RPGM - VoidBound [v0.5.5 Public] [Cursed-Atelier]

A ton of CG assets, combat sex with a bunch of cut-outs, statistics and ton of fetishes. There's a lot of meat in this H game... If you can be assed to read hour long story hour of some space opera BS similar to the animated movie Titan or some shit.

The only time I'd lend an ear to that is when the fetishes are focused on story related means. Not to mention the protagonist's sex dialogue is peak fantasy, girl goes from virgin to loves getting fucked by aliens in no time at all, no joy in the corruption aspect. The only solace is that the combat sex and H scenes are very well done albeit due to the nature of grid based combat it can be very slow to grind. You can skip the intro and jump straight into the action, eventually, and then get dragged out again for more exposition. There's a ton of investment done to try to flesh out the story, too much that isn't even attached much to hentai. Despite the engaging combat sex, I'd recommend a full save for people who want to see the hentai, you'd be liable to lose your boner otherwise.

This is a weird one to me. While it has a good story, great world building, awesome interactible environment in terms of how much there actually is (not just a map with two buildings you can get into), the game is great except for some tedious objectives and no mission log. But I somehow find the sex uninteresting. It feels like it does not serve any purpose and is mostly just a pic or two with descriptions or dialogues there. There seems to be no progression in that way. You can do everything from the get go, no corruption, no progress, no mechanics there. If there is an NPC that wants to have sex, just click the button and go, which to me is just really boring. The MC acts like whatevs, let's do it, I don't care. The only semi interesting sex scenes are the story scenes where the MC has some sort of personality, but even then it feels out of place.

To me, this game is more about the story, the world and the gameplay, than the lewd. The lewd is really boring, while the story is really interesting. But I am not here for a good story bad lewd. I could play baldurs gate or any other rpg that has great world but dumb romance and scenes in it, and I wouldn't have to deal with the old school rpgm system with all its flaws and limitations.

Somewhere between 3 - 4 stars imho.

After playing a bit more and getting into a lot of combat scenarios, the combat is awful. While it looks fun, it's really tedious. It's not that hard, but you have to spend your crafted resources etc., and it takes long time to finish the fight, especially when most of the enemies just run away from you, so you have to chase them, which prolongs the fight unnecessarily and makes it really unfun.

Innovative Gameplay, Good Aestetic & Very erotic. A must to play for lovers of eroge and good gameplay. The detail given to the characters is another plus, as they're not simply throwaway characters, but instead are given proper characterization.

Review for 0.5.3 (with around 2.5 hours of play from 0.5 so I haven't really tried the later updated content)

This is a game made with care and love from its developers. It has polish, but unfortunately it is just not fun. It is relatively enjoyable during the early rail-roaded experience until you get to the big city, at which point I got lost. As some reviewers said, the game would benefit from a quest journal. After loading up my save from 0.5, I gave up after about 10 minutes of walking around talking to NPCs. The dialogue were one-off and never meaningful so that felt like a waste of time. The rest of the game has a similar vibe of not respecting your time - tedious exploration, and slow nested menu navigation. The game has aspirations of being a large scale RPG with lewd elements, but the RPG elements are not very interesting and the porn elements are too few and far between to keep you going.

0.5.3c

this game emanates the love that the devs poured into it. places and cities feel so alive it's amazing. at some points i was HOPING that some doors of houses don't open so i don't have to explore that as well because there was just too much. lots of npcs have interesting things to say so you feel pressured to explore every nook and cranny.

the writing is really witty. lots of double entendres and jokes. interesting story and interesting/unique explanations of lots of stuff.

but. despite all the love and great writing the creator is still not George R. R. Martin. so there are some areas where the writing doesn't make sense or feels too complicated. like even in the intro 1 person gets called in 5 different names. sure after playing it and watching it back it makes perfect sense since i already know the characters, but at first it was extremely confusing and was hard to imagine what's happening, especially without visual art of the situation... which felt really empty and lacking.

there are multiple text "bugs". where a character clearly reacts or answers to another person's question or statement... the problem is, that statement was either removed or changed so there are like 6-7instances where the text makes no sense but you know something is missing. (in 1-2 cases you can deduct what was missing or removed or just bug).
i also got a critical error once i tried to save during an animated scene.

the combat imo is excellent. lots of choices. very interesting. very unique.
if i have 1 critique about it, is that battlefuck feels very alpha-ish. the art about it. and the way enemies move around while they are supposed to be fucking/bondaging the heroine. and it breaks immersion a bit where it does not make sense.(like 2 dudes fking her while there is only 1 alive. and even that guy is moving all around the place while supposedly holding her)

i didn't play the game before the rebalance/rework, supposedly it's changed this patch... but imo so far it's amazing i didn't experience big load times.

there are clearly many unfinished areas. but i have no doubt that this will be an excellent game when it finishes. it already has great content. if you have bad end (or good end) you are transported to the gallery and can watch all scenes... which is quite necessary since the first H-defeat scene (with a robot) is bugged as well currently so you can only watch it through gallery.

H-scenes in general: one is battlefuck mechanic. some defeats have unique H scenes too. but there are plenty more later in the story. the first area against robots have some interesting scenarios too, then next part is the humanoids and then etc. after unlocking the gallery, there are like 40+ unique H-scenes not including the battlefucks. rarely some art is bad and rarely some are excellent and animated. so i guess old ones are constantly getting updated. but in general art imo is nice. multiple scenes are imo fappable but don't expect it to be a sexfest. i think this game takes pride on its writing so it's more story/writing driven

Slightly above average as a game, serviceable story, and good porn.

As a game, VoidBound is a step above bog-standard RPGM games, which is nice, but also not truly impressive. It has its stronger sides, but there is a plethora of unpolished aspects as well. The initiative-based turn system is fairly good, but that's the only gameplay element that I like without any ifs or buts. Oh, wait. Having a combat system with a spatial element is better than not having it, for sure, but because battlefields —at least for now— have identical size and are completely devoid of obstacles, the end result is not some deep tactical combat. The stat system looks interesting, but Caly (the protagonist) does not gain experience, only plot-tied power ups and upgrades. You can't really plan some big upgrades or builds in advance, which takes out a lot of gratification from the character growth. Level design is generally good mechanically, and pleasing aesthetically, or even beautiful, but some custom-drawn elements lack clarity what is traversable and what is not. The interior of one particular bar is especially bad at telegraphing where the fuck the exit door is. The stealth element of navigating the world is well-designed, but unfortunately the game incentivizes you to wipe out all the packs to collect all the loot. Speaking of loot, why the fuck do the enemies in the dream level drop real money? And why don't you gain a single new ability or perk for beating said dream level? Wouldn't that be a much more appropriate reward?

The battlefuck element is almost entirely passive, at least as of version 0.5. The heroine gets her suit torn, which eventually provokes a mook to grab and lewd her, which raises the pleasure meter. Since orgasming in combat invokes basically no penalties whatsoever, the biggest danger to being grabbed and molested is actually enemies who ignore heroine's predicament and continue unleashing conventional damage. Those bastards. The pleasure meter is persistent between different instances of combat with some slight decay, which is very good, but it also completely ignores any lewd events that can happen in-between. Caly relaxes in a hot spring, and paddles her pink canoe? Cool, her HP is restored, her ammo is restored (wait, what?), but her pleasure meter is not reset to zero? WHAT THE FUCK. (edit: the dev promised this is/will be fixed, but I have not verified this yet)

The real sore point is the UI. It's sluggish (I don't want animations, I want fluidity) and badly structured. Managing weapon upgrades involves navigating an awkward multi-tiered menu when it could be done in one flat screen. Just... no. Me no like. RPGM at its "finest". Also no journal, coming back to an old save with an unfinished quest is going to be a pain.

This may feel like I'm bashing the game, and in a way, I am... Because it's so frustratingly and obviously close to being good. It just needs a bit more coherency and polish. But at least the devs are trying to innovate, which I guess can be counted as a strength.

As for story and porn, it's good. Well, the story is okay, humanity is conquered by an empire of space jerk... elves? Next I'm gonna need some stupid McGuffin... aaaaaand called it. Whatever, you know the drill, I know the drill, we can slog through this. The characters the story focuses on are well written, and that's what matters, not this space knife-ear empire... fluff, to use a more generous term. Good banter and stupid sexy adventures is what will make this enjoyable. Speaking of sexy, porn is written in first person; it's kinky and hot. I liked it, no real complaints here. Technical side of writing is also good, no obvious errors or typos.

Good music and some VA present, if that matters to you.

TL;DR: 6/10 RPG with a 3/10 UI, 7/10 story, and 8/10 porn. Four stars. Requires slightly more than a potato GPU (we're talking fairly old intel iGPU level of potatoness).

The guys make a great game.
The fullness of the H-scenes - check.
Good artwork - check.
Plot and validity for most situations - check.
Gameplay features like the crafting system, complex tactical combat, stealth, and puzzles - check.
The game is 10 out of 10.

Voidbound has surprisingly atmospheric art. The city looks like a grimy, living breathing thing. If only if it played like one: there are huge areas that don't seem to support any gameplay; very few random lewd encounters per square walked.

The "dungeon" areas are similarly subject to very unclear areas that can be interacted with. This seems to be the result of the fact that whole tileset have been built from the ground up, and though with obvious artistic and aesthetic flair, not with good game design in mind.

The dialogue is quite disappointing. There is a lot of it, and most of it is neither very titillating or otherwise exciting or even interesting. A lot of it seems to be worldbuilding. However, also very verbose and uninspired.

The gameplay elements are not so much difficult as they are an obscure chore where you have to attempt to interact with every tile in a gigantic area.

With those criticisms said, there's undoubtedly a diamond in the rough here, and a rather unique and creative team must be behind it. Though combat needs some work, the basic elements for a good system are there: The sexual elements, clothing degration, being able to give up instantly, and the beginnings of a system that could become an average tactic battlesystem.

The H scenes are decent enough and there seem to be quite a few of them. The art for these looked a lot better in the game than they do in the screenshots. I think the wholistic style really maxes them look better in game than they do when seeing them on a website.

I recommend saving often. For example, you can work a waitressing job with sexual harassment included (and if you want, invited), and it's the one way to reliably get income. However, if you click wrong once and accept a guest's request for sex, you'll be locked out of doing the job ever again.

Finally the music is great and varied and further helps set a good atmosphere.

Holy long walk for a small drink of water Batman!
This game has more padding than a teenager who's insecure about the size of their breasts.

First off the art is top notch! Very well done!

The actual layout of the missions is where the problems begin.
Step 1: Walk around looking for something aimlessly
Step 2: Find an elevator that wont open
Step 3: Fix some wiring (back track)
Step 4: Elevator still out due to power, need to get around laser walls
Step 5: Get to lava suit to turn valves (back track)
Step 6: Lasers off, no proceed to a steam room.
Step 7: Walk around slowly clicking on which pipe is broken (SLOW)
Step 8: Return to elevator area to get to a conduit room (back track)
Step 9: Go to a conduit room solve a puzzle restoring power
Step 10: Return to the finally fixed elevator and drop down.
Step 11: Walk through the final area to get to the boss room.
Step 12: Face the boss that can call for reinforcements endlessly.

Thats the FIRST mission! Steps 1-12 all have patrolling enemies that you have to wait and avoid.

Not to mention the absolutely annoying AF tunnel vision your character has making things even more annoying to wonder around. It's just busy work.

If you saw this game and thought the art looked great and it had the tags you liked be forewarned! It'll take a good while to get to some real meat. Some sprinkles are spread out and those are nice but don't expect this game to be a Jerk-A-Long

Incredible game with a great story and art with lots of pretty diverse content. The visuals are pretty great with some awesome looking sprites and lighting that really pushes RPGM to its limits. I played an early version which was already impressive, but the newer updates have really raised the bar in all aspects.

(Review for version 0.4 Beta)

Art - 4.5/5
Characters - 4/5
Writing - 4.5/5
Gameplay - 3.75/5

TL; DR: VoidBound, in general, is pretty good, with gameplay mechanics that are quite engaging, and art/writing that are enjoyable to go through. Given this, however, the game still needs quite a bit of polish to truly utilize it's potential.

The art is standard anime-esque fare, with characters that wouldn't look out of place in a sci-fi manga or anime. Level art seems to be quite standard as well, though the latest dungeon, the forest/mushroom one, manages to stand out from the rest of the game. H-scenes are drawn well (though there are no animations), with most having variations depending on your state of clothing damage.

Considering the game has a serious "save the world" type of narrative, this warrants closer inspection of the characters. Unfortunately, many of them seem to be archetypal, such as our protagonist being the typical plucky, courageous (if a bit kinky) action girl who has to go save the world, or the gruff space pirate captain with a hidden heart of gold. Motivations are somewhat lacking, and quite a lot of people just seems to be willing to help our protagonist with everything. Of course not everything has to be the next Mass Effect, but giving our characters a bit more uniqueness could do wonders for the game.

With this in mind, the writing is quite standard. There are highs and lows, and I find that the environmental descriptions are quite good. What makes me rate the writing higher than characters however, is the H-Scenes. The game delivers absolutely well on what our protagonist feels during the myriad scenes one could encounter. While a lot of the scenes are non-con, the writing manages to make quite a few of them non-rapey, and almost seem like kinky CNC roleplay, which is a bonus for people like me who aren't into non-con.

Finally, gameplay. Since the game is in the middle of overhauls to gameplay systems, take this one with a grain of salt. The tactical aspects of the game are interesting, with a time-based system mixed with the typical RPG combat. Unfortunately however, there doesn't seem to be much depth on it so far. Yes, crafting mods for weapons are a thing, and yes there are multiple weapons, but so far, there aren't much things differentiating them from one another. Rifles, pistols, shotguns all feel the same, and you can so far win everything with just the pistol and enough time (and trauma packs). If you're willing to spend some money on it, vibroblades/grenades can melt bosses with ease. It also doesn't help that combat doesn't leave much room for creativity, with the embassy bosses being the ones with somewhat unique mechanics.

Puzzle and exploration sections of the game are quite hit-or-miss. Some locations can be ignored entirely without it affecting your game. I find the puzzles to be solvable with some thinking, but there are some quirks that require hints from the devs (thankfully, they're very active).

The UI/UX portion of the game also has drawbacks, with each dialogue and choice intro/outro requiring animations. Thankfully, the UI has improved by light-years compared to the last version.

Overall, 8/10. Caly is waifu.

0.4 beta version

honest, don't know where to begin. very rarely porn game waste my time this big.

good parts
- the yellow furry shit is cute i guess

parts you will forget soon
- art
- character writing
- universe design

bad parts
- map design is cringe labyrinth to add fake playing time
- user interface is super slow (not lag, just very long animations that someone thinks look good). person who said city doors are good has to stop making games
- combat is unfun, slow, and happen way often. enemy balance is bullet sponge
- easy to never find sex scenes, can play hours with 0 sex
- buggy dialogue with some npc

tldr; this is game is a bad rpg who sucks at porn game

Really good! I got more fun, than in Subverse.

Beautiful painted female heroine, nice sex scenes.
Hope, there will be MORE latex scenes.

Good luck to creator, really want to know what happen next in game.

Played through the existing content and gotta say that this game seems promising. There might be just a tad too much dialogue and too much stuff in combat (considering that you're playing only your first missions). But art is great and the space station thingy gives interesting things to explore.

RPGM games with tacked on sex are a dime a dozen around here, but void bound is a cut above for a couple reasons. First, combat is almost completely avoidable. Second, despite being chock full of non-con, none of the scenes felt particularly rapey. And third, the writing and story were good enough to where I felt the story wasn't a complete write off.

Of course, if the sex sequences weren't as good as they are, the game would still be a write off. Fortunately, the art is great, the writing is great, and the circumstances are deliciously, ridiculously erotic. I really can't praise this game enough for making the girl into all the sexy. Of over a dozen scenes, only two of them felt uncomfortably rapey (and that shit's pretty much a no-go for me). There's not much of an explanation for why our girl is such a sexual libertine, but I'm not complaining.

As of 0.3, there's about three hours of content. Upon game completion, the gallery is unlocked with all scenes. Although the gameplay is really nothing to write home about, I'm looking forward to more. The sex scenes are worth way more (and way worse) filler than Void Bound puts you through.

It's still a demo but it's already showing great potential.
The story is actually pretty absorbing and the writings of impressive quality. It's probably gonna be one of the best written Sci-Fi game in this site. The intro before actual gameplay is quite long, but I truly enjoyed reading it, unlike a lot of erotic games in this site with unbearable amateur writings which I always skip.
Gameplay mechanics so far seems interesting and promising. Seems a variety of gears and tactics for selection are planned in the future development.
The artwork is quite good and enjoyable, even if I believe some scenes can be more detailed.

This review concerns the alpha expansion release v0.31.

The "RPGM" tag has become quite dubious because of the immense number of copy-paste, low-effort RPGM-games being released.
I'm very glad I didn't skip this one, because it's a diamond amongst the dirt.

The story starts off simple enough, without too much of a heavy lore dump. It makes you actually interested in not only the main character, but the side characters and overall plot as well. An early H-scene to keep things exciting and it's off to a great start.

Combat felt very refreshing from the standard turn-based games. Terrain and positioning took on a more key role as well as ammunition management, weapon upgrading, skills, ... Everything was quite polished, aside from a few glitches which are of course to be expected from an alpha release.

Generally the puzzles and riddles really struck that middle ground between not being too overly complex as well as still being engaging to solve. An issue however, and this is why I deducted one star, was the light puzzle. There was no way to reset the puzzle, which can be annoying if you don't have a save prepared.

Overall a very fun, engaging game I personally only rarely see flying by. Keep up the good work, Cursed Atelier, and you'll have a gem on your hands!

I don't often actually post here but this is...really good and i ended up enjoying the story more than expected for a hentai game so here we go
As i said story is actually pretty interesting with some fun character writing
Art itself is really fun and onpoint, only thing i'd like more would probably be animations during the combat scenes.
music and combat are both fun, though combat takes a bit of getting used to and opens up a bunch more once you unlock the ability to modify your weapons
overall would absolutely recommend supporting the patreon
5/5

[Review applies to Alpha Release 0.22]

Much of what I want to comment on has already been covered by Steven Steven below, so to quickly sum up (well, quick for me anyway):

• Tactical RPG elements are interesting so far - currently uses player positioning and a mix of ranged & hand to hand attacks, most of the attacks are fairly basic and there's no terrain options or anything yet. But, early days. My main concern is that it is a bit stodgy - turns can take a bit of time to get through, and the mobs are just tanky enough that you have to go through a few of them to finish an encounter. This is further compounded by the in-battle sex, discussed at the end of the review.
• Mostly like the puzzles. At this stage, they're enough to get you thinking, but not impossibly hard. Even though it's not explicitly a horror game, the dark stages can produce some scares with regards to enemy placement, if you're not attentive. Although I don't think it's explicitly said, most of the mobs are puzzle-like and avoidable - patterns can seem erratic but there are ways to avoid most groups.
  Spoiler: Patterns

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• Story in general is interesting, backstory seems solid, but this release does skip over bits. Writing is generally good. Decent banter. Caly seems to be a well-formed, strong character. Less sure on the other majors because of the story skip. There do seem to be occasional errors but it's mainly just missed spaces or possibly kerning problems.
• Artwork is generally good but quality does seem to vary in places - I'm not sure if these are stylistic choices or just early artwork that wasn't considered top priority for first release - none of it looks bad, just a bit sketchy. Most of this is in the intro and not the actual gameplay level/scenes. I get the impression that the demo may have initially been planned to start just before the gameplay level but changed shortly before release, but that's pure speculation on my part.

The main thing I wanted to add was praise for the scenes in game already. Of the three in the game (that I know of, anyway - I've not seen any others but think I found them all), one of them is part of the story, and the other two are losses to enemies (one the main mob, the other the boss). There are also, technically, two types of in-battle sex scenes. All of them are player sub, so if that's not your thing, unfortunate. All of the actual scenes are very well done so far. Caly's tough but has a definite subby streak. Her internal monologue is great, adding colour without detracting from what's going on. The art is great, and they use quite a few different CG's in each scene that aren't just a base pose with tiny changes. I did notice one or two places where they may have reused a CG either in error, or because they didn't have a CG for that exact bit and used next-nearest.

On a more personal note: I also love how much description goes into how Caly's being manhandled by the various enemies; For all the games that feature BDSM and player sub stuff (non-con or otherwise), few ever seem to actually describe that in great detail. And the final scene in general... well, I don't want to post spoilers, but it hit a whole bunch of my buttons. Safe to say that this team does seem to understand player-sub BDSM stuff beyond just how to use it as window-dressing.

On the other hand, I'm not too keen on the in-battle sex scenes. I already mentioned that the combat was a bit stodgy, and these do not help. I don't feel they're in-depth enough to be that erotic (at least compared to the actual scenes). They just make the combat drag on. There's very little description, just a reply from Caly and a cut-in of what part of her is getting molested. Most of the time, once you're restrained, enemies transition from doing HP damage to trying to make you cum. Cumming doesn't actually deal damage or have any negative effects that I've seen. If you manage to struggle free, they get a free attack before your next move. If you cum, you have to choose "stand up" to resume combat, and then they get a free attack against you. Some mobs do continue doing HP damage if you are restrained, but it looked like a bug when I last saw it. I don't want this removed, though, but I would like for it to count for something, instead of just being a timesink.

In all - 5/5 for an early release. Just needs a bit of polish going forward. I really look forward to seeing more of everything. More art. More story. More Caly. More enemies. More Caly getting into tricky scenarios with those enemies. Really hope it carries on strong. Definitely one on my "To patreon sub" list for when I can afford that.

Not a gameplay you see everyday, which is refreshing. Tactical RPG are always a plus for me. The puzzles are fun and work well with the environnement.

A big plus to the world building in my opinion. The scenes are, as well as the story, well written to this Alpha 0.22.

There is room for improvement (which is expected for an alpha) :
- Jens and (Haars ?) are good in the dialogue but having a dialogue with them both without faceset can be a bit confusing.
- The fights are a bit repetitive. Not because of the lack of choice in skills and attacks (there are plenty of those), but because of the slow rythm and the fact they lack diversity. They don't need much to be really fun... (maybe different battlemaps or a system of cover).

These are just my thoughts, I'm not an expert.

I'm definetly watching this thread up close.