Idol Forging

Not sure how to feel about this one. It's essentially a cohabitation/slave-trainer type of game and you have a deadline of 100 days to corrupt the idol fully. Per day, you get 3 actions and thus have to somewhat carefully choose how you wish to spend your time, energy and money. As such, it's also a resource management game. The UI feels polished, which is definitely a plus. The main issues for me are the RNG, the lack of variety and dubious way the developer decided to handle the resources. For example, you can rest at home for +20 guaranteed enegry or go to the park with a decent chance to get +30 energy. And yet, for some reason, sleeping does not give you any energy at all. This is a problem though if going to work costs you 20 energy, which means that you're more or less forced to spend 2 actions per day just to break even on your energy. Keep in mind that basically any h-scene costs you more than 20 energy as well and that every single day you pay $200 (and in the beginning, work barely gives you more than that). This results in pretty stale gameplay where, instead of enjoying h-scenes, you're spending more time just repeating rest + work, hoping to squeeze a scene in every couple of days. However, despite all of this, I still managed to corrupt her fully in just 50 days, so the difficulty really isn't there either. As for the h-content, there is sadly not really that much there. Basically there's 10 repeatable scenes in total that do not change as her corruption increases, which makes the corruption feel somewhat lackluster. The story was alright and has a decent plot twist, though it's nothing that outstanding either. Some of the writing to me just doesn't make sense honestly, but it's not a big deal. All in all, it's alright, but suffers from a bad gameloop.

Yeah this is a good one. There's AI art, but it's still good. Things get dark midway through. The MC is not a nice guy. Momoka has a bad day, shall we say. Stamina refills at the Park and attending concerts is OP. Do that and Momoka will be at 100 Domination by like Day 35. When you're there, you can focus on H scenes and buying sex toys. Game is fun. The game is short, but good.

This is NOT a romantic fluffy-cute story. This is forging. And it's pretty dang solid. The animations are tastefully simple, the dialogue is great and succinct. Story is good as well. Minus 1 star because I have some gripes about UI/gameplay that heavily incentivize save scumming but overall it's fine. The pacing of the h-scenes is also slightly disconnected from the story. 100% guide: Shower has 3 separate scenes, save scum for it. Dinner has 2 scenes, save scum for them. There appears to be only one "good" ending and a couple ways to get pretty much the same bad end, so the choices don't really matter too much. Once you get the true end, revisit the shop. Gameplay tips: Shop takes 1 time slot no matter what you buy, so buy a lot when you visit it. You can save scum the park for +30 energy instead of resting. When the detective events start, don't bother. Save scumming the idol cheering event is also very good early on. If you scummed enough, you should have some spare time to explore, view h-scenes, etc.

You play as a nameless protagonist who's an idol fan who just so happens to help the idol of his dreams out of a couple pinches. This eventually turns into a dating sim of sorts where you manage your money and her affection to eventually win her heart while she temporarily cohabitates with you to take shelter from paparazzi. Gameplay loop is rather simplistic. You'll find yourself barely keeping afloat with the initial job until the better ones unlock later in the plot, so you can't exactly afford items early on. You may even find yourself rerolling actions to hope for better outcomes just so you have a little excess to make some headway into developing your relationship. UI and graphics look great. You can discern from bits of the art style that it's AI (especially the animations) but it's not egregious that it ruins the experience. Some H scenes have brief looping animations that weave into the still CGs. The writing is competent and coherent, definitely not an MTL product. Story events are fixed and dialogue choices have little impact on its flow. While there are four endings, two are real ones while the other two are essentially game-overs. The biggest strength is the twist deep into the story that turns the game's atmosphere on its head, giving a sense of "my god, what am I doing?" (unless you're into that stuff) It doesn't come entirely out of nowhere, as it's foreshadowed pretty early on in dialogue. The whole experience takes a couple hours to get the two major endings, maybe three if you take the time to savor the H scenes. It's brief, slightly flawed, but quite the ride. Would be getting a 4 from me if the gameplay loop was fleshed out or balanced a little better.

Decent game compared to similar titles in the genre. Art, music and general design are all what you would expect from a paid title in [current year]. Animated H-scenes are pixilated but resolve after a second or 2, which is very weird. Story is dark and really gets off the rails. Choices are an illusion. Biggest con is that RNG can actually just fuck you from getting the best ending through no fault of your own. Success/Failure of certain activities is random, and the rewards for them are so wildly disproportionate it's actually really damamging to your ability to win. If the RNG aspect were to be smoothed out the game would just be better. How do you live with the idol and not know when her concerts are? Why are they ever during the morning? If a shop item was added to bring Rest energy gains up equal to the walking in the park, this would be a pretty easy 4-star title.