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

Based on the (as yet) unfinished early access v0.1.

Ostensibly this review will be relatively similar to all my other reviews on f95. However, I feel it is worth noting that I actually will be holding Subverse to a MUCH higher standard. Not only is this a fully-fledged actual proper game in its own right (and not just some RenPy/Honey Select renders strung together with text) but it had a budget which probably blows everything else on here out of the water. So always remember that.

Also let me briefly say I am biased in this review in that I actually funded this game on Kickstarter and so I genuinely and seriously hope it does well. Even if only as proof that a porn game can achieve these heights.


Pros

• Early access - let’s get one thing quickly out of the way. I’ve seen a few reviews on here and Reddit complaining about the lack of content. This is ONLY v0.1 More is coming. Let’s at least be fair about that.
• Visuals – Easily the best visuals I’ve ever seen in any porn game. Bar none. Unsurprising really, given that they had the budget for it. Instead of one person spending ages bashing out renders in RenPy they actually have full Unity sexy stuff and the girls and aesthetic is all amazing. Again, it’s not really fair to compare Subverse with the other stuff on here due to the difference in budget, but at the same time, it would a HUGE black mark if it didn’t look great.
• Fully voiced – Doesn’t need much more to be said about it. Nothing like fully voiced dialogue to really draw you in and make the waifus come to life.

Mehs

• Gameplay – There are 2 forms of gameplay. A spaceship SHMUP (think a modern-day Asteroids) and a grid-based turn-based strategy game. Both are, frankly, fine. They tick all the boxes of being functional, visually clear, easy to understand and play, etc etc. They also are unimaginative and have absolutely zero depth. If this were a gameplay-focused game, it would be considered to be absolute shit, but because both of these aspects are there to compliment the porn, it gets a bit of a pass. I SINCERELY hope they improve though, because at present you have to play them both a LOT to earn points with the waifus. And while “fine” is acceptable in the background, when you have to play it a lot, it becomes extremely boring.
• Humour – The humour and tone of this game is extremely reminiscent of the Deadpool films (including 4th wall breaks). If you liked that, you’ll love this. For me it was VEEERY hit and miss. Sometimes I chuckled, sometimes absolutely nothing, but I appreciate the light and fun tone at least. It doesn’t take itself seriously (as it shouldn’t).
• UI – The UI during dialogue is a bit… Weird… I was expecting/hoping a dialogue system reminiscent of Mass Effect but instead it’s actually more like a visual novel. An overcomplicated visual novel too. There does not need to be that many buttons on the UI.

Cons

• Pandora system – ALL of the porn in the game is separated from the rest of it in the “Pandora system”. In that system you access it through your cabin in the spaceship and then you get to see scenes with your waifus. The scenes are unlocked with points from the mini-games and you can select a few of them to watch one after the other. However, the absolute vast majority of them are nothing more than looping 5 second gifs. There’s some moaning in them, but no dialogue or dirty talking. There’s also only occasionally a TINY amount of interaction where there is a speed of fucking slider and a “cum” button. And that’s your lot. It absolutely fucking sucks.
• Choices – There are none. At all. The dialogue so far is like a visual novel, but it’s also like the absolute worst visual novels because you have literally 0 interaction and influence over events. I know it’s not even remotely got the same level of funding as a Bioware game, so a branching plot is perhaps too much to hope for, but SURELY they ought to be able to do dialogue trees. I mean, if fucking DrPinkCake can do it, why not a company funded to the tune of £1.6 million? The same is true during the sexy stuff (as mentioned) where you only choose what to see and then have no choice over what actually happens within the sex.
• No kink tags – If this were a normal game company making their first porn game, I could forgive this, but it isn’t and I can’t. EVERYONE on f95 knows: “if you can, you give people the option to include/exclude kinks” especially the very controversial ones like bestiality/NTR/tentacles. Well, Subverse doesn’t give you that option. It makes it very, very clear that some of your waifus are off getting fucking pounded by demon monsters when you’re not fucking them. And for me, that just ruins the immersion. I don’t want that in my harems and they need to fucking add some sort of tag system.

I think Subverse currently has committed 2 extremely egregious sins, which both are more less extensions of the same thing: it has totally separated the porn from the rest of the game and there are no story or even dialogue choices. Both of these are part of the same problem: there is NO interaction in the game.

Honestly, I feel like someone needs to sit FOW Interactive down and explain to them exactly what they are making and why it has the potential to be so good.

Why are porn games better than porn? Because we can self-insert more. We get to actually interact with the girls on the receiving end of our depravity. We actually get to imagine what it would be like to have a harem of alien waifus (as opposed to just watching it or reading about it). Games provide a level of interactivity that you don’t get with video or books and that means the potential for immersion is so much higher.

And I SHOULD NOT need to explain that.

And yet, the actual level of interaction is so godawful and non-existent. If it were any other game and it were a VN I’d downloaded from here, I would have rated it a 1 and told you to not bother with it as a waste of both your time and money.

Add to this the myriad of other issues: the fact that the mini-games are both kinda boring, but you have to grind them to unlock Pandora scenes is just a total chore. The fact that there’s literally no dialogue or sexy talk during the sexy scenes is absolutely mind-blowing. And the fact that the porn is totally separated from the actual game, as if you are literally alt-tabbing between a strategy game and PornHub, is just one of the outright biggest blunders I’ve ever imagined.

I will say this right now: in its current state, DO NOT BUY Subverse. I won’t advocate playing it for free, but right now it’s not worth the money paying for it. Not even close.

However, I genuinely hope things improve. It’s only early access and the devs seem to have very close relations with their fans and take a lot of the criticism on board. The most recent development blog post addresses a lot of things I’ve mentioned, so hopefully things will improve on that score.

Unfortunately, for those of us who were hoping for Mass Effect But With Lots of Tits, I do have my doubts about it’s ability to redeem itself and we might be waiting a good while longer.

Game looks great but it has very few content I was expecting much more, considering the devs got over 1M in donations from patreon and they had over 2 years to work on it... maybe it will change and the devs will add more stuff, but right now its not worthy, super disappointed

This game is awesome and its crucial step for nextgen adult games.
Not only the adult content is great, I also love the turn based combat, which is fun and fast and easy to control, also the space fights brink nice arcade nostalgia and space.
Bought the Steam version, as everyone should....

So, at this stage, so far "good", but no more. For the sound, music tracks - excellent! Everything else, well, I would like to "a little better" The main character is spelled out as, just a stupid nerd schoolboy, who is given because he is one "such a captain-hero", the rest is complete crap (except for sex scenes and piu piu in space , it's fun)
As a result, 7/10, but since there is still little content.

OK this "average" rate is subject to change, but for now 0.1 is average bordering poor, why?

1. sex scenes are just a loop lacking any of the characteristics of a studio FOW video. they said this will be different with the development of the ingame mechanic "PANDORA" later down the line, but right now its just bad.
2. Gameplay; its not bad its just mediocre, it may be because 0.1 is the early game, but it feels bad, the "danmaku" fights are really easy and the turn based grid combat just feels barebones, it has what it needs to be called a turn grid combat, nothing more.
3. Voice acting and characters; this is the only point holding the game together, amazing voice actors, nicely written characters, hell its on par with jap developers in this aspect, it has some really "cringie" parts but the game knows it and uses it in the joke, its a very good surprise to find this quality, it may have failed to impress with the sexscenes but the dialog will keep you into the game if you are into this kind of humor.

Overall it has potential, the sex was a disappointment in 0.1 but dialogs were a pleasant surprise...

It was like being with a shitty but interesting prostitute; the sex was shitty, disgusting even, but the after sex, the talk was what made you pay and call her again...

Test based on v0.1:

So far, so good. I always hate when the game won't let me save, but the gameplay and overall presentation are pretty damn good. This is a game that is actually fun to play.

I agree with the other critics, that the xxx-scenes appear to be mostly disconnected from the game. However, I'd like to remind everyone that this *is* a first demo, the way I understand it. Also, since the game is fun to play, I don't mind waiting for the adult content.

I do have some complaints, though. While I do understand that the writing in a porn game doesn't have to be Shakespearean and while my pain threshold is relatively high for juvenile humor and 4th wall breaking, it kind of undermines character building if a majority of characters talk the same way.

Also, there are some bad effects (the one with the glowing green eyes, where the ex-empress hypnotizes her general is just ... terrible) and the female faces all look kind of same-y.

As of v0.1

Gameplay - 1/5
The "bullet hell" style space combat is actually pretty fun, but the same can't be said for the grid-based combat. It's really fuckin' boring and slow-paced. Hopefully the devs can add a "fast mode" to alleviate the shite pacing of the grid-based combat because if you're expecting XCOM w/ hot girls, you will be thoroughly disappointed.

Scenes - 2/5
If you're a REAL studiofow fan (a.k.a. a degenerate who likes seeing hot bitches getting fucked by fug ugly monsters), then you'll probably be disappointed with the current amount of monster scenes. Afaik, these are the only notable scenes involving aliens: one tentacle scene with the Lily the sniper (w/ cumshot), 1 mantic scene with Demi the robot (w/o any cumshot), and 1 alien doggystyle scene with the red-skinned devilgirl (w/ cumshot). It's irritating tbh because even the vanilla scenes are pretty lackluster since most of them are just animation loops w/o any real happy ending/creampie/cumshot (rn, only 3 vanilla scenes have a happy ending)

Story - 0/5
They spent waaaayyyy too much time making "cool-looking," cyberpunk-esque cutscenes that nobody fucking cares about. I would've appreciated it if the fucking cutscenes actually had sex in them (say, for instance, the blythe antagonist cowgirling and fucking the shit out of her enemies after beating them up). Nobody gives a shit about shiny visuals if it's only there to tell a cookie-cutter, generic, sci-fi story that's trying waaayyyy too hard to mimic the wacky, over-the-top vibe of Borderlands. That just ain't it chief. Tell your cutscene animators to make something that'll ACTUALLY interest us coomers.

RECOMMENDATION:
get a full save from the thread, go to the "captain's quarters" then click the bed to "enter pandora," which is basically the game's gallery

TL;DR: shite gameplay, boring story, shite cutscenes, get a full save to watch half-decent loops and anims.

Update as of v. 0.3.0
Even after all this time, the game really hasn't changed at all. The sex is STILL NOT incorporated/integrated into the gameplay (thus, there's very little context to most of the scenes other than "oh, i feel like fucking right now"), but there IS one cinematic cutscene with the new character involving sex, so that's good I guess? They still have a long way to go, however, and for 23 gb, the porn side really isn't worth it. You might as well watch all of the scenes (including the newly added ones) on xvideos/spankbang, or download something with higher quality porn (e.g., WildLife, Paralogue, AQE, Honey Select, Illusion games), or way more story (e.g., any good VN from this site). Otherwise, if you enjoy crappy grid combat, repetitive jokes, forgettable characters, and crappy allusions to zoomer culture and funny maymays, then go ahead and waste your time, I guess.

the game is completely disconnected from the scenes that, for the most part, are pretty good. There are only two scenes that you get from ingame events/progression, the rest of them are totally unrelated and you have to spend points to unlock them in a gallery. I fucking hate that system, there is no context whatsoever and the gameplay feels hollow for an adult game because you know you're not getting any action on defeat, mission success, etc etc

Excellent:
-Voice Acting
-Locations (Background)
-Models (Waifus)

Good:
-Animation
-Story
-Humor

Bad:
-to Short

I Honestly don't know with wich games most of the ppl compare the game. Look at pretty much all 5 to 4 Rated games on here and they are Easiely compare and it is still a 0,1 Version. Yes it is not the Second coming of Jesus but if you ask me the foundation is there.

Yeah tried the game for 80 minutes, not recommended.
Overall rundown of the game
-story/dialogue
terrible ironic reddit dialogue, constantly self reference itself and being so "epic 4th wall breaking XD". literally just a wannabe deadpool.
-COOM
the sex scenes themselves are ok even if most of them lack cum shots, the problem is that most of these scenes lack context and are not integrated into the story, they're just there and it makes it really boring, and not even worth fapping to.
-gameplay
space combat is really bad, no finite controls and the combat is extremely straight forward, ain't no 2hu
the ground combat is just extremely awkward and simple. no real depth to it, just move and attack. with a few counters here and there.

>bugs
don't know if its "buggy" exactly but there's a lot of extremely dumb and flawed mechanics
>dialogue takes forever if you don't skip because you can't just skip to the next line until you wait 5 seconds
>if you skip dialogue on the ship it takes you back to the room instead of dialogue menu
>no easy escape keys for menus or windows
>"discovery mode" where you fly your space ship around is just pointless and tacked on

Could've been something more but instead, it's just a glorified porn. The only thing that made this a game is that there's sequence where you gotta play. I can't say anymore because everyone has already pointed out what's good and what's wrong with this game. I hope it'll improve more since it has a lot of potential.

So this is what AAA porn gaming looks like. What a turd.
Devs, please! Making fun of your asset flip game, being ironic, doesn't make it alright. Especially when you get a million something bucks on kickstarter. Seriously? A million fucking dead presidents, and it somehow ends up worse than some patreon one man side project. Hello? Do you have no shame?

The mini-games are all mobile shit, and the actual porn, I swear to god I couldn't fucking believe it, is separated from the actual game. Yes, you just unlock scenes and then watch them separately, they aren't a part of some narrative. And the actual scenes are not even that good either, not "one million dollars" good that's for sure.

HUGE dissapointment, to think this was supposed to bring a new era of porn gaming, what a joke.

Considering the time this was in development, its fairly bland. Its a standard visual novel, with some tactical gameplay sort of like Xcom. Well and some ship fighting which is also just a standard arcade shooter. The Gameplay is tedious and boring. Nothing special here to be found.
The scenes are also a bit bland. You just have single scenes to choose from, you cannot move the camera and there is fairly little.
That coupled with all the lies the devs told their fans, I cannot really give this a higher score than that.
Only catering to Harem where the Protagonist gets all the girls, a full game, deep gameplay up to par in quality with Xcom and so on.

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.