Jessika's Curse

Name: Jessika's Curse
Availability: InStock
Rating: 3.0 (20 reviews)
Author: Venus Noire JC

by Venus Noire JC

Uncensored Windows

Versionv1.9.13

EngineUnity

Released2023-10-30

Updated2026-04-09

LanguageEnglish

2DCG Adventure Ahegao Animated Big Tits Combat Corruption Creampie Fantasy Female Protagonist Humor Mind Control Monster RPG Simulator Turn Based Combat Vaginal Sex

Jessika’s Curse is a hand-painted RPG experience currently in development. It will feature deep turn-based combat, erotic Battle-Lust animations and good dose of geeky humor.

Screenshots

Pixeldrain

v1.9 v1.7.57 Ava Relationship events: - Cosplay - Euphemisms - Ava Backstory - Cracks - Airhead - Pearl Necklace - Blackjack and Hookers - Sluts - Sacrilege - Greed and Love - Kneeling Knees - A sweet threat - Bothersome Latex - Wolf Mask - Manacles and Handcuffs - Tunnel - Gossip Bekahrah Relationship events: - Derring-do - Your Hair is Yellow - A travesty - Bekahrah.Exe - Mouse's Grandmother - Comfortable - Dancer's Body - Greedy Orphans - Psalms of the Virgin - Special Friend - Hang ups - Bless my Hammer - Bek - More than just enough - Living Biceps - Brain vs Brawn - Minor Lisp - Sisters Mercy Relationship events: - Balls Whipped - Burn - Cat and Mouse - Dirt - Fell Asleep - Knight Prostitute - Leave Them Alone - Peril - Rod Of Penitence - Save Me - Sin - Thief - Topless Technique - Tough Love - Untapped Potential - You Bitch Finn Relationship events: - Sir Hamsalot - Finn's Butt - Kraken Me Up - Fishing vs Catching - Insult Battle - Begging - Latest Caper - Stool Pidgeons - With Apologies to Bobby Pickett - Reverse Mermaid - Favourite Colour - Wound Too Tight - Amalia's BackStory - Clean Mug - Secrets and Scars - Faeries And Barnacles Balance Changes: - Church now removes a kink 100% of the time - Changed the trigger for klepto and glutton so that instead of trying every character with the kink in sequence, it will now randomly choose one and ONLY try with that one character v1.7.47 New Events - Mouse Intro Scene - Bekarah Intro Scene - Melaina's Intro Scene - Ava: 2 New Scenes (The Grand Tour, The Brothel's Own Godmother) - Rodrigo: 2 New Scenes (Meet the Pack Rat, Puppy Love on a Rat) - Temporary buttons on Venkmar city to access the scenes Code Clean-Up, Refactor and Optimisations - Dungeon Curos - Dungeon UIs - Kink trigger Bug Fix - Kink death combat freeze - Glutton Trigger v1.7.38 - New Scripts/Dialog Ready (A softer heart, Love at first sight) - relationship dialogs (Alf 2, Bekarah 2, mercy 2, Finn 2) - Customer for dialog Animations: - church animations: Jessika / Mouse / Amalia / Melaina UI: - relationship dialog notification - relationship dialog trigger, returning to venkmar - improved quest UI window - New World Map display - exit button improvements - FPS counter Bug fixes: - poison icon display - detailed node on map display - kink gain on return to venkmar - kink gain during dungeon run - Lust break black screen - Lust break stuck - bug fix berserk v1.7.25 new feature: Battle - retreat move - square back - diminishing escape chance - Lust gain for cowardly - 10% cowardly kink gain if it's not present. Dungeon Retreat -70% acquire kink - minus 50% gold - minus 50 % of items received will be left behind at random - Dungeon Fail (game over due to lust broken explo ) - 100% acquire kink - minus 70% gold - minus 70% of items accrued Dungeon success + 20% acquire kink Accessories - accessory shop buy and sell - equipped accessory is now removed on sell shop - character sheet adjustments for equipped accessories - Accessories UI bug fix - Klepto Kink hover details - Lust break display in combat - debuff tool tip stuck - dead charas on fountain - lust bar on exploration now adjusts to lust heals - curos soft lock on Goblin Idol - missing curios - clicking too fast during combat stuck - Update Character sheet for accessories - added numbers for accessory counts - Guild Level up and skill up tabbing - Heal Targeting - loot animation received - random pop up on venkmar fix - equipment hover on character page v1.7.19 crit computation - lust damage reduced - chracter portraits moved to resources folder - lust exploration rework (will now damage 1 character instead of the whole party) - dungeon shop bought item will now disappear - wolf howl 50% chance to miss - optimisations - code clean up - unused objects removed Bugfixes - Resolution fix, will automatically detect the closest resolution applicable - Copper ore loot missing - Lust break moves targets KO'ed allies - Positive Curio animation on a negative outcome - Lust break attack targeting fix - Tutorial movement and attacks restricted - restrict movement when there is a pop up window - hover details gets stuck - entering new room camera movement - klepto kink should not gain any loot - KO'ed chara still selectable - relationship events temporary removal - some curos soft locks - lust break tutorial on combat fix - crate text result on empty crate - player hp goes over the max on healing - Blacksmith Upgrade bug fix (materials) - Poison Debuff implemented - Screen Resolution reverts bug fix - Volume and Graphic settings on restart/new game bug fix (reverts to default) - Blacksmith Material required bug fix - Blacksmith upgrade correct price display - Materials retained on restart game bug fix - Removed other materials from Blacksmith - Volume sliders and Toggle Fix - Curios and Enemies on map inaccuracy fix (rework on spawns and curos) Visual - Bandit Stun Placement - quest icon removed when zoomed in - larger copper icon display on Blacksmith - Tutorial visual of forge pans down - pop ups should restrict player to confirm - added silhouette bleed - character portraits on exploration adjusted to match positions - adjustments on brothel sex scenes - lust numbers on church/brothel - lust break pops up the battle UI - dungeon shop dialogues not disappearing - details on fountain - Combat Camera Rework - VFX adjustments - VFX timings - Characters are hidden when not yet speaking/not yet in the dialogue - Mouse Lust break on multiple lust breaks visual fix v1.4.3 -N/A v1.4.1 - Lust moves soft lock - sex scenes fixes - Gallery fixes - venkmar character page fixes - world map nodes hidden - SEX SPRITE SKIP BUTTON UNRESPONSIVE - TAUNT ENHANCEMENT - ADD POISON VFX ON BAD CUROS ROLL - VEXING SHADOWS VFX - SACRIFICE SKILL SOFT LOCK - JESSIKA AMALIA SEXSPRITE - TAUNT APPEARS ON other PLAYER UNITS - REMOVE INTRO - ANIMATION GALLERY ISSUE - BROTHEL AND CHURCH ISSUE - BROTHEL GOLD ISSUE - BROTHEL AND CHURCH FADE ISSUE - INVENTORY ALIGNMENT ISSUE - FINNS QUEST FLAVOUR TEXT UPDATE - IMPLEMENT GALLERY THUMBS - sex locks per node - Curos Softlock - Player going off the bounding box - Black Screen when moving around areas - MISSING 2nd BAD END ILLUSTRATION - RANDOM CUROS ON EMPTY ROOMS - Enemies Respawning on Rooms - MAP ICONS NOT DISAPPEARING on HUD - VERTICAL ROUTES AREN'T ALIGNED PROPERLY - SEXSPRITE STILLS APPEARING IN EXPLORATION - NODE 3 INACCESSIBLE - bandit corpse visual - quest visual - gallery locks - poison in combat death - doubled enemy attacks - another character page bug fix - shadows on exploration - skip overlap - kink notification v1.3.24b - Jessika improvements (skills and animations) - Mouse improvements (skills and animations) - Amalia Implementation - Melaina Implementation - Bandit and wolf implementation - Goblin and Myconid improvements - 2 new nodes added - Level up implementation - Skill level up implementation - Kinks implementation - Tutorial improvements - Tool tips added - Various bug fixes and optimisations - Test environment for combat and sex sprites COMBAT IMPROVEMENT - dash in, jump out - animations and zooms - additional effects per skill - turn orders - keyboard controls QUEST IMPLEMENTATION - quest progression - node locking - additional scenes VENKMAR IMPROVEMENTS - Animations - under the hood optimizations - World map - Quest/PUB UI - Brothel UI - Idle cursors - Blacksmith effects CURIOS - Corpse - Mushroom - Campsite - Dead treetrunk EQUIPMENT - Implementation - Equipment upgrade implementation ART: - Melaina battle sprite - Meliana sfx and animations - Amalia battle sprite - Amalia sfx and animations - Wolf battle sprite - Wolf animations - Bandit battle sprite - Bandit animations SEX SPRITES - Amalia X Jessika - Amalia X Mouse - Amalia X Melaina - Melaina X Jessika - Melaina X Amalia - Melaina X Mouse - Jessika X Amalia - Jessika X Melaina - Mouse X Amalia - Mouse X Melaina - Amalia solo - Melaina solo - Amalia X Myconid - Melaina X Myconid - Amalia X Goblin - Melaina X Goblin -Jessika X Bandit - Melaina X Bandit - Amalia X Bandit - Melaina X Bandit - Amalia X Jessika grope - Amalia X Mouse grope - Amalia X Melaina grope - Melaina X Jessika grope - Melaina X Mouse grope - Melaina X Amalia grope - Jessika X Amalia grope - Jessika X Melaina grope - Mouse X Amalia grope - Mouse X Melaina grope - Melaina Lust Break - Amalia Lust Break - 2 Defeat Illustrations (Node 1 and 2 Goblin orgy, Node 3: Bandit Orgy) - Overworld Map: Wyldwoods Venkmar NPC ART - Finn Sprite - Madame Ava Sprite - 4 new accessories - New Brothel UI - Quest UI Public Demo You’ll be able to control our first two party characters, Jessika and Mouse, explore the town of Venkmar where you’ll meet Alf, Bekarah, and Sister Mercy, as well as visit the first area, the Wyldwoods, and face off against goblins and myconids. Demo 5 Change Log - Curios implementation (all loot converted to gold) - chances of loot added - open pop-up title and description on open currency display - loot (gold, loot (as big gold coin), equipment(as gems), trap (nothing)) - Victory Screen implementation - loot display - total gold (from loots) - Battle numbers added (Regular Damage, Critical Damage, Lust Damage, HP Recover) - Status effects display - Large map added during exploration (click mini-map to toggle) - mini map reskinned - added full screen mode - Made the map draggable (hold left click then drag) Fixes - reverse spawn of curios and enemies (for right to left) - spamming skip button - blacksmith dialogue hot fix (delayed dialogue) Known issues - Sometimes Goblin x Mouse animation causes game to break Demo 3: - Church UI - Gallery UI - Alf quest complete - Alf quest turn in - new Combat UI - new hp bars - new turn order - targeting on click - lust break fixes - clicking on turn order enemies will target the enemy - hover enemy details - target arrow always on, during player turn - Combat will not spawn on edges - Various bug fixes and optimizations Updated Venkmar Demo (fighting still buggy as hell, but the town is progressing nicely and the voice acting is pretty good and fits the characters)

Royal-Focus 2024-02-23 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I want to give this 5 stars, so so badly - but I can't. This game has so much potential, taking such a unique artstyle but also such a played out gimmick of turn based sex, and flips it on its head. The enemies are out to kill you - but! they are also trying to turn you on slightly, the fact the sex comes from you being overcome with lust is perfection - a lot of turn based just do rape but this feel incredibly different. It is truly a unique experience. The game itself, is actually playable with an acceptable amount of content, hence the 4 stars. The developers created Seeds of Chaos, arguably one of the best porn games out there, so I understand this isn't their priority, but the game has been in the dark for so long now. The last thing I would want is for it to die, I would prefer the developers to announce it On Hold. I urge anyone reading this, play the game, you will not regret it. We just won't be getting any content for a while. Update 05/10/2025 - Right boys, it's over. Pack it up, load it into the vans and go. the content we have is fantastic but I don't think we will ever see another update for this game.

Nemidi 2023-12-05 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I like the game an atmosphere and it has a beautiful artysle, theres a good amount of bugs some eveb game breaking, but man the devs abandon this game for long periods and just put all the money into their other game. Overall has potential and I enjoyed it but I doubt it'll ever be given the attention it needs from the devs.

Satori6 2023-11-12 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

V.1.9.13 Extremely buggy - unacceptable for almost a 2.0 version There are game-breaking bugs (eg; the screen not zooming out and preventing you from targeting enemies). The concept is interesting, and the art is good, although two of the characters look like a parody of a human due to the size of their breasts. The other two look ok. The gameplay is simple and repetitive, but it works for this game due to the underlying kink mechanic. There are a only a handful of animations. They're fun at the start, but they get old real quick due to how often they're triggered later on. Only a couple of enemies seem to have sex/defeat scenes. I don't understand why they'd add new enemy types to a lewd game if they don't trigger any new lewd content. I would probably give this 3 stars if it was a 0.2 version. For a game close to its 2.0 version, it doesn't have a lot to offer. It feels like most of the resources were spent making the game look professional (fancy menus and walking animations) with the lewd content being an afterthought. A shame because this could've been a good game.

Sotman 2023-04-25 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I don't know. This feels more like a demo rather than a game being in development. And it has been 4 years. At least the artwork is good. The overall experience was very mild. The intro promised stuff that the game has yet to deliver

Arkady 2023-04-25 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The Good: mighty fine artwork fun characters The Whatever: the story; it might be good, if actually made sense and worked, but that's clearly too much to ask The Bad: gameplay; maybe it'd be salvageable with balancing, but apparently the devs can't be bothered The Bowling Shoe Ugly: the bugginess; not sure if the story, as far as implemented, would be good if events actually triggered, and did so in proper order a single save, written to the registry - that's seriously some break out the torches and pitchforks level bullshit, and that's before even considering it'd be tempting to try both "sane" and "lusty-depraved" playthroughs I'd really like to rate this higher (because the art is great, and the glimpses of the story seem kinda promising), but the Bowling Shoe Ugly is just too much.

Deleted member 5546583 2023-02-10 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Writing and story is pretty poor. The game isn't in a playable state but, even if it was, it doesn't seem very fun, interesting or balanced. Only gets 2 stars because the CGs are very good. In the future, I hope that a gallery gets added so that it will be possible to enjoy the CGs without having to play through the combat parts.

barb's porn account 2023-01-18 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Solid animation, character design, and art - but what really sells it is the writing. The characters feel and read like 3-dimensional people, and that makes them much hotter. Not much else to say - although at this stage of development (1/17/23) I'm having trouble advancing.

eithon 2022-04-13 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

it's pretty similiar to darkest dungeon. i like the concept a lot. game is fun and enjoyable but sadly too short. need more enemies and more animations. i hope they will develop more story or more animated stuff to this game. it's enjoyable but can't really play more than ten minutes.

Weimn 2022-01-11 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I love the characters and art style, but the game itself needs at least 20 more updates to be any good. The animations look like it's a porn ad on a random website. The gameplay is basically scuffed darkest dungeon. The quests are basically "clear X", giving you gold as a reward. Story? Idk, is that even a thing here? For sure we have some dialogs, but I have literally 0 interest in it. I just wanna have a game with this artist and those characters in another genre. A VN, or like an RPGM... or basically anything. Cuz this game at it's current state is so far from being enjoyable.

munaki712 2021-10-20 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

=]] The game just poorly unbalance , Got tons of crit from enemies and characters atk miss or low damage 99% . the shops in town sell useless items . i didn't expect 2 years game could be this horrible.

frankensteiner316 2021-09-05 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Its really cool. Bugs are an issue, i had to restart the game a couple of times due to the weird combat glitch, but other than that its a really good game. Hope to see it improve and expand because right now its pretty short. I cant give it a 5 star rating because of the bugs but its definetly solid enough to play.

evilDragon 2021-09-05 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

In short - Buggy directionless mess with terrible gameplay. Waste of good art and resources. Good base game idea/ but terrible execution. When I have seen the good art and a lewd darkest dungeon-type game I was hyped. Plus the devs connected with great SoC game. But when I downloaded a demo (1.7.19 I can only imagine how bad it was before) i was shocked: first bugs - the game crashed 3 times in 20 minutes I played it Absolutely unnecessary and poorly implemented voice acting Level design with no clear map The devs put all their effort into graphics (making animated scenes etc.) without putting effort into the story and world building (first impression anyway) I feel like the devs choose their priorities very poorly. This game had been in development 3 YEARS! And with a decent budget. Yet it crashes and has lost of bugs. barely playable. Its nice to have great graphics, voice acting, a lot of animations but it's worth going for when you have base rock-solid gameplay and writing. And it is clear that high-quality art with animations and voice acting are expensive and they cant make a lot of content. I hope this project either dramatically changes or dies so there would be one less game that is too ambitious to ever be realistically finished and in a good and playable state.

Fsama 2021-07-23 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I never write reviews but figured I would for Jessika's Curse. The reason being, I think it has the foundation of a very good game. The most recent update really showed what potential it has. Art is fantastic, animations are solid, and the core gameplay is fun and engaging. So instead of focusing on the things that will likely get fleshed out as the game developes (like bugs), I will instead focus on major problems/shortcomings that will need to be reworked. So to put it very simply, this is Darkest Dungeon but stylized to fit around porn. Currently you have 4 available party members; a Busty Priestess, a Sardonic Sorceress, a Flat-Chested Rogue and a Bimbo Knight. All four characters are drawn extremely well and offer good, unique things in terms of looks and sexual appeal. Instead of gaining Stress your characters gain Lust, and are prone to fucking/masturbation/molesting each other or the enemies during the midst of battle if their Lust gets too high. The problems stem from the fact that the rest of the game is TOO MUCH like Darkest Dungeon. I won’t compare every single aspect, instead just point out what doesn’t work in JC. First of all the combat is too hard. Enemies can 1-hit KO party members with a lucky crit. Normally this isn’t a big deal but in JC every dungeon has a boss at the end, and it is practically impossible to win vs. The boss without 4 party members. All the enemies have way too much health as well. Basic level 1 enemies have around the same amount of HP as the party, and the same damage. This makes it so that the most survivable way of fighting combat is spamming stun/blind, and then bursting down enemies who aren’t stunned/blind. If youre outnumbered, you will likely be taking a lot of damage which you have no way of actively restoring outside of combat. The not-Curio interaction objects are pretty out of wack. Most are useless/pointless, excepting the Fountain Statue thing that heals a major portion of health. And conversely, the one not-Curio that can poison you, which will tick massive chunks of health every few steps through the dungeon until you heal it - and you can only heal during combat, so if you don’t get combat you might just lose someone and have to leave. There also needs to be some kind of keyboard button to open the chests so you don’t have to click on them every single time - if there is one I missed it. Disregarding health/damage, enemy balance is also not great. So far I’ve run into Myconids (Big-mushrooms), Goblins, Wolfs, and Bandit archers. Myconids are fine. They either do lust damage or low physical damage. Goblins seem overtuned. They have physical melee, physical ranged, and lust melee (but it seems to be able to target anyone). Wolfs are utterly broken and will completely wash your run if you get unlucky. The reason being is that Wolfs not only have high damage, but every single wolf has the ability to howl and call in a second wolf. You can get overwhelmed extremely quickly in a fight if all the Wolfs just decide to spam howl and you find yourself fighting an endless wave of wolfs. There needs to be an Alpha wolf or something who has this ability. Being able to call in reinforcements in a game that is very determined by Action-Economy (how many actions each team has) is gamebreaking. Wolfs are broken, through and through. Lastly the Bandit archers. Also broken. It seems if the bandit archers are located in the backline of the fight they can target all 4 players with the same amount of damage that their regular 1-target shots do. This is utterly insane, especially in the boss fight where there are 5 bandits. I will bring up Darkest Dungeon again to compare - all abilities that target multiple enemies/the whole line do significantly less damage, which is why they are balanced. Archers need to be tuned way down, specifically that one ability. Finally the “Afflictions” mechanic. Basically if anything bad happens to your party members they will gain negative traits like “Nymphomaniac,” “Sadistic” etc. Currently they gain these traits way too quickly, there is no way to see what they actually do, and no way to reliably get rid of the traits. You just put them in the church, pay money, and hope they go away. These happen way too often and are way too detrimental. I have found that characters will ignore orders entirely with low lust because of these silly traits. If you’re going to do these negative traits, you need to do positive ones as well. I’ll laundry list the rest of things I think need to change/would like to see added/removed. -Gold grind is way too slow, and rewards for dungeons are pathetic. -Needs to be a dedicated way to remove afflictions. -Voiced dialogue is nice but unnecessary. This should not be a major focus of your development. -Characters having clothing changes as they get Lustbroken would be cool to see in-dungeon. Having their equipment get upgraded as you upgrade at the blacksmith would also be cool. Since your following DDs style, color pallette swaps could be interesting. -Dungeons are generally too long. Having a boss at the end of every dungeon means it should be short and to the point, not forcing you to wander around for 20 minutes. -Characters need swappable skills (I think you’ve addressed this already). But in the current state there needs to be more stun/blind/disabling skills, or the combat balance needs to change altogether. -Gallery only seems to show scenes of your party members trying to molest each other on lustbreak. It doesn’t show any of the monsterxparty interactions, or the partyxparty sex scenes. That’s pretty much it. It sounds very negative, so I’ll end on a positive note. I like this game a lot. It could be my favorite porn game if the developments continues on well. The art is fantastic. The gameplay to porn ratio is perfect. The animations are solid for what they are, assuming they all get fleshed out more then 10/10. The style, music, world and setting are all great as well. So I give this game a 4/5. I hope to see it continue to develop, and will donate on patreon though I rarely do because I believe there is something good going here.

floran 2021-06-27 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

literally unplayable. Have to restart the game constantly because everything is bugged, can't exit stores because the character covers the X button. In the map there is no way back so again got to restart the game. The voice acting is terrible, but atleast this can be fixed by turning off all voice volume. Audio is the only menu, there is no option for video setting which would be great because the resolution is a mess. A shame because the art looks promising

jems242 2021-06-26 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

3 year old game and can't get the simple battle system to work right without it just breaking for no reason and I can't continue the battles. Art is nice at least and the voice acting is pretty bad, sounds like 1 guy doing it with a voice changer.

Lamp856 2021-06-25 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Its basically an erotic version of Darkest Dungeon, except you only have the same 4 characters. Where sanity and breaks is replaced with lust and lust breaks. The positive/negative perks is replaced with kinks. The art direction is alright, gameplay wise I can only guess that the dev is working towards basically rebuilding Darkest Dungeon mechanics with a more sensual spin. At the time of this review the game is still very barebones, gameplay is simple and repetitive without enemy variety or encounter variety. Though at least there is some variety for the scenes. It could be a viable parody of Darkest Dungeon just like how Last Evil is an erotic parody of Slay the Spire. Though this kind of gameplay is difficult to fap to, I'd only give it a 3/5 for now. If it gets fleshed out mechanically, I would probably bump to a 4/5.

mjfff 2021-04-16 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The best hand-drawn art I've seen in a game. Although the devs are still working out the mechanics of the game, it really has potential. I would like if the animation scenes were voiced acted but I think that will come in time. I look forward to the day when this is a full game.

CraziBeast 2021-01-24 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

3/5 Gameplay 3/5 scenes 3/5 Overrall So, this game is finally playable. This used to have a ton of bugs that made it impossible to play. So here is my take. This is basically like darkest dungeon, but with porn. Imo, that is pretty good. The skills are balanced so you actually need to use all of them. 3 maps so far, so around an hour of gameplay you need to finish this. Now, the "PLOT". The scenes are pretty good, the art is nice but it's kinda inconsistent in some scenes. There is a nice quantity, but mostly lesbian material (not all of them). There is a gallery and you unlock the scenes by finishing the maps, you don't need to lose. The girls are pretty hot and they have pretty different body types. Overrall, a pretty enjoyable game with noice "PLOT". It has enough content to make it worth it, but it has a lot of potential that could make this one a great game. So far, making that potential that I saw the first time true so I kinda hope it continues like that.

RumbleBR 2021-01-23 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

This game is good, a good rpg with a good battle mechanic, very clean, the cgs are okay, but what kill this game is the updates, 3 or 4 months for a update with nothing new on cg or monsters, the game is good but that time for give soo poor things for the players is not good.

Rainbowhead 2021-01-22 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I really want to like this game, but it's still very raw, and in a wrong way. There are a lot of things I can tolerate in WIP projects, but most of these projects tend to focus on porn and offer simple gameplay loops that don't strive to be anything serious. Jessica's Curse has heavy focus on gameplay with beautiful graphical bells and whistles, but JC may as well stand for "Jesus Christ, how boring". It's stiff, it's repetitive, it's tedious. The thing it focuses on the most, it fails to present properly. I get that the devs wanted to get funding and baited people with porn, but locking NSFW content behind bad gameplay was a bad decision, especially for a team that has two other titles. The art direction is very pleasant, but it lacks smoothness that other games with same quality of art have. Every action takes just a bit too long, but, since it's a TBS, there are a bunch of these actions stacked together. It's like running into red light on every intersection. The current solution for that is an option to speed up time during combat, but that compromises the rest of the visuals, because all animations speed up too. UI is weird. It's minimalist in the worst way possible. Almost all information is hidden from the player, unless you hover over an enemy, teammate, action icon, etc., contributing to stalling time on each of your turns even more. Receiving damage is obscure, because player's characters don't have constantly visible HP bar. It may as well print anything instead of the damage/lust value. Gameplay-wise, I'm not a big fan of Darkest Dungeon, but I enjoyed it. DD seeps tension and demands sacrifice, all thanks to its neat balance. Jessica's Curse doesn't have that, at least not yet. The starting characters aren't that distinct and lack skills that would make them more than a bland fighter with an extra skill. Walking through "corridors" is completely pointless, because nothing happens between combats and looting. There are no traps, no light mechanic, no objects of interest except for containers that don't require anything to open them. Just hold D (one in each hand, huh) until you get to another encounter. All of the above ties into very tedious battles. There is no tension, because the enemies don't deal that much damage, but on top of that they are too spongy. Damage from your characters feels almost random, and you can win by smashing things until they die, ignoring any need or reward for playing smart. And this ties into sexual content. Jessica's Curse follows the trope of "you have to lose to get porn", and, on paper, having a Darkest Dungeon -like game, where even if you win, you lose, sounds like a good balance, especially compared to old Japanese VNs and platformers. But it doesn't work for JC, because of everything mentioned above. The only thing you lose is your time and patience.