Category: Adult Games

X-Angels

Ed Note: This write-up discusses content intended for an 18+ audience. There is no intrinsically 18+ content or art in this write up, but there are images that some might consider risque, and there are links to content that is 18+ (Though that content is age-gated a second time). All of which is to say: You have been warned.

Prologue

I played a great game recently that I probably can’t recommend to you.

That said, you can know for sure if you’d enjoy it by answering a few questions:

  1. Do you like deck-builders?
  2. Are you interested in seeing a very competent, if a bit limited execution of the genre? One that maps the whole thing into a much larger, longer run of an experience with some visual novels elements?

Yes to both so far?

Great.

How do you feel about hardcore animated pornography?

Ed Note: It occurs to me after writing all of this, I should probably be a bit more specific in who this game is for. The porn in X-Angels is very much geared toward straight men. Sorry for anyone else whose hopes I might have gotten up.

Act 1. I Play It For The Mechanics

X-Angels, by BaranceStudio, is an incredibly fun, if somewhat limited deckbuilder, probably best compared to Slay the Spire. Like Slay the Spire, each turn, you draw a hand of cards, and play them to deal damage to enemies and opponents. Cards have variety of effects, ranging from damage, to generating shields to block incoming, to generating buffs, de-buffing, or applying permanent triggers to yourself.

But if you’re still here, you probably answered “Yes” to two of those questions above. You know about digital deck builders. So let’s talk about all the things you haven’t seen before.

Now, is it a deep and meaningful visual novel experience? No. Not really.

Each “Run” of X-Angels takes place parallel to sort of visual novel experience. This on its own is actually pretty neat. The game feels more akin to full campaign than to a roguelike, and you can choose to do the games various areas in different orders. A single run takes a fair bit longer than comparable games, especially on the hard difficulty.

X-Angels also adds a system where, based on the first two characters you recruit (of four), those two characters define your deck-building and your X-Power, a sort of side meter.

When this meter is filled, it can be used to be activate a special power or ability based on which character you have active. The second kicker is that you can switch between characters mid-fight, allowing you to build charge on one character, then swap to another character to use their burst. It’s a cool little mechanic.

These are quite neat, and range from conjuring extra cards into your deck, to purging debuffs on yourself. And again, this is an area where it feels like X-Angels goes harder than it needs to.

Many of Lia’s abilities effectively poison herself, or scale off poisoning herself. So instead of having to add cards to purge that poison, she can use her X-Power to do so.

Also, I really appreciate that the game has an actual story instead of just “Lore.” I am so tired of games that are just “Lore.” I would never say that X-Angels has better gameplay than Slay the Spire, Monster Train, or Inkbound but at least it has a story with an actual fucking ending.

Intermission 1.

Several years ago, while looking at the trash that shows up on Steam, me and my friends got into an discussion about what the worst possible mechanic you
could combine with erotic content would be.

After a bit, we settled on Sudoku.

Then one of those friends, one who actually finishes their side projects, went and actually made the whole thing. It has multiplayer!

It’s called Operation Sexy Sudoku, but, here’s a little inside scoop: that’s just because the developer called it as “Open Source Software” as its development code name.

You will need to be logged into Steam to see this.

Anyway, they had made most of the game, and realized that they didn’t have one of the more critical elements for this sort of project: The porn.

At this point, we started trawling around on itch.io, looking to see if there was an asset pack, or some easy way to get a lot of anime pornography
that could be used in the game. And while we found a pack, after researching, it turned it out it was someone stealing assets from a developer calling BaranceStudio, and trying to sell them for money.

This is how I found out about BaranceStudio, and ended up following them.

Act 2. Adult Content, For Adults

I did put a whole disclaimer at the front of this, so I’m going to keep this part brief, and non-explicit.

X-Angels operates off what I’d call “Porn Logic.” It’s mostly fairly vanilla, but there is an option to opt into what I’d call the “bad end” route, which contains the typical sort of dark ending content you might expect from anime porn.

If I was to describe the sort of adult content you’ll see in this game, I’d say: There’s nothing here that you wouldn’t find in a dark romance or hentai.

That said, there’s a lot here that is absolutely not part of a healthy adult relationship.

I think that’s enough of a disclaimer. If you want to learn more, the game has a mature content descriptor on the Steam page.

Intermission 2.

It’s kind of weird that sex, something that most people will do in their life, is much more taboo in games than murder, something presumably most of us have not done, and will never do.

The obvious take is that “sex” in games bears pretty much the same resemblance to sex in the real world as violence in games bears to violence in the real world.

After all, if I shoot someone in Fortnite, I haven’t actually murdered them. I’ve kicked them out of the game they are in. It’s less eternal void, and more being tagged out in capture the flag.

The parallel version, then, is probably something like “Sex in games is almost always porn or porn adjacent.”. It has the same relationship to the real complexities of sex and relationships that violence in games does. Which is to say, pretty much none.

Does anyone else think it’s a bit weird that most video games that have sex, it’s used as reward? It’s at the end of a romance option, or it’s unlocked in the secret ending. Porn games do the same. “You saved the day, here are some titties and/or dick” is not a particularly nuanced take regardless of whether it’s full frontal or not.

Also, it strikes me as odd that when something is “Adult” or “For Adults”, that almost always just means “It’s horny.” Not that it involves rent, or taxes,
or the difficulty of meeting people as you get older, or the stresses of aging, or complexities of modern life.

No, “Adult” means genitals.

Act 3.

So why am I writing about this?

Well, there’s an interesting post credit sequence in which the developers talk about their intentions, and there’s a bit where they say, “Hey, this game was much harder to program and implement than our previous games! Anyway, our next game is going to be something much more complex then this!”

And I kind of respect that, in the same way that I respected it when they responded to me and my friend asking about their assets.

We live in an era where it can be super lucrative to make exploitative gacha games that sell softcore porn. Basically, selling microtransaction lottery tickets to children for the chance to see “not quite porn.” BaranceStudio could have taken this approach. Instead, they made a direct, interesting, and well thought out porn game.

I just find it refreshing that someone made horny deckbuilder and sold it for $11.

Conclusion

So do I recommend X-Angels? Well, again, only if you like deck builders and male gaze-y animated porn. Okay, that’s a lot of qualifiers, but I think they’re pretty fair ones.

It’s not a perfect game. I didn’t encounter any game breaking bugs, but the save-file system is very wonky, and the translations are rough at times.

But if you do like the things mentioned above, and you prefer to earn your horny cutscenes instead of having them handed to you after you click through 90 lines of text, it’s pretty great.

X-Angels is $11 on Steam.

HuniePop

I’m going to be honest. I chose to play through HuniePop purely to flex on a friend who thought that the game was “Too hard” and that “Most people couldn’t beat the first level.” For reference, this friend has beaten all three Dark Souls games, so my first impression was that they just really, really sucked at puzzle games.

Having now actually finished the game, I have to admit it was not as easy as I was expecting. But I still beat it, so suck it Kyle. Anyway, HuniePop!

HuniePop is sort of combination of dating simulator and match 3 puzzle game. I have some issues with the game’s implementation of both of these mechanics. But credit where it’s due, it did make me realize that I was about to forget a girlfriend’s birthday for the second year in a row. More on that in a moment.

Anyway, after a brief tutorial and introduction to the game’s mechanics by a sex fairy, you’re given a magic phone that that will let you locate girls you encounter and also show you information about how much they like you.

Hmmm… when you put it that way, it’s kinda creepy. Like, it’ll show you if they’re asleep, but you can’t go visit them or talk to them if they’re not already in a somewhat public place? I dunno. Anyway, that brings us to the first of the two main gameplay loops.

While HuniePop advertises itself as a match 3 game, there’s also a large portion of it that functions as a sort of memory game. Here’s how it works. After the tutorial, you’ll start off the first day, and you’ll go around talking to girls. There are four time blocks in a day, and the game progresses to the next time block when you choose to go talk to a different girl. These blocks are Morning, Noon, Evening and Night, and with some small difference for Evening and Night, they all function pretty much the same.

While you’re interacting with one of the girls, there are five actions you can take. You can buy her food, which increases the food meter, you can offer her a drink, which she generally won’t actually take you up on unless it’s already much later in the day, you can give her a present, or you can just chat with her. Food, alcohol, and gifts all cost Munie, one of the game’s two currencies, that you get by successfully completing dates (Editor’s note: just like in real life). Chatting with a girl gives you a small amount of Hunie, the game’s other currency, but lowers her food meter. Chatting is actually a fairly large portion of the gameplay loop, and she’ll either tell you something about herself, such as birthday, favorite season, etc., or she’ll ask you to remember something she’s told you previously. Getting these questions correct rewards you with extra Hunie, which is used to upgrade your stats, and increase the value of various tokens in the match 3 portion of the game.

It’s worth noting that none of these things actually make her like you any more.

In order to get her to like you more, you have to go on a successful date, and this is the match 3 part of HuniePop.

This is where HuniePop has some differences in genre from most other match 3 games. There are 5 different types of symbols, which each have a different mechanical effect:

Talent/Flirtation/Romance/Sexuality – These are the four symbols that build your affection meter. You need to fill this meter before you run out of turns to successfully complete the date. They’re the circular symbols in the image above. Each girl has a like, and a dislike. Matching the symbols they like will net you more affection, matching the symbols they dislike generally net you less. The other two types will just give a base amount.

Passion – The heart shaped symbols. Matching passion symbols boosts your passion level. Higher passion level gives you a multiple on the amount of affection earned from the four symbols mentioned above.

Sentiment – Sentiment tokens are the small teardrop cyan tokens. They give you energy in order to use your “Date Gifts” which are activated abilities. Abilities can range from permanently increasing the spawn rate of certain tokens for the rest of the date, to removing all tokens of one type from the board, to just replacing all tokens of one type with another.

The Bells I Can’t Remember The Name Of – They’re the bell shaped ones. You match these to get an extra turn.

Broken Hearts – If you match broken hearts, you will lose a large portion of your affection meter. You don’t want to do this.

I think this single gif is responsible for 90% of the bandwidth usage on this site…

While these mechanics are interesting, I have two big problems with them. The first one is how Broken Hearts feel to play with. Because you’ll try to avoid matching them, you’ll find yourself often with a very clogged board state, and it can be easy to have new tokens fall into the board, and set off broken heart chains. It’s frustrating, and it takes away some of the fun I’ve always had with match 3 games: trying to set up ridiculously long combos.

My second problem is a design decision that was made regarding how matches work. If you make a match that includes a set of 3 orbs going up, and 3 orbs over, in a sort of a L shape, with one shared orb in the corner, the game does not count this as a match of 5 orbs. In fact, it won’t count two of the orbs at all. It will just remove the highest match of three and remove the other two. It makes it much harder to set up certain combos. I just don’t understand why they made this choice.

So why do I think that this is a design decision? Well, if you successfully date a girl enough to get her to want to come home and fuck you, there’s a secondary mini-game version of the match 3 puzzle where you have unlimited moves and in that part of the game the L pattern does count as a full match.

Speaking of which, I think it’s time to briefly cover the “Adult Content” that’s present in HuniePop. There is… surprisingly little of it honestly. It’s there, but outside of some bare breasts, and six or so images, nothing ever reaches past the level of “Hot Babe Calendar.” It’s suggestive, but except for the aforementioned, not really explicit.

Overall, HuniePop is decent. It’s not amazing in any sense, but I did find myself continuing to play it, and trying to to beat it. The difficultly curve is a bit weird, with some unusual spikes, and there were a few challenging points. It’s better than I was expecting, and if it wasn’t for the pattern mechanics and Broken Hearts, I think I would have had a fair amount of fun with it.

HuniePop is available on Steam, and also GoG (You’ll need to be logged on Steam to see it though, because ADULT CONTENT). If you want to hit on anime girls and see breasts while also playing a weirdly difficult match 3, this might be the game for you. If you’ve got no interest in the game’s erotic theming, though, you’d likely be better off with another puzzle game. (I would personally suggested Beglitched!)

Princess and Conquest

I bought this because I was kind of horny, and frankly, the money could have been better spent.

Princess and Conquest is “unique.” That’s not the same thing as good. I cannot come up with a single simple way to describe it, so I’m choosing to go with Pornographic Action RPG with Political Simulation elements. From what I’ve played so far, I would not recommend it.

I don’t really consider this blog to be “Family Friendly,” but I also don’t currently provide a way to easily opt out of seeing 18+ content. For that reason, I’m not going to provide any in-depth level of analysis of the game’s sexual content. That’s not to say I won’t talk about it, but there should be nothing in this blog post that will make anyone upset or hot and bothered.

General Concept

So, what is Princess and Conquest? Well, at the base, it’s an open-ish world RPG. After a brief tutorial that explains a few of the general mechanics, you’re tossed out into a large open world map. From here, you can whatever you want, as long as whatever you want consists of wandering around, exploring areas, having casual sex, and taking quests to complete for Swirlies, the game’s currency and XP. Combat is done in a sort of real time action RPG thing, where you can switch between members of your current party on the fly. Each member has their own equipment, stats, and abilities. Some have access to magic and projectile attacks, while others don’t.

This isn’t a static open world. There’s a day/night cycle, and time is constantly passing, during which the various kingdoms will declare war on each other, send armies at each other, and generally cause the world to slip into absolute chaos. You can choose to intervene in these fights for one side or another, in order to push the balance of power a given direction. Doing this also gains you affinity with the Princesses you aid, allowing you to convince them to stop trying to murder their neighbors and whatnot.

If you’re reading all of this, and thinking “Okay, that actually sounds kind of neat, and I’m horny and want to play this” pause that thought for a moment. Because Princess and Conquest is, as far as I can tell, made in RPG Maker.

I do not know why anyone would ever choose to make a game with real time combat and open world mechanics in RPG Maker. In another post on this site, I wrote about No Delivery, and noted how the game was impressive for utilizing the engine in interesting ways, and taking advantage of some of its quirks for neat effects.

Princess and Conquest does not do that. Instead, it takes an engine that was primarily built for single player traditional semi-linear turn based RPG’s and uses it for a game that relies primarily on simulation and real time action combat. While it’s impressive that they were able to get it to do this at all, a large number of the mechanics just feel terrible.

The worst one by far is combat. Switching between characters on the fly is incredibly floaty and feels laggy. The hitboxes for the player weapons can feel absolutely miserable, compounded by the fact that many enemies can deal damage on contact. One of the bosses can’t be damaged, even with projectile weapons, unless it is faced directly head on; otherwise projectiles just phase through. Another boss is be able to land hits while in its theoretically “Vulnerable” phase, in addition to not actually taking damage when attacked. In another instance, because of how projectiles were handled, I attacked, missed, and then couldn’t use the projectile again because it was still traveling and hadn’t been cleaned up.

I’m not sure where this part of the article will go, but I’m just gonna write it anyways. I also want to apologize for the relatively lower level of quality in this portion of the article. Sex, and by extension, porn, is complicated topic for a variety of reasons. Frankly, I don’t have desire to do a deep dive analysis and criticism of a $12 Steam game’s portrayal of fantasy sex. Just like I don’t feel like reviewing random videos on Pornhub. If that was what I wanted to do, this blog would have a different name, and likely a higher readership.

Sexual Content High Level View

For a brief bit of context: I’m a straight man. I’ve done some stuff. I would not consider myself particularly “Vanilla.” I’ve seen a fair amount of weird porn, and weird porn art. I’ve had sexual relations with both genders. Okay, context and perspective set? Good. Back to the game.

My primary issue with Princess and Conquest is that it doesn’t offer adequate ability to opt in or opt of the sex/sexual activities. In the time I’ve played so far, I’ve seen content and situations that I suspect would make some players highly uncomfortable. However, there is only one form of controllable interaction, and it’s not broad enough to cover what the game offers.

My secondary issue has to do with the nature of sex in Princess and Conquest. While I consider the above topic to be more of a general statement regarding sexual content, this next one is more of a personal opinion. Sex within Princess and Conquest is almost universally encouraged, as is getting characters that the player has sex with pregnant, through two mechanical benefits. First, having sex has a chance to get an egg which grants more party members, potentially a party member of a hard to find “race” or with better stats. Second, having sex with an NPC will increase the affinity the player has with the Princess character of the same race as the NPC. One of the player goals is to try to avoid massive chaos and breakdown, and affinity points are used to convince people to stop waging war. Since affinity points can otherwise be difficult to get without pissing someone else off, in order to prevent a world war you kinda have to fuck everyone you come across who is interested.

Okay, so enough of that. Again, please don’t take this as some form of full analysis of the game’s sexual content, or my views of sex. The above are merely my two major problems with how the game handles its pornographic content and mechanics.

Okay, so, back to the rest of the game. I have a bunch of smaller problems outside of sex and combat. Here’s a short list:
1. The game is buggy. Most of the time, these bugs don’t do too much. Sometimes, as I discovered to my incredible annoyance, they crash the game. And because of how the save system works, have fun going back to your last save.
Author Note: I actually went back and played some more of the game to get screenshots/see if I was being overly harsh. Then the game crashed.
2. Obtuse systems. The game wants to have a level of political strategy and simulation, but good luck understanding how population growth, eloping, or any other system works without the Wiki, because the game will not tell you. Or Tea Parties! Because I read the wiki, and I still don’t understand how Tea Parties work, or are supposed to work.
3. Frustrating map design. This wouldn’t be as bad if it wasn’t somewhat accentuated by the game engine, but the map design. Dear God, the map design. I want to make something clear. If you have game with a zone-based map, and you leave or enter zones by pressing in a given direction, DO NOT FUCKING MAKE IT SO THAT YOUR MAPS SPAWN THE PLAYER IN A LOCATION WHERE IF THEY PRESS THE BUTTON THEY USED TO LEAVE THE AREA A SECOND TIME, IT BRINGS THEM BACK INTO THE ZONE THEY JUST FUCKING LEFT.
4. Quest system weirdness. I do not like that I cannot have more than one active quest from the adventurers guild at once. I do not like that quest descriptions can be weirdly vague about what you need to do to complete them. And I absolutely hate the quests where the descriptions don’t actually give information about what you need to do to progress the quest.

So that’s Princess and Conquest. A unique concept and set of game mechanics using a game engine absolutely not intended for them, with not great, but functional results. For what it counts for, the writing and porn (from my mildly kinky straight male perspective) is decent, but does not mesh comfortably with the game’s mechanics. Currently, I do not recommend the game, and short of them rebuilding the entire thing in a game engine that can gracefully handle their design decisions, I likely will not ever recommend the game.

Content on these links is NSFW. If for some reason, you still want to play the game after all of this, you can find it on itch.io here or on Steam here. You’ll have to sign in though, as again, this is an adult only game.