Fleshcult Review

This is a small, pretty well made web browser game. Game has some issues like lack of sound effects or artwork, but you can’t expect much from a game worth few bucks. It might as well be a free experience.


Setting
This is as much cringe as I can handle in such games. Fleshcult avoids being unrealistic, laughable in terms of writing and artwork. Setting helps to immerse you into gameplay. Every building block is here, a succubus, literalistic interpretation of hell and from that summoning rituals. You have a perfect setting for a game based on sexual encounters. The fact that there are precious few if any games based on succubus idea is a shame. Especially considering flood of pornographic games on steam.

Writing
Writing in Fleshcult is good when it comes to erotic games and sub-par when it comes to writing in general. The main strength it has is that you are playing as succubus and thus, you already have an excuse for being thrusted into one unrealistic and overly sexualised situation to another. By taking literalistic Biblical interpretation of succubus, writing has a lot more wiggle room to create a believable situations.

Setting is well established. Why you are here. What you have to do. Building upgrades, events. Encounters with people do avoid from becoming cringy, but sheer repetition of same events and encounters will soon kill any writing. Game is overstretched, you have to play that mini game too many times which kills immersion.

Problems
However, in some parts of a story, game stumbles a bit. Like hell overlords using nuclear strikes to subdue demons. Then it turns out that witch hunters nuke demons in order to force them into a certain status quo with humanity in a dominant position. However, nothing is expanded on it, such story shifts are being thrown without any world building. How people go to hell? Is entire military goes to hell? Plot holes like these are introduced at the end which overall takes away from writing in general.

Dialogue also sometimes dips below game’s standard. Repetition of same events is actually that kills encounters in the end as you are here just to play encounter mini game and not to read text after a little while. In general, there is far too little story, dialogue, events, conversations for a text based adventure.


The Good
Gameplay involves balancing lust/terror and mana. It is quite good system for such a game. It reflects a stage in which victim is in an encounter through text. Your options changes according at which stage you currently are. NPC can react to you casting spells if they are also familiar with the arts. Maintaining a good balance between lust and horror is interesting as it creates a sense of urgency. It also makes you consider what you want to do, some actions might be too intense, others are better used during finale in order to gain various benefits.

The Bad
The problem with the system is that after some time game bugs out and does not allow you to recover mana. Thus there is a timer on any encounter and it does not allow it to end more naturally. This system also does not tell you why or when it will stop working, it just stops at random.

Mini game itself suffers from the issue that various abilities and effects are imprecise. It can tip horror meter over the limit. Especially when your abilities and actions do not always tell you what they do. Will they increase horror, etc.

Convincing individuals are also quite arbitrary and based purely on luck. Last tier people are just tedious to convince. You keep trying and trying, but if luck is not on your size, it can take a while. System seems to be entirely based on RNG, there usually aren’t any clear conditions of what you need to do to convince an individual or to gain an edge in rolls. I recommend in introducing another system in this games – quirks. Each person would have some oddity about them which you could discover through writing. If that quirk is met, you will gain an easier time converting them or they will come with you at the end. Quirks already exist like for example with size queens, but it could be introduced in a whole game and hidden in a text, made more subtle in order to remove pure randomness from an equation.


There are a lot of things which this game needs. I would recommend just making a sequel instead with all those additions as it is much work for a little gain. Though, I do not think that I will be able to influence development of this game for a better.

1. The most jarring issue is a complete lack of any sound or music. It is something which you would expect if you are paying for a game and is far more addition than any new content for this game.
   
   
2. This game lacks any artwork besides main menus. I would like to see each encounter as having its own piece of artwork. I also hope that developer manages to maintain a certain level of style which this game has through future updates. Usually such content has no sense of subtlety or even desire to portray people even half-realistically.
   
   
3. There is no way to pass a day. At the end game you will have everything you need and just want to end the story. An option to pass a day to get that extra upgrade or to just fast forward story events is quite needed.
   
   
4. Random events are very few and they are prone to be repeated over and over again.
   
   
5. You can’t exactly build your character as you want. If you go and modify your body with tomes, you usually cannot go back to a default state as you were before.
   
   
6. A lot of items do not do anything or are in competition against very useful abilities. In game customisation needs to be rebalanced. Some abilities need to be just learned and used as base character kit. Other abilities I would like to see have its own unique writing like Tome of Verminus (or something). It should not replace your base parts and game should be reworked in trying to convince other to try it out rather than how it is now.
   
   
7. There are quite a lot of upgrades for followers and they seem to be meaningless. It would be better if customisation options would be simplified somewhat. I never had the time to upgrade them all and upgrade options were meaningless overall. The same issue extends and in dialogue, so far only for wanting them to leave you or to risk their lives. There should be an indication what upgrades and potential they have.
   
   
8. This game could be improved upon is writing. It is unclear what is going on with a Church. First Barons of Hell are nuking hell. Then Church is nuking hell. Just what the hell? This whole world is left unexplored and in general it is just a confusing mess.

Overall, game feels unfinished. Core gameplay is here. All writing is here. What is missing are looping background soundtrack. Now game has no sounds which is quite frankly unacceptable for a paid title. In addition, game is extremely light on visual artwork. Developers should add at least one artwork per menu option and an encounter or an event. Then rise price of this game to 5 euros to reflect greater quality of game.