RPGM - City of Secrets [v0.04.0] [TheDarkLight]

[v.0.04.0]
It's a good game with downsides, which is very different from a "bad game".

It's a heroine-game in the standard RPGM-mold, focusing on making a goody-two-shoes MC fall under the influence of various female/futa villains, mostly involving possession, transformation and mind control. The first explicit scenes the game throws at you already make your MC grow a cock and go up against slimes, so you know what you're in for.

The tag-list is pretty much my ideal one, and a game having such a specific focus on hypnosis/mc is even better. Though the scenes are short and a bit plainly written, they do a good job of appealing to the desired fetishes. The theming of the game is great, and the art quality top-notch, especially the character-art. On a conceptual level, the game is great, and it sometimes succeeds in what it's trying to do.

***
However, there are still a lot of pretty core-aspects that the game could be doing better:

- The writing outside the fetish-content is very simple. It is good to not get bogged down in the worldbuilding in the introduction to your porn-game, but this is a case of any depth or texture of the story just not being there. Everything you get told about the world that is not fetish content, or part of the main "plot" is fairly obvious and uninteresting. The scene-writing is decent, but also more focused in trying to deliver brief, isolated scenes. In general the pacing of the content is a bit awkward especially for the in-dungeon loss/"punishment"-scenes. I hope the devs pay special attention to the slow-corruption scenes, which are the most important part to get right in a hypno-kink game.

- A heroine corruption-game like this is about "corrupting" "the heroine". That's why it kind of hurts the game that the MC in this is given a pretty bland personality, without a lot of detail to her. Sure, it can enhance other aspects of the writing, but having the MC have very little established personality hurts the game's attempts at trying to portray changes to that personality. It's a fault a lot of corruption games make, but that doesn't mean it isn't also bad here. It also detracts from being able to write relationships between characters.

- When it comes to the mechanics of the corruption and character-building, the game is in a kind of awkward spot. The focus of building your character is on slowly grinding up stats by spending time and/or money, but it doesn't have any kind of story-significance, deeper gameplay-system or opportunity-cost attached to it. So, the stat-grinding in the current game only fills time between the progression of the corruption-plotlines. I think a better version of this concept would have the corruption-themes interact more deeply with the gameplay, without their consequences being purely negative in making the game harder or locking content away.

- The game still uses the default RPGM-battle-system, and relies on those basic mechanics for it's combat and gameplay. Not to say that future content can't expand on that in the future, but to me this system is not only dated mechanically, but also something that is completely detached from the main focus of the game, which is the mind-control/fetish aspects. Using these systems as the basis for the game is "easy", but it also locks the game into creating a lot of content that's mostly just killing time, without engaging with what the game is mostly interested in or connecting with the main character. Nor does it connect with the main fetish, and it mostly just forces the plot-progression of the game to the mold of your average RPGM-dungeon crawler.

- And, of course, because it's an RPGM-game, there's a lot of time filled walking through empty environments. Granted, establishing a sence of "normalcy" through gameplay can be good so you can break it later, but this is still a pretty boring way to do it.

***
Despite all the negative aspects, I am glad this exists, and I hope this project has a good future ahead of it. This feels like it has great potential.

Great game! Amazing Game! Fantastic Game!

My only complaint is that the corruption stat is silly and doesnt go up organically. You barely get it to rise at the start but then you go into a dungeon and it skyrockets up! my recommendation is to set corruption to cap with soul fragmentation. Or somehow cap how much corruption you can get from dungeon events.

also maybe make it so she is made to watch hypnosis porn on top of getting hypnotized to watch porn.

also I didnt notice anything happen with the will power stat going up and down. Maybe its to be added in the future? but some ideas that im sure you already thought of: have some will power draining events that you have to manage, you can get it to go up and down temporarily... or in a few cases permanently. make it a percentage willpower check to advance on getting hypnotized with the bracelet. While some people would dislike this slow down... this would be amazing to me.! And for those people that dislike this slow down you can probably just add a prompt to ignore the willpower check and get hypnotized anyway. Make it like the therapist in the game Girl life with the therapist where each time you go to get hypnotized, its harder and harder to resist for each new thing with each visit, requiring more will power.

This is one of the Top 3 games in development on this site!

An excellently put together game.

the story is intriguing, Emma is a very endearing main character despite being a naive straight a student and the supporting cast are all very well done, especially the monster girls such as Victoria, a ghost who is also an exhibitionist and masturbation addict and posseses the mc to carry out these lewd acts.

Visuals are great, especially the pixel art and cg. The sex scenes Have all been really great So far. the open world is also quite nice to look at and dungeons are decently atmospheric.

combat is relatively interesting though nothimg really groundbreaking, though being honest nobody plays these for the combat.

so far it’s a relatively modest amount of content but I’m very interested to see what else gets added in future.

Very fun and lewd little adventure. In this one you take control of student lady which mind and body is subjected to plenty of outside control, being hypnotized by a fellow student, being possessed by a ghost, sharing head space some sort of rogue soul, and a very kinky futa-loving slime. The animations and art are simply awesome, if you're into hourglass H-cup ladies. Though there's lots more lesbian content, than futa content, so don't dive into this expecting to see tons of cocks.
The story is a bit more than you expect from an adult game, it's very intriguing, and dialogues aren't too cringy, the characters for once actually feel kinda real.
The gameplay itself consist of a time management type of life sim, where you need to balance your budget, training, your soul being fractured, and killing monsters. It's a little bit better, than your average RPGM game.
As of v0.02.02 it's quite unfinished, lacking continuation to both main and optional storylines, some animations and CGs. I'd say at this point in development it's worth a go, and it's only going to get better as new updates come out.

It is a very good game, the designs and animations are fantastic and the story is interesting, it reminds me a little of Jujutsu Kaisen in a way. I don't give it more stars because it has many black screens where there are no images, only text. I understand that it barely The game is in development but that's the only negative thing I can say about the game. For the rest I hope they release an update soon with more visual content. I give it 4 stars for that but this game deserves 5 stars

I am a big fan of pixel art, so this game caught my attention. I am glad I decided to check it out because it has a lot of potential. In the current version, there are two dungeons that are well-designed and different from each other, not only in terms of aesthetics but also enemy types, which I appreciate. However, the main downside is that leveling up doesn't seem to have much effect due to the gym and library increasing your stats. Despite this, I highly recommend checking out the game.

I played up to a little bit of the first dungeon, but currently have no interest in playing further, despite both yuri and mind control being among my absolute favorite subjects.

This game does a lot of things right, but it's being held back by some extremely lackluster writing. Obvious grammatical mistakes like missing commas and apostrophes plague almost every line of dialogue, and the phrasing itself is often truncated in the way that you might see things written on a message board between friends. It's clear that someone without writing experience has a story in mind that they're passionate about (and the story itself isn't bad) but the implementation is too flawed for me to feel invested in it.

This is why the game seems to "start slow": despite being a plot-heavy game - which is totally fine, if that's what you're going for - the plot itself is delivered too poorly to be engaging, and there's nothing to be interested in until the sex stuff finally starts up.

The pixel art animations were the definite standouts. Though I only saw the first one, I would love to be able to access more, but again have no interest in slogging through the game itself to get there, and I wasn't particularly tantalized by the accompanying dialogue either.

I hope this gets addressed in future updates, but without a full rewrite I doubt I'll be interested in playing again. It's entirely possible some people might not be bothered by this: if so, enjoy. Good luck to the dev(s).

Starts out pretty damn slow, but the dialogue fast forward is really, REALLY fast if you want to use it, and you can save in the middle of dialogue.

If you like mind control or possession this one's bound to be a gem.

Review for v0.01.52

Exactly the kind of game I love to see. Art is amazing in all instances, plots nice, characters work well, so on and so on. A couple of problems as of the current version though, stem from managing stats and resources.
- grinding at the gym for stats I wish I got from level ups
- restaurant work for small amounts of money
- ever present accumulation of soul fragmentation
- school rep after getting possessed by Victoria
that's a lot to worry about for each time slot not taken up by school, etc. I hope to see either better ways for the player to deal with these problems, or number changes as the game is developed, but aside from that this is already one of the top games on this site IMO. I WILL be buying the full game on final release, which says a lot on this site.

A game about the MC being mind controlled, posessed, and raped by other women. Larger focus on possession than other games. The game is still in its early stage so there is not a lot of content, but there is potential here for something great.

My main gripe with the game is that there are no males in the game who want to violate the MC. Lack of males is fine but please include penises so the MC can get pregnant. Thank you.

multiple forms of possession? yes please! this game despite being new has by far exceeded my expectations for a NSFW game involving bodily take over. I'm a sucker for ghost possession but this game surprised me with slime possession as well. If you love possess content then I recommend City of Secrets

Game is very good, playing the game is just following the quest main story and side quest is good. Genre mind control + possession is excellent genre my favourite. more art sex scenes which is more interest (hoping add art harem scenes too).

[v0.01.01]
The game is basicly done, but there is no content...
A big and empty game at the moment.

-Story, Originality
You are a woman and other women want to hypnotise, posses and plainly r*pe you.

-Renders
Cool 2D artstyle.

-Sound
Okay sounds (overall).

-Playability
1 dungeon and several events you have to actively look for.

-Performance
Runs okay.

-Bugs
If you use mouse to move, there is bad pathfinding and player character zooms around corners getting stuck.

When a cutscene starts player model becomes bold (without clothes, hair and everything else).

"Possession" event can overlap other timed events (because you skip yhe day until evening).

-Animations
There are 3-4 animations and they look good.

-Voice Acting
No voices.

-Grammar
Didn't see any mistakes.

-Amount of content
There are a lot of scenes that are described with words.
I hope all the h-content gets at least a still image...

Now it looks extremely empty.
There are around 10-15 h-scenes, but only 3-4 h-animations/pictures/visuals.

It will certainly get a lot of attention in the future and I think the most important to add visuals.

I quite like what I see so far. Good art and I love the way you slowly corrupt the mc from different perspectives. Also that an in-game guide is provided helps a lot for those who might get lost. The only thing missing is the addition of CG. Great game no doubt!

One of the very few possession focused games out there. With more kinks to come. The game has great art, both CG and pixel. Combat is a bit basic, but that isn't the main focus. I'm looking forward to seeing more possession, body swapping, and mind control goodness coming from this game.

Rating for release version 0.01.01

Excellent art, very fetishy and erotic.
Good writing, a bit weak in areas but most people just will not care. The attention to detail more than compensates for it, such as your personal goals and feelings changing depending on who is brainwashing you and at what stages.
RPG Mechanics are simple, it's obvious that's not the point of your game. No GOR, no in-combat sex, just simple battles and then sex scenes are separate.

Is 5/5 overly generous? Yeah, probably. But also I cannot overstate the attention to detail in the fetish scenes. If you're into hypno/mind control, possession, futa, or anything else this game is offering, you'll understand why it was rated so highly if you try it too. If you hate these fetishes, be aware that the game is All about them and you're going to hate this game.