kind of crazy that this is the best they could do after having so much money and time pumped into this thing.

It's just very boring and repetitive for a whole lotta NTR and Monster loops. I had hoped it would be a lot more fleshed out but it just feels very meh, and yes I know the game is in Early Access but I don't think the core game play will change ever, I found myself very bored of the game and just wanting to fuck the girls instead of doing the combat, both versions and there are less scenes of your character fucking the girls than anything else so I don't really see myself going to play future updates (v.0.4.0 and so on) of this game.

while the pron Element is not as developed as many people would like the thing is, this is a game with Erotic content in it, but I full fap fest like many other games on here. it has fun gameplay and a compelling story plus intresting characters.