WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS JUST MY OPINION, BUT MY OPINIONS ARE OBJECTIVELY CORRECT
Home, where I learned the truth about despair, as will you. There's a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth... Hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy... So simple... And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying. I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope.
-Bane, The Dark Knight Rises
First, I just want to say that I get it. I get why people are jerking this game off, I get why people are giving Bo Wei positive reinforcement, and I get why people are saying that this is better than Warrior’s Guild. I was on the Tower of Trample thread and endured the delays alongside everyone else. I get it. To the people who have been waiting for a real update to Tower of Trample for over a year, this game represents hope. A speedy new way of doing things. But that hope has corrupted and deluded the minds of those who mean well, which is why I felt motivated to write this review in the first place. This game does not deserve its current four star average and, frankly, it is probably the worst game Bo Wei has ever come out with.
I will explain why.
1) What is a Submission Narratives?
Bo Wei makes femdom games. Femdom stands for female domination. The fetish, by definition, necessitates a narrative of domination and submission. A female dominates, a male (or a female, but that’s a slightly different narrative that I won’t get into) submits. This Submission Narrative can be divided into four, arguably five, crucial parts.
- Prologue: The sub is alone and has not yet met the domina. At this point, the sub should have relatively vanilla sexual habits. Sometimes the sub is aware of their own masochistic desires, sometimes they aren’t. What’s important is that the sub is walking down the vanilla straight-and-narrow.
- Seduction: The domina meets the sub and slowly, over time, draws him in. It is of crucial importance that the seduction phase begins under relatively vanilla circumstances. Otherwise there is no contrast between the seduction phase and the other phases. It is also of crucial importance that the sub has the chance to fight back and walk away from the domina at any time during seduction phase. It might not be easy for him to do so, but it should at least be clearly possible. Seduction must be consensual, otherwise its just a reverse-rape monster girl game. There are some exceptions to this rule- for example, content that pertains to the blackmail fetish. But even in cases of blackmail there is still some consent that is necessary for the relationship to be interesting. Sure, it might be humiliating for the sub to allow those pictures to be posted online, but if it would allow him to regain control of his own life it might be worth it. Why is consent important, you ask? Well, it’s especially important in a Submission Narrative because if the sub doesn’t submit of their own free will, they might as well have never submitted at all.
- Beginner Training: The domina begins to enact stricter and stricter control. This is the phase in which the more specific fetishes begin to get introduced. If the domina in question is a findom-type, this is the point at which the sub will be coerced into handing over money. If the domina is into foot-worship, this is the point at which foot worship will likely be introduced in as something that is necessary for the relationship between the sub and the domina to move forward. It is important to note that, even during this phase, consent is still important. The sub should still have a chance, even if it's a slim one, at normalcy.
- Enslavement: This is the phase where it all becomes official. This is the point at which the sub completes basic training and ceases to be vanilla forever.
- Advanced Training/Possible Relationship Stuff?: This phase is somewhat optional and many Submission Narratives end before this phase begins. During this phase, the sub receives training that he wouldn’t have been receptive towards during the earlier phases. If the domina is particularly sadistic, this is point at which urination and other hardcore fetishes are often introduced. This is also the phase in which the sub and the domina might also start advancing their relationship emotionally and begin to become more committed to each other.
2) Why Are Submission Narratives Important
Why is the Hero’s Journey important? Why is the Shakespearean Tragedy important?
The Submission Narrative is important because it has verisimilitude and verisimilitude is incredibly important for a narrative of any size, shape, or fetish. On some level, all human beings know that relationships and journeys both psychological and spiritual all take time and have steps. The Submission Narrative is simply an extension of that.
3)Submission Narratives in Bo Wei’s Other Content
I know this seems like a lot, but it is important to the point that I’m eventually going to make. What makes Bo Wei’s games so appealing is that most of them have the Submission Narrative down pat. I will use Tower of Trample as my primary example, but everything I’m about to say also applies to Warrior’s Guild and to a certain extent the early Mixfight games.
In Tower of Trample, you play an inexperienced young warrior who wants to save his friends. You journey to a tower where your friends are being held captive by the evil villainesses who kidnapped them (Phase 1). On the first floor, you encounter Scarlett, a villainess who is holding one of your friends captive in a cage. You exchange insults with her, then do battle with her. It turns out that she’s far more powerful than you, and you have to do a great deal of grinding in order to reach the level of skill necessary to defeat her. During this grinding period, she will flirt with you, use her wrestling moves on you, force you to sniff various orifices, and do other lewd things (Phase 2). If (as I stated earlier, the “if” is very important) the player decides to inquire about Scarlett’s heels at any point, Scarlett will offer to play a game in which you (the player) must play fetch with Scarlett’s heels like a dog. This introduces the puppy play fetish to your relationship with Scarlett and initiates the training phase (Phase 3). If you keep coming back to Scarlett she will keep on training you, which will eventually lead to her enslaving and collaring you like a dog and also urinating on you (Phase 4). After this point, Scarlett teaches you how to do tricks and eventually lets you loose into the Tower with the expectation that no matter what happens you will always come back to her and be her slave (Phase 5).
4) The Submission Narrative in Tiffany’s Trap Fucking Sucks Balls
Now, why am I saying all of this? Why is this important? Well, it’s important because Tiffany’s Trap, despite being developed by Bo Wei, features almost none of the Submission Narrative phases that I just mentioned. Tiffany’s Trap goes something like this.
You play as the local warrior of a generic medieval fantasy village. One day, a village kid goes missing and his mother begs for you to go on a mission into the nearby forest to defeat the brigands who are believed to have captured him. (Phase 1) You meet the brigands, who claim to be innocent, then you eventually discover a succubus (named Tiffany) sleeping in the forest near the dead body of the young boy. This is where things get weird. At this point, the player character automatically decides that the young boy must have fallen to his death from the nearby cliff. Furthermore, should the player decide to attack the sleeping Tiffany she will immediately wake, tell the player that she’s innocent, and then the player character will believe her (!!!). After this, the player will be closed off from attacking Tiffany. So, right off the gate, Phase 2 of the Submission Narrative has been ruined before it has even started due to the complete lack of meaningful consent from the player. Then, when the player meets with Tiffany for the second time, Tiffany immediately jerks the PC off with her leg, drops some humiliation themed dirty-talk, and makes him her slave. So Phase 3 is skipped entirely, and we go straight into Phase 4. The bulk of the femdom content in Tiffany’s Trap is then spent on Phase 5 (the one phase that isn’t wholly necessary for a Submission Narrative). After being enslaved by Tiffany, the player character is first coerced by Tiffany into feeding one of the village kids to her. She kills the kid. Then, Tiffany coerces the player character into helping her infiltrate the village. Once she’s earned the trust of the villagers, she will then kill them all (via lewd succubus stuff of course) night by night until only the player character is left. Then the player and Tiffany have a battle to the death and if Tiffany wins she kills you too. Notices the abundance of murder that I just mentioned? Phase 5 of Tiffany’s Trap is pretty hardcore. Maybe not hardcore in a graphic sense, but conceptually? After being enslaved by the domina, the sub in this game basically assists her in committing mass murder. Now, this wouldn’t be that big of an issue if Phases 2 and 4 were expanded upon and if Phase 3 actually existed. That way all of the murder would at least feel sexy. But as it is, Breakfast at Tiffany’s Submission Narrative feels extremely top-heavy and rushed.
It’s like if I wrote a standard high fantasy novel with a hero’s journey where the farmboy emarks on his quest in chapter 1, learns he’s a wizard in chapter 2, and becomes the strongest wizard on the planet as well as an enlightened Master of Both Worlds in chapter 3, and then chapters 4 through 25 were all just the main character murdering all of the baddies with no effort and fucking all of the princesses with similarly low effort. It would be bad writing. It would be critically panned.
5) Since the Submission Narrative Sucks, the RPG Elements of Tiffany’s Trap Feel Pointless
In Warrior’s Guild and Tower of Trample, the RPG elements are tied into the Submission Narrative. In Tower of Trample, the player earns levels by fighting the women of the tower and becomes incredibly strong as a result, However, no matter how hard the player tries, the girls always become stronger than the player. The same is more or less true with Warrior’s Guild. Both games also feature mechanics where the player can actually lose levels. I don’t think I need to explain the femdom appeal of a domina taking a player’s levels away.
In Tiffany’s Trap, the player doesn’t lose levels to Tiffany and can actually gain the power to defeat Tiffany at the end of the game if you find the correct items. So what is the point? Where’s the fetish fuel?
6) So Why Only a ⅗ if Tiffany’s Trap Has So Many Problems?
Ehh, the CGs are pretty hot.