Never has good art been so let down by awful gameplay.
Taffy Tales is a point and click "game" coded in Unity, which would be infinitely better as a linear story coded in Ren'py. Why? Well:
1. You have no choices. Despite the fact that the mission log seems to imply that you can choose to do things in the order you wish, almost all content relies on previous content being completed before it'll even unlock. So you get the non-choice of doing one mission, then still having to do the other anyway. It would be functionally unchanged as a linear story, and the pacing would be improved.
2. Pretending to be a game. This is one of the most common problems in adult games, and it's in Taffy Tales in spades. As is usual in sandboxes, you're forced to grind money to buy items to move the story forward. But there's never any jeopardy: no time limits, no risk, no objective expiring or loss of reputation with a character. You're forced to grind just to add a couple hundred clicks of the mouse to the game. And don't forget exploration! Go places, look at things! Explore, like the adventure games of old! Except you can't. You can only discover things as the mission log updates to allow you to, so it's all just useless locations you can waste time clicking to.
3. The interface. You have a map (a dozen clicks to get anywhere), a mission log (meaningless, as you're forced to do it all no matter what, and it doesn't track missions properly, see below), an inventory that you literally never need to see, and an MC stat page that you literally never need to see. The game also tracks the day and time, which is completely irrelevant 99% of the time. All of this represents an enormous amount of unnecessary work on behalf of the dev.
4. The interface part 2: everything is slow. Everything you can interact with can be examined for no reason. You get the exact same repeated message when you look at something every time you look at it. "Ah!" you might think, "but then I'll know when something changes and I'll know to check again!" Wrong. Whenever you actually need to interact with something, you get a brand-new prompt. So it's all useless clutter. But let me give you a better example: sleeping. If you want the day to cycle, you click a dozen times to get into your house. You click your bed. You click sleep. You now see some useless dialogue about the MC sleeping. Then you see him strip. Then lay in bed. Then fade to black. Then the game title, Taffy Tales, pops up, along with the number of days you've spent in-game. On day 1, this is slow. Then, as days go by, this becomes frustrating. Then annoying. Then infuriating. By the time I was on Day 80, I hated that I had to spend 20 seconds just watching the MC sleep in what should be an instant process. And this is just one area; this sort of design is pervasive throughout.
5. Bugs. The game is full of them, some game-breaking, some not. The dev seems to patch relatively quickly, but certain things remain. The most obvious is that the mission log informs you of "NEW MISSION!!" seemingly randomly. Sometimes, nothing is there at all; sometimes you've completed a mission, so the new mission is actually a mission leaving your log; sometimes you get a new mission with spoilers for something you haven't even come across yet. It's a mess.
But that's enough game design talk. Now onto the mediocre: the story.
You play a young man with a split personality. You might expect this to mean that there is some interplay between the sweeter, lighter side and the darker, more aggressive side of his mind. Nope! The dev wants to have their cake and eat it too. So your sweet side goes, "noooo, don't be mean!" while the dark side takes complete control and is a sadist to every woman in the entire game. Only in the very most recent updates does the MCs dialogue with a character determine how lovingly/sadistically he treats them. The entire split personality system is clearly designed not for having internal conflict, but for having a sadist path and an NTR path through the game. This is, to my mind, a lost opportunity for some interesting storytelling.
And now the only good part of the game: the art. The art has an interesting and exaggerated style (that I think of as 'off-brand Incase', because the influence is obvious) that is generally consistent throughout. I say generally because, while the portrait images of characters are well-crafted, when characters are in sexual situations that involve different positions their designs can be somewhat inconsistent. There are also occasional inconsistencies between the art and the text. One character is described as having a very small penis (thumb-sized) and is then drawn with an at least 8 inch cock. Strange. But the art is definitely the main draw of the game, and if the style appeals you'll enjoy it throughout.
All in all, I would say that Taffy Tales is a sloppy effort. There are a number of missed opportunities and outright infuriating design choices that subtract substantially from decent writing and good art . I wouldn't consign it to the garbage heap, but I won't be waiting with baited breath for the next release.
