Unreal Engine - Completed - Subverse [v1.02] [Studio Fow]

Verdict: No Recommendation

The good parts

• The voice acting is superb.
• The visuals are often nice, the art direction is great.

The bad parts

• Repetitive Gameplay. At its core the game is a kinetic novel with two mini games attached to it.
• The Porn. There's almost no lewd action during the game's story. The Scenes are seperated 5 second loops you can unlock through points. They have no context or dialogue.
• The writing is often terrible edgy, trying to be relatable funny but failing. Reminds me of the "Silence brand" meme.
• No interactivity. No dialogue options, no interactions during the lewd scenes. There's no reason why this game uses a AAA 3D Engine if it's not making use of it.

Conclusion: Subverse is the Last Jedi of NSFW games. A visually truly stunning game with fantastic voice actors and actresses. But in every other aspect of the game it falls flat and disappoints.

Review for Version 0.1

What this game is:
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You play as a pervert mercenary tasked to overthrow the puritanian galactic empire of boredom, assisted by your crew of hot battlesluts. To do this you go on missions which are either asteroids/geometry wars style space combat, or squad turn-based ground combat on an iso-grid.

As you complete missions, you get points for unlocking sex-scenes in a galery. That's about it.

The good:
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This is easily the best looking and best sounding porngame on the market. In terms of presentation Subverse is a freaking artpiece, that puts everything else out there to shame.

It's also a proper parody, and by that i mean spaceballs-grade parody: The whole game is neverending train of 4th wall jokes, genre-savy puns and sexual innuendo. If you read other reviews saying the dialogs are cheesy: Those are people who don't understand humour and sarcasm even when they're being facefucked with it. Subverse is the Spaceballs of porngames - simple as that.

The actual game-parts of Subverse (space and ground combat) are... decent. They're more polished and deep than most other porngames, but still just minigames.

The bad:
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The porn-content of Subverse consists of maybe two dozen unlockable animloops. That is all: Two dozen loops with a slider from "slow" to "fast", and a "cum"-button. No positions, no interactivity, no complexity: Just a bunch of animloops.

Do they look good? Hell yeah, just like the rest of the game: No plastic-puppets, chunky polygons or clumsy anims to see here - those loops are artpieces. But they're still just a bunch of fucking loops.

Now combine this with the fact, that the "gameplay" of Subverse is just two minigames with variable enemies, and one has to ask the question: How much is Subverse a "porngame", when neither the "porn" nor the "game" is that interesting?

Of course the same could be said for hundreds of other "porngames" out there. Subverse isn't bad - it's "mediocre", and that feels disappointing compared to the stellar presentation and great parody.

Or to put it another way: Subverse sets such a high standard in presentation and writing, that it reveals how "meh" the average porngame really is. And at it's core Subverse is just an average porngame, dressed in a glorious shell.

It makes me wonder if this project maybe would've worked better as a softcore parody. Of course for that it would need proper gameplay to carry the story.

Conclusion:
-----------
Presentation = 110%
Story/Humour = 100%
Interface = 75%
Porn = 45%
Game = 60%

This is a lot longer than I intended. I ended up just having a lot to say about it so I've broken this review into parts and put a quick TLDR in bold at the bottom of each section for those who don't want to read it all.

This game is actually what got me into porn games when I originally backed it on kickstarter and I'm pretty disappointed with what we have so far. For over two million dollars I wanted a high quality porn game but what we got was a shmup game with porn literally pushed off to the side.

The Story/Gameplay
Let me first say that I do like the shmup/turn based combat in this game. I actually ended up beating every single planet mission because I was having such a good time leveling up the girls. I recommend it if that's the type of game you're looking for, but if you were expecting high quality porn from this wildly successful kickstarter then you'll probably be disappointed.

The story is fine so far. I didn't find it that engaging but it's still too early in the story (this update covers chapters 1-6 out of 22) to say it's bad and I think it has the potential to be fun once things get going. My biggest problem with the story is that it feels so disconnected from the sex. After you meet each girl you'll do a mission for them and then get the intro sex scene but that's it. All the other scenes are put into a type of gallery where you have to unlock them by using the game currency which means that every sex scene apart from the first viewing of the recruitment scene is devoid of any story/dialogue.

It kind of feels like they spent so much time on the story/gameplay that they forgot this was a porn game and didn't know how to implement any scenes into the story, so they just threw them all into a gallery.

The Sex "Scenes"
The sex scenes are way below the quality you would expect from this game. The old Meet n' Fuck flash games had more interactivity than any sex "scene" in Subverse. I use the term "scene" loosely because about 95% of them are just 3 second animations being looped and the other 5% are called the special scenes (they even say something like "these scenes were cooked up special in our porn lab") and they cost double to unlock. In these special scenes, you get a speed slider and a cum button. That's the entirety of the interactivity in this game. Surprisingly (at least to me but maybe I'm crazy), this game which was made using UE4 doesn't have an option to change camera angles.

95% of the scenes are basically just gifs with a special few giving you the bare minimum of interactivity.

The Voice Acting
The voice acting is pretty good. Some of it had me cringing and sometimes the characters would talk really slow which drove me crazy (you can skip a line of dialogue like you can in RenPy) but overall I thought the performances were good. The fact this game has voice acting would be a selling point for a lot of people but you should know that the girls don't say anything during sex (like I said earlier, there's no dialogue in these scenes). They still moan but it's a pretty short loop just like the animations. That being said, if you talk to the red girl at the bar about sex she'll tell you if you want to make her happy then to obey whatever she says in bed, so maybe dialogue is/was planned. Either that or it was just a throw away line.

The girls will moan during sex but they won't speak at all.

Final Thoughts
I wanted to like this game but it just doesn't land for me. This is more of a very long video with shmup gameplay thrown between cutscenes in order for it to be called a game. To me, it feels like StudioFOW tried to use their knowledge in Source Filmmaker to develop a game despite the mediums being very different from one another and it just doesn't work. There's hardly any context or interactivity to any of the scenes in Subverse which is kind of the whole point of making a porn game. Hopefully things will improve as we get closer to the finished product but until then I'd recommend playing almost any other game on this website.

Review based on v0.4.0.

In summary: good porn, bad game. Visually appealing, but "meh" gameplay sandwiched between funny story segments, with porn thrown into the mix as an afterthought. The porn is little more than a collection of clips with minimal interactivity.

If you strip away the presentation and spectacle, you're left with an average shmup and a TRPG not worth rating. The porn is high quality, but it's poorly implemented to the point that it drags the overall experience down.

The biggest gripe I have is that most of the sex has zero story context and is completely independent of any story events. This works in other games with a more engaging gameplay loop, or games full of once-off encounters that may or may not also be massive harem builders, but not Subverse in its current state, especially with its focus on building a (meme-tastic and hilarious) world and fleshing out characters. The short, no-context clips don't mesh with the rest of the game very well, and transitioning between gameplay and porn is incredibly jarring. Also, for a porn game, there's not enough hardcore porn. I want to see more actual fucking in various positions.

As it stands, I'm more inclined to download/edit a save and treat the game as a gallery viewer with an associated story and lore than I am to actually play through it.

The porn isn't integrated to the story, which makes it unerotic. Just watching randomly selected small porn gifts out of any context isn't a very arousing experience.

The animations of the characters during dialogues serves no purpose.

The story and traditional gameplay elements might make it an average traditional game, but as a porn game it fails completely.

(3.5h played)

+ actually interesting Story and Characters
+ nice animations and voice acting
+ balanced difficulty (not too easy and not too hard)
+ good gameplay (space (real time) and ground (turn based) battles


- long loading times while in Ship

Subverse is what I've always wanted : gameplay and story with sex in bonus.

I've just played the game since release and couldn't stop.

• The story is nice and easy to follow, a bit immersive too.
• The game know it's a porn game and will never try to take thing seriously, leading to absurd joke all along. (I'm really fan of this kind of humour)
• I'm running the game on an good pc and got an 60 fps lock with "EPIC" settings, so the game run very well.
• Graphics are very good even tho models aren't crazy high rez
• Music / sound effect / ambient sound are nice and the dub is so nice I now have an aussie accent
• The gameplay is F*cking great for the shump phase, would buy it again if a spin off focussing only on that were release. it's just ok for the "ground" phase tho
• Porn scenes are good and you have a lot of choice.
• For now the game isn't finished yet but for the ten euros I pay for this game it's already worth it.

So there is alot of game here compared to how much porn there is

I mean sorry but playing a whole fuck off game-play sequence just to unlock what amounts to a bunch of 15 sec loops is ridiculous

Ive seen cheap renpy games with more erotic lewds, and seeing as its fow, thats a fucking disappointment

and it not like the riveting dialogue is keeping my attention

Everything is done with extreme polish, but nothing compliments the other features, if anything it feels like a grind for such little content, after how much money and how much time has been put into it, it feels like all the attention went into making a game with porn in it
rather then making a porn game

I backed it, so im going to stick around till the end, but man this doesnt look like a great start

Steam reviews dont help, everyone is raving about it, but compare that to here, where we play porn games by the boatload, and people seem to be more critical

Honestly after all the money they got on Kickstarter and time they've spent, I feel like there isn't much to show for it. There are only three unlockable girls at the moment and not many scenes. The scenes themselves have little to no interactivity. The gameplay is blander than a boiled goose. There are literally only two modes: repeatable, predictable space battles and boring turn based ground combat. The voice acting is okay, but there isn't much of a story here. 4/10 for now, we'll see if they get their act together and add more. It's still an early access release.

This game is divided in 5 elements.
1. An old School space shooter mini-game. (Good)
2. Tactical combat mini-game XCOM style. (Good)
3. Visual Novel. (Bad)
4. Static sex scenes poser aka Pandora System (Bad)
5. Cinematic video cut-scenes. (Good)

1. This one runs smooth and its relatively fun.
2. This one is challenging at times and more complex, if somewhat random and unbalanced.
3. This one is cheesy and breaks immersion constantly, turning you off and wanting to skip it entirely (fortunately you can). Sadly a waste of the voice acting budget.
4. This one is surprisingly bad, there is a point buy scene unlocker system in which you earn points as you level up your characters via the mini-games (this needs a cheat mode desperately). The scenes are static, one angle, videos in a loop, you can hasten the action with a slider bar and then press a button for the finish.
5. This is where FOW mostly shines, doing what is well into their wheelhouse which is doing videos. The videos look great, but sadly they aren't about sex (so far as I played at least and doesn't seem like they will). Unfortunately the videos aren't optimized and they will eat away at your RAM, making them freeze or slowmo or get sound glitches.

Final verdict: I am giving it a 3 for how ambitious of a project it was, but ultimately its a bad VN with a unsatisfying sex poser built on top of 2 fun mini-games. I don't play adult games for the grind or the mini-games, so that's why I scored it so low. I feel this game had great potential and the resources were misplaced focusing on the mini-games and not on the sex scenes or VN aspects of the game. Its quite the shame since I had high hopes for this game and I've been a FOW fan for awhile now. So in conclusion I think the design is what is flawed in what could have otherwise been a great game.

The game is, even in this early state, everything that I wanted it to be. Now, I might have a slight bias, having backed the game pretty heftily early on. Plus, I am of the rather-unpopular-here opinion that plot-with-some-porn is far superior to porn-with-some-plot.

PLOT: The plot is pretty generic, all told. Ragtag group of space rebels fights against the tyrannical powers-that-be. Its characters and presentation keep it wonderfully fresh though, even if it can be rather on the nose with its parody ellements.

CHARACTERS: Color me surprised, I was expecting things to be overall a lot cheesier. The voice-work is absolutely top-notch, better then a lot of AAA games, and the actors were able to do their lines with just the right amount of seriousness without over or underselling it. The humor lands more often then not, and everyone is pretty likable. Except DEMI, if you ask me. Her robotic delivery really doesn't match her character. I like Killison more then I thought I would, too.

MUSIC: Of all the things I was not expecting in this game, it was a pretty rocking soundtrack. There aren't really anything in particular worth calling out, its just generally solid all around. Some of the fight themes are pretty fire bops.

GAMEPLAY: Part Visual Novel, part shoot-em-up, part tactical RPG. The tactical elements are, as of right now in 0.1, pretty clunky, but nevertheless a really cool framework. I do wish you could deploy more characters at a time at the very least.
The game really shines in the shooter sections, with a remarkable amount of enemy variety and buttery smooth action. As you unlock more, it gives you even more ways to approach the various factions, and I imagine its only going to get better with time.

GRAPHICS: Studio FOW continues to impress in this regard. Characters have a colorful, buoyant, but not overly complex design, something I would compare to, say, Borderlands. But the details are impeccable. Truly masterful. The galaxies that serve as the backdrop to the shooter missions are beautiful as well. Again, the game kinda languishes in its tactical sections in this regard as well, compared to the others. But if nothing else, this game is pretty as hecc.

LEWDS: Its good. But its Studio FOW, of course it is. Every scene on its own is pretty good, excellent even by 3D porn standards, and are short and simple. But through the game's PANDORA system, you can chain scenes together to make your own pseudo porn-vid. Its quite nice, even if it does take a good while to earn enough scenes to put together anything decent. Not that I'm complaining.

CONCLUSION: I consider this the Cyberpunk 2077 of lewd games. The massive over-hype will always bring great works like this down, because fools can't temper their expectations, but to me, its already everything I could have asked for and more. As the game continues to march towards true completion, I imagine its going to be something incredible.

10/10, would back the game again.

Absolutely AMAZING, game. Still has some rough edges.

Played for about 2 hours and I'm not sure if you can replay levels. Although there is a "completed" section of the quests that
leads me to believe you will be able to.

Sex is more like a video and less inter-actable than some of the VNs people may be used to. Static camera angles. Single takes, etc. You can mix-match the different positions, but I feel they're a little on the tame side. Just a single, short loop of the same expression.

I'm hoping there's some RPG elements for your Mantics and self/avatar, but that may be unlocked later.

This is a REAL game, so don't expect PURE smut. Gameplay is fun and and easy to pick up, but not so easy you become bored.

I'm hoping there's more MFF, MFFFF, etc, and Group "activities" than just the basic positions. You should be able to pick any Position and apply to any girl. Camera should be FREE floating for those scenes.

Can't wait for the full release.

I wrote a whole motherfucking review but misclicked and now it's GONE.

***

Let's be real, interactive flash level sex scenes are fucking boring and lame as fuck plus we know the Ren'py/RPGM games of F95 are better than this game despite the arseload of funds it has. I would much rather play the popular college experience games on this site than play something overproduced and largely uninteresting.

I came in wanting to drain my nuts, but whether you came for harem or NTR, you are shit out of luck. FOW might be talented, but I know half a dozen 3D smut peddlers off the top of my head that make better porn. Now imagine these reprobates trying to make a game. Prepare to be fucking bored.

There's no build up and no tension, "yeah" I hear you say, "this is a 0.1". It's clear from character dialogue and current sex scenes that this is not set to change. Good luck with 0.2.

Some of the jokes are funny but don't be fooled, they don't make the game worthwhile and are overused. The most egregious reference to be is the Shit (anagram for you amateur cryptologists) Code from Sci Fi Franchise No.3. This game plays like a prepubescent fever dream, not a barrel of laughs for the lads.

***

I saved up three days of cummies for this and now I want to go to bed. Thanks FOW, you chinless, berry-picking, window-licking gimps.

Pros:
- Gameplay is simple, straight to the point. Its a porn game after all, I personally just want to get to the hot stuff.
- Its gorgeous, everything is animated beautifully, very cinematic too if you care about that at all.
- there are not too many but not too little waifus either, there are 10 in total planned to be in so far. I personally hate when games add 50 female characters but 40 of them have less than 5 scenes, id rather a game have 5 characters with 50 scenes each than have 50 characters with 5 scenes for most of them and a shit ton for a select few.
- There are 10 chapters in total but so far we have 6 which is pretty good for a first release.

Cons:
- Not enough main character on female scenes, unfortunately its studio FOW, and if you're familiar with their work they really like interspecies/beastiality in their films/games which is personally a HUGE turn off, and I know it is for a majority of people since it is a niche fetish and all. So here's hoping they add WAY more human scenes in the future.

so far this is all I have since I havent played everything up until the end, but ill probably come back and update the review once im finished.

Pros:
-Story, it's simple, funny when it needs to be, and not over the top
-Combat, straight to the point, not overly complicated
-The characters, diverse and plenty
-Voice acting, rivals that of some AAA games, enough said. Great choices.
-Sex scenes. Everything for everyone with the quality expected of Studio Fow, be it if you're into bestiality, or tentacles, or just vanilla, it's all there and the system they added is pretty intuitive

Cons
-The PP system, or how you unlock new scenes is a bit limiting. I can kind of understand what they were trying to do, but you got some playing to do to unlock them
-I noticed a few old sex scenes that don't quite fit in with the other much higher quality ones, not the end of days, but they do stand out
-No dedicated Save System, it's all based on autosaves.
-Can't hide the chat panel

All in all though, this is pretty much what I expected and here's hoping that this title will pave the way for other bigger developers to maybe make their own high quality porn games, not likely to happen anytime soon, but one can hope.
There's still a lot that can be done, but for an Alpha it more than delivers imo.

The gameplay is pretty good and responsive albeit a bit simplistic, the animation quality is probably their best yet, their implementation is the absolute worst they could have went with...

It's basically those flash games where you just influence the speed of the animation and when to cum, but in 3D, with no other interaction and single camera angle, in some scenes where the MC doesn't participate you can't even influence animation speed/when to cum. Really fuckin disappointed in that.

After many years of waiting, it's finally here! And somehow it is worse in v1.0 than it was in Early Access. At least in EA, you have hopium that it will get better. But the content given here is lacklustre at best.

Overall Score: 4/10

Pros:
+ Fully Voiced which is great! The dialogue is a little on the corny side, but it's a porn game so who cares.
+ Music is pretty nice. Nothing memorable, but not terrible. Sounds spacey.
+ The characters and their designs are *click tongue* nice~
+ The graphics and art style are incredible, definitely almost AAA quality compare to most other porn games around the western market.

Cons:
- The amount of loading screens kind of annoying. Whether this game started development 5 years ago or released today. The constant loading screen after every bit of scene, end of dialogue, and cutscenes is very exhausting. Like bloody hell, 1/4 of the gameplay is loading screens.
- The dialogue is incredibly cheesy, hard to immerse yourself in this world when the fourth wall is broken in almost every conversation. The dick jokes after awhile gets very very stale. The Fuccbots were pretty hilarious as well as Killi.
- Ground combat is in need of more refinement, feels very boring compare to other turn-based combats in other games. Space Combat is fine for the most part, but nothing that spectacular. Very repetitive.
- Sex scenes are quite hot for the most part. The Pandora system is a little weird. I was a bit disappointed in using a currency called PP to unlock them instead through story progression.

It's like the developers were trying to make something amazing like a AAA or AA porn game, but failed at game direction 100%. This is trying to be a Visual Novel and at the same time a video game yet fails at both. The best way I can describe this game is "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle." This game felt like it was made from 2000s with some of the worst writing. It's pretending to be something that it is not. It is a glorified VN with sub-par game direction.