Recent reviews by ✿ Blinky ☻

This is one of the most beautiful lewd games I've ever played, but it isn't the most fun one I've played.

Incredible pixel art, vibrant colours, wide range of creative level designs, and really fun characters and enemies. The soundtrack is pure delight, and I could listen to those musical loops for hours, even outside of the game.

Despite these big upsides, I have three major points of contention:

There are many important collectables that are either required for completing quests, or needed to actually survive a given area. A long list of those collectables are outfits which cost a LOT of coins, hundreds and sometimes thousands.

Since you don't earn many coins per kill, you're forced to repeatedly grind for them to progress. This is done by exiting and re-entering a room, which respawns all the enemies upon each re-entry. This kind of farming isn't necessarily fun, and just distracts from the rest of the game's inherent charm.

If you don't grind like this, eventually you'll meet a trader deep into a level. Traders sell all of the unique outfits, so if you don't have enough coins on you at the time, you'll have to leave and come all the way back later.
Travelling through these levels takes ages, more so if you're under-levelled. There are about a dozen such traders, and too often I've been several hundred coins short for a crucial purchase, despite making sure that I clear each and every room I go through to try and store up on coins.
The need to grind like this appears to be intended design, and I feel this disrespects the player's real-world time.

While there's plenty of nudity and fun sexual content, it's somewhat divorced from the overall experience. There are no in-game knockouts, you can't be snagged by an enemy or obstacles, and there's no sex in the gameplay generally.
Every enemy and boss simply keeps hitting you until you die. Meh.

Similarly, despite the core mechanic of swapping between a male and female character, the sexual content is entirely female-oriented. Many of the reviews point this out, and it also irked me. The wizard you play as gets almost no love.

In every game-over scene, or in any of the unlockable bonus scenes, the focus is definitely on the girls. Curiously, the male in those animations is often a weird shade of blue or purple, even when it's clearly supposed to be your male wizard doing the boinking. One of the preview images on this store page has an example of this.

The game features an easily accessible map of all the rooms and areas you have discovered, however this map would have greatly benefited from having some kind of custom marker, or a better way of identifying points of interest.

There are MANY artificial barriers to progression in all of the identifiable areas, such as barbed vines, waterfalls, narrow pipes and gaps too far or high to jump over. You unlock abilities to traverse these obstacles eventually, but there's no way to mark anything on the map.
You'd best have a fantastic memory for this kind of thing, otherwise I strongly recommend maintaining a map outside of the game, to keep track of all the places you mean to go back to.

As it stands, the in-game map reveals the location of major characters, bosses, save points, teleporters and traders. There's no way to tell if any of those characters still have something waiting for you.

Get used to feeling lost in this game, and enduring TONS of back and forth wandering.

If there were in-game sexual encounters, such as enemies being able to boink you, or if you could get caught up in obstacles such as vines, tentacles, and other traps, this would easily be one of my favourite erotic games.

As it stands, it's just a really good Metroidvania with quirky erotica plastered over it.

I can safely recommend this title, depending on your tastes and play-style, but personally I expected a more immersive experience.

P.S. The unlockable costumes are SO CUTE, seriously! The Miko shrine-maiden, and the Angler fisherman costume are outrageously adorable. They are all worth seeing.

My Reisen fumo judges me harshly, but my Tewi fumo seems unbothered.

• Short experience, but what there is feels fair for the price.
  
• Creative variety of enemies.
  
• Reisen is T H I C C.
  
• Three playable levels in total. Each look and play very differently.
  
• Comprehensive gallery, easy to figure out.
  
• Fantastically animated game-over screens.
  
• Combat can feel clunky, but doesn't come across as buggy or unfair.
  
• Inconsistent English translation, but the few spelling and grammatical errors are negligible.
  
• The in-game animations are also great, but a good portion of enemies or obstacles don't have knock-out scenes or events, when it feels like they should. For example, one of the bosses can eat you, but there isn't an animation for it to transition between gameplay and the game-over. Moreso, there are several tentacle "clusters" that can't capture you, only doing damage instead.

Basically: Big, bouncy, bodacious bnuuy. Buy it!

• Gorgeous graphics and animations.
  
• Pleasing visual aesthetic. The overall presentation is masterful.
  
• A short experience, but comfortably so. Doesn't overstay its welcome.
  
• Very clever puzzle-platforming. Not an aggravating challenge, but not exactly a walk in the park either.

• Unintuitive default control scheme, but all the keybinds can be modified to suit your style.
  
• The animations are excellent, but feel short-lived somehow.

I had a great time playing through this game, and feel I got my money's worth. I unlocked all of the available content in four hours. This is the kind of h-game I'll occasionally keep coming back to.

However, I feel that games like this should ideally have more h-content in the gameplay itself, such as for game-overs or stun events, when your character is otherwise overpowered, but not K.O'd yet. As it stands, the gameplay feels somewhat separated from the lewd content.

TL;DR: A surprisingly fun experience that effectively motivates you to unlock everything it has to offer, all at a very fair asking price. Recommended!

A precise platformer made ridiculously difficult by the lack of any kind of checkpoint system, or the ability to precisely platform.

If that's not harsh enough, it features narration that is both existentially insightful and obnoxiously condescending.

Remarkable catharsis if you actually manage to somehow finish it. Recommended.

I first played this title on my home town's Childrens' Library in the late 90's. They had two old computers that (probably) used Windows 95, and you'd pay 10 Namibian Dollars per hour to play on them. Alongside the original Duke Nukem, Hugo, Police and other classics, Crystal Caves was one of my favourites, for good reason!

The platforming often requires tremendous precision, but the controls are so consistent and reliable that you never feel cheated by the game when you fail. Despite all the bright and varying colours in each level, your character Milo is pleasantly easy to keep track of. Stellar design decisions all around.

Speaking of design, this game comes with four episodes, all featuring 16 levels. The variety and creativity is inspiring. Some levels are certainly more difficult than others, but it's entirely possible to complete all of them without ever taking damage! That's a feat I couldn't pull off as a kid, but have finally managed as an adult :D

The included level editor is a fantastic bonus. It's very easy to learn, and lets you appreciate just how much effort goes into designing one.

The music is delightful. I think there are 8 different tracks, and they're all a treat to listen to.

There are a handful of sneaky secrets, some of which are hinted at in the Steam Achievements.

A 10/10 title in my view. I can't think of any legitimate criticism to levy against this game. Even at the regular full price, if you enjoy classic platformers, I feel that Crystal Caves is definitely worth it!

This game is a master-class in level design, implementing the philosophy of letting the player choose their approach and play-style to near perfection. This game's replayability value is outstanding. However, for any first-time players, even those who are experienced with other Hitman titles, Blood Money definitely takes getting used to.

Menu navigation is likely the biggest headache you'll encounter, at least initially. For example, when there are multiple bodies, guns and a door nearby, you can't bind WASD to navigate that "use" menu, as it will make Agent 47 move away from what you're interacting with. Instead, make sure to use your mouse's scroll-wheel, but if that doesn't work, the best alternative is to bind menu up and down to your keyboard's traditional direction keys.

The game has aged remarkably well, but if you have a high-refresh rate gaming monitor running over 60 frames a second, this will cause rare, obscure issues like not being able to fire your weapons in the slow-motion death scenes. Very high resolutions like 4K and over are also not natively supported, so a mod or an edit to the configuration files will be needed.

Aside from these nuisances, this game is so much fun that it's worth putting up with its technical hiccups. The first-person mode is a blast, and a highly welcome option in many scenarios. There are a lot of missions to play through, and each of them is so well planned, that there can be dozens of different ways to complete a mission well.

The available four difficulty settings scale intuitively, and the AI is more than serviceable. The four default weapons can be upgraded rather extensively, and this is one of the few games I know of where you can put a suppressor on a shotgun! Aside from those four defaults, there's a heap of special weapons to collect throughout all the missions, even a humble air rifle.

Amusingly, this game is very clearly designed for a subtle, stealthy approach to gameplay, yet you are given a wide assortment of destructive weapons, for those special times when you feel like throwing stealth to the wind.

"What do you want in this mission? No weapons at all for maximum sneakiness, or a double-drum magazine on your M4 assault rifle loaded with armor-piercing bullets? Can complete this mission with only your fiber-wire, or do you think waltzing into the target's office with a magazine-fed short-barrel SPAS-12 is more appropriate?"

A personal favoured title, and one I'll repeatedly return to over the years. Very highly recommended!

Quake 3 Arena not only defines my formative years, but it's quite likely the best game to warm up to, ahead of playing any other shooter. Legitimately, no other game gets my reflexes, game-sense and accuracy as razor-sharp as this legendary title does. Here's why:

• Blisteringly fast gameplay.
  
• No reloading, just dakka-dakka.
  
• Hilarious character designs and even funnier in-game taunts.
  
• Buttery-smooth, stable frame-rate. With a maximum possible render speed of 200 frames per second, it's the silkiest 200 your gaming monitor could ever beam at you.
  
• Comically overt gore, and satisfying gibs.
  
• Demonic imagery and prentagrams, because why not? >:D
  
• Highly satisfying hit-marker sound.
  
• Mod-friendly, with MANY mods available internet-wide.
  
• One of the most bad-ass announcers in gaming history.
  
• Power-ups, including the infamous QUAD DAMAGE.
  
• No friggin' levelling system, no loot boxes, no store, no in-game currency, only raw multiplayer.
  
• Bones cratered.
  
• Orbb.
  
• Hossman.
  
• Daemia.
  
• Bitterman.
  
• Grunt.
  
• You have lost the lead.

Quake 3 Arena is the sole reason I got gud at first-person-shooters. I first got a copy of the game in 2005. It would be many more years until I'd have internet with a ping under 700, so I'd play against the bots, and they most certainly aren't push-overs.

At the time I could barely compete against the medium difficulty bots. Just about a year later, I was already blazing through the nightmare bots without much hassle.

This game has a unique way of sharpening your senses and skills up, and quicker than almost any other game could. Quake 3's railgun is the reason I can flick-shot. The rocket launcher taught me how to predict an enemy's moves. The chain-gun and lightning-gun taught me how to keep my crosshair on a target, even while both of us are madly bouncing around the map. The gauntlet trains you how to side-wind to get a melee kill over a ranged enemy.

No jokes, if you wanna sharpen your skills up for the sake of any other game, whether it's CS:GO, Battlefield, Call of Duty or even Fortnite, this game will power-level your abilities like no other.

The only trouble you'll likely encounter is setting it up on a modern system. By default, the game only supports 4:3 resolutions, so if you're playing on a modern 16:9, or an ultra-wide panel, you'll have to set your preferred resolution, FOV and frame-rate in the game's configuration file. The way the game applies brightness to itself is also very strange, and for some reason, you can't easily alt-tab out of this game, but luckily this doesn't get in the way of fragging.

If you happen to own an old CRT monitor, plug that beast in and crank it up to 70hz for maximum nostalgia (and coil-whine).

10/10, a timeless classic.

YOU HAVE TAKEN THE LEAD.

This game is slick. Genuinely, for an early pre-alpha release, it offers a lot already:

• Ancient Egyptian aesthetic. YES.
  
• Downright gorgeous graphics. Scenic landscapes, crisp textures, high-polygon models, the lot.
  
• Creative character designs.
  
• Abundant lewd content, with some appropriately tasteful humour mixed in.
  
• Serviceable combat system. Still fairly standard, but what's already there reliably works.
  
• Partial voice-overs already available for some NPC's.

A lot of what the game has to offer in terms of gameplay mechanics is still very bare-bones, but this project shows serious promise. With graphics and sex scenes so professionally crafted already, I look forward to what this game has in store next.

Lewd games tend to not get nearly the same kind of backing and marketing that other mainstream genres do, so when creators put forward a game with this much competence and passion on display (pun intended?), I feel they deserve all the support they can get. I very much recommend visiting their Patreon if this project is to your liking.

It's tough to explain exactly how much I love this game, but I assure you, even if you've never played it before, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is worth your time.

A lot of my praise is contextual to the time in which the game was made, but even compared with the vast majority of modern-day adventure titles, The Infernal Machine is a shining example of adventure done right.

Note: While I don't have any hours in the Steam version, I have hundreds of total hours spent on the physical retail release and GOG version combined. More on this below.

• Incredibly creative range of levels, enemies, and set pieces. It keeps you playing, as it's exciting to discover what's in store for you next.
  
• Levels are highly competent in their design.
  
• The game's story is intriguing, and unfolds cleverly as you progress.
  
• Good range of weapons, and your satchel's capacity is unlimited, so you don't need to worry about ever collecting too many guns, ammo or items.
  
• Humorous enemy behaviour, especially from the Soviet soldiers.
  
• An attempt at real-world scavenger hunting was made. At the time, most videogames made use of tropes like floating/spinning items. This game has every item lay on a surface, like the ground, not highlighted in any way, so hunting for items is intuitive and surprisingly immersive.
  
• Several hours, if not days of play time. This adventure might last long, but it doesn't overstay its welcome either.
  
• There's a fun extra level you can unlock, with loads of references to the actual Indiana Jones movies, and there's even a hilarious Monkey Island cheat you can unleash on your enemies.
  
• The music is fantastic, despite the bit-crushing.
  
• Voice-acting and casting is on-point. Every character is a pleasure to listen to.
  
• All levels have exactly 10 hidden treasures to find. These treasures allow you to buy ammunition and health supplies before jumping into the next level.

• I can't for the life of me get the Steam version to actually start, on any of the computers I have access to. My brother and friends can play just fine, so playing this on Steam may be a hit and miss for you. I don't have any of the same issues with the GOG release though, which appears to have better modern-day compatibility built into it.
  
• Famously buggy. There's several known issues mostly with compatibility, and some game-breaking crashes at the beginning of certain levels. Using some guns can also cause a crash. These problem also appear to afflict systems randomly, and isolating the cause of this on specific systems is very difficult. If you run into any damning problems, I suggest searching the forum for solutions.
  
• Awkward combat. Even if you know what you're doing with dodging and general control, it's often impossible to avoid certain damage that comes your way.
  
• The IQ scoring system doesn't make much sense. At the end of every level, you are given an IQ score based on how well you played, including how much damage you took. For some reason, this maximum is 50, despite a perfect play, you won't ever achieve more than 50 IQ points. It feels like the game insults you, even for a perfect run XD It's also unclear what earns you score, and what subtracts from it, without doing some of your own research first.

You may encounter legitimate frustration with this game, but this is mostly with actually getting it to start on a modern system. Once you do though, The Infernal Machine is a masterfully crafted adventure.

My father bought the physical 2-disc copy of the game for my brother and I on a whim, around 2002. It was one of the games being sold for cheap, in a literal bargain bin. Little did we know in what legendary regard we'd hold this game for years to come. It captured our imaginations in ways few games did in our formative years.

For example, the Soviet enemies are hilarious to me. While they put up a challenging fight, their exclamations and movements have been a meme between my brother and I since our primary school days. Gennadi Volodnikov is also an inexplicably likeable villain.

We played on a Windows XP computer in those days, and ironically, XP was the worst operating system to try and play Infernal Machine on. It reportedly caused crashes when using the rifle, shotgun and machinegun. However, a way around this was to simply have Windows Media Player open in the background while you play. This somehow stopped most of those issues from happening. Since we didn't have any kind of internet connection in those days, I never thought to try this. If only we knew :P

Another fun bug-fix of the time was reinstalling the game to get around crashes. For example, when encountering a crash at the start of the Palawan Volcano, you'd have to reinstall the game so that it loaded from the disks instead of the hard drive. Once you pass the point where it would crash, you could install it normally again. It's easy to forget how slowly things installed from CD's.

In conclusion, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine will remain as one of my favourite single-player experiences, now and forever. Admittedly I view my experience through rose-tinted nostalgia goggles, but I'm convinced that its competency in story and level design may endear itself to both new players, as well as returning ones.

FULLY recommended!

The game that introduced me to the Metro universe, and still one of my favourite Metro games, despite its known bugs and issues. Once you get it going to your liking, it's one hell of a ride!

• Magnificent world-building:
  The developers clearly put a lot of passion and effort into crafting a believable and immersive game-world, both visually and audibly. The game rewards you for exploring every level to find supplies or better weapons. There's always plenty to see, sometimes even uncovering more subtle plot elements along the way.
  
  
• Fun and surprisingly realistic weaponry:
  There is great detail in every gun and its respective design. Their ramshackle appearance lets you admire how their various mechanisms potentially work, and comes across as something that people stuck in a post-apocalyptic scenario would actually craft. This makes the rare and "modern" weapons feel that much more special to use later on.
  
  
• A brutal yet rewarding experience:
  The story unfolds and develops very cleverly. The events and set pieces are so well crafted, it motivates you to keep going if only to see what might come next. You cannot tank much damage, which motivates you to play carefully. Resource management is also crucial, so you do well to use ammunition and gas mask filters sparingly.
  
  
• Ahgopstop!
  Ahlalalalalalala, oh hogopstop!

• Unrefined and often annoying stealth:
  Easily the biggest gripe people have with the game, and rightfully so. It's very difficult to get used to, often owing to how unintuitive it is.
  This game's stealth is such where if you alert just one enemy in an area, every other enemy in the level immediately knows your exact X, Y and Z coordinates. Enemies also have a famously annoying habit of screaming bloody murder even when you do a silent takedown, instantly alerting every other enemy in the level. Even if the enemy you killed didn't make an audible sound, but they noticed you for a split second before you took them down, a telepathic ping is sent to their buddies, and they all know your exact location.
  This of course takes some getting used to, but this kind of brutality is all the more reason to play carefully, and makes for some genuinely tense "stealth" gameplay.
  
  
• Weapon customization is lacking:
  This is definitely handled better in the redux. Here in the original, you're forced to replace entire weapons for upgrades you might want. Individual attachments like extended barrels, scopes, lasers or suppressors cannot be individually attached or removed. This limits how you progress through the game somewhat, but luckily it's not too limiting.
  
  
• The "Moral Points" system doesn't make much sense:
  There are two endings to the game, one "good" and one "bad". To get the good ending you need to earn enough of these points, but the way you earn them is not by making a conscious moral decision, but accidentally finding a secret room or overhearing a conversation. It's not so much a reward for playing morally, as it is for finding all the more obscure details the game designers decorated every level with. A very strange and confusing design decision in my opinion.
  
  
• Field Of View is uncomfortably narrow by default:
  FOV can't be conventionally adjusted, and most other available in-game settings are fairly limited. Meaningful fine-tuning for the sake of control or graphics will need to be done from the game's config files.
  
  
• Uncomfortable default mouse performance:
  I recommend searching the forums for a link to a Raw Mouse Input fix. Do not confuse the redux's fix for the original game, as both versions have the same mouse issues. The vertical sensitivity is lower than your horizontal, for whatever reason, and a raw input patch fixes this.

I have played both the redux and this original, and when only comparing these two titles, this original is by far my preferred experience. While my comparison between the two is quite harsh, I feel it is fair. Here is my reasoning why the original Metro 2033 reigns supreme:

• Aesthetic and graphics:
  The redux version clearly has sharper textures and higher polygon counts in its models, but the original Metro 2033's lighting and shadows feel more realistic. There's a slightly deeper contrast between dark and light here, and most prominently, the "shadow" or "ghost" characters look way better in the original.
  In the redux, the ghosts are semi-transparent dark 3D models that are supposed to look like shadows, but really don't. The original's ghosts actually look like shadows cast on the walls and ground beyond your flashlight. They are genuinely unnerving, whereas the redux ghosts just break your immersion.
  
  
• Melee combat:
  The original game's knife is a separate weapon that you can equip on its own. It packs a surprisingly visceral blow, and even lets you choose between punching or slicing at a target. Both appear to do more or less the same damage. If you run out of ammo, you can reasonably stand your ground against some mutants with just the knife.
  In the redux your melee attack is a separate command, much like you'd be used to in Last Light and Exodus, and has an irritating short delay between pressing the button and the attack actually taking place.
  
  
• Stealth:
  The redux version is much more refined in this aspect, but the original's brutality has its own appeal. The incredibly unforgiving stealth fits in well in the otherwise unforgiving game world.
  
  
• Voice Acting:
  I'm not convinced that any meaningful improvement was made between the original and redux version. A notable difference is the main character Artyom's voice changing from a more moody, depressed tone here, to a more generic, almost "action hero" tone in the redux.
  The most confusing and obvious downgrade was with the child characters' voices. This original game's children sounded like they were voiced by legitimately young actors, while strangely in the redux, it clearly sounds like early 20-somethings trying to sound like they're 8.
  
  
• Laser Attachments for your guns:
  They are WAY better here in Metro 2033! In the redux, it's difficult to see where your laser's focused dot actually lands on a given target. You see more of your laser's trail than where it goes.
  The original's lasers don't leave such prominent trails in the atmosphere or dust, but instead left a brighter, easily visible dot on your target. This makes firing from the hip feel much more accurate, and satisfyingly impactful!
  
  
• WEAPON DAMAGE!
  By far the most annoying downgrade in the redux release, which alone was enough to make my latest playthrough there more irritating than fun. There, the weapons all feel so much weaker in terms of damage per shot.
  For example, you can land repeated head-shots on a given mutant, like a Nosalis or Watcher, but it simply won't go down! Only a handful of repeated headshots later does it feel like dying. Furthermore, fully-automatic fire on an enemy is a waste of your ammo. It appears that there is a cooldown of some kind between shots. If too many rounds connect with an enemy in a short time-frame, some of those rounds wont register damage. Only ever engage them in semi-automatic fire.
  In sharp contrast, shooting in the original Metro 2033 is super fun! If you are skilled or lucky enough to land excellent shots, more often than not you are rewarded with a successful takedown. You can practically feel every bullet leave your gun with aggressive velocity, and strike into your target with appropriate force. Weapons are comfortably accurate, but not too much so. If you keep your fire to bursts or semi-automatic shots, you can mow down even groups of targets in a rewarding cacophony of gunfire, impacts, physics collisions and screaming.

Fully recommended, especially now that this gem is free!