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

FOW Studio is a big name in the animated adult scene I follow, so I was curious to give Subverse a try. Here's my honest take.

From the very beginning, the game makes it clear that it's not meant to be taken seriously - at all. One look at the main character, the Captain, was enough to disconnect me from the story and cast. The humor and tone felt too over-the-top to build any real connection with the characters or narrative.

Gameplay-wise, it's okay - not terrible, but definitely not engaging. I found the mix of gameplay types a bit confusing, and the adult content even more surprising, but not in a good way. There are some story-integrated sex scenes, but they felt flat due to a complete lack of buildup. Most of the adult content is tucked away in what’s called Pandora - which is essentially just a glorified Gallery Mode.

Pretty quickly, I realized this Gallery Mode was the core pillar of the entire experience. It’s the main reward for slogging through the rest of the game. If it had delivered, maybe the grind would’ve felt worth it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

While the animation quality is top-notch - as expected from FOW - the actual scenes lack any real context, progression, or interactivity. They’re very short, and you can’t even view them in 3D or engage with them beyond basic playback. That lack of depth kills the payoff entirely.

It’s a real shame, because the game had the budget and technical polish to be something more. But in the end, Subverse feels like a collection of disconnected ideas, loosely held together by a mediocre Gallery Mode that doesn't live up to expectations.

im trying real hard to play thru this for the first time and its kinda crazy

90% slapdash worldbuilding with pretty good voice acting and really boring characters with cartoonish idle animations moving their mouths

8% cute vanilla mini games including lite bullet hell and tabletop minifig combat

2% nice prerendered porn

so i care about 2% of this game but that 2% is pretty good

One of the most disappointing games I've born witness to. No promises were met, no expectations met, it was a floundering mess that didn't succeed at anything it set out to do, and in the end, didn't really succeed at anything either.

Subverse is a bold, unique experiment that blends genres in a way few games have attempted. Its strong visuals, humor, and engaging—if somewhat shallow—combat make it worth checking out for those who enjoy adult-themed sci-fi adventures. However, its slow updates and repetitive mechanics may limit its long-term appeal.


⭐ Final Score: 7/10 – Great potential, but needs more polish and content.

The characters and setting sell this game. Best VA work in any lewd titles, sexy fun characters and writing. Each fufills a different niche and fantasy. A variety of lewd content and I feel the new outfit system gives pandora a LOT more replayability, same as gallery. I also feel the pinups and audio tapes are underrated. I've lost my computer recently but damn I miss this game.

This game is a true masterpiece, combining stunning graphics, immersive gameplay and a captivating narrative. Every detail is carefully thought out, providing a unique and immersive experience that keeps us hooked from the very first moment. Simply amazing!

From time to time it might get tiresome and repetitive if you try to level up and unlock as many of those planets as possible but the story and the rewards are really nice/worth it. If you got the time and love a good story teeling with fun, also sometimes cringy dialogues, give this game a try!

The first thing i have to mention is that the voice acting in this game dwarfs even AAA games nowadays. Really kudos to the VAs.
The animations are also top notch. One of the best scene animations I've seen in this site.
That being said, there is a very big issue with the game. It has two versions in how the characters act. It seems to me that the devs didn't want to bother with developing the characters and just had them act in whatever way the story needed.

Girls.
The models are great. All of them are beautiful and have diverse personalities. Some are cute and lovable, others killing machines and psychopaths.
But there are two versions of the girls on how they act. In one version the girls act like complete sluts and will fuck anyone and anything. And the
other version has them talk with the MC about their feelings and how much they love and care for him.

MC.
Honestly, the MC was the worst part of the game for me.
Again the game wants to tell two different versions of the MC that are complete opposite of each other.
One, he is a complete loser with destructive tendencies. He doesn't care about anything else other than getting high/drunk and fucking. Most of the time he has to be told what to do and is saved by the girls or hiding behind them.
Although the above is in 90% of the game, there are times when the game presents the MC as a heroic man who will rush into battle and
will do anything to win.
Now i wish this was a character development for the MC, but the game inserts the heroic man version whenever it is needed. Once that scene ends the MC returns to being a loser once again.

The other thing that has two versions is the relationship the MC has with the girls.
There are times when he calls them his "waifus" and others that he calls them his "fuckbuddies".
Most of the game the MC is a cuck who doesn't care or even enjoys it when others are fucking the girls. In the ship, aside from the MC and the girls, there are also the alien monsters who fuck the girls all the time. The MC has
no issue with that and sometimes he watches them on the cameras while he masturbates. There is even a mission in the game where you have to protect people that you know that they are going to fuck one of the girls.

Then there are times when the MC acts like he is in love with the girls. There is also one scene when he learns that one girl fucked someone in her past and gets angry. Then he gets sad and calls himself a cuck. This scene was very confusing.

In the end, the MC is a sad and pathetic character that anyone with even a little bit of self respect will have a difficult time playing him.

The story is one of the things i enjoyed in the game. The plot twists (if you want to call them that) are obvious to anyone with half a working brain shell, but it was enjoyable nevertheless. The world building was great as well. The tone of the game, as others has said, is hypersexualised with "comic" elements. Although there are times when the tone gets a 180' and becomes serious.
There are only two things i didn't like in the story:

There are not many sex scenes in the story of the game. 2 with each girl. One when you recruit them and one at the end of the game on their personal
quest. But all of them are well animated.
But, there is a mode in the game called "pandora" where it has many short sex scenes there.

Now i know that that the game has an NTR tag and even in the description it says that it has "monster gangrapes". Although i am not an enjoyer of such things, i will not complain about them. I would not walk into a vegan restaurant and complain that they didn't have stake. That being said, the fucking alien monsters have more scenes than the MC. It is such a shame really.

Subverse definetely has a high production value, it looks great, it's fully voice acted and it's got a large map filled with content, but it's ultimately a boring game.

Most of the gameplay is space or ground combat missions which gets very boring fast because there is no variety, it's the same type of missions over and over. You have a lot of variety in units, abilities and enemy types, but the ground battles are over too quickly and the space combat always feels the same.

The world of subverse is fleshed out and interesting, but a big problem is the tone of the game which is hypersexual and vulgar in a humorous way, which some players might enjoy, but I don't like a game that doesn't take itself seriously.

The game doesn't have classic sex scenes, where short scenes are part of the plot, instead you have 1 long high quality animation with each waifu that you can only get at the end of the game, and very short animations you can unlock throughout the game. The long animations are great, but it's disappointing the game doesn't have classic sex scenes.

Overall it's a 4/10 game, it looks great but it's very boring

Shallow gameplay and even shallower porn, would be tolerable if the GRIND didn't meant you were forced to play the same boring minigame for hours just to get seconds worth of porn. I got so bored I eventually just looked up the events, only to learn that some major characters have zero porn events.... in a porn game. Did I miss the sign that says this game is catered solely towards grind fetishist?

I seen and played when first come out yes if that build still exist and they done same thin i think indeed this game worth like 2.5 star thats not a lie but right now ? thats insult this game have less budget than many top games here and yes i am not jokin even this game got million like 2 mil or less they cant use everything on game as kickstarter thing like you need to give back what you promised to fans.

So with less budget than Scam games on this site let me say this no not bad game sure its boring in some way some reason why they even tried to do this ? no idea even as just visual novel i think this game can be %1000 better yet they choose extra things ruined gameplay here yes this is big no no for many and for me.

Sex scenes amazing they improved even added sex cutscenes really highquality with DLC you can watch 4k plus many gifs like movies in PANDORA and yes yes yes i know its sucks right ? to not fuck girls any way you want or do things here especially with STUDİO FOW quality ? i dont have single idea why we dont have free sex scenes where we choose to what we want thats a BİG SHAME thats one minus here especially big minus.

Really graphics amazing girls amazing sex scenes amazing after seeing this completed i played again damn man why ? why they didnt made game with less game play and more visual novel style ? with free roam sex scenes ? shame really shame but even with all completed game deserves 4 STAR they done good work its not trash many people putting bad reivews for some reason but no other than grind its solid good game.

I really enjoyed the game, the story is quite entretaining and most of the grinding is semi optional. the main story if you dont skip it is quite long so your will be in for 30h+ of game 40+ if you do close to all of the star sistems

Yeah, so I'm conflicted on this. Well to be honest, I'm not. This i s a really bad game. It gets boring so fast. So there's basically two game-play loops. Spacebattles and land battles. Both are pretty cool, the first 10, 20 times you do them? But then you have to do them like 480 times over? And there is not much changing. You're doing the same thing over and over again. For what? For discovering stuff to "level up" your waifus and see them nude and do naughty things OUTSIDE of the game in some in-game studio.

So yeah, the porn part is also separated from the gameplay loop. And this combined makes the game feel like such a waste of time.

You are basically a hamster in a hamster wheel clicking to get points to unlock videos of 3dcg porn without any connection to the story.

I paid for the game because I wanted to contribute to a serious attempt to make an AAA game. The voice acting, graphics, everything is AAA, except for the game itself which is such a bore. I can't bring myself to finish it. And I have tried twice...

Let's get the obviously bad out of the way :

- Everyone has already said it : too much grind, the available galaxy map is filled with arround 500 planets. 1/3 of the planets is just an "assign a waifu and get instant reward" mission. The rest are shmups and tactical turn-based mission that get repetitive really quickly.

- Also a common criticism : Sex scenes not included in the gameplay or story outside of some exceptions (recruitement and devotion quests). Scenes are in a separate mode where you can buy and watch them with resources. That's not how you do porn game, it feels artificial.

- Too few skins for the waifus, and most of them you unlock at the end of the game. Would have been better to give customisation options more progressively.
I heard that they will add skins in futur updates so maybe it's an issue that will be solved.
Also give us a skin for the Huntress without her helmet for christ's sake, she's such a cutie it's criminal to hide it !

- Sometimes they try to get creative with the missions but end up being more tedious than anything else. But hey there's a skip mission option if you fail twice so whatever.

Now the good :
- Animation quality is top notch. Shame that there isn't more camera control during scenes.

- Chara design good and varied.

- Writing isn't really that bad. Yeah there is a lot of corny jokes about sex and dicks but what did you expect. You get used to the self-reference 4th wall breaking jokes fairly quickly as well.
I think what saves it is the voice acting which is REALLY good.
Story is about gathering a crew to fight a totalitarian prude state, nothing groundbreaking, get the game moving forward.


Overall imperfect but still somewhat good game. Still giving a good grade despite all the flaws because it's better quality than most porn games getting released...
If they listen to criticism, they might do really good games in the futur, if they keep creating games that is.

I could write a detailed, elaborate review for this game. I could. Unfortunately, this damn game has SO much grind, nonsense fillers, and exhausting activities, that I do not find myself capable of going into much detail. For this reason, I am going to write a long, yet general overview of my experience with this game. Enjoy.

Let us just start with the positive sides. Animations? Great. Wonderful, even. Writing? The developers are consistently trying into making it Deadpool-esque, fourth-wall-breaking parody. Did they succeed? Well, it's not fantastic, but it didn't make me cringe or anything, so the dialogues themselves are decently okay.

The overall plot is well-thought, with the characters being sympathetic, the main villain charismatic, and you do want to know what happens next, or spend more time with the girls. Which there are eight, each with her own side quest, dialogues, reactions to the main plot events, stuff like that. Mass Effect if it was porn.

The girls are… well, I cannot say that they are written badly. It's just that all of them, except for a few, have personality archetypes based on varying degrees of whoreness. Milf whore who likes big monster dicks, demon pirate whore, porn actress whore, dwarf-esque warrior whore, big mommy warrior whore, catgirl lesbian whore, etc. There is a singular nice girl, who begins as a villain, then joins the team, and a somewhat nice hacker girl. So, if you're into whorish character whose entire personality is to fuck, fuck, fuck, then great! If not, then you are going to feel grossed out, uncomfortable, and regret wasting your time. But they are all pretty hot, at least. Didn't make it better for me.

Animation are great. Voice acting is top-notch, actually took me aback to hear such quality. Sexual scenes are… well, some of them are great. Some are meh. A lot of them involve disgusting xenoporn, futas, comedically large cocks, whatever. Really, some scenes here are so damn gross that urgh. If your tastes are more on the vanilla side of things, then immediate skip. Seriously, believe me. Most of the scenes aren't part of the plot, as they are just a collection of scenes you can grind for, but the ones that are a part of the story can be pleasant. Anyway, nothing to complain about here.

And that's it. Yup, that's all. Gameplay is so atrocious that it should be outlawed on Earth and Moon. And I mean LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF IT. Space battles? Games from the literal eighties did it better. X-Com wannabe ground battles? Ban whoever designed this. No, no, the developers even made such simple things like giving gifts to the girls, or buying collectibles in a shop, or moving around the map, or anything else, unbearable. Not kidding. Whoever was responsible for gameplay aspects, or game design as a whole, should be thrown to the big dicked monsters. Permanently.

With that said, you will spend dozens of hours of your precious life repeating the same tiresome two gameplay loops over, and over, and over again. Now, of course, there is an option to skip it, called “Victory Protocol”. But surprise-surprise, you have to die three times to activate it. Think it's going to help? In space battles, you will have to waste about three minutes on a single level. And ground battles can't really be skipped this way, because dying there takes a million years, about as much as to win them. Ugh.

The ending is abrupt and with a hint for sequel, I imagine. So, is it worth playing? If you have a lot of time to waste, and don't mind grinding for many, many hours, to see a bit of a decent plot and nice female characters? Yeah, go ahead. Personally, I regret the time I wasted on this, and would've been very angry if I valued my time in any way or capacity. Why am I writing this? God, I am so tired…

5/10 on a good day.

Brilliant in so many ways. Well written characters, great stories, fun world building, hilarious dialogue. Its like the characters are a love letter to all the horny comedies from the 2000's. I miss that era.

Game play is well fleshed out too. jumping between stick shooter and isometric turn based team battles.
I enjoy asteroid like shooters and the challenge level on this is pretty well balanced as the game wont let you upgrade until you get through parts of the story and the battler mode give an easier but fun challenge too.

Biggest thing in this game besides the visuals of course is the voice acting. you can tell the actors all had a bit of fun with this one.
Well done Studio FOW. Im picking this up on steam to support the developers.

What can I say? It's ass. Humour is dimwitted and abrasive and feels forced like three day constipation. I get it that it's a pee-pee game but chill.. not everything has to be a dick joke. Space combat eats a fat dick but that grid jumping combat felt natural, even fun at times without overstaying it's welcome. Considering where this game came from number of animations was oddly low and static. Like the whole game they're technically pretty and functional but man.. the constant dick jokes.

Would've definitely refunded if I had to.

Smut game with actual gameplay. You can actually explore the universe and progress through it instead of visiting the same 5 places over and over to try and unlock new "scenes". The voice acting is amazing and these are waifus you could actually classify as waifus.

I'mma gonna say it. I like this game a lot, but MAN did the story suck dick worse than any of the porn scenes in the game. For transparency I was a backer and played almost every version of the game as it was coming out up to Sova part 2 (save structure got changed and I really couldn't be bothered to replay it at the time).

The Visuals and the audio - bundled together because there is nothing to say about it besides it looks and sounds stellar. They nailed the look and sound they wanted for this game and I greatly enjoyed both.

Overall World Building and Lore - I enjoyed it more than the story and gameplay. Why I say that I will continue in later segements. But suffice to say that it it vibrant, interesting and fleshes out the galaxy very well.

The Jokes - some land and some don't. And some are the planet "Fuck That". NGL that one got me.

Gameplay - Space combat is great full stop. Ground combat is kinda ass. It got a LOT better over the years of updates, but its really monotonous and boring. I legit didn't need to use any mantics besides the first 3 you unlock even when swapping girls for the exp.

Devotion - Fuck me sideways. Felt like I was grinding PoE again. And for what you might ask? Close to nada. Sure you get an outfit for Pandora and one long scene and pinup photos... which kinda just exist in a seperate system that is kinda arbitrary overall. Also by maxing the characters you will have damn near double the amount of PP needed to unlock every scene in Pandora making that even more useless.

The Dialogue - I kinda started speed reading halfway though because a) there is much more of it than necessary to get the point across especially in the sidequests, b) its garbage. Don't get me wrong there are standout scenes and the VAs killed it. But you can only pretty up garbage only so much before people start to smell the odor of it again.

The Story - they were cooking something in the early parts and then someone must have lit a fire under their asses and it went from a decently paced story to a breakneck clusterfuck. No spoilers on this one. That comes later and hoooooooo boy do I have something to say about that.

The Empress - now we get into spoilers.
Its really unfortunate since this game could have had more, deserved more in terms of story telling and got a Road Runner ending. Funnily enough I remember them making fun of Mass Effect 3 and that game's ending, and then pulled an Andromeda. Hope we get some DLC to fix it down the line, because it was heavily underwhelming

A lot of fun. Voice acting, character design and great voice acting are what carry this game. Love the Devotion Quests too, I only wish the game had more content like that. Solid writing too, I love the outfit system, it adds a lot of replay value to the gallery and Pandora.