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Reviews for "Ikimono High: Monster girls dating sim"

My my my, what to say about this game. I mean, I can't say this is bad, because it isn't, but I wouldn't want to call it good either.

In short: It's been mentioned before, but the storyline seems lacking. It's okay if you figure the game out well, but it could use some polishing. Second point is the mechanics on which this game runs, which aren't properly explained, especially what the upsides and downsides of certain things are.

In long:

Well, let's start with the good stuff, which is the art and the fluidness of the game itself. It runs without errors and looks overall well polished, besides the plain text in the textboxes sometimes. The music is nice, it doesn't get overwhelming, it could run all day long without you noticing, but it does add to the mood.

The okay stuff is the storyline. It has some depth, it has some meaning, but there is little real depth to be found. It's, as mentioned before, quite generic and really just doesn't make you feel connected with the characters. Some better storylines would fix this (perhaps make a more in-depth sketch of the characters background?) and somewhat more forced conversation, randomizing events, but that's threading onto the next point already a little.

The bad stuff, is the ingame mechanics you're able to play with. You miss a general feeling of choice, of possibilities. The reason this is so is because you linked all possible events to just a few buttons and didn't make progress immediately very clear with those few buttons.

For example, the gift button does increase the stat of a girl, but you don't get a direct prompt of that. A simple *Relationship increased!* pop-up would already make that better. (A pop-up in the trend of the confirmation screen of ending the day, not another textbox on the bottom.)
Or, to name another example, you have to choose between spending money on eating so you can study more, or money on gifts to level your relationship, but there seems to be no value in leveling your studies since there is no clear benefit for it (you haven't got a single place to see that stat, you can't say what negative consequences it has when you don't study, etc). I only did studies because I couldn't do anything else with my "stamina", and there wasn't any negative effect upon depleting all my stamina either. That made the game feel very bland and not truly as if my choices mattered.

Combining all that made the game feel like a grindfest, which in general is the least enjoyable part of any game. Click study as much as possible, then gift as much as possible, chat if I feel like it to see what chats I unlocked (sadly you skip some if you gift twice in a row, hint hint) then end the day. Rinse and repeat until one girl is full, click on stats, click on the heart, start over.

Now to counter my comments, you could say "But you should try finishing the whole game, you're missing much content!" or "Well, I don't want to become another generic sim-game...".

So, let's look at that first argument. If I somehow feel motivated not to play the whole game, that means you put the accent of things too much on certain aspects of the game that are easy to finish. You can't force someone to play a whole game if they're only interested in the beginning part, so, you should look into what is wrong with playing this game for longer than necessary to get a quick ending (hint: read everything above).

Now what about the second argument? Well, fair point! I completely understand you do not want to be "another" sim-game, and that's a really good attitude to have! That's what causes creative things to happen. But I don't feel you have to go into that direction AT ALL to get a better game out of this. You can add silly random elements from other genres, to name a few, get into a fight if you don't gift a girl for long enough, taking a rpg-esk style in. Or, add some silly simple skillgames to make studying, gifting, eating or perhaps even sleeping harder! Small things to come up with that improve the quality a lot.

Now, this has been a long rant, but I think this covered most (but not all) of the flaws and possible improvements to make. I hope this helps you out and helps you grow as a developer. Don't give up!

And P.S: You can't tell people in the "Author Comments" to read the instructions before playing a game. 90% of people skip it, and 5% more ignore your request. Just put the tutorial at the start of the game and add a skip button for the impatient ones.

Kind regards, Distractionz

KoltonKennedy responds:

Thank you for this "long" review, critic.

Look i need you to just make a game all about Okami-Kun, He's the best. (P.S oh yeah your games good btw)

KoltonKennedy responds:

Thanks!
haha everyone just likes Okami so much.

it wasn't bad.
the story was cliched, but also kinda stupid. i didn't really like the entire harem aspect where all of the girls in school inexplicable are in love with a boring, normal guy.
the twist that you used to know the zombie girl before she died was a bit stupid and the cyclops girl with a fetish for her cuts and bruises was pretty weird, but i guess it's not too strange when it comes to the plots of anime and vidual novels.
i got the "visual novel" ending? i don't really know how i got it, or how to get the others. i was expecting to have the character end up with one of the girls that i maxed out the stats for, but he didn't. i did not really understand the ending or what the satyr-girls big secret was or why she was acting weird. i don't think it was properly explained.
the girls all looked too similar in design and structure and merely looked like humans with very minimal "monster" aspects. i think you should play up their monster features next time.
the satyr character apparently had "strange legs", but you can't really tell, because her portrait cuts off at her skirt.
all-in-all it wasn't terrible, but a lot of things could be improved. i will definitely play the sequel and possibly anything you make in the future. i would really love to see you get better and i believe you can do so.

This was bad. It wasn't trash, but it sure wasn't good. Maybe I'm just a jaded jerk, but the writing had no ounce of originality. The art and whatnot was decent for a flash game. The only thing really holding this project back was it's uninspired story.

If you're doing this just as a means to express yourself then it's fine. If you want to truly make a lasting story that connects with people then it's going to need to be much closer to home. As in not such an idyllic setting with "perfect" characters. People just accepting monsters without any racial violence? Nope. All the characters having a collective boner for the protagonist? Nope. The protagonist being accepting of everyone and everything? Well that can work, but the world will screw over such yes men in it's own way.

I'm not trying to be hurtful or anything kid. Just being an honest jerk.

KoltonKennedy responds:

what? i dont even...

I can feel my childhood thumping to the forefront of my chest as I play this game. I've always been a sucker for dating sims and it puts a smile on my face to see such a nice and simple one in this day and age. Quick question, is there a time limit? My inner rusher made it so I beat the game on like day 14 after just spamming gifts so I never actually got around to exploring the full content but I want to. XD