Recent reviews by Kaoskampf

The short answer is if plot doesn't matter to you, then this game will probably scratch your itch. Its quality in art and animations are a little higher than its contemporaries. But if plot is what you're looking for, even a basic one, then I do not recommend this game.

I’m actually conflicted about this review. This game is a great example of energetic, positive devs who keep the community updated and who consistently produce content. I really want to reward that development style with a yes, but I can’t really recommend this game. Here’s why:

***

The art is fine. It's over-the-top as hell with busts upon busts upon boobs, but still well within industry standards. The animations seem good, too.

Still don't understand the title. 5 hours in and no dancing in sight.

But the plot can be summed up by a conversation (here roughly remembered) that occurs between one of the NPCs and the protagonist:

NPC: "That sounds extremely stupid, you know."

*two seconds later*

NPC: "But somehow I believe you."

That ‘somehow’ the NPC is referring to is called writer’s fiat; it’s about as much justification as you're going to get in this plot.

The biggest disappointment was the attempt to make the protagonist *appear* moral. He's very immoral - blatantly so. But at one point he says, defiantly, that he WON'T USE HIS POWERS ON HIS FAMILY. Good for him. Makes sense. The hero we don't need or deserve but ended up with. But then he proceeds to use his powers on a non-family NPC in order to use that NPC to manipulate his family into doing the things he refused to use his powers to make them do. That's a big sentence. Let me see if I can write it another way - "I won't manipulate my family, but I will manipulate someone else into manipulating my family." Even Obi-Wan would trip on this moral 'high ground.'

I suspect the game takes inspiration from another 'mind control' AVN called Dreams of Desire. One of the ways the game hints at this is its depiction of a scene from DoD on a TV screen while the protagonist says that he doesn't like movies that use mind control. I took this as an artistic statement - the author was saying DoD was an inspiration, but that this game intends to depart from it in a significant way. There are definite similarities between this game and DoD, including but not limited to the too-timid-to-say-what-we-mean Landlord/Landlady language. But the protagonist specifically says that games (or as it's presented here, movies) like DoD are not his thing.

Ok, cool. I'm down with that. Mind control and corruption aren't really my favorite flavors, either. But then the protagonist goes on to use mind control to both directly and indirectly manipulate those around him. So either I misread this artistic statement or the author is making a distinction without a difference and I can just go to hell.

Perhaps the entire scene was tongue in cheek anyway.

And I suppose a larger conversation could be had here - if the "real" reason we're all here is BOOBIES, who cares if the plot is bad? Well, it's called an AVN - an Adult Visual Novel. Which means that it has to adhere to the rules of being a novel, even if it's just a 'type' of novel. That means that both the plot and the protagonist's justifications have to make sense. And a lot of that doesn't happen here. The NPCs just get cool with a bunch of taboo stuff real quick and for no real reason without any actual character development occurring. Protestations over taboos are thinly veiled immediate capitulations - "Oh no, we can't do this, but, whoops, we've done it."

The characters seem poorly wrought, anyway, without any of them seeming to have much drive beyond interacting with the protagonist. I believe the step sister (ahem roommate) goes to college? I honestly don't know. I know the step mom (ahem landlady) likes to read. And that's really it.

Fun and challenging if played on the higher difficulties.

It's a relatively simple management style game set in an apocalyptic world. I played it a decade ago and recall enjoying it up until the last mission, which I found both tedious and annoying. That being said, I got lots of relaxed enjoyment from it then and am doing so again now.

The humor is light and successful, for the most part, but there are moments of actual depth where your decisions result in some serious consequences. Lots of stories for the characters, though short and simple. The mechanics are surprisingly straightforward and fun, with only a few elements bogging the game down (like having to talk to every character once you research social management for the 100th time - and reading the same conversations over and over again because it's the 8th campaign mission and you've read them all already).

Still, go into it with the mindset of doing something simple and relaxed, and you'll enjoy it.

The first NSFW scene featured a woman (how to say this delicately) bouncing on the protagonist…and her ‘downstairs lady parts’ were bouncing separately from the rest of her. It was off-putting, weird, and, if I’m honest, hard to take seriously.

The writing isn’t particularly good. Syntax can be weird and diction overly formal, making the writing stilted and halting. The writing comes across as coming from the perspective of someone writing as a non-native English speaker. Not a crime, but it impacted the quality of the writing.

A weird example of the subpar writing. At one point, a character says “Now I don’t know how to get out of it.” The very next line, spoken by the same character: “Now you don’t know how to get out of it.” I imagine this is an editing issue and that a previous iteration of the game featured the protagonist “guessing” the words of the character (hence the ‘you’). But things like this just really killed it for me.

The narration is taxing and overly descriptive. In all fairness, the narrator’s description does, from time to time, add relevant information to the story. Most of the time, however, the narrator adds description that isn’t necessary, doesn’t add to character growth, or otherwise bogs down the reading. At one point, the narrator (presumably the protagonist thinking) tells that a woman turns around; but you can see that the woman has turned around because it’s a visual novel, rendering the description entirely unnecessary. There is no reason to tell me what I can see.

At another point, the narrator refers to himself as a ‘we,’ e.g. “We should go into the room,” almost as if the narrator is referring to himself and you, the reader. This subject confusion broke immersion and happens more than once.

The animations and art are ok; aside from the bobbing lady parts, they seem on par with industry standards. Even the setting and starting point for the story are ok, if somewhat unbelievable.

But the writing is underwhelming, making the story a bit dull and slow to read. I can’t really recommend it.

Ok, yes, but almost a 'no.' Very close to being a no, really. The TL;DR version of my review is that the overall plot is interesting while the gameplay and interpersonal relationships are weak. However, you may enjoy the gameplay here more than me, and I was able to complete the game (mostly and with the help of a walkthrough) with my interest still intact, meaning that I think others could probably enjoy it more than me.

***

The still-too-long-but-did-read version:

The art and animations seem antiquated, but I can't fault the game for that. It seems like it was being made in the 2010s, and if I understand the history of AVNs correctly, the genre was only starting out then. The visuals have evolved with the tech, and I can't really fault the game for being a product of its time. But, nonetheless, the antiquated nature of the visuals can be frustrating.

The setting is great - who doesn't love a dark, creepy, castle-like building where everyone's trapped inside by a storm? It's probably this game's most redeeming aspect, actually.

But the style of game is just not good to me - the 'run around and click on a bunch of stuff until something works.' You run around collecting items, going room to room, figuring out what item to use with what thing. It's not fun to me. It takes a LONG time to figure things out. And it's not always clear what to do. I played the first few hours organically and then transitioned to following a full walkthrough. And some of the things you have to find and click on are crazy to me. Who would think to go there and do that in order to do this other thing?

I suppose one might say that my opinion here is subjective. Maybe. Apparently other people enjoy this style of game. It's been around for a long time.

But I'm not convinced that my taste is merely subjective; the gameplay in Lust Epidemic is grindy and obnoxious at times, elongating playtime by forcing the player to roam around in hopes of finding something. There are clues, of course, so in many cases you can direct your searches. But I still found myself sighing when I had to run through a forest, click-click-clicking as I went, only to pick up one item and run right back through said forest. That, to me, is grind, regardless of my personal feelings on the style of the game.

Personally, I suspect this type of gameplay is a holdover from an era when the technical limitations of game design prevented games from being "more" than this basic style.

But while I don't like this style of gameplay and think that there are legitimate, objective reasons to dislike it, I get that some people do enjoy it. And I get why they enjoy it: it's puzzles and exploration, which can be fun. And, in all fairness, my ADHD brain has zero interest in what it often sees as inane puzzles (I'm here for the story), so I definitely can't say that I'm unbiased.

But gripes about the style of game aside, the story itself had some issues. It was good in the sense that the setting was eerie and evocative, and the overall plot was intriguing. I was genuinely invested in figuring out how the story would end. Many of the characters were also interesting, often having an ominous air about them and changing as the story progressed.

But where the story fails is in its integration of erotic content. Integrating erotic scenes into a story believably and understandably is one of the biggest difficulties of the AVN genre. It can be really hard to do because people don't really run around like sex-starved nymphomaniacs. What follows might be considered spoilers, albeit probably vague ones.

Many games, like this one, have a big plot device that makes explaining the erotic content easy. For example, a game might have a simulated universe where all love interests are programmable bots susceptible to manipulation. And these kinds of plot devices are not *necessarily* bad, but they do come with disadvantages. In general, they make writing easier by giving the writers a ready excuse for NSFW content. These plot devices come with a trade off, however; they often oversimplify characters and situations, making them hackneyed and reductive. In the case of Lust Epidemic, the love interests are unique and have interesting personalities, but their dalliances with the protagonist feel forced and thin. Ultimately, the spoiler-free version is that the romantic relationships are weak.

But this review was almost a 'no,' and the biggest reason is that the game crashed after I loaded a save and played for about an hour or two. I could start from my save and play again to get to where the game crashed; I was probably only about 10 minutes away from the final scene. But I don't want to. It wasn't that enjoyable. And the reason I hold the crash against the game is because the game actually has a feature to remind you to save - which I had on. I wasn't reminded to save. Of course, I understand that the game can't (or shouldn't) remind me constantly to save; I'd just get annoyed then. But I don't see how the game is so old that it can't have either an autosave feature or a skip option - and this has neither.

Of course, there's a lot that I don't understand about coding, but if a game from two decades ago can have an autosave feature, so can this.

I'm going to look up the ending and decide whether I want to continue on with the series (I unfortunately already own Nadia, the second game in the series). But my final point is that there are probably better ways to kill your time unless you really like old-style puzzle solving and exploration.

No, and largely disappointing given its high positive rating. I suspect it's rating is so high because there are so few games that offer this flavor (monsters) at such a level of quality. And therein lies my first comment.

If "monster" is your flavor, you'll probably like this, not because it is inherently excellent but because there is nothing else in the AVN market (that I've seen, at least on Steam) that deals with this flavor as well as this does. The art is good, the plot is passable, the world is interesting. I do believe there is some newer stuff that's in EA (Mutant College or something like that), but I'm not sure even that tries to dive headlong into the flavor the way this AVN does.

But the language/translation is a problem. For the first chapter, I actually thought the writer was a native English speaker - one wrestling with tonal and syntactical variance among characters, but still one writing from a native English perspective. The early writing must've been combed over thoroughly to ensure quality. But as the story goes on and you encounter more recent chapters, the language gets worse and worse. The writing seems like it was probably rushed, so that might be one reason for the decline. But regardless of the reason for the deterioration of the writing's quality, the syntax, diction, everything just goes off the rails.

By the third or fourth chapter, I was trying to figure out what things meant, e.g. "But the game is worth the candle, at least from a future perspective." I have no idea what that sentence means. Using context, I think the narrator was saying that all their current effort will be worth it if they achieve their future goals...but that's not what that says. I believe the author was attempting to use English idiom, like burning a candle at both ends, but they did not achieve that goal.

Editing note: Ha! It's a very old idiom. "The game is worth the candle." It's antiquated, not used in English anymore. Because candles/lighting aren't expensive in contemporary society. So either the idiom has persisted in the native language of the writer and they've translated an idiom haphazardly or they don't understand that the idiom they've chosen is outdated.

At one point, too, a character flat out starts speaking another language for two slides. I assume this was an error because the character had never given any indication that they were speaking English as a second language, but I don't know. Maybe it wasn't and the character just needed to speak another language in post coital bliss to truly express the quality of their release. I don't know.

But the language continues to get facepalm inducing, and by the fifth season, it's infiltrated the adult scenes to the point where it's really hard to take them seriously.

The characters are unique and have their own interests, but characterization is watered down by truncated relationships and puerile dialogue. By truncated relationships, I mean that everyone gets real close and friendly long before you'd think they would. By puerile dialogue, I mean that several of the characters are prone to emotive overreaction and insipid dialogue - dialogue where nothing actually gets said and no characters actually develop.

And then there's the narrator. This seems to be a trope of poorly translated English AVNs - the protagonist acts as a narrator who explains everything, including the most bland observations. It's like the writers are insecure about their ability to communicate. Two points about how this style of narration detracts from the story:

One, the narrator asks the question "do they want to ♥♥♥♥ me" every. time. a. character. looks. at. them. Or they remark on how turned on they are by a little ankle skin (hyperbole here). It's annoying and what a 13 year old does.

Two, the character adds little to no insight into the scenario by narrating so heavily. The axiom "show, don't tell" applies here - I don't need the protagonist to tell me that character X seems nervous if you write the dialogue in such a way as to show it. And, admittely, many games do have *some* narration that accompanies their dialogue, which is fair - but it's a *visual* AVN for a reason. There are elements beyond just dialogue that allow you to give the audience a fuller understanding of the scenario presented. Writing out every nuance is unnecessary.

There are some good things. I think the universe that's been set up is cool and has potential. I think the story is interesting enough and, in truth, 'fun' enough at times. And so for much of the game, up to this point, which is about Chapter 5 or so, I was wrestling with giving it a thumbs up. And the fun part is what saves it mostly - I tried not to take it too seriously and, to the extent I could do that, I found it somewhat enjoyable.

Now, I understand that this is an EA title. Maybe the devs plan to *fix* the translation or add in animations. I don't know. I do know that if both of those things were to happen, I'd probably change my review - 'probably' because there's still a fast plot, bland conversations, and poorly optimized characterization. But, even if there are EA plans to fix the translations, that's not something that should come at the back end. If you've released a story for the readership and it's unreadable or difficult to read, it's not ready to be read, even if the game is still in Early Access. I couldn't finish this AVN because the reading was so labored, and that's why it has a negative rating.

The game warns you in the beginning that translations are done with AI, noting that there are likely to be issues with spelling, grammar, etc. I respect that. I know how bad developmental costs can be and using an AI does make sense. I do tend to have no mercy on translation issues because there's no shortage of willing translators who'd probably proof the writing for a free copy of the game. And if you're going to market a game in a given language, I'm going to hold you to the same standard I hold every other game in that same market, especially when prices are similar.

But as someone who works with large language models professionally, whatever AI they used here should be fired. I don't know what the original language was, but the English translation is bad to the point where I could not get immersed into the story or continue. I did try.

But even if the language were written perfectly, the story has a bland, overused set up. A hackneyed starting point for the story isn't necessarily a bad thing, but a trite start followed by a lukewarm plot put me off.

The protagonist is goofy to the point of hilarity. He's not very relatable; despite being an adult, he acts like a child and, worse, is placed in childlike situations as if to underscore his childlike status. He endures petty, puerile bullying that seems out-of-place for an adult life. I'm not saying bullying doesn't take place in adulthood; ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ abound wherever you go and at whatever age, but the style of bullying was unrealistic. Someone stealing your lunch money at uni is odd. Getting mugged at gunpoint? Now that's the kind of bullying that happens in adulthood. But some fellow students mocking you and demanding you give them money didn't feel like a real situation, at least not the way it was presented. I mean, maybe if a gang had attacked him, but it was just some people.


So, I found the protagonist unrelatable and a bit dim. Maybe the story is a "coming of age" narrative where the protagonist grows up and becomes a more dynamic, interesting person. But whatever the protagonist would've become, they were not able to hold my interest initially.

The love interests look great, and though they are stereotypical of the AVN genre, they would've been fine, probably, had the story been able to keep my interest.

The art, from what I saw, was great. I saw little animation, even though I used the skip button to try to find something. I eventually just stopped even that. Still, I suspect the animations were on par with the art - which means that they would be solid.

If a poor English translation doesn't stop you or the subpar plot doesn't put you off, then this game will be fine for you.

Excellent, probably in my top. Great mechanics added to the AVN, and that's rare. Most mechanics added to an AVN feel useless or laborious. Not so here.

I was skeptical of the premise, but it worked well. The protagonist "lectures" at times, and normally that would annoy me, but it not only works here but I found the information conveyed relevant to the plot, useful, and well said.

Excellent characterization.

Biggest weakness is the visual work. The animations are short, rare, and generally underwhelming - but the scenes are still enjoyable and offer a lot to the audience. I was skeptical of what seems to be cell shaded art - I guess it's cell shaded? It's a term I've heard and it looks like it. But whatever it's called, the art put me off at first, but I came to enjoy it a great deal. Still, it's different. But ultimately in a good way.

The amount of content is great. The plot is also great - with emotional and intellectual depth.

One note - I wish I knew exactly how far along this game is in its development process. The EA information was vague and the game is certainly not done when the writer seemed to think it would be. It's ok that it's not "on time," I just wish the EA information was more...informative.

Still, pretty strong recommend here.

Haven't finished it, but aside from a few seemingly contradictory points in the lore/story, this one is every bit as good as the first one. Good writing, love the art, etc.

The content seems greatly expanded in this game, but there's still stuff that doesn't make sense. Can't really talk about it here because spoilers, but I feel I have to do an unfortunate amount of abstention from disbelief. I think that's worth noting for a review, even if I can't be specific.

Still, the story is enjoyable enough that it gets a thumbs up - though I wish there was some way to represent my dissatisfaction with what seems to be a number of narrative inconsistencies (or at least have what I'm apparently missing explained to me).

I wrote a review earlier in my reading experience, but decided to delete it and wait a bit more.

Ultimately, I feel this title is worth recommending but with some significant caveats.

First, this AVN has the general problem of being an open world full of closed doors, meaning that you have many locations on a map that are possible points of interaction, but most are empty, blocked off, or otherwise unnecessary. This isn't an EA problem; it's not a matter of there being too little content at this stage of development. Rather, this is a weakness of map-centric game design.

And I don't know why this design choice has stuck around - maybe it's a nostalgic holdover from browser-based games, maybe it's a lack of imagination, or maybe other people really like this way of organizing a game. But in AVNs, I think these maps 1.) create narrative friction by putting more barriers between you and the story and 2.) are just boring. There's no real ‘game’ in this mechanic - I just have to do a lot of clicking. Not the right time of day? Click 'til you get to the right time of day. Not in the right area? That's fine. Click through five different scenes around a map - scenes during which nothing happens - to get to room or building or something. The scenes are buried behind inane clicking. Or annoying words like "YOU HAVE NO REASON TO GO THERE RIGHT NOW" are being thrown at you constantly despite everything being highlighted as interactable.

Beyond my dislike of maps, the narrative is ultimately a bit weak. Now, in all fairness, cuckolding and corruption aren’t really my favorite flavors. My bias aside, however, when these flavors are expressed through an AVN that features a female protagonist, it seems they often gut the protagonist of substance in one of two ways. She is either submissive - not a crime in itself, but you are given no choice - or she's vapid and easily taken advantage of.

But I never want to play a stupid or submissive person (outside particular expressions of a fetish). It's not fun. Her ambitions seem muted and her motivations are passive, as if fate or casual interest is tugging her along. Even her greatest ambition, school, doesn't seem motivated by more than a vague hope (of making more money, I think?). She seems easily duped and your choices are often framed in such a way as to require little to no motivation either way; the character seems to flippantly decide on a course of action as if by a whim, e.g. “Oh well, why not?”

And while throwing caution to the wind and doing something for no particular reason is something a character might reasonably do, the character here seems to do this often enough that she’s either bland or stupid.

A weak protagonist seems to be an issue with cuckolding or corruption in AVNs generally. But in most AVNs that explore these flavors, the NPCs are the ones that are puerile and vapid, though the protagonist is almost always a troglodytic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. But vapidity is more tolerable when it’s something you’re roleplaying against, not the other way around.

But in Steps of Debauchery we have a female protagonist as the adulterer; she is willingly taking on the role of choosing sexual escapades. But instead of making her a dominant character inhabiting these roles willingly, the opposite occurs: she is instead vapid, silly, easily led along, ignorant, and always stumbling into these situations as if by accident. Or, having found herself in these situations, she is reactively ‘ok’ with them because, well, she’s kinda horny all of a sudden.

Now, I deleted my earlier review because I wanted to see if the female character became more dominant. In that case, the story would have a coming-of-age feel to it where the character comes to inhabit the role of a ‘cuckolder.’ And while the protagonist does develop some, she has yet to change in any way that feels substantive. She’s a little more gutsy, a tad less reserved, maybe a bit more sure of what she wants, but she’s still deciding things seemingly at whim and playing a reactive role in the plot.

Ultimately, the plot suffers from a weak and somewhat unenjoyable main character. Perhaps this type of protagonist is necessitated by the flavors being explored, but I feel the narrative still suffers too much here. There’s just too much internal dialogue to the tune of "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE HE TOUCHED ME BUT...NAH, I GUESS I'M OK WITH IT...I MEAN, I GUESS." She does more wondering than thinking.

But, while I feel both the narrative and protagonist are relatively weak, the plot is enjoyable enough if cuckolding and other taboo flavors are something that interests you. The animations and art are solid, if seeming a bit short at times. Ultimately, I do recommend it, but with the above concerns in mind.

Yes, but the axiom "show don't tell" applies strongly here. An hour in and I hadn't really made it out of the first room in the game. 4 hours in and I haven't made it past the first day. Granted - about an hour is down time because i walked away from my computer but...even at three hours, the plot is moving very, very slowly.

Not only is the plot slow, but the dialogue is repetitive. 30 to 40 minutes in, the main topic is "my dad was a ♥♥♥♥," and that topic kept popping up like that Pokemon Diggio. is that what's he's called? I don't know. Regardless, it got old fast.

The adult content doesn't make much sense. Hard to go into specifics here without spoiling. But a woman's insistence on talking about your penis is...weird? I mean, it feels forced. I will say that at least every character doesn't try to swing from your penis within the first 10 minutes, so at least some effort is there.

I don't find the art particularly great, but it's not bad, and I haven't witnessed many animations really (again, 3 hours in the plot hasn't moved far).

The characters are unique, which is good. But while their bodies are not caricatures, they themselves feel like they are. One sister is the big bad bully personality type but it gets obnoxious when she won't STOP being a big bad bully. Like, conversation drags to a snail's pace because it's like she's incapable of having a serious, real conversation. It's flirty insult after flirty insult after flirty insult after sister is lame insult.

So why a yes? Because honestly there are far worse games out there for the same price. This, at least, is mildly entertaining. The writing needs work, admittedly, and the art isn't going to wow anyone. But I think someone would get enjoyment out of this.

EDIT: Animations aren't bad, though they feel a bit short. I've come to enjoy much of the dialogue - though it is still long winded (only days have gone by after 12 hours) and relies too much on banter, it somehow works. I say "somehow" because I still don't think it's epic writing. It still feels like tell, not show. I think it works because ultimately the characters themselves are evolving, even if a bit unbelievably (life changes in, like, 2 days and all because a new pee pee showed up).