Cruise Conquest Review: (FYI, haven't yet played dad route yet, just the other 3)
- Aesthetics: 6/10 - Nice idea/concept, but a little messy. 1950s/1940s styling of the ship was excellent touch and added to the feel well. The point-and-click style had decent flow/ I could construct a pretty good mental map of the ship. The backgrounds fit together quite well. The animation engine for your characters takes getting used to but you manage to produce a wide range of people with it, though the dark eyes kind of bother me ("good enough") and the character animations themselves are great, though somewhat comical at times. The transition videos were great for AI, though one of them (actually featured in the trailer) has the ship moving forward but its wake is flowing in the opposite direction, like it is moving backward. Definitely an AI thing but it kind of bothered me. I think using AI stock photos or photorealistic people for background characters is a better way to go for my tastes. Music fit everything well/wasn't annoying (I usually mute music in games but not for yours). Could make it to an 8/10 if AI stuff was fixed more but the animation engine keeps pretty much all your games at an 8 for me. If it works for you, then keep it up.
- Story: 7/10 - Not as easy to follow as some of your other work. The main storylines, particularly Suzan's and the daughter's, made sense and were developed well enough. Good buildup for those characters, and your humor shined well there. Found myself laughing a few times. Just judging those two storylines, I'd give 9.5/10. Unfortunately, the son's storyline was kind of an afterthought. I admittedly didn't play through Henry yet so can't say much but he seems strange based on the other stories. The side-quest stories for the various MILFs the son interacts with are good, though could use a little more development. Fahima's is particularly fun. That said, the Shrock and Donk didn't do it for me. Too much "random". Random doesn't necessarily mean funny. The theater parts really dragged down the score here. Overall, not your best, but some very notable stories and it's clear where you put your time. Might be good to focus on one or two central characters for a future game and really develop them/use others to develop them (like you have in other games like desperate days, housewife, CCTV 1, etc.)
- Lewd Content: 9.5/10 - Main reason I enjoy your games (of course). Focus on "older woman"/"younger man" is the core reason I like your games. You had ample content given development timeline and they had a good variety of positions/styles that fit each character. Gallery view is creative as well. In particular, I REALLY enjoyed the SPH/SPE aspects in the scenes when included, but the other commentary/speaking during scenes also enhanced them quite a bit (Not just "ooooh aaaaah" lol). I usually like to see at least one or two scenes with a particularly dominant woman/amazon position featured, which wasn't really present here too much, and that is the only reason it wasn't a 10/10 for me.
- Gameplay: 9/10 - Almost perfect. Intuitive enough to play around on your own without guides or cheats but they're implemented in a way . Minigames are winnable but still fun. Don't feel like a massive time sink but instead as a game enhancer. Navigating the ship and finding things point-and-click style worked well. Only detraction is some bugs when you activate too many quests/get certain items too soon. I think it was a good decision to not try to design "perfect days" for a player to follow to get 100% as that kind of takes out the variety and really pressures the player to just follow the walkthrough step by step. By adding "go back in time" or "pass time" cheats it gave the player freedom to "mess up" or try things, which is an important part of gaming. The randomness generators for certain games (bingo, slots, etc.) were the right balance of favorable for the player, as were the difficulty levels for the shuffleboard and air hockey games. Only thing that kind of bothered me was the claw machine, but you can skip that anyway. Score would be higher if there were no bugs.
Final Score: 8.5/10 - One of your better games, and worth the money, but not your best (for my taste). Nice breadth of content. makes sense given development timeline. Can't wait to see what you decide to develop next!