Others - The Shimmering Horizon and Cursed Blacksmith [v0.82f] [Ason]

Good gameplay and bad everything else.
First, I don`t understand why adult content even here. It`s don't motivate you. It's not made for pleasure. It`s don`t fit in the story. It`s don`t needed for that type of the game.
Second is story. All of this "mystery", curses, lost memories and other weird things from addict mind just kill gameplay vibes. You kill things, smash things, compose loot to weapons and kill&smash again. Its a nice orc game. Realy. Orc from warhammer fit perfectly here. Also they respawn naturaly and you don`t need any weird stuff to explain it.
But gameplay is good. Rogue-Lite with enough abilities and gear options to keep things interesting a long time. Combat mechanic with turn based and positioning is nice too. Especialy in the modern world where devs makes fast pacing realtime games or default RPGM combat. Playing something different is like a breath of fresh air.

The Shimmering Horizon and Cursed Blacksmith - Early Access Review by Xbob1
Reviewed on Game Version: 0.82f

Notice: I intend to return and review the game again upon release in case some of the things I mention are fixed/changed upon full release.

Introductions / Summary:
The Shimmering Horizon and Cursed Blacksmith is created by Ason, the same developer who made Cage of Succubi a while back and I highly recommending giving it a shot if you want a idea of this developers general abilities. This game is a massive leap forward in terms of effort and development from the development team which I believe is around 5 individuals with extra help here and there. Overall I would argue this game has some of the best gaming mechanics/gaming quality you could find on this site but there are a few major issues that bring this game down that I will get into later that stop it from being a 5/5.

Story / Plot:
Section Rating: [3/5]

Spoiler: Story Spoilers

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Overall the story is mysterious, giving you little bits of information to keep you captivated but never enough to give you the full story. However if you want to collect all possible memories, the process has been described as tedious and even boring by some players but overall I really enjoy this story and how its portrayed. However without a completed game, I refuse to go above a 3, for all I know the ending could be incredibly unsatisfying but only time will tell.

Game Mechanics / Gameplay
Section Rating: [5/5]

Let me start by saying this, the game is difficult and designed to be so and a lot of people are going to find that annoying but honestly I like challenging games because it makes overcoming that challenge all the more rewarding. It's one of those games where if you have no clue what you are doing then yeah its going to be a poor experience but actually taking the time to learn the mechanics of the game and playing it like a actual game is how you have fun with this title.

Mechanics of the game are diverse with many things to take into consideration. HP, SP, Levels, Blockrate and of course Erosion. You can lose all your HP but that only knocks you down with a erosion increase each time you go down, it is only when erosion reaches its max where the next time you go down, you go down for good and lose most of the items and souls you had on you. Erosion also increases with H attacks from enemies along with using your powerful weapon which increases your erosion with each use.

Now for the fun part, making weapons. You have a blacksmith level which increases when making any weapon and reading memories shards related to blacksmithing. The 3 values of forging a weapon are Tenacity, Mass and Magic. Tenacity increases the weapons durability, Mass increases the size of the weapon and Magic influences the elemental damage and abilities of the weapon. Picking the right values can lead to some powerful weaponry, and remembering what makes what is really valuable even with the predict outcome skill you obtain later on in the game.

Dungeon expeditions are not quick unless you are over leveled for the area. Enemies only move when the player moves and so when you encounter large amounts of enemies, you should consider your options and what to do before making a move. You can also find lots of machines and statues in the dungeons which are randomly generated on each floor like the dungeon layout themselves, meaning every expedition will be different. But these machines and statues can often give the player special benefits such as recycling items for souls or exchanging souls for random items. I really like the randomizer as its possible to get items that can't be accessed on your floor, so you might get a rare material from the 3rd dungeon level while only being on level 2. Also try to kill as much enemies as possible as you can unlock special, one time souls that boost your stats permanently such as higher erosion capacity or more carry weight etc.

When at the home area, you can interact with companions such as Doroelle which will benefit the player. In the case of Doroelle, she can exchange your collected souls for general powerups like higher blacksmith level cap, increased weight capacity, reduced erosion speed as so on, these are very important if you want to progress.

Now for some general tips:
1. For the 1st boss, eliminate the mob spawners as quickly as possible, then dodge the giant knight with jump abilities, it is also weak to Light elemental attacks.

2. For the 2nd boss use elemental weapons to take out the legs then once the head falls down, use the cursed sword abilities to get as much damage in as possible.

3. For the 3rd boss, do not rush through the battle as the boss will teleport away when it enters it next phase. Simply bring a lot of weapons and use abilities with area of effect to harm as many enemies as possible with each attack. You can also use confusion stones to confuse all enemies around you and make them much easier to fight. For the boss itself, its weakness is to darkness so using cursed sword abilities when its exposed is really powerful.

4. THROW THINGS. Don't sit there and wait for enemies to come and hit you, if you got random trash that you don't need, throw it at the enemy. Swords near breaking or random scrap do great amounts of damage. Just don't throw swords with lots of durability because the durability loss upon throwing a weapon is quite a lot. Also when throwing potions, make sure to check what the potion does as the effect is applied to the enemy when thrown, so don't throw HP potions because that will just heal the enemy.

5. If you don't really know what items to stock up on before a boss fight, my recommendation is both soul drops and explosives. Soul drops heal 30% of erosion, allowing you to use the powerful cursed sword and then heal the erosion after, basically giving you free powerful attacks. Then explosives can be used either for general mass damage, hitting multiple targets at once and quickly dealing with mob spawners, which is usually the main cause of early player deaths.

Music / Sound Design:
Section Rating: [4/5]

Music and Sound both play a very vital role in immersion and it does a really good job at providing that mysterious/otherworldly feeling to the game. And I honestly found myself pausing for a few moments to take in the scene.

Music can have a incredible impact on your mood during certain sections and during the boss fights especially, you really feel the moment, fighting till your last cracked sword and last soul drop as you fight these titans of bosses. Even when exploring the dungeon, stuff like the wasteland battlefield of the 3rd level has a really nice charm to it, a feeling of never ending conflict and hopelessness while still giving you the energy to push forward.

H scene sounds are really good and I believe use some of the same effects from their previous title. Regardless the music down to the sounds really do a great job at making those scenes feel a lot nicer.

As far as I know, none of the sounds are custom and are simply apart of the RPGM, so no custom bangers I am afraid (at least to what I know because a lot of it was recognizable from other RPGM games)

Erotic Content / H Scenes:
Section rating: [3/5]

Erotic content is arguably the weakest element of the game with that content being divided between companions and lewd enemies within the dungeon. When it comes to erotic scenes I believe the best ones have a balance, the art could be super great and animated but if its lacking the dialogue then it can feel rather hollow and the same applies to games that focus too much on text without changing or even giving visuals to a scene.

In regards to companions, the content is satisfying with the scenes being animated and voice acted with good sound and what I would argue to be the perfect length of dialogue with enough to keep the scene interesting while not giving so much text that the scene starts to go stale. The companion scenes are just great and my only complaint would be that I wish there was more, so far its like 2-3 scenes between the 5 companions which is alright.

Where the game really begins to disappoint is with the fact that none of the enemies have any defeat scenes or just scenes in general to go with them. You put all the effort into making these really cool characters and then have them voice acted and animated AND write mini backstories that the player can collect and read like other memories to learn about the character. But in the end it just feels like wasted potential as its basically a looping animation with none of the charm of the companion scenes which leaves you going "Well that sucks."

Overall I wish they did more with the enemies, they have everything they need so what's stopping them from giving us at least 1 scene per enemy aside from some extra time writing? Companions really do all the legwork for the Erotic content of this game while the lewd enemies just feel like filler. If only they could give the same love to the enemy scenes as they do the companions, the erotic content alone would be a 5/5 for me.

Conclusions:
In conclusion, The Shimmering Horizon and Cursed Blacksmith is a wonderful game that shows that even porn games can have some amazing and engaging gameplay to go along side the erotic content. Companion characters really carry the game in the erotic scene area but its the lacking attention to the main enemies of the game which stop this good game from becoming a great one for me. Overall, give it a try, especially if you like difficult games and there is still time to fix these minor issues with the game and really earn that 5/5 score but we will see how things are on full release.

Final Score: 4/5 - A Good Game

Slow and grindy but with one of best "actual gameplay" games on this site. Its actually fun to just play it for rpg elements and to progress. Music is decent with dark souls atmosphere, graphics and ui are on satisfying level.
H scenes are unique and well made, one of better artstyle in 2dcg genre. Animations could be slightly more fluid with more quality elements but overall its very solid. One of my first H games and favorite ones.

v0.65

Holy shit... this game is a masterpiece and it hasn't even been completed yet, let me explain it to you.

So, you have your typical rpg maker movement controls, but the battles are happening directly as you walk around from bird eye's point of view, due to the square grid of each map you can move in not 4 but 8 directions, the enemies will chase you relentlessly so a good strategy is to provoke them, run to a tunnel with width 1 square, sit at the tunnel and let the enemies pile up one by one and you fight them one by one. You should know that on each turn you and the enemies can do one action, so if you are surrounded you get attacked by everyone at once, so you need to focus on 1 on 1 fights in the tight corridors.

Weapons you have and weapons the enemy has can activate abilities, these can include:

dash strikes 2 tiles
jump strike 2 tiles distance
shockwave ground jump
ranged attack with infinite range, single enemy
magical ranged AOE attacks
healing spells
spells that heavily increase block/parry chance
AOE long ranged line attack
the ablility to destroy walls like you are playing fucking minecraft, lol, though not very useful in combat
and many more...

Speaking of weapons - to obtain them you need to craft them. How does that work? Well, when you fight enemies and progress through levels you get raw materials, these materials can be used to craft knives, swords, hammers, aces, healing staffs, and many others. Depending on the quality of the materials used you get different quality weapons. After a weapon is created you have the ability to enhance the weapon, this can be used to enchant magical stones to a weapon to give it extra magical damage or to add more raw materials to a weapon to increase base damage. There are no crafting recipes - the same materials can produce 4-5 different weapons, well excluding the special enemy weapon drops which are guaranteed to let you craft the enemy's weapon, those are very powerful so use them with care. Later on you unlock the ability to see what your matarials will create.

Oh and, did I mention that the main protagonist whips out a blacksmith anvil out of thin air, IN THE MIDDLE OF COMBAT WITHOUT GIVING A SINGLE FUCK and crafts these weapons? He is amazing.

Every weapon has its durability, normal attacks cost 1 durability and abilities cost 2 or 3 roughly, so you need to be strategic in your crafting or you might end up with all your weapons broken in the middle of combat. Once a weapon is destroyed after durability reaches zero a scrap is saved into your ivnentory, so if you find good materials you can craft a good weapon from the scraps.

Using a weapon's special abilities costs not only durability but also stamina, or SP. so again, plan your moves ahead, you have all the time in the world, this is a turn based game system.

Here is an exploit I loved to use: the best way to heal up is to craft a staff by combining one material with as many health potions as possible, the healing staff now has passive health regen, a LOT of health regen, so you can walk around empty corridors with the staff equipped to heal up back to max and this costs 0 SP and 0 durability. I love it.

So, the combat, how is it? Well it's hard, so hard in fact that you might think about rage quitting, but the addictive gameplay loop of fighting, crafting and fighting again will keep you playing. Each ability of your weapons has a fantastic animation and not some shitty half assed visual effect.There's save points on some floors in the dungeon, but those are not very frequent, at a savepoint you can safely teleport back to base with all of your souls intact (that is currency) but if you die you lose a percentage of those souls and can only bring back N items with you, so save often.

While exploring the dungeon your corruption meter grows, if your health reaches zero you don't die, instead you gain a lot of corruption and revive, reviving gives you one powerful AOE attack. when you corruption reaches max though, dying is a real death. There are upgrades to make this curse much weaker later on.

Boss fights:
Boss fights are FUCKING HARD and very fun and satisfying once you beat them. On your first encounter with a boss you will never be able to kill them. Let me tell you my strategy:

1. Farm the dungeon repetitively, craft the most powerful weapons possible and stash them in the chest, also stash anti corruption potions in the chest, also stash focus potions in the chest.

2. Repeat the dungeon until you unlock all of the purchasable upgrades.

3. Grab all the good shit from the chest and attack the boss.

4. Use Focus potions to parry un-dodgeable big boss attacks.

5. Use the anti corruption potions to stay alive.

6. Use the powerful weapons you brought to kill the boss.


You will notice that there is a point to teleport back home before each boss, however you cannot save there normally. Many people will say that this is bullshit because if they die to the boss, and they will die many times, they have to restart the entire dungeon level to try again, instead of respawning before the boss. That is very annoying, yes, but there is an exploit to fix this. The game has a "emergency save" which functions as a normal save but from ANY POINT ON THE MAP. It occupies your autosave so it instantly gets overwritten when you try to load it ad progress forward. This is done to prevent save scumming, but joke's on them, this CAN BE EXPLOITED TO SAVE SCUM EVERYWHERE! Let me explain, so you go to the room before the boss, you activate the emergency save, you close the game, you go to the save folder, you make a backup of all the save files. you load up the save in game, you die to the boss, you exit the game, you bring back your backed up save, you open the game and VOALA, you can LOAD the emergency save right before the boss You are welcome.

The bosses are large, they have big fully animated AOE attacks, and they will be a challenge for you, so use my strategy and be prepared for the worst.

Now about the H-scenes
Honestly the gameplay is so much fun that you will see the H-scenes as you die in the dungeon and not the gallery, most of the scenes are game over H-scenes, very well animated and fully voiced, there are also a few wholesome scenes with your companions back at the home base. Even if there weren't any H-scenes the game would still be a 5/5 rating cause the gameplay is FUN.

The story is very mysterious, you are a cursed adventurer who keeps dying and respawning, collecting souls, but that's not too important, cause the gameplay is FUN.

I took me 17 hours to beat the version 0.65, the game is a masterpiece and needs to be shared and highlighted by the users of f95zone.com a lot more. Currently there's only 3 bosses, game isn't finished.

There is even a statue showing every single patreon supporter's donations, this is the first time I have seen this and it really shows the contributors.

First things first, this is one of my favorite games in terms of gameplay on this site. I come back to it every time there is an update that bring new levels to go through.

So why the 4 stars?
Let's just say I rate this game great, specifically as a regular rogue like game. The game has a very interesting crafting system, skill combinations, turn-based combat system, dungeon progression system. In general, this game is just fun to play. Also, the game is not easy, you have to tinker with the bosses, however, as well as in Dark Souls, which the authors were clearly inspired by. I am wildly discouraged by the fact that people who are clearly used to playing visual novels only, with no gameplay, at the slightest difficulty running to cry to the developer to reduce the difficulty of the game. Personally, for me, it kills all the fun. The difficulty was what fueled the interest in me, trying different combinations of skills, potion sets and so on. I went through everything before the nerfs. Not on the first try, of course, but it was a really interesting challenge. In general, you can see from other reviews that people give the game a low rating just for difficulty.

So, why is it 4 stars. The main drawback is the actual porn element. In the game porn content is divided into two types: in the first, enemies will rape you if your health drops to zero, and in the second, you will be assaulted by secondary heroines to have sex in your hub (most often while you are sleeping, which is also essentially like rape). The main character is mute, he has no personality, which in my opinion is very important in games of this nature, where in addition to NPC characters, there are main characters with personalities. It doesn't make you feel like you're really building any kind of relationship with them. Yes, they could take away the dialogues on behalf of the main character, but instead they could add the ability to choose your answers, so it would not hurt the immersion and you would at least feel like you are in the guise of a character. The second point, the way the characters interact with you, essentially the whole progression of the relationship looks like this: you do some request from them, after which they throw themselves at you to fuck you. Some of them throw themselves at you for no reason at all, because they are lustful by default. Is it interesting? I would say no. There's no sense that you're really building a relationship with them, performing favors for them is an excuse, the main character is empty as a person, and the heroines fuck you just because you're the main character and the author wanted them to.

The sex scenes themselves are animated, and generally of acceptable quality (they're short), but again, because of the lack of context - stupid rape - they don't arouse interest.
Due to the lack of any kind of leverage on the part of the protagonist over the characters around him, the whole sex component just seems boring. It is unclear why these girls in the dungeons want to rape you in the first place. They're not there alone, there's a bunch of monsters, tentacles, pumped up men, why the hell would they want the main character? There are notes in the game, but from what I've read, none of them explained anything in any way. And the rest I just found no desire to read, as they're just huge walls of text (just like my review) with a vague or none existent connection to the current events. But even if, for whatever plot reason, they need to fuck the main character, it still doesn't change how boring it presented. Essentially, it's like porn, with people fucking each other in an unemotional way, without any story, without any personality. If you like watching the act itself and don't need any other details other than the process itself, then maybe this won't be a problem for you. The very nature of adult games allows you to unfold characters, to give meaning to events and finally endow characters with personalities the player would sympathize with, rather than making them mindless meat to fuck with. They could make some kind of interaction with them, for example, that the main character talks to them about something before the fight, or that one of these characters considers the main character a worthy mate, because this and that. Or you could make the main character himself capture some of them, and then interact with them in the hub.

Overall, as I said, the game is very good in terms of gameplay: interesting bosses, enemies using skills, each of them requiring a different approach. The turn-based combat system, which forces you to plan your actions, a large number of skills, variations in the creation of weapons with which you go into a dungeon. Also, I might mention as a plus, the Dark Souls atmosphere, however those characters that are in our hub are heavily out of place in it. In fact, except for the keeper (the girl who helps us raise levels) everyone else acts like they came from a generic slice of life anime, except they're also lustful on top of it. Personally, it breaks the immersion completely for me.

Wish there was an 'easy' mode with infinite weapon durability - while I understand this defeats the point of the genre, I'd love to play though and explore the world and fight monsters without the stress of resource management and remembering what I need to use to craft certain important weapons.

This deserves someone between 4 and 5 stars so I gave it a 5. The art direction, music, sound design, and animation are genuinely beautiful and the game has unique and innovative rogue like dungeon crawler mechanics where you craft weapons on the fly. If you like resource management, dungeon crawling, and spreadsheets/memorization this game is GOATED.

I think the game difficulty and the (mostly) h-scene on loss mechanics make it hard to function well as a porn game however. While the content is good (and there's a lot of content) it's not trivial to unlock new scenes, and the resource management side of this game can be particularly punishing. Just like real life, I don't want to have to lose all my currency and material possessions to have sex lol.

Overall - I would say I'd like to see the developer try their hand at a non h-game, or modify/create game that has varying difficulties. Those are the main obstacles for this becoming an all time great game (and it's very close to being one!)

Honestly, while the erotic content is very well done, it's not really my type. My reason for the 5 stars lies solely on this game gameplay. It's actually just a fantastic addition to a genre that lies mostly forgotten. If you're curious about the erotic content, look at the other reviews.

Actually fun! The movement is smooth and the gameplay is your standard dungeon crawler (?) but its damn fun. The girls are pretty and they are animated AND they have voices! I thought this would be a female protag with that thumbnail in the front but im not disappointed at all

Amazing and addictive game.
You come for the booty but you stay for the gameplay.
Nice dubbed and animated scenes with a solid gameplay, interesting story and characters.
5/5 can't wait for this to be finished.

PROS
+ Good story
+ Good CG art
+ Good gameplay mechanics
+ Good BMG
+ Good MC
+ Lot of costume
+ Good scene
+ Good OST

I would give 5/5

since i have OCD, this game is perfect for me.... Hope there will be more content and map to explore .

Decent Rougelite but Not Fappable (Review) [ver. 0.61]
Total playtime: 10h+
Number of faps: 0
Finished the game?: Not yet

Game-play (4/5)
It's a rougelite 2D dungeon-crawler. The game is based on a crafting system. You craft and upgrade weapons to fight and kill the enemies you encounter. The game is grindy if you want to progress through the levels. You need to level up many stats using a souls-like mechanic. However, the game engine is outdated compared to other games in this genre. Any other indie or AAA game in this genre is much better than this game.

Sex(1/5)
It has 3D animated loops as H-scenes. No customization for characters. It has voice-acting. It has a H-scene viewer. However, H-scenes happen when you lose to elite/rare mobs. You need to button mash to get out of these scenes. The H-scenes are very short, definitely not fappable. Each H-scene has 2 variations. The only reason I'm giving 1 star is because it is voice-acted and animated.

Verdict (2,5/5)
The game is solid for what it has to offer. Even though it's not up to par with other games in the genre, it's still fun to play if you enjoy playing rougelites. The main problem is that every second you spend playing this game is a second not spend on playing a better rougelite. That's because the H-part this game offers is not good enough. If you are playing this game to fap, just don't. All I can say about sex is that it exists. It's in the game. You'll encounter it from time to time. You'll appreciate the effort put in to it but you definitely won't fap to it.

In short, the game tries it best to be a good rougelite but cannot reach the quality it strives to reach mainly due to the outdated game engine. On the other hand, it doesn't put enough effort in the H-content which makes this game a "barely" adult game.

Why only 2 categories (game-play and sex) for the review?
I only care about how good and entertaining the game-play (mechanics, replay-ability, enjoyment, etc.) and whether I can fap to the h-scenes. The rest doesn't matter to me.

Animations are amazing and the gameplay is super fun - maybe a bit challenging though (rip me to the first boss) deff recommend giving it a shot!

Shares a lot of similarities to dark souls mechanics (Souls, item loss on death, durability) but they complement the game overall, and is a nice change of pace to games that dont offer much in the way of challenge of gameplay

Great game, a little too hard for my tastes tho, really wish there could be an easier mode

If you want to know about the gameplay, it's basically Pokemon Mystery Dungeon with a few more tweaks, not realtime RPGM fights like these other reviewers, who apparently did not understand how the game works, said before complaining.

Bad enough to be popular.

- Empty, lifeless environments
- Stock 'wander aimlessly around here' soundtrack for most areas
- Screen flashing and explosion sounds whenever you do anything
- In copying the generic and mindless Dark Souls, its made something mediocre even worse.
- Realtime buttonmash in an RPGmaker game. I'm not kidding.
- Yet another sexgame that punishes the player for watching sex scenes. Dear developers; a Limited Time Only!! Enjoy It While It Lasts! sensation doesn't make your content any more special.

remove armor boss, i keep killing it but it comes back to life and doesn't tell you what to do. It feels like endless mode and has wasted a lot of my time. If there is some secret event that you need to trigger, they have not made it clear.

This game is great.

The core gameplay loop is definitely challenging, but fun as hell once you learn it. You need to constantly be picking up materials and crafting new weapons in your downtime, and not be afraid to use potions whether it be to heal yourself or debuff your enemies.

Also, all of the girls have two animations with two dubs each, a foreplay (blowjob, titfuck, etc.) and a main (sex). You can tell that a lot of care was put into the animations, and they are all more than fappable.

The combat is a neat thing where its turn based on an RTS style grid. Every time you act, your enemies act too. This can be exploited to always let you get the first hit in any confrontation, or to easily get out of dodge if something goes wrong. It might take a bit to learn, but it is well worth it.

In conclusion, play this game. That's it.

Gameplay and game design both very poor. Only decent thing which brought this game above one star for me is the animations. But even then, that is over shadowed by the dreadful game play.

There is a final boss at the end which is terribly ambiguous on what's required. I've done so much damage to it that it's gone dormant about 5 times, just to get back up and start fighting again. No indication whatsoever on how many more times I have to knock it down or if there is a certain condition that needs to be met. It's essentially survival mode when the game design is this bad.

Not playable, will need many tweaks and fix the cursed armour fight.

i couldnt fap playing this, i was just too into the gameplay and atmosphere lmao
the game is great, i mean, i didnt get too far to see if its well balanced and if it keeps interestinng, but by the looks of it, it does.

[v0.14] review

Wow, real time combat in the RPGM engine. Good job ruining what could otherwise have been good... Real time keyboard fighting has never been, and never will be any good. Especially not in the RPGM engine. Why do devs fucking do this I don't understand!?!?

This combat system is fucking ASS and frustrating as hell. The H scenes seem nice, but there's no way in hell I'm going to suffer through this shitty ass combat.

This game is a hard pass. I'm giving it a 2 instead of a 1 though because the H-scenes are well above average.

Was going to try it out for a few minutes and wait for it to be complete if I liked it but this game basically plays like a One Way Heroics game and IT'S JUST LIKE DARK SOULS so I couldn't help but play it for 3 hours straight.

Not having an infinite chest in the base is annoying and I'd have liked a companion system with the monster girls but it's still real good. Best of luck to the devs!