Horsing Around

Game Review 1: Tales of Androgyny.

Note, this is a personal review, I'm not a games journalist or anything.

3.5/5 - C

ToA is a game with 3 segments and approximately 1 theme. It's a text-based adventure game, it's a shockingly complicated combat system, and a gallery where you get to view the game's one and only theme: watching an effeminate man be structurally redesigned by penises, sometimes male, mostly otherwise.

First, the adventure game.

The adventure and role play mechanics are surprisingly weak, but are made up for in the skill check system and descriptions. The game has very vivid and imaginative descriptions, which, when coupled with the visuals, are highly effective. The mechanics are a lot weak, but what I find more interesting than the skills you get from levelling up are the skills for failure. When you fail enough in combat, get your organs rearranged enough, or even choose to seek out noncombat deviancy you obtain as red skill associated with that depravity. I love the idea of developing skills without a clunky menu, where your actions just make you more effective at those actions, but it's used almost always as a debuff in this. Ironically, though, the complexity of skills and difficulty of the game seems to ask you to play longer for content that repeats itself and grows stale quickly, especially considering it's penchant for bad ends that just make you reload.

Second, the gallery

The art of this game is extremely hit or extremely miss, depending on your tastes. It seems to be designed to appeal to hentai addicts that looked a little beyond their comfort zone. For me it sits firmly in the space of 'i'll find this art disgusting the moment I'm done' but, to be honest, due to the game's very high raunch factor, it kind of works to the benefit of the game's theming. It feels like something you're not supposed to enjoy, so if you can get into the headspace of a first-time kink discoverer, it's really very fun. I'm not sure how much of that is intentional or incidental, but y'know, death of the author and all that. Overall, the large spash-screen pictures are good, and the little zoom-in you get in combat or text are very fun and usually are distinct based on what enemy you're fighting. The morph-image animation ends up being fairly smooth and doesn't take you out of the action. Plus, I'll admit, watching my character get assembled like Ikea furniture by absurd phalli is always a blast.

Third, but not last, is combat.

The combat system of ToA is big. Like, really big. It consists of a flirtation system, attack, defense, dodge, mid-combat intercourse, and the most stressful of all stances. Most of these are exactly what you expect. Turn based, increase enemy flirt meter, try not to die or get seduced yourself. Classic. But stances are the bread and butter of this system. Basically, each stance you get into has a number of associated actions, some of which are attacks, flirts, sex, the usual, and some that change your stance through doing them. Some are straightforward, you can't swing a sword while prone, so you spend a turn getting up into a crouch. But some are closer to 'i'm in a guard, I'll make a shield bash which will set my opponent into the off balance stance and me into the reckless attack stance, I can chain that into hammer down which lets me put an off balance opponent prone, and puts me off balance, I'll ignore off balance by laying atop the enemy once they're prone and now I can proceed to ride them cowgirl, the one sex stance I put all my points into-' -gasp ok you get the point. It's complicated. Most of that wasn't even far from the truth. It's, to a beginner or consumer without much time to invest, completely esoteric and nigh impenetrable, but I don't dislike it at all. A lot of games of this ilk are just too complicated for anyone's good, and this seems like it really rides the line. It's got an interface that tries to explain what each thing does, specialized icons, and like, at least it isn't maneuvering a hex map. The UX does a lot to mitigate how confusing it all is, and early fights need little strategy so you end up picking it up as you go. To be fair, it's genuinely trying something different and makes sure not to just yoink what already works, and that counts for a lot in my books.

Lastly: pornographic content

Part of the reason why I first chose this to be my initial review is because I find this game to rank firmly in the middle in terms of depravity. If you think it's too depraved for that, you may find my blog a tad distressing. If you think it's not depraved enough for that, you're probably right, but the ugly bastard style of art makes me read it as a little deeper than it is. I will likely talk about games that are more vanilla in their themes, but that I play because they are exceptional in other ways. The specific content of the game in question is almost entirely watching a twink get Yoda death noise'd by every cylindrical piece of salami in a 3-mile radius, a grand majority of which, although changeable by a setting, is (by default) held by a number of amazons and monster girls, with notable exceptions I'll leave out here. Its content, while vanilla, is largely up my alley, and I find it misses a lot of opportunities to spice things up. I'd say if you are a recovering hentai addict, trying to see the best that the world of the internet has to offer, it's a great place to start but I wouldn't end here by any means. It's in this part of the review that you will notice that I've gotten to a point in my life in which I have forgotten that the ordinary amount of depravity is zero out of 100. I don't mean kinkiness, I do genuinely mean depravity in the sense of being devoid of value. This is a game for people who are sitting at 10 maybe 15 on that scale, and I think I'm just at a point in my life where I don't find that particularly engaging without anything else to prop it up. The game has little to no story, the writing is largely insulated to specific scenes, and the major villains don't seem to be all that important other than being very difficult to fight. So if you're still using the word 'Futanari' to describe what you're into, this is probably a decent first step into being a person of real culture. Maybe when the orcs and elves are not so novel, you'll be ready to move on to something a little more advanced, like that werewolf from early on in the game.

Overall:

It's certainly a high-effort, high-polish game, but misses out on a whole world of Anthro, Beast, Monster, and other more exotic kinks, and lacks a great deal of depth when compared to text-based games of a similar style. If you really want to fall in love with your characters, experience some transformation, or get down and dirty with less vanilla partners or more interesting activities, you're better off looking elsewhere.

3.5/5 - great for beginners.

im grilling absolute cheese

some of my favorite woven tapestries, by Cecilia Blomberg:

Point Defiance Steps

Mates

Rising Tides

Vashon Steps

late Halloween post. Boyfriends carving pumpkins 🎃

Something I've noticed in recent years is my habit of rationing out the things I enjoy. I take each bite carefully of the meals I really love, just make sure I don't miss them. I rotate the games I play and the books I read so I don't end up too deep in one when it runs out. Hell, there are some fanfics that I've had sitting in the wings for a rainy day.

I'm not sure where it comes from exactly, but there's a real sense that there's simply not enough of the things I truly like for me to consume. Webnovels, even with thousands of chapters, run out, either because it's ongoing and I've caught up or because that's all that there will ever be. It's part of the reason I read them. They last long enough to fulfill my ability to hyperfixate.

But the better the thing the stronger the fixation, and I still find myself hungry for some games, webnovels, or fanfics, even years later, and a part of me wishes I'd taken more time to savor the meal. I'm the media equivalent of a broke 22 year old dude kicking himself for buying a pizza when he was 16, I know, but you can't experience anything for the first time twice.

No matter how much you enjoyed it the first time.

When I talk about how I don't like sex, it's so people like me can feel "more normal" and not so "broken". Not so everyone else can feel "less normal".

Can't believe we still have to say stuff like that all the time in any context of advocacy but this isn't about making things worse for you. It's about making stuff a little bit better for everyone so everyone can be seen. Not even necessarily understood. Just seen.

(PS: I don't wanna put a disclaimer on literally all of my posts to say I mean no ill to allo people. That should be implied. With that said, to all the allo people who DON'T react like that: thank you. Y'all give me hope.)

Alt Version of last piece without stars or text

Sometimes I have to question my brain's idea of who I should be. Like, these cotton gloves feel more like 'me' than my hands do. Girl, is this some kinda a self image issue? What do you want from me? Get better hands?

In short, I'm wearing gloves for now. When it starts getting warm again, I'll hope this isn't still an issue. ¯\_(= ͢ =)_/¯

This music is making me nonsentient.

I will listen to it for hours.