HTML - The Contest at Houndgate [v2.5 Hotfix 1] [EroFlair]

I liked the game. But I'll give it a 4/5 rating for now because there is a flaw.

It seems to me that most events in history happen in some kind of forced mode. I was particularly surprised by the scene where the heroine is asked to be a footstool when they first meet. And all this is happening in front of a crowd of people, okay it would be a conversation between two people..... Would you offer such a thing to a recruit coming to you, even if he asks for "any job"? What's even weirder is that the heroine might agree to it.

Excellently written with a ton of customisation options that actually change things. I also just vibe with the general style and idea of the game too. And it's appreciated that it's trans friendly! Definitely one of the more promising text-adventures I've seen on here in a while.

Edit: Saw the other review talking about broken links and the like - while I ran into 2-3 of those, the vast majority worked perfectly. Not sure if I was just luckier with that or there's been a bugfix.

Very early build, but it's enough to keep an eye on. Text based cyoa style game, customizable MC, writing is polished and knows its style. The planned options seem interesting both from an adult perspective and an adventure game perspective. It's all text but works well, and hopefully can deliver on plans.

Way too early to have enough content to really know what it will develop into. Lack of images isn't a problem, but know there aren't any yet, and might not have any. It's primarily text.

There is one simple issue right now with how the text is presented, you are presented the text, then have either an option or a click through, but it just places new text and it's hard to tell where you are reading from. A new screen isn't necessary but the option or some other method of keeping the reader's place is necessary. As it is, it is disorienting. I would suggest the author check Fenoxo or other similar style games to see how they do it.

It's hard to rate the story thus far of course, we are too early. But essentially you are an adventurer starting off in a town, you need to do jobs to make money to pay your entry fee into a contest. I suspect there will be combat but haven't really gotten to that yet if it's in this build, maybe classes, training, etc. There are guilds, I expect romances, different kinks and relationships are possible. I so far have tried it with a female protag and it looks good, I'll also try with a male too to see the differences, but so far so good.

Update: Tried out both male and female and tried most options. Couldn't trigger most of the scenes, there were bugs and quests just wouldn't update. I think this needs some playtesting and QC. Still hopeful it develops better, again very early build, I am reviewing the first release.

Good luck to the dev. With text maybe releases can be quick too until content is large enough, I wouldn't even worry about art yet.

Update 9/22: Dev has been active with patches and fixes, next release is around the corner. Bumping this up to 4 stars. From the notes issues have been fixed, I have not played the hotfixes but I will check out the next update. I expect to add more and bump up to 5 stars after a couple of updates. Reviewing a first release is hard, and I wanted to get at least a review up since there were none, so that people have an idea and check it out. Hopefully more players and more reviews going forward.