Thursday, February 23, 2023

Hentai Game Review: Mage Kanade's Futanari Dungeon Quest

I've reviewed a fair few Dieselmine H-games over the years, most prominently the Violated Hero series.  They were always light on gameplay and usually pretty good on art.  Nowadays they seem to be in a really weird place.  They probably have one of the most gifted smut artists/animators around, L Buffer, working for them, but don't really seem to know what to do with him.



Unlike its predecessor, A Lose Hero in the Castle of the Succubi, which was pretty much a glorified gallery where you walked from H-scene to H-scene, Mage Kanade's Futanari Dungeon Quest is technically a game, just about.  You have an attack button, a dodge button, and have to navigate fights and timed puzzles.

I'm not into futa, so originally didn't have much interest in this.  Then I saw some clips floating around on porn sites and was lured in.  What can I say, I have a weakness for sexy squishy slime girls.


They got me.  They knew my weakness...


The one area I'm sort of okay with futa is futa protagonists having their 'weak point' targeted by sexy (and importantly, non-futa) succubi and monster girls.  And in this, the protagonist is pretty much functionally a dude with how the various monster girls treat them.  I suspect the only reason they made the protagonist a futa is to double up on the ryona audience by showing a sexy chick with big tits getting slimed.

That's one of the features of the game.  There is a large panel on the right that shows the negative statuses currently affecting the protagonist.

I played this untranslated, so I'm not 100% on the plot.  A sexy female wizard chases a succubus to some ruins.  After entering she gets tricked and hit by some magic that gives her a cock.  Then she has to navigate her way past various erotic traps and monster girls that are bent on wanking her into a stupor.


Not the boooooobs!

The game is quite inventive on that, to be fair.  The first level has you trying to avoid gas and boob traps while fighting off disembodied wank hands and paizuri tits.  The second is full of lascivious slime.  The game gets across the theme of an erotic trap dungeon fairly well and the boss fights are pretty good.  By the 4th level it starts to become obvious the devs are running out of steam.  The traps and timed puzzles go away and are replaced with lazy battles versus hordes of horny bunny girls.  The 5th is a replay of the boss fights, but with the 'lead' succubus of the level involved directly.

As with a lot of Dieselmine games, there is a lack of ambition.  The early levels and boss fights are pretty good, but it's very short and feels more like a demo or proof of concept.

Art is variable.  The L Buffer animations are excellent as always.  I was less impressed with Bad End H-scenes.  The art on those was a little too cartoony and the proportions on some of the succubi ended up looking weirdly grotesque rather than sexy.


Sorry luv, you're just not my type.

As with most of the recent Dieselmine succubus and monster girl games, it's pretty much a showcase gallery for L Buffer's talents.  Those are good as always, but the whole thing is probably a little on the pricy side for what you get.  It's a shame Dieselmine can't seem to put those talents to better use.  Other devs would salivate at the prospect of having this sprite work in their games.

(If I could get a artist/animator as good as this to provide some graphics for The House of Hellish Harlots...)

The erotic traps are interesting, at least for the early levels.  I'm currently brainstorming a SexDungeon project for #Dungeon23 over on Patreon (and SubscribeStar).  This has given me a few ideas for things to work in, like the Boob "Wall of Death".  Mage Kanade's Futanari Dungeon Quest is maybe a little expensive for what it is, but it's fun and given me a few ideas, so checking it out was not a complete waste.


Beware the "Wall of Boob"...

Milking Farm is probably still the peak of the L Buffer/Dieselmine era, even if that also only had rudimentary run 'n' hide gameplay.

Monday, February 13, 2023

House of Hellish Harlots website is fixed?

I think it might be fixed.  After ringing around it seems like a cached version got stuck somewhere.  I got them to manually clear it on Friday.  Rang them again today when I wasn't seeing any changes on my test machine.  Was made to look rather foolish when clearing the local browser cache/viewing in an incognito window and did see the updated version.

Web design is fun. :D

Oh well, hopefully the problem is fixed now and you should be able to see the changes at houseofhellishharlots.com.

You might also notice a few changes.  There is an option to play the latest version, but this is password protected with the password given out on Patreon/SubscribeStar.

The public build is also available.  This should now be at v0.038.

While I've been focused on the website, I thought it would be a good time to cross some other things off the ToDo list.  There is now a small harlot gallery featuring artwork I and others (okay, just Mark45 at the moment) have had commissioned of some of the harlots.  I'm hoping to add to it.

There's also a tab with all my books.  Man's gotta pay bills and eat.

Anyway, hopefully the issues are over and the website is now updated for everyone.  (If not, try clearing your local browser cache or an incognito window.  You'll know you have the new version as there are now 2 "Play" buttons on the welcome page - latest and public.)

As we've established, I'm pretty much a rank amateur when it comes to the web design side of things, so if you run into issues - eg pictures loading too slowly because I put the wrong file up, let me know in the comments below.  Any feedback much appreciated.

I'm hoping it's fixed now... 

Sunday, February 12, 2023

House of Hellish Harlots Website still not updating

Yup, I'm aware of it.

I can see the lack of updating on my backup laptop, so I can at least track the problem now (rather than being in blissful ignorance as it looks fine on my regular computer).

I phoned the contest host people on Friday, but whatever they tried doesn't appear to have worked, so I'll keep pestering them today and over the week until it's fixed.

While I was mucking around with the website, I made a few updates.  More on that when people can actually see them!

For now I see many phone calls and waiting on hold in my future. :'(

Wednesday, February 08, 2023

Still Working on House of Hellish Harlots Update Problem

This one still has me baffled.  I managed to bring a geriatric old laptop out of decommission, so I'm seeing what everyone else is seeing - the Changelog has updated to v0.038, but pressing "play" loads up v0.037.

I've tried flushing the cache on wordpress and a temporary kludge fix of creating a new page to hold the embedded twine.  Neither seems to have worked, so I'm scratching my head.

I'll keep at it and see if I can get this fixed.  Any helpful comments that have an idea of what the problem might be are much appreciated.


ETA: Still mystified.  Tried flushing the cache.  Tried switching CDN on and off.

It doesn't appear to be just the play game section.  I made some further updates to the changelog page to fix the background image in place.  That doesn't show up on my other laptop either.  At the moment it seems like every change isn't being propagated out and I have no idea why.

I'll keep working on it.

Monday, February 06, 2023

Try Again with House of Hellish Harlots - This Time to v0.039

Okay, something seems to have gone wrong with the last public update of House of Hellish Harlots.  Enough people have reported only seeing v0.037, so it looks like something didn't go through.

I'm still not entirely sure what's gone wrong.  I did notice that Elementor appears to have taken control of the shortcode text box I was using to load in the embedded Twine .html, which it wasn't before.

I've tried updating to v0.039 (just the embedded file, not the changelog).

I now see v0.039 when I load up https://houseofhellishharlots.com/ and hit play.  What do you see?

Sunday, February 05, 2023

Are People Having Problems with the new House of Hellish Harlots v0.038 Release?

I thought I'd make a post on this as I've received multiple comments on it.

If you check the House of Hellish Harlots website and hit play, are you seeing v0.037 or v0.038?

On the 1st of the month I did as I always do, uploaded v0.038 and hit update, then deleted v0.037 from the file system (because the game file is pretty big).  When I check, I see v0.038.

A lot of people are reporting they're only seeing v0.037.  I don't know if this problem is still occurring or what might have caused it.

Anyone with more web experience know what it might be?

(My guess would be people are seeing an old version cached somewhere, but my web-design-fu isn't good enough to be 100% on it.)

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

House of Hellish Harlots v0.038

A new month, a new House of Hellish Harlots release.

The public website demo is now up to v0.038.

This adds:
- New Harlot: The energy bunny Leppi Navitas.
- Repeat visit functionality for Succuba.
- Amoura D'Coeur's much more dangerous repeat visit scenario.

The second half of Amoura D'Couer's scenario is something I know people have been waiting for for a while, so I hope it delivers.

As always, the public demo can be found on the website here:
https://houseofhellishharlots.com/

If you want to support the project and my other writing, I have a Patreon and SubscribeStar.  Subscribers there get new versions two months early and can influence the order new harlots get added with semi-regular polls.

They were given v0.040 yesterday, a small update that adds one new harlot - Hati Krim.  She's a blue-skinned alien (-looking) babe that specialises in erotic cream massage.

This is a small update.  Currently I'm running into issues with the project being so big the Twine Editor lags.  Until I've solved that, I'll be putting out single-harlot release and then hoping to catch up later in the year.

I hope you enjoy playing with the new harlots.  Leppi is very appropriate for the year of the rabbit and reasonably friendly in comparison to the others.