BoneCraft is an adult-oriented Hack & Slash in where we play as the leader of the Wranglers named Captain Fort Worth, on a quest to lead his men to the hottest alien babes in the universe. Right off the bat of our journey, he flips out on a comment a crew member made, drives straight into several asteroids, causes a mutiny, and crash lands onto an unknown planet. Those wild turn of events serve as a tutorial to get us accustomed to several of the game’s mechanics before being cast to brave said planet. It also introduces us to the silly tone of this title. Darn near every word out of people’s mouths are so over the top and shameless that you can’t help but want to both simultaneously facepalm at their antics and laugh heartily.
Our Captain is quite the versatile fellow, not only can he perform both a heavy and light attack with his melee weapon, but he also carries a set of two ranged guns. He can take either a shotgun or a rifle, as well as either a flamethrower or cannon. You can swap between the two on the fly and use them by holding the Shift key before you attack with a left mouse click. Changing between your two ranged weapons also swaps out the type of grenade you have, them being explosive and fire. Using them is similar to guns, but instead of left clicking as you hold Shift, you right click. It will use a chunk of the ammo of your current weapon, though are quite effective against crowds and well worth their cost.
An interesting feature is his ability to either down his jet fuel ammo or swallow bullets for temporary benefits. Chugging down a flask of fuel will increase your movement speed significantly and allow you to jump far higher. Eating live ammunition, on the other hand, will cause you to dish out a lot more damage. They last around six or seven seconds, yet only cost a single round of the fifty you can carry in each of the two ammo types. It is a boost will worth taking advantage of whenever you have enough time to eat your ammunition without getting an axe to the face. Finally, we can also block by holding down the mouse wheel. It is a surprisingly fleshed out fighting system for a porn game whose main purpose at a glance seemed like raunchy humor and sex.
With all that info under your belt, you are now ready to face whatever the inhabitants of that world are. As it turns out, they are orcs with heavy Cockney accents. For a race of green-skinned warriors and a battle-hardened group of humans that literally eat bullets, this meeting went rather peacefully… up until they tried to make love to your sexbot waifu. That’s when you dash in to meet them head on and attempt to survive various waves of attacks, chainsword in hand. The weapons the orcs hold are inferior to your own, but should you find the need to do so, such as when disarmed, you can pick up their weapons off the ground and use it against them. You can also dole out basic commands to your squad of four, to do things like stay close and defend you or attack everything in sight.
It all sounds good so far, yet a combination of two issues drag the combat down. The first is the camera frequently having trouble tracking you. And secondly is how far the enemies fly back after you strike them a few times. Trying to kill a single foe feels akin to attempting to catch a slippery bar of soap in a shower. A lock-on mechanic would have helped to alleviate the sense of confusion as that would at least keep the target in sight. Speaking of, the first thing you’ll want to do is turn the camera way back in the options menu. By default, it is way too close to your character, making matters much worse. Luckily, it doesn’t really matter if you only damage a foe and let your teammate take the kill. You don’t get any experience. Instead, this title has a currency system for upgrades and any defeated enemies drops cash.
At the start of every mission, you will be given to chance to upgrade a wide array of things. You can buy new melee weapons, upgrade ranged weapons, improve the damage a grenade does, and even buy more powerful teammates for your squad. It is far too many things to all max out within a single playthrough. In that same menu, you can select how difficult you want the mission to be, ranging from Easy to Hard. Each mission has three or more objectives to them and dying will set you back to the one you were at, but without your melee weapon. It also sets you back with all the cash you gained, so with how relatively melee weapons cost, it is a very light penalty.
There are technically 12 missions, but one of those feature nothing but sex in an elf orgy. Any female you spot while playing this is fair game, whether it be a chunky green orc or a slender purple elf. If you press Enter while near them, you will engage in a sex mini-game in where you match her speed and power via some meters in order for both of you to get off. Doing so may be the entire objective of the mission, such as a case in where you pillage a village, but it also carries the handy side effect of completely restoring your health. You can go at it for as long as you please, yet going for more than one round has no added benefit. Enemies can’t attack you while you do the deed either. Your main threats will be your own squad-mates who will rush toward any women and will beat you to it if they talk to her first.
In the upgrades menu, there also lays a sex shop in where you can buy different positions and discover how to unlock different girls, many of which are never seen in the campaign. There is a wide variety of both partners and positions, including instances with more than two people. Some that you can unlock don’t include any male characters at all. Male on male engagements are none existent however, barring a specific case with what is known as a shemale. It is all completely uncensored, voice acted and decently animated. Beating the game will open up a brothel that will greatly increase your options over the regular sex shop you’ve had before missions.
The missions are nothing fantastic. They typically involve things such as killing a certain number of enemies or collecting objects. Some that require you to do things like defending someone or a pseudo ‘capture the flag’ mode are not all that fun and often times frustrating. The latter in particular was won via sheer luck as I singlehandedly tried to capture various locations while the enemies had an infinite amount of respawning orcs to do the same. Both those cases were near the start of the game and thankfully never occurred again. An issue those with high-resolution monitors will have is that the UI does not scale with it. I played it at 4K, and nearly everything was still perfectly viewable, minus the minimap at the bottom right that will be too small for comfort. Considering how often you need to seek something to collect or destroy, you may want to lower your res for simple ease of use.
In total, doing all of the 12 levels took me around three and a half hours. The highlight of all of it has got to be the dumb, dudebro humor and a plethora of references to other things like Zelda or Warhammer 40K. I was chuckling all throughout and was always eager to get to the next cutscene. If you’ve ever seen the Republican Space Rangers cartoons from GTA IV, you know exactly what you are in for here in terms of humor, and it is fantastic. Bonecraft originally released in 2012 and only recently made its appearance on Steam. It has held up really well due to its cartoon-like graphics, and the humor is just as effective as ever. With so much lewd content, a good amount of upgrades to keep you playing, and a team of degenerate space marines accompanying you, Bonecraft is an unceasingly entertaining experience. It is a bit on the short side, and some missions weren’t all that great, but it is an ambitious little title well worth considering.
[Review copy was provided]
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