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

This was a great idea, back when was annouced.
But since then the flood gates of porn games had been open, we are no longer in the times where Hunnie Pop was a surprise.

While this game has been in developement games have come and gone that are better than what Subverse is currently offering, even on going patreon games feel more promising.

IronIcally Studio FOW doesnt seem to understand their target audience, they thought that their experience doing porn videos was transferable to video games. What i mean by this that video games are a time investment and with all the trash that floats in the world of porn games, this breed of gamers tend to be very picky. They know well what they like and are willing to discard a whole game if it has a big enought quantity of something they dont like.

So who is this game for? Harem fans? well those probably dont take kindly to seing the girls getting railed by big monsters.
For fans of super hard-core sex? they might think that the games doenst go far enought and probably dont care about the more vanilla aspects.

It tries to take its story seriously but the juvenile humor kinda ruins it. I tries to be funny and juvenile but it takes itself to seriously for it to work.

The gameplay is boring so out the window go the fans who want a good game along their porn and the gameplay consumes enought time to allianate those who want to just get to the porn.

and neither of those aproaches are revolutionary since are plenty of porn games that tried both concepts and even combine decent storytelling with humor better than subverse.

The animation on the scenes is good but not exactly revolutionary, you can find plenty of games that are on the level or better in this forums and personally i think that having sex scenes without some sort of dirty talk nowadays is just unforgivable

so i ask again, for who is this game?


The only reason this doesnt get a 1 is because of the voice acting, the only people actually doing something good and something that isnt standard nowadays. Sadly despite all their work, im fully convinced that subverse will launch without much fanfare or will just crash into the abyss.

ps: im more than willing to back and change my score if it turns out great after all this time.

I liked the game concept. The actual design is pretty cool, but there is not much variety in the attack animations. As for the kinky scenes, not bad, not good. That's all I can say.

The worst thing about this game is its core gameplay. It's awful. It gives the player no breather. It goes from fight after fight and so on, and all of them are repetitive. I saw one mediocre kinky scene, and the game threw me into a terribly boring loop of fights. It was a nightmare and rather extremely frustrating than fun.

The story is cringe and boring. MC looks a bit like Deadpool, and I guess the developer wanted to make him actually like that, but it failed, in my opinion.

Overall, this game is awful in many aspects. With 50 gigabytes in size, I expected something different. After finally beating one of the more difficult fights, I was happy to see some scenes again, but guess what? I got into another fight instantly.

I couldn't keep up with that any more and pressed alt + f4, removed this trash from my hard drive, and burned my PC.

The Steam trial period before refund is 2 hours. But in first 2 hours of the game there is barely 15 minutes of gameplay with 1 minute of looped NSFW content. Everything else is endless dialogs, without proper animation for talking characters. A game like this should not have such a long opening and a long tutorial. It supposed to be a tactical combat game, but not a linear visual novel. I was very disappointed that the game was so linear. I understand, its an early access, and there is alot of missing content. But I'm sure that many people will refund this game simply because it doesnt show its actual gameplay in the first 2 hours. It's been almost 3 years since the game was released and if this is what it is now, I can't even imagine how mediocre it was when it was first released. Obviously, the fact that it's in early access is no longer an excuse. In every good game story progression and cutscenes are a reward for successful mission, not the other way around, when you are rewarded with few minutes of gameplay for listening a long dialog. Its not so hard to add more random shooting or tactical missions between dialogs, to keep players engaged. I wonder if the developers of this game have ever played an RPG game in their lives because I don't understand why this game is classified as an RPG. You do almost nothing in the game except reading dialog. Even in the sex scenes in the game you have no control and that's not acceptable. That's the whole point of playing this game. The main story is boring and a Mass Effect ripoff. The main character looks like a terrible Star-Lord copy. The game's turn-based isometric combat mechanics are also terrible. I've been seriously bored for the hours I've played so far and I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. If this keeps up, I'll probably have to uninstall the game because it takes up close to 60 GB of space, which is just ridiculous.

This game is probably top 3 in terms of art quality. The rest is okay.
The only problems are the combat being too grindy and the scenes not being tied into the story. Some may like the story, some may not but it IS there.

Some have rated this lower than those games with static images of creepy 3D models from 2005 and that is simply unreasonable. Though more should be expected out of this project considering the budget, overall it's still a very good lewd game. Hopefully one day Subverse's quality animations, models and voice acting will be seen as the standard.

Edit: as of the completed 1.0 release, though the lack of additional content is disappointing and the updated pricing is a bit egregious, I still think this game outperforms most if not all other nsfw games by a VERY large margin, not just in terms of quality but also in terms of the time taken to deliver such a good product. Subverse is what you get when nsfw gaming is taken seriously and Studio FOW have done a great job. So again, within context, for its time, Subverse is a 5/5 and I'm hoping we get more games like it.

It's weird to see so many people passionately hate the game. I can understand to a point, but there's definitely a resentment bias to justify a less than 2.5 score. I could say some of the ship battles are frustrating, but there's a 3 try and skip option. The field battles are fun and short so if you loose for whatever reason, you feel like you wasted 15 minutes instead of an hour. I had the habit to resource grind that I didn't need to because the updates are cheap and not enough of them.... but that's kinda my own fault. The models are absolutely amazing, varied, original, sexy and seductive. The animation is great and I'd like a lot more of them to be honest [again, resource harvesting can leave you with dozens of point to unlock Pandora sex scenes, but there aren't enough scenes]. The tone switch between absurd comedy and serious plot advancement sometimes is too jarring. The goofiness of the main character's tattoos and always wearing panties on his face undermines the seriousness of a character talking about the tragedy of their origin, but there are some interesting and original sci fi elements that is so good.... it reminds me of a Roger Corman movie; "I'd have done it differently" is not an excuse to hate it. I'd say the weakest part is the humor. There are the sex jokes and their level of juvenile potty humor and the B celebrity mocking of people like Joe Rogan, Tim Pool and Gordon Ramsey [it dates the game however relevant it may be now] and the majority of companions are women so you're not going to find any humor there [joking]. Trying to be funny and the material's not that funny is the definition of watching a stand up comedian bombing and that's what it feels like some times, but only gets that bad a few times and some of the jokes like the manically depressed lovecraftian being and the prestigious games journalist got some good laughs out of me. It's so much better than a porn game has any right being and embarrassing enough to not talk about its quality to family and friends. I hope the next few updates are content [maybe alternate costumes/skins for photosessions] and in game upgrades based to spend the saved up resources and I'm hoping the companion quests flesh out the characters emotionally as they are voluptus.

Okay, Subverse

I don't know, I don't know...
I liked the game, honestly, but it can get boring quickly due to the monotonous gameplay and repetitiveness. However, I can't say it's a bad game because it's well-made, not perfect, but designed for players to spend just a few hours a day. You don't have to finish it in one day, you don't need to force yourself to play through it in a single evening. The project is crafted skillfully, and as for the sexual content... well, here I'm not sure. At least, it satisfies me, much better than I expected initially. At least, it's a game, and at least, you can play it. There's lore and silly jokes, in a good sense. Perhaps, the humor present here may not be for everyone, but I can confidently say that if you work all day without weekends and just want to unwind for a few hours without thinking about something serious, then this project is for you. But I could be wrong, personally, for me, this project is like a little relaxation after a hard day of work.

the framing of the game feels disjointed, with you playing a nonsense joke male protag that gets cucked by aliens for the entire duration of the game, which just plays as a glorified grind to unlock stuff in a gallery. i dunno why they couldn't have just done no protag or a female one with no relation to the cast & her own scenes as it would've fit 10x better with the content studio fow produces.

past that the writing is insufferable, but some people might find it funny. the animations and sound and presentation are still nice, but getting past the really weird design choices, the fact that it's basically just a gallery viewer attached to a mid game it all just feels like a huge missed opportunity. maybe just wait for the animations to get uploaded on a video site

Off-the-cuff-Review after playing [0.8.3.2] to Act 2 for now.

I myself have followed the development to a point, but not invested into it before. And as Steam has yet to implement age verification for countries who actually care to enforce their laws, I had to finally go the torrent route.

I will keep it short till I get back to it:

UI:
Good. A bit awkward and currently doing too much heavy lifting in terms of getting to the content, but the menus are quick and easy to learn.

Visuals:
Pretty damn fine. The stylized realism works well and atmosphere, light and bloom goes well with the NFSW subject. Dick-shaped spacecrafts do actually fit in quite naturally.

Gameplay:
Fun and satisfying in the short run. Difficulty is on the low end, except in the story missions. The tutorial will probably kill you in the first attempt, but after that there is little surprise. The "dodge" of the ship being locked to the guns instead of following the flight direction is a bit limiting.

Sex scenes:
The meat and potatoes of the game. Currently, very bare bones and suffering from the fragmentation that is my main gripe with the game at this stage.
BUT: The animation and ability to control the camera in most is AWESOME. Tell me which other game has you trace your sex partner's body and allows you to really immerse yourself into a moment, to watch her tits bounce, her pussy be pounded or look into her eyes while you reach the peak.
If you are a theater of the mind guy, you should have some fun.

Sadly the way you get to it is, as said, fragmented and quite dry, and the amount of content, especially if you don't like Futa and ESPECIALLY if you don't like your Waifus get gangbanged, knotted and bukkakked by alien mutant creature (Studio FOW goodness as I call it), you will end up with 6-10 scenes. Per girl. It is enough, just not expansive. Some also don't have a climax, and you get a bunch of sexy idles as bonus.

Character:
Some of the best in the business. Voice performance is amazing. Sadly, the amount of spoken word in the h-scenes is pretty small, but damn do they make a likable bunch. The camp of the entire setup, plot and humor is also part of their character. They are "larger than life.", which allows for a more expresive approach to their acting, which works quite well. Some accents are a bit heavy, some "sexy talk" a bit try-hard, but they are fine in most cases and regularly have their moments.

Story:
Quite solid. The world is VERY aware that it is a game and a sexy one at that. Interestingly enough: The story, somewhat campy and over the top as it is, is well-structured and tends to follow its own logic. That logic is not realist, main characters are demigods and lay and slay what is put in their way, but it is internally consistent and driven by character motivations, which some resent Hollywood flagship productions have failed at, so thumbs up.

Humor:
I like my Monty Pythons and Naked Gun movies. I like my ASDF movies and YT meme compilation. I like my 1960s black-and-white German Comedies. What I can't stand is what counts as self-aware, reference humor, today sometimes called Marvel humor, as well as gross out humor.

Now... Subverse kinda nailed it, though. It is not laugh out loud funny. There is some cringe. BUT: It works with the world, story, atmosphere and characters. It is a flavor that, like the story, is internally consistent.

Big surprise for me. I thought I would just like the gameplay and h-content and suffer the rest. But it is actually a solid product.

The Big But:
It has been mentioned: The game is fragmented. H-content is mostly dumped in a Gallery system, most screen changes have still loading screens and the music and scenes cut off. It is something that Studio FOW will have to work on, as it is found through in every minute outside of dialog and fighting. Especially the relationship/sex stuff suffers; Character enter, sex condition gets established. You meet it, you have a short talk, sex scenes with some foreplay happens (that is pretty new and a big focus of the resent development, so I want to spread some optimism here) you have a single take fuck, the scene ends. (Killision had some nice after-talk though) It is a buzz killer.

4/5, good, but with flaws, though obvious ones, which are more likely than not to be addressed in further updates. Might take a while though.

PS: Oh, almost forgot the Photoshoot feature. Fun as hell if you have an eye and interest for pin-ups and erotic photography. As everything else somewhat limited, but what is there, is quality.

its by studio fow so the animations and models are pretty solid, but was kinda expecting more from it(?)

it has alot of things it's trying to do, and i do appreciate a variety of things they try to put in, but i feel like they can further develop each part further, like for example, perhaps having more personalized story for each waifu and interactive dates that raises affection instead of simply just giving them gifts, even a tiny short story would be nice. with relevant scenes or dialogues in them, etc.

h scenes just feels really meh due to the fact it isnt very attached to the story and just part by part that you unlock, but its not that bad. just feels like it can be done in a better way, than simply just isolated scenes, with some sort of opening story scene or something.

atm, it still feels very much like a visual novel with mini games in them. i mostly enjoyed everything else, except for the space battles. they feel grindy as hell and feels like they have an unnecessary additional one or two waves in them, and there are so many missions of them, which i really just give up on it. would be nice if while exploring the places here and there, they have dialogues and or scenes in them occasionally to spice things up ig.

voice acting is good tho, and it really brings up the whole game.

The humor is hmm not mine, its bad and not funny
That all of the sex scenes are in pandora are also bad
The side quest are all boring and not funny
The main quest is oke not bad not good

Another minus point are the devotion
So much was promised but little was delivered…
The two that are out are boring…
We need to wait for the porn until 1.0
And when they are really only a few mins long, then the devotion mission are complete crap…


To the combat.
Every combat is almost the same.
The first 10 combat missions where good and I had fun. But after I played more then 20/30 mission of mission that are almost the same its getting boring and because of this I started to skip the combat mission.

Not only this, this game forces you to have as many combat mission as possibles, to farm points for different stuff. This game is extreme grindy when you dislike or find the combat boring.
At least you can skip it after 3 times…

This game is a bad porn game and also in general a bad game.

FOW promised a good game and delivered a bad game…

The jokes in this game are as shallow as the gameplay.
Spacecombat is fast, bright and tedious. Groundcombat is lackluster and a waste of precious game space. The humor in the story is forced and does feels aftifical and is not funny as all, Marvel grade bad.
Now to the only reason you should play the games.
Waifu
Yes they look good and are fully voiced and thats about it.
Do not pay hard cash on this, just wait till some one rips the short vids and makes a PMV/HMV out of the content.
If you do play the game for the Wifu content you will realize that you waste precious hours of your life to get access to 10 seconds of loops that have nothing to do with the quality of their films.
Stay Save

I was one of the original kickstarter founder of the game.
Many years has passed, now we are playing version 0.8 and the game is almost finished.
Regardless of the fact that the game design deviates from the typical success pattern of an sex game and essentially takes a regular game and adds a gallery to it, the game maintains a high level of quality.
Since we know that Studio FOW basically just made Blender videos, I would guess that they hired some developers who had no idea about sex games, only about how to make a good Unreal Engine game.
Yes, the game can become a chore, but thanks to cheats like WeMod you can run through it pretty fast just for the plot and gallery.
The gallery is not perfect either, but all animations are of high quality and although they have a fixed angle, the camera is fixed in a very artistic way.
And most importantly, the gallery provides you with enough content for many fap sessions.
Therefore I fail to give the game anything but 5 stars.

great models
good story
great voice acting
great graphics
ok game play

the game play may be simple but so is many of our favorite game
every thing looks great and thanks to that the combat feels nice
this is 100% of the the better porn game out there !
is it worth the close to 50GB download hard to say it depends on you
i personally have fast internet and around 10TB of space so i cant really answer that ^^

it's good, not only porn : you have to do also space battles but it's actually fun.
Animations are done really well and also sex scene.
Girls are beautiful and the graphics of the game are crazy
So it's a good game

If the same effort made on the animations was put forth on the combat/gameplay, this game would be doing a lot better than it currently is. The gameplay is monotonous, uninspired, and takes far too long to win a battle.

We're here for the boobs, not to slog through a battle only to suddenly have another unexpected group of enemies drop onto the board just as you think you're finished and can go back to seeing more boobs. It makes the experience excruciating when you have no idea when the battle will be over.

I like the characters and animations for the story but i was really disappointed in the minigames between all that.
Maybe someday, the developers will make a better game and gameplay with the main characters and 3d environment.

My main gripes with this game are cringe writing and the fact that juicy scenes are devoid of context and are not integrated into the story, other than it's clear that a lot of talented folks are working on this.

Studio FOW as allways cooking some masterpiece.
Animations without a doubt very fapable.
Alot of interesting characters, Sova is definetely top tier.
The main story can get a bit tideous but it's still very interesting.
The gameplay also is decent for a game is this type of genre.

Pro's
Excellent game, good visuals, chock full of humor, good story, good balance between the gameplay elements and the story.

Cons
Grindy gameplay(could use some more customization to stave off the monotony), sex scenes seems a bit disconnected from the real story.

My review will not be something new and original, but I want to say that this game deserves at least 4 stars with its unfinished version.

And now I will try to explain my subjective opinion:

1) The plot, dialogues, game script, character development. In my opinion, Subverse is the first game where I swam into its lore in a broad sense, ranging from the main missions, which served the goals of our team to save the galaxy, to secondary tasks with good references and humor. By the way, humor is present everywhere here, the self-irony of the developers additionally gives its zest to this game. There are moments in the story where you start to think what will happen next? How will the next events unfold? All this makes us look forward to each update.

2) Gameplay. In addition to listening / reading dialogues, watching cinematics, there are types of activities in the game for a more varied pastime. There are ground battles, where a squad of Manticores with a selected waifu will fight turn by turn with certain enemies, and space battles, where you can already immerse yourself in an action shooter arcade. Here I can say that these types of activities will not come to everyone, since (especially space battles) boredom and a desire to speed up time are possible, but it is likely that with the full version it will be more and more interesting.

3) Graphics, animations, voice acting. Here I can say for sure that I don’t remember a similar game in which, in addition to a specific plot, there is a completely separately voiced character, animation with good facial expressions in the dialogues, you watch videos with special attention, and this is a separate praise for the voice acting, sound directors and animators. Here is StudioFOW shine with their trump card and there are no nit-picking even in thoughts.

4) Waifu deserve special attention, each is special in its own way, talentedly voiced. We are still waiting in future updates of devotion quest, in which our girlfriends will reveal even more. And I will also add that they are not the same in a good way (as is often the case in typical anime harems), namely, each has a different figure, skin color, eyes, hairstyle, height, and so on. That is, everyone will find his favorite to his taste) (I hope Celestina will please with content in the future).

Summing up, the game deserves attention and is worth it to play it.