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SIMULACRA is by far one of the creepier games I have played. This is due in large part to the fantastic sound effects. Little noises happen at times that really threw me off such as the sound of breathing and especially what sounded like tapping on glass. I literally stopped playing and went to look around outside to see if someone had been tapping on my basement window one time. The music is also pretty good but I felt it could be a bit repetitive. The puzzles were also for the most part very good. From the text puzzles to rebuild distorted messages to how you had to go find info on various apps to figure out phone numbers and one where you had to find a website page link, I enjoyed them overall and applaud how different they were. I didn’t really enjoy the puzzle where you have to rebuild images as I found it tedious but I did get better at it by the end. I also didn’t like how the laptop mission was timed. That being said one thing I will praise is that even if you fail a mission it just seemed to branch the story in a slightly different direction so it wasn’t required to pass all missions or puzzles. The voice acting was a mixed bag. The voice actor for Cassie, Ashley, and Anna were all good but the police detective, Greg, and Taylor were all a bit over the top and didn’t feel as normal or real people. The detective especially. Also the part where the badge says “special police” was hilarious and in real life would make me think the cop had gotten his gear from a toy store. The videos themselves were well done. I played SIMULACRA on Linux using Wine. There was no options at all. It did respect my refresh rate despite no v-sync option. The game uses an auto save system with only one save slot so it constantly overwrites. I did have a couple issues such as a couple times I opened the game it wouldn’t go full screen as well as using Alt-Tab crashed the game once. Neither issue happened more than a couple times so it’s tough to point the finger to the issue.
I started out not really liking the main character much and finding the story kind of slow. It really did get better as it went and by the end I thought it was amazing, loved the twists and turns and had a better appreciation for Nicole. I think there is a fair bit that is left up to interpretation that I would have liked answered but it is by no means an incomplete story. I won’t post spoilers but the story ended up being one of my all time favourites in terms of walking sim games. It felt like a more macabre version of Firewatch. The game did have some wasted parts to it. You can pick up a fair bit of objects but they provide exactly nothing to the story aside from the items you are meant to pick up. The map system was decent but I think it could have done a little better job marking certain locations so it was less maze like. There are also a fair bit of dialogue choices but I can’t seem to find anything that they actually do as the story is extremely linear. There is also a timer on those choices which I found varied at time with sometimes getting a solid 30 seconds or so and other times getting just a split second to choose. The voice acting is great as is the music although certain bits of music were a tad overused. The graphics are fairly well done. The object detail ranges from excellent to decent. The animations are also well done. I played TSORF on Linux using Wine. It never crashed. I did notice a slight issue where on a multi monitor setup the game would move things from one window to the other when in full-screen. It was an easy fix as I just unchecked full-screen. The game has a resolution setting, a v-sync toggle, and one graphics option. The v-sync toggle is useless as the game has a 60 FPS cap by default. The performance was the full 60 FPS with exception to 1 drop to 59 FPS. The game uses a checkpoint save system where there is only one save file that gets overwritten each time. The game also erases your save file after you finish the game.
That is that the parts that are good were already good and in the original game. The parts that are bad are often issues that were not present in the original game. The voice acting is great. The music is awesome. The story is fairly well done. There are a lot of decent choices in the game. There are a lot of ways you can play the game minus boss fights. Bugs are ultimately what did this DC in for me. There are a lot of animation issues such as your body or an enemy’s body going through surfaces like walls or desks during a take-down animation. I got game breaking crashes on the Panchea level. At different points in that level I keep getting crashes with the error message “ran out of saved memory”. I was able to get by it once by loading a previous save but later on I could not get by it using that method, adjusting graphics settings, trying different versions of Proton/wine or anything else. I literally can’t finish the game which I had no issue with when the original first launched in 2011. Looking on the Steam forums gamers on both Windows and Linux complain of this issue dating back as far as 2013. The fact that this bug still remains in 2025 in various forms is a disgrace. There are even other bugs such as when using the social enhancer aug you can choose “charm” but it will actually choose “intimidate” instead which can cost you the conversation as the game’s code has switched the two for that instance and you really have to pick the wrong one for it to work. Once again looking at the Steam forums that bug has been unfixed since 2014. There are other bugs where objectives don’t always update properly. For instance I got a pocket secretary which told me where a person was hiding but my objective didn’t update saying I knew that info (still said I had to find out where they were) and I had to go there manually to get the objective to skip ahead saying I had found them. Don’t get me wrong, the game itself is still very fun to play but the DC was bug city for me.
Repella Fella really surprised me. I went into the demo not really having much expectations. It blew me away so much I went and bought the full game. It has fantastic humour. It can also be really grim and I loved that. It gives you many choices throughout and often times those choices had consequences I had not really thought about much. More than a few times I was surprised just how well thought out some sequences were in terms of taking into account what would really happen. The story itself is fairly well done. It throws a lot at you in terms of factions, characters, lore, etc but it also gives you a really detailed in game guide to all of it. The lockpick mini game is a decent although it would have been nice to have as way of figuring out which tumbler to try next without guessing. The various death scenes you can encounter for your character were inventive, hilarious, and didn’t penalize you too much. I didn’t like how you pretty much had to have subtitles on but they didn’t fully do their job. With subtitles off you miss all of the foreign language spoken but with them on it only translates some of them with others only saying “foreign language” and on top of that you also now have to see all of the English spoken that I didn’t need or want. I thought the hacking mini game was mixed as well. It has a decent premise but it was really easily to get penalized by picking the wrong colour too early with no way of knowing beforehand. The music and voice acting were both well done. I thought that while the story was perfectly setup for a sequel at the same time this game ends just as things were getting really interesting. I had no idea the story was going to be split up like this going in and I feel it should be called “episode 1” as there is little in the way of any conclusion to it. The graphics had great style and it was like watching a cartoon that I had more control over.
Sisterly Lust is quite possibly the deepest visual novel I have ever seen. The number of different choices you can make to branch the story; how many relationships you can have; the types of relationships you can have; is all just staggering. You can choose which of your family members you want to pursue or pursue them all; you can befriend and choose to pursue another 5+ side characters depending on other choices. You can choose how to deal with issues such as blackmail; violent spouses; riots at a mall; pregnancy; and more. The game has humour; eroticism; great characters; and fantastic art. If it had a good soundtrack and voice acting it would be the cherry on top. It lacks any audio at all but to be honest I didn’t even care. I was too busy enjoying the game. I will say that the inheritance card was played a lot. Basically at the beginning of the game your dad dies and leaves you a bunch of money. Many times throughout the game you have to pay for things that would be hard to do for many of us but for the main character he just has this pile of money that never seems to dry up to solve the issue. I didn’t mind the crutch that much but part of me wants a directors cut where I knock up all of my family and become an alcoholic as paying for 4+ kids without a job kills my spirit. The consequences of the realistic poor man’s harem. If this stuff sounds minor it is. I truly think this is one of the best visual novels I have played and hope more people try it. I played Sisterly Lust on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any spelling errors. You can manually save whenever you want and there are 54 save slots. Game Version Played: 1.1.2 Graphics Engine: Ren'Py 7.3.5.606 I can’t recommend Sisterly Lust enough. It is easily worth $50. Each play through took a little over 9 hours for me. I've bought it for 15 USD on Itch.io and now for another $18.41 CAD here on GOG. The developer earned my money.
The third week of Fetish Locator wraps things up pretty decently. There are a bunch of side endings that you can choose if you want to end the game early depending on previous choices. Most of them were really well done. The endings that have you ending up with Nora, Allison, and Daisy had really well done epilogues that I think were better than the main ending I got. I wasn’t happy with Jessie’s ending as all I got was a screen about some future DLC that will be coming out. The main ending I got with Stacy was decent but not exactly what I was hoping for. The story leading up to the end was pretty well fleshed out and done better than most visual novels that have stories that span multiple games. I had guessed where it was going but it was still fun. The visuals were great with well done models and object detail. The real highlight was the animation quality. I don’t just mean the lewd scenes, I mean the transitions from all scenes to scenes. It was simply the smoothest and best I have ever seen in a visual novel. The voice acting was bad though. It wasn’t really voice acting as it was just the characters making murmurs and grunts and it got annoying really fast. The music was decent though. I had a few comical gripes with the game. There is a scene in a police station where one cop is wearing a police hat with a polo shirt and two badges, one around his neck and the other on his waist. Another cop is wearing two badges as well with the one around her neck super tiny compares to the other. Also there is a scene that is described as mountain climbing that is pretty much just hiking. If these gripes seem minor they are. They didn’t hamper my enjoyment at all. There is a mini game for studying that is basically a lot like Space Invaders except with books and boobs instead. It was very tough but at the same time it was optional and a decent way to add some game play to a visual novel.
The setting is delightfully eerie. The characters are interesting. There appears to be a very deep lore to the game with a lot going on behind the scenes. That is almost my only real gripe that the game drops you in this world with little to no explanation as if you already know all about the traditions and people. A codex would have been nice. This wasn’t an issue at first but as the game goes on you are required to remember more and more things that you will be forced to use later and that combined with the language of the game was problematic. The art style is fantastic. The music is well done. The sound effects are good as well, used often enough to break up silence without being overbearing. The game does a good job of being more than just a visual novel. You move around places, there is an in game map, there is a decent rhythm game element as well as a decent QTE mechanic. The QTE parts are actually pretty challenging as you not only have to contend with keeping the bar in a certain section but you still have to click through the dialogue to further the game. There are two difficulty settings to the mini game as well as the option to turn them off so it should satisfy everybody. One other thing I would like to see changed is when it says you can “proceed” certain places it would be nice if it said where or what that place is. The map doesn’t really list what places are just where you have to go and where you currently are. Sometimes it doesn’t even list that. I played on Linux. It never crashed. I did encounter a bug where from chapter 6 through chapter 11 I had zero audio. There is just 1 graphics option and 3 audio options. You can manually save whenever you want and there didn’t seem to be a limit on how many save game files you can have. There was an auto save system although it doesn’t say when it’s saving. The game’s FPS was pretty low at times. The game didn’t seem to lag at all but none of my hardware was being taxed to explain the low FPS.
I was a little bit worried going into the first season of Tales From the Unending Void because I thought so highly of the developer’s previous game Sisterly Lust that I figured there was little chance they were able to top it or even match it. I am very happy to say I was wrong. They once again made one of the finest visual novels I have played. The sheer scope of it is amazing. The amount of lore in terms of various species and planets all having their own look; history and customs is just huge. There is an awesome codex to go with all of it as well. The overall story was fantastic so far. I can come up with a few nitpicks but they are just that, nothing serious at all. For instance I wasn’t overly happy with the route with Jade that was a dom/sub route. In Sisterly Lust I thought the developer handled that kind of relationship really well but in TFTUV I found that my character being dominant toward Jade was basically just me being rude. It didn’t feel like it captured that bond as well as they previously did. I will also say that I found it a little light on tough choices. I very easily had myself the makings of a fine harem by the end of the first episode, which is fun don’t get me wrong, but part of me wishes for something more along the lines of Acting Lessons where you couldn’t always have it all. Despite all that this game is still top notch. The characters were well developed. The story had action; mystery; comedy; drama; all done well. The game’s lewd scenes are among the best in the genre and the models and object detail are gorgeous as are the animations. My only nitpick on that front was the few scenes where characters use a stun gun on other people had a stun effect that looked a little weird. The relationship screen is great and does a good job of letting you know where you stand with the love interests. The music is fantastic and sets the moods well. AMD FX-9590 | 16GB DDR3 RAM | XFX RX 590 8GB | Mesa 22.1.7 | Garuda | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.19.6
The game play itself is actually quite good. The shooter elements were great and enjoyable. There was one time where the game threw infinite enemies at me, which is a mechanic I don't like, but it was a small part of the overall game. There was a decent variety of weapons. The puzzle aspects were decent. The only real gripe I had with them was that It wasn't always clear where you could place an object like a valve. Others like the rust remover puzzle were very logical. The graphics were fantastic. Everything from sun rays, lighting, water, foliage, objects, etc were all more like looking at a AAA game than an indie. There was a bit of pop in at times but not much. The voice acting was well done as was the music. Where the game fell apart a little was the story. It never did a good job of fleshing out it's ideas right until the very end which was poorly explained and left more questions than answers. One can easily say that a sequel could provide these answers but maybe that is true and maybe the sequel never happens. It would have been better to provide a more thought out narrative during this game. There were invisible walls at a few points which I always find to be a cheap substitute for providing a real reason I can't travel somewhere. I played INDUSTRIA on Linux using Wine and VKD3D. It has a resolution option, a v-sync toggle, three AA settings, an FOV slider that goes from 85-110, and five other graphics options. The difficulty settings affect how you can save with normal allowing auto saves and hardcore only allowing saving at typewriters. You can change the difficulty when loading a game but not in game. Performance was great but you will need a decently beefy system at 2560P maxed out. There was about thirty seconds where the frame rate dropped below 60 FPS but the rest of the time it was above that. The game never crashed and I didn't notice any bugs.
Leap of Faith surprised me. It doesn’t have a ton of lewd scenes but has one of the best stories I have played through. Without spoilers I will say that the way they handled having a relationship with a person suffering from depression was very accurate, at least to my own personal experiences. It was one of the few times in visual novels where I could really relate to the main character. The stories of the other characters were hit and miss. Steph’s backstory as to why she left the main character for years seemed too fantastic to believe. The game also has some good interface ideas. You can take pictures and upload some of them to social media but only at at certain times. Like some other games you get to use a cell phone to check messages and social media but with leap of Faith the text messaging actually felt very realistic in that you are waiting for responses before choosing yours. The game has some personality choices you get to try to tailor to your character such as athletic; flirty and romantic. I liked how they came into play, sometimes closing off dialogue options and other times changing the way a scene plays out. For instance if you have a high enough athletic score certain lewd scenes play out differently. I do wish they were used more often though. The lewd scenes themselves were well done although they lacked a little choice compared to some other games in the genre. The animations were fantastic throughout the game. The models and object detail were well done aside from the main character’s hair. I don’t mean the colour but just the hair itself seemed a little strange looking to me. The music was very good, enough so I tracked down some of the songs to buy after playing the game. There was one faux choice at a beach where you can choose to skinny dip or not but regardless of what I chose my character stayed out of it. I don’t like faux choices. The presentation of the game right down to the main menu deserves praise and looked fantastic.