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

As expected, the game looks better visually than most other porn games
But that's about it, the sex scenes are all well animated but not scripted, barring maybe a couple of scenes that are 'special' and feature slightly more involved direction than just baseless fucking.
It all clearly show's it's a 0.1, which idk what i expected from a game that crowdfunded so much

The BAD
- No free camera for sex scenes
- Animations could be better
- They chose a VN over a Dating Sim Interaction style (it doesn't fit)
- Grid Combat gameplay
- Boring Story

The GOOD
- Voice Acting
- Shoot em up Gameplay

Well that was quite disappointing, especially after all that hype.

Pros:
+ Great art and animations
+ Nice cutscenes
+ Good voice acting

Cons:
- Terrible writing, they really did an insanely bad job at presenting any sort of story. Feels like I'm reading a story written by an edgy call of duty child.
- Space ship gameplay is so insanely boring.
- X-com turn based whatever gameplay even worse somehow
- Unintuitive menu
- Constant loading screens

Really seems like they should just have made a movie instead, the "game" part of this was just a lot of work, and no fun.

Extremely disappointed in this game i was expecting a lot more on the porn side, as it stands right now it has a mediocre shmup section and an even more boring tactical section. I have played a few tactical games and this is definitely too simple to keep me engaged to it.

The porn needs context and scene setup in a game or it just isn't interesting, Studio Fow could have just made these and uploaded them separate from the game because as it stands they add nothing to the experience.

Now i will give them credit for the production values as they look pretty impressive, the music and voice acting are also solid. Honestly i think they wanted to make a normal game and not a porn one but utilising the fan base they already built was too hard to pass up.

The fact that this game has been in development for two years is in this poor of a state is an incredible suprise with the lack of content, only three fuckable characters as of Launch, an already repetitive quest system at the beginning of the game (it doesnt make it better when you make fun of it game) generally cringy dialogue and the worst sin, porn within the game is completely seperate. No scenes lead into fucking other than the recruitment scene then you just get to watch the scene without the ability to change angles. The shmup sections are actually semi-decent though and I had fun doing that but its incredibly unbalanced and having Killi as a copilot unlocks a stupidly overpowered ability.

Subverse is an ambitious cinematic gameplay erogame that blends visual novel dialogue, SHMUP and grid-combat gameplay, and animated ero.

Full review:
Sanahtlig's Corner: Subverse, Adult gaming goes mainstream

Pros:

• Colorful characters and dialogue
• Well-developed setting despite the unserious concept
• Fun SHMUP combat
• Strong cinematic visuals
• High production values, especially for a Western-developed eroge

Cons:

• Generic grid-based land combat
• Ero content is (currently) sparse and lacks context
• Initial (early access) release lacks sufficient content to justify the price

Honestly a very poor showing from a game that promised the moon and was funded enough to get there and back. Gimmicky dialogue, poor plot progression, boring combat sections and downright mediocre animations.

Unless you're into NTR, the game's primary content, avoid it for almost anything else.

Geez people. This is EARLY ACCESS. Lot more development will come.

So far, good game. Its funny, looks good, fun gameplay, sex is a bonus. Ya, its scene based and what not, but that is early on. I am sure there will be more later or in the finished product. Look forward to seeing where this one goes.

Too little game too many uninteresting, mediocre and unnecessary dialogue.

I have not experienced the hype. I didn’t expect anything from this game, I even thought that people would always be deceived and thrown for money, but now it came out and I’ll say that the game is so-so. even more precisely, there is no game as such. a set of dialogue scenes and a couple of game moments. i have feelings, they make the future gameplay for donate scenes by hiding them behind the grind and there will be boosts and stuff that we hate in games.

The game tries to be so many things at once and doesn't succeed in any of them.

VERY slow intro, it isn't always clear what button does what and pacing is all over the place.

Dialogue is good, characters are average for what you'd expect from such a game.

With that all said you can definitely feel that a lot of hard work went into this game but sadly none of it is truly paying off so far.

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.