Name: Lewdapocalypse
Price: $0.99 / £0.99 on Steam (Warning NSFW content in link)
Reviewed on: Hal 850 (laptop 1)
Review:
Well you can blame Connor of MMOfallout for this review coming into existence because he's brought the game up a few times in the Sentinels of the Store discord mostly due to controversies around it eventually I decided I was curious enough to try it. If nothing else I thought the game would provide a good whipping boy and provide some entertainment for you my readers as I metaphorically ripped it apart. So I picked it up and something happened dear reader, I started playing it and I started to enjoy it.
Don't get me wrong here this isn't a must play classic of a game but it also goes above and beyond what I expected based on both the price and the general attention and talk around the game. It's clear to me some effort and care has been put into this title by it's developer. There was a clear vision at work and desire to make something beyond the standard fare. As a partaker in many such adult entertainment games I'm used to a lot of Patreon supported adult games development being just slight evolution of adult dress up games or visuals novels with added boobs. On Steam I'm used to most of the adult games being match 3 style games or other more simplistic games like Zuma / Puzzloop like titles and for the price of Lewdapocalypse I wasn't expecting much beyond that. What I got was a genre I've rarely seen though I'm vaguely aware of it not being entirely new in the form of a sort of side on shooting defence game which I have to admit I don't know the actual genre name for it if the genre even has one. It feels somewhat like an indie version of the old light gun games but not quite like them either.
Gameplay wise you have to shoot the zombies before they reach your character. Headshots kill zombies in one hit while body hits take multiple hits. If zombies do reach your character you have to use up a knife to kill off the zombie and lose some time letting other zombies get closer. You can get more knives by breaking the crates in the levels and hovering over the knives until the bar fills up to collect them. As the game progresses you get introduced to variants of the standard zombie such as military ones with helmets which have to be shot off before you can headshot them and special forces zombies who are immune to headshots and have to be killed with body shots. Later levels also see the first two types of zombies having variable speed with later levels including zombies who run at you (complete with their own animations not just a sped up standard walk animation). To give you a chance of surviving you get given more weapons as you progress including a: spread shooting shotgun that can hit multiple enemies at once; a rapid firing assault rifle and a high powered grenade launcher, all with ammo obtainable from crates.
What surprised me is while the game clocks in at only about 45 minutes to beat in that time there are 4 different boss fight you can encounter all with their own mechanics that vary from somewhat similar having to shoot things out of the air to a more complex final boss fight based round stunning the monster to allow you to power up a giant laser. It's also in boss fights where you'll tend to find the healing herbs too though you do heal off all damage between areas anyway.
As this is a lewd game it had quite regular lewd scenes which actually are obtained by completing Jigsaw puzzles (no I'm not joking). The scenes are pretty good though I did notice a few instances of clipping issues and they're quite varied.
While as I said previously the game is only about 45 minutes it does incentivise multiple playthroughs with different paths you can take through the game and multiple endings. The New Game+ mode also gives unlimited ammo in one of your guns and each subsequent completion of New Game+ means another Gun with infinite ammo along with the previous one to use. which can be surprisingly fun to mess about with while going for the other endings. The game has 3 endings in total with the 3rd ending only being obtainable by getting the first two.
The different routes through the game do also impact areas you might visit and some of the boss fights you might end up doing along with the lewd scenes. After your 3rd completion the game then adds Ricardo posters to try and find and collecting if you choose to do a 4th playthrough. The game also offers unlockable outfits for completing the game, it should be noted the outfits don't appear in the animated lewd scenes nor the visual novel esc story segments though only in normal gameplay or the non visual novel styles cutscenes.
I will also give them some credit for the game being playable 1 handed. There's also an option for UI scaling so there's options and even options to turn off certain effects which yeh while 1 handed mode isn't there most likely for accessibility reasons it's nice to see such options even in an inexpensive indie game (I won't say cheap because the game itself has quality that very much seems like calling it a cheap indie game would sound insulting).
Story and writing wise it manages a nice balance between cheesy adult film style writing and story and the odd silly meme of comment. Though I will say certain jokes probably aren't for the overly sensitive crowd like those on ResetEra especially 1 joke that I can only guess is actually parodying poor quality writing elements such as those that were initially in Mass Effect Andromeda. It does a fair job parodying Resident Evil though no jokes relating to Leon and Clare which could have been ripe for parodying or joking about.
Verdict:
What could have been a poor quality cheaply made adult game coasting off parodying a popular franchise actually seems to have been made with heart and some level of genuine love for a certain franchise who initially there was talk of controversy around them and Lewdapocalypse which is the reason for certain statements in game. Honestly thought the developers and publishers of Resident Evil should actually take this title as a compliment of sorts as it's really not going to be confused with it or be damaging the value or sales of it. This feels like an adult game that gets what it wants to be and is more than happy to play up the cheesy adult film style writing and events.
I put in nearly 2 hours 30 in total completing the game 4 times. I still haven't got all the achievements and so if you're some-one who likes hunting achievements this game with keep you fairly busy. While it only took 45 minutes for my first play through the alternatives paths and alternative endings added replay value to. It's also worthy of commending for doing a quite rarely seen gameplay style and trying to show the Lewd games genre can see more gameplay types than visual novel / match 3.
Score wise because of the surprising quality vs the price and the content provided it's scoring above average and only fails to get a higher score due to the slight issue and art that while not bad it does fall slightly short when compared to some other such titles.
Composite Score:
Overall Score:
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