Tacarasu is a game being crafted by a madman and I hope it gains whatever support it needs for him to complete his vision. It is lacking a lot, but it is early in development and it is a solo dev, so my score reflects that.
STORY AND CONTENT: On the surface, Tacarasu follows a pretty tired setup where a fit young man goes out of his way to enter an incestuous relationship with his mother and aunt, who are both blonde, because they usually are. There are a few other women who aren't related to the main character in the mix, but most of the content at time of writing is centered on these two, the mother and aunt, because it usually is. What makes this game unique is that the mechanisms the writer employs in order to orchestrate these relationships are so contrived they become entertaining.
I don't really know where to begin except to provide an example. While sitting down for dinner, the woman who collects the main character's magical semen talks to the player at length about the war that elf pirates had with a coalition of elves and humans, and how the opposition to the pirates summoned a stone demigod (who is also the character that gave you magical semen) and defeated the pirate king, and then without batting an eye talks about how society is built on a foundation of monster fucking. Incredible.
I wasn't sure about this game going into it, but at a certain point the insane shit had me and I needed to see what was up next. The world building comes up with a dumb reason why everyone on the island is a horny incestuous nudist, but builds on those ideas and keeps them consistent in a way that I couldn't stop thinking about; it's the driving force of this review. I hope the developer leans into these ideas and goes absolutely nuts with the cock magic.
ART AND PRESENTATION: The models are fine, with some notable exceptions. The main character looks pretty goofy, and the monster designs are just nude human models clipping into other simple assets. The monster designs are what lead me to believe that the higher fidelity assets weren't created by the developer. I don't find using assets like this particularly offensive either way, and I don't think it is fair to say this is an asset flip. I am also not accusing them of being assets: it's entirely possible that the Dev put their resources all in on the character models, which if this is the case, good choice.
The models for the women are not bad. they are cartoony, but they work. The animations are also fine; nothing stands out as particularly awkward. It is idiosyncratic at worst, passable at best. If we're grading on a curve, for a solo dev working on a project of this scope, the animation being at this quality is excellent. Putting focus on the sex scenes and making sure they're not particularly awkward is the right call. I like the Amazons. I wish there was more of that.
There are no options (for visuals or controls or settings) as far as I can tell. This is more important than the relationship XP tracker. Eat your vegetables, developer. The UI is very "My First Unity Game" but that is absolutely not a priority, and did not functionally affect my enjoyment of the game.
There's also no sound in the game, as far as I know, which is taking a fair bit away from the experience. You are free to explore a large level that is mostly empty, and a soundscape would have done a lot to fill that out. I can imagine the monkey's paw curling, and in a future update we'll have extremely loud waves and endless seagulls (With no option to turn them down). Sound design is needed in a world like this, but it should be subtle and deliberate.
GAMEPLAY: The game sees you walk around a large area, collecting enough food and water to keep your small group alive until the end of the week. Along the way, you can bump into events and cut scenes which are littered around the map. Time does not pass in real time, but in phases (Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night) which move forward at the end of most events, or if you manually press a 'wait' button.
This is the part of the review where I am going to be a little harsh.
The resource collection is both easy and tedious. After the first week it becomes clear that there is no danger of running out of food or water, so long as you keep doing your chores. It is busywork of the worst kind, and the size of the map doesn't help. There are teleport stations which bring you back to camp, but they move time forward, so if you want to see a cut scene back at camp (the cut scenes are tied to progression, so you do want to see them) you're going to be walking back.
The event system is a mixed bag. It does some stuff well, and some stuff quite poorly. I'll get the bad out of the way: It is poorly organized. Some events are only available at certain times of the day, in certain places, and there is no way to track when or where these will be happening. So my days consisted of forgoing the events right in front of me, so that I could do a lap around the island, hunting for anything I could do, and having to walk back after failing to do so. This problem would have been mitigated somewhat if the teleport stations didn't move time forward.
What I actually did like about the event system is that it had me remembering character's routines and locations. I could meet certain characters in certain locations on Mondays and Tuesdays, and it was rewarding to keep track of that and plan around whose relationship I was going to move forward next. There are ways I wish the game would lean into that more, giving characters different evening routines, or having anyone do anything on Sunday.
ADVICE FOR THE DEV: Part of me wants to offer no advice and let this madman cook. But here we go. I am going to try and focus on simple, cheap, actionable ideas that can fix stuff right now.
My first piece of advice is to cut the physical space of world in half. The map is way bigger than it needs to be. Make one beach area, one forest area, and the main camp. Unless the tunnels connecting these areas are hiding loading screens (I am pretty sure they aren't, I jumped out of bounds) make the tunnels way, way shorter. Your level design needs to be compact and easy to navigate. This will do a lot to help the world feel less empty, as everything fun that you can actually do is going to be concentrated, easy to find, and less annoying to find. After that, only expand the world out if you run out of space to add content - you have the opposite of this problem right now, and don't have enough content to fill the massive space you've built.
Make events more accessible. Why can't I go lounge on the beach chairs in the afternoon? Why can't I talk to the research lady in the evening? You know that scene you have with the plant lady? Make that available near the river every single night, while everyone is asleep. You don't need to make new scenes to do this, just make opportunities to interact with the scenes you do have available more often, at more times of day. They also don't need to be sex scenes, just let me find characters during the day and give them a little dialogue. Making it so the characters don't dissapear when not in events will also do a lot to help the world feel full. Even if it's just placeholder stuff, block these characters into the world at every time of day so that I can see them living their lives even if I can't interact with them. Pose them reading books or lying on the beach chairs or something.
I would seriously consider cutting the food and water collection, unless you want to overhaul them to be a lot more fun somehow. In my opinion, all the mechanics in your game should be tied to moving relationships forward, because that is what your game is about and that is where you should be putting every resource you've got. I am not here to put coconuts in a pile every Monday, that does not help me bang the beautiful amazon woman whose magic immunity makes it impossible for her to collect monster cum.
In conclusion: I like this game, I did give it 4 stars after all. What it lacks in polish it makes up for in crazy ideas so dumb they become funny again. It's got a long road ahead of it, but it is worth checking out.
