Will StudioFOW Recover?

[Volexay]

StudioFOW used to be the biggest name in adult animations. Subverse put them in an even brighter spotlight, but once the game actually released the reception was lukewarm at best. I’ve been trying to find what’s going on with them now, but all they ever put out are vague “working on it” updates blaming things like Steam restrictions and localization. I honestly don’t buy that. Meanwhile all the devs might as well not exist as none of them have any socials.

From what I can see, they’ve got a bunch of animators basically twiddling their thumbs that are begging for funding on Throne or Fansly where almost nothing is being funded — for obvious reasons. According to third-party Steam stat trackers, Subverse probably pulled in around $14 million total. With that kind of money, there should be real progress, yet here we are with no meat on the horizon.

So the big question: are they really going to pull a No Man’s Sky turnaround and make Subverse into something great, or are they just going to cut their losses and quietly drift away? Right now it looks more like the latter, but I honestly hope not because though subverse was very much a disappointment, I can admire them for trying and releasing 'something' to the public. Even though that something left a lot to be desired.

 

[Hagatagar]

and make Subverse into something great

I doubt that. The promise everybody bought was a porn game. But it ended to be a game with porn. Very seperated from each other. Not much different from games like Mass Effect, Cyberpunk or Baldurs Gate, where the lewd stuff runs seperated from the actual gameplay.

It's a bad game design, if you sell it as a porn game on such a big scale. People where disappointed because they couldn't deliver what the customers expected.

Yes, many other porn games have the same issues, but that's one of the reasons why porn and games is very hard to mix without letting the other part down.

 

[MissCougar]

I think the problem with Subverse, and it is weird, is how it seemed to have been initially sold vs how it ended up being.

It was sold as a porn Mass Effect rpg.

It delivered as some unusual asteroids game, visual novel, and grid based strategy game with frustrating difficulty spikes.

It has unusual humor and a story line that mostly is entirely discrete from the provide, except for a handful of "get the girl on board" scenes for the first time.

After that you are playing mini games in the story to get tokens to unlock sex scenes in some sort of scene viewer. The scene viewer, last I saw, just plays a loop of some scene. While it is well done, it may as well be a gif because I think you have minimal control of the camera and can just zoom in or out. No rotating and such of the whole scene.

Also despite using Unreal Engine, it seems like the myriad of story scenes are all pre-rendered scenes, resulting in an absurdly huge file size. It's like for some reason they opted to just not use Unreal for the cinematically and literally use it for an asteroids game and an isometric strategy game where I don't recall the game board even really moving around any in these missions.


I think the game people wanted and the game people got was so far off base it is hideous. You may as well just find the videos or gifs of the sex scene viewer parts because playing the game was incredibly cringy. While the VA is good... it does not exactly get anyone in any kind of sexy mood I'd think. At least not me, I won't speak for other people but for me, the odd humor and kind of unappealing dialog and ridiculously long story pieces just did not blend well.

Notging blended well together, and overall it's kind of forgettable. I hope they can make a better game next time with an emphasis on combining the game with the sexy stuff... but who knows.

 

[baneini]

Why do people care about a dev that made 1 shit game?
Are they studiofow shareholders?

 

[Icarus Media]

I think the problem with Subverse, and it is weird, is how it seemed to have been initially sold vs how it ended up being.

It was sold as a porn Mass Effect rpg.

It delivered as some unusual asteroids game, visual novel, and grid based strategy game with frustrating difficulty spikes.

It has unusual humor and a story line that mostly is entirely discrete from the provide, except for a handful of "get the girl on board" scenes for the first time.

After that you are playing mini games in the story to get tokens to unlock sex scenes in some sort of scene viewer. The scene viewer, last I saw, just plays a loop of some scene. While it is well done, it may as well be a gif because I think you have minimal control of the camera and can just zoom in or out. No rotating and such of the whole scene.

Also despite using Unreal Engine, it seems like the myriad of story scenes are all pre-rendered scenes, resulting in an absurdly huge file size. It's like for some reason they opted to just not use Unreal for the cinematically and literally use it for an asteroids game and an isometric strategy game where I don't recall the game board even really moving around any in these missions.


I think the game people wanted and the game people got was so far off base it is hideous. You may as well just find the videos or gifs of the sex scene viewer parts because playing the game was incredibly cringy. While the VA is good... it does not exactly get anyone in any kind of sexy mood I'd think. At least not me, I won't speak for other people but for me, the odd humor and kind of unappealing dialog and ridiculously long story pieces just did not blend well.

Notging blended well together, and overall it's kind of forgettable. I hope they can make a better game next time with an emphasis on combining the game with the sexy stuff... but who knows.

This was what got it for me, I initially thought it would be a free roam space game with a lot of sex elements, instead it was like a more complex version of watching their videos. I think they had a great brand and were and still known for quality video production, but that didn't translate into making it a game.

 

[Volexay]

This was what got it for me, I initially thought it would be a free roam space game with a lot of sex elements, instead it was like a more complex version of watching their videos. I think they had a great brand and were and still known for quality video production, but that didn't translate into making it a game.

That's what I've been saying, but the glaze the game is getting made me think I was crazy. So many people were saying this is the best adult game in adult game history and nothing even comes close to compare. I was think I must have downloaded the wrong copy or something.

 

[desmosome]

That's what I've been saying, but the glaze the game is getting made me think I was crazy. So many people were saying this is the best adult game in adult game history and nothing even comes close to compare. I was think I must have downloaded the wrong copy or something.

At least on this site, it didn't receive one sided glaze. There was actually A LOT of sentiment in the game thread that basically mirrors what MissCougar wrote above.

It has great voice acting. That's about it for things it did above par. The gameplay was completely basic. It failed to deliver on the merits of the gameplay, even if we are generous and accept that it wasn't tryng to be mass effect with porn. The asteroid thing was at least kinda decent, albeit very repetitive. But the grid based tactics was complete ass, with no sense of tactical considerations on the board nor strategic developments of the units (different builds, equip, class change, what have you that makes tactics games interesting).

Of course, the biggest thing that everyone shit on is the fact that the porn is completely removed from the game. Like what's the point of even kickstarting this shit and making a big deal about it being the first major AAA porn game if they are gonna do it like this? It's just a scene viewer that shows an animation loop with a speed dial and zoom, without any dialogues. Absolute mind boggling failure.

That was the state of the early access. I havne't played any versions after that, but AFAIK, the best they could do was add one actual scene per girl when they join the crew.

Plus, the reddit neckbeard level of humor was absolute cringe, making the story a complete joke.

I honestly don't even know how it's possible to make such a bad game with the funding they had.

 

[RGMedia]

I think the problem with Subverse, and it is weird, is how it seemed to have been initially sold vs how it ended up being.

It was sold as a porn Mass Effect rpg.

It delivered as some unusual asteroids game, visual novel, and grid based strategy game with frustrating difficulty spikes.

It has unusual humor and a story line that mostly is entirely discrete from the provide, except for a handful of "get the girl on board" scenes for the first time.

After that you are playing mini games in the story to get tokens to unlock sex scenes in some sort of scene viewer. The scene viewer, last I saw, just plays a loop of some scene. While it is well done, it may as well be a gif because I think you have minimal control of the camera and can just zoom in or out. No rotating and such of the whole scene.

Also despite using Unreal Engine, it seems like the myriad of story scenes are all pre-rendered scenes, resulting in an absurdly huge file size. It's like for some reason they opted to just not use Unreal for the cinematically and literally use it for an asteroids game and an isometric strategy game where I don't recall the game board even really moving around any in these missions.


I think the game people wanted and the game people got was so far off base it is hideous. You may as well just find the videos or gifs of the sex scene viewer parts because playing the game was incredibly cringy. While the VA is good... it does not exactly get anyone in any kind of sexy mood I'd think. At least not me, I won't speak for other people but for me, the odd humor and kind of unappealing dialog and ridiculously long story pieces just did not blend well.

Notging blended well together, and overall it's kind of forgettable. I hope they can make a better game next time with an emphasis on combining the game with the sexy stuff... but who knows.

Pretty much this. We expected some kind of story like a Mass Effect style visual novel or Trials in Tainted space in a more linear form. Instead we got minigames with porn gifs and I can't even tell you what the plot was despite having purchased the game. It was one of the few games I ever got a Steam refund on, having been so disappointed by what was actually delivered.

So the big question: are they really going to pull a No Man’s Sky turnaround and make Subverse into something great, or are they just going to cut their losses and quietly drift away? Right now it looks more like the latter, but I honestly hope not because though subverse was very much a disappointment, I can admire them for trying and releasing 'something' to the public. Even though that something left a lot to be desired.

No.
The game now has a mixed overall review. While it was technically released only a year ago, they began work on it over 5 years ago. They know how to animate, but they don't know how to write or make a good game.

 

[69trasheap]

Subverse really was the epitome of "let's find any jackass who can string words together into a sentence and call them writers." Even if StudioFOW were to go back to making movies, the field has significantly changed; there's tons of new animators out there making hardcore content nowadays. The only thing they have now is name recognition, which might not be doing them much of a favor at this point.

 

[bazanoff]

look, what they have to do is make sex animations for ground battles, A LOT more outfits and maybe some random animations while on the ship. The funny thing is that their target audience probably plays japanese games without even knowing japanese, so giving so much attention to dialogues doesn't really make sense.