One of the relatively few porn games which actually try to be "games", integrating "porn" aspect with "gameplay". For that, it has three main parts of gameplay loop — walking around and exploring, "gamified facebook moderation" job, and sex minigame — with a few separate side minigames. However when approached from the actual gaming loop design point, it sadly has multiple major flaws.
One of the subject's omnipresent problem are constant discrepancies in the design. For example, control scheme is competely disarranged: certain sequences force you to navigate the character and interact with objects exclusively by keyboard, while others force you to exclusively use mouse navigation. There are many in-game screen spaces (from MC's computer desktop to the map to the game options and save/load) but controls for all these screens are completely different, up to the means to close/cancel the respective screenspace. A few of these try to be diegetic with its design, but the "close/cancel" button is still always different, always placed in a different spot and sometimes even doesn't acknowledge the "close" function clearly. Furthermore, some interaction sub-screens ca only be closed with a keyboard interaction, having no mouse button to do so.
Walking/exploration loop has this problem in full and high. Certain specific actions (e.g. "shop/activate" and "invoke sex") are bound to Q and E respectively, but both regular "interact" and "talk" functions (including traversal between exploration zones) are generally bound to Space. But wait, it's worse: certain exploration zones have overlapping interactions, where "traverse" is bound on Q but "talk" is on Space (a sane minute design intention but a poor choice from the point of consistency). But wait, it's even worse: in a few places the scheme is reversed, so you have to traverse with Space and interact with Q, often in the same screen with the previous variant.
The "facebook censorship/moderation" game loop is a bit more coherent, but it suffers from the artistic/stylistic incoherency. Image sequences used for procedural generation of "posts" one is supposed to review and censor are a bunch of screenshots taken from a dozen of completely different games, with vastly different artstyles, including both 2D and 3D. It's one of those cases where it would've been sensible to use a pass of AI inpaint with the same core model/lora in order to make it visually consistent in general.
Then there are sex scenes. Most of them are sets of pixel-art animations, in quite a good quality; however, once in a while you suddenly get a full-frame animated-art "cutscene" instead, adding to the stylish discrepancy. It even applies to the essential storyline quests, where "blackmail scenes" are animated art while regular followup "sexual training" is in pixel art. And that artistic approach is even more inconsistent with dedicated and side-quest scenes which vary per-case without any detectable artistic intention behind it.
Some minigames have rule explanation popup only during a first try (with an option to invoke help screen later), but some have it to pop everytime you launch said minigane again and again. Furthermore, the choir singing minigame doesn't just have it everytime, but it doesn't stop the minigame itself in the background, so you'll almost guaranteed to miss/fail a great part of it the first time when you spend your time trying to comprehend the minigame mechanic.
And then there are some "systems" which are declaed but don't properly work, either due to being bugged or just not being implemented properly. For example, during the "facebook moderating" game loop one of the censorship conditions is to look whether the photo is attributed to some "celebrity", and then to check whether the "poster" name coincides with the respective "celebrity" name. However, for all my playthrough I haven't met a single event where the "poster name" would've coincide with the "celebrity name" in the first place, essentially making any "celebrity" notification just a glorified checkbox for instant reject decision. Another example: info sheets for the "storyline target heroines" contain counters for blowjobs, handjobs and titjobs; however these activities are only available during the "blackmailing cutscene minigame" which becomes unavailable anymore after successful completion, thus the respective counters basically mean nothing.
Also, one of my least-favourite "features": locking some essential things behind optional upgrades. In the exploration part, the default walking speed is quite slow; one has to grind for and then purchase not one but two optional upgrades to even bring the movement speed up to the comfortable/intentional.
On top of all this, one has to add extreme bugginess, including literally the main storyline; one of the most important sequence-breaking bugs, blocking the whole progression at a certain point, has only been (reportedly) fixed in version 3.1.4, more than half a year after the game's release. Then there are multiple side bugs leading to either misinformation or incorrect outcomes (e.g. max Chaos tolerance at the top career level being falsely reported as 20 instead of 120 until the actual Chaos value exceeds the former value) presented even at the moment of writing this review.
Overall, the scope, aims, intentions and general effort put into the game are quite great, and pixel animation quality and respective general "sex minigame" design are fine. However, the lack of general design vision and coherent design direction leads to a very weak practical implementation of otherwise good ideas. It's very much like the game has been made by a multiple non-connected people, randomly picking different aspects to program and design by their own volition, and then slapping it together into a single game without communication between each other.
I could've continue and extend my critique on particular designs of almost every aspect, every mechanics and every quest of the game (from animation transitions to sound design), but the review already seems too lengthy for that.
One of the subject's omnipresent problem are constant discrepancies in the design. For example, control scheme is competely disarranged: certain sequences force you to navigate the character and interact with objects exclusively by keyboard, while others force you to exclusively use mouse navigation. There are many in-game screen spaces (from MC's computer desktop to the map to the game options and save/load) but controls for all these screens are completely different, up to the means to close/cancel the respective screenspace. A few of these try to be diegetic with its design, but the "close/cancel" button is still always different, always placed in a different spot and sometimes even doesn't acknowledge the "close" function clearly. Furthermore, some interaction sub-screens ca only be closed with a keyboard interaction, having no mouse button to do so.
Walking/exploration loop has this problem in full and high. Certain specific actions (e.g. "shop/activate" and "invoke sex") are bound to Q and E respectively, but both regular "interact" and "talk" functions (including traversal between exploration zones) are generally bound to Space. But wait, it's worse: certain exploration zones have overlapping interactions, where "traverse" is bound on Q but "talk" is on Space (a sane minute design intention but a poor choice from the point of consistency). But wait, it's even worse: in a few places the scheme is reversed, so you have to traverse with Space and interact with Q, often in the same screen with the previous variant.
The "facebook censorship/moderation" game loop is a bit more coherent, but it suffers from the artistic/stylistic incoherency. Image sequences used for procedural generation of "posts" one is supposed to review and censor are a bunch of screenshots taken from a dozen of completely different games, with vastly different artstyles, including both 2D and 3D. It's one of those cases where it would've been sensible to use a pass of AI inpaint with the same core model/lora in order to make it visually consistent in general.
Then there are sex scenes. Most of them are sets of pixel-art animations, in quite a good quality; however, once in a while you suddenly get a full-frame animated-art "cutscene" instead, adding to the stylish discrepancy. It even applies to the essential storyline quests, where "blackmail scenes" are animated art while regular followup "sexual training" is in pixel art. And that artistic approach is even more inconsistent with dedicated and side-quest scenes which vary per-case without any detectable artistic intention behind it.
Some minigames have rule explanation popup only during a first try (with an option to invoke help screen later), but some have it to pop everytime you launch said minigane again and again. Furthermore, the choir singing minigame doesn't just have it everytime, but it doesn't stop the minigame itself in the background, so you'll almost guaranteed to miss/fail a great part of it the first time when you spend your time trying to comprehend the minigame mechanic.
And then there are some "systems" which are declaed but don't properly work, either due to being bugged or just not being implemented properly. For example, during the "facebook moderating" game loop one of the censorship conditions is to look whether the photo is attributed to some "celebrity", and then to check whether the "poster" name coincides with the respective "celebrity" name. However, for all my playthrough I haven't met a single event where the "poster name" would've coincide with the "celebrity name" in the first place, essentially making any "celebrity" notification just a glorified checkbox for instant reject decision. Another example: info sheets for the "storyline target heroines" contain counters for blowjobs, handjobs and titjobs; however these activities are only available during the "blackmailing cutscene minigame" which becomes unavailable anymore after successful completion, thus the respective counters basically mean nothing.
Also, one of my least-favourite "features": locking some essential things behind optional upgrades. In the exploration part, the default walking speed is quite slow; one has to grind for and then purchase not one but two optional upgrades to even bring the movement speed up to the comfortable/intentional.
On top of all this, one has to add extreme bugginess, including literally the main storyline; one of the most important sequence-breaking bugs, blocking the whole progression at a certain point, has only been (reportedly) fixed in version 3.1.4, more than half a year after the game's release. Then there are multiple side bugs leading to either misinformation or incorrect outcomes (e.g. max Chaos tolerance at the top career level being falsely reported as 20 instead of 120 until the actual Chaos value exceeds the former value) presented even at the moment of writing this review.
Overall, the scope, aims, intentions and general effort put into the game are quite great, and pixel animation quality and respective general "sex minigame" design are fine. However, the lack of general design vision and coherent design direction leads to a very weak practical implementation of otherwise good ideas. It's very much like the game has been made by a multiple non-connected people, randomly picking different aspects to program and design by their own volition, and then slapping it together into a single game without communication between each other.
I could've continue and extend my critique on particular designs of almost every aspect, every mechanics and every quest of the game (from animation transitions to sound design), but the review already seems too lengthy for that.
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