Lustful Valley is an adult orientated Open World Adventure game with a dash of horror. We play as a girl named Anna who is searching for her sister that went to look for job opportunities in the city of Dailand. I learned that from reading the store page. In the game itself, all you get are some CGs and a small cutscene that explain nothing and will leave you more confused than anything. This is a different kind of horror than just your mere jump-scares or something stalking you in the dark. It is the type of uncanny experience that feels like a fever dream you just can’t wake up from.
Starting off, you will find yourself on the outskirts of the town of Dailand right in the dead of night. It is where the traditional type of horror of this title is at its strongest. The heavy fog and deafening silence made me feel like I was walking into Silent Hill itself. Venture further in and you will eventually come across a warn down diner with a dead-eyed waitress behind the counter. As I inched closer to her expecting to get my face ripped off, it turned out that she was a normal human being. Well, as normal as people get in this game, at least.
The lack of movement from NPCs and their uncanny, near lifelike, but not quite there appearances fit this game like a glove. Half of the time I didn’t even know if I was trying to talk to a corpse or not. The only thing that let me know for sure was if the E to interact key popped up. Anyways, back to the waitress. She very helpfully lets you in on how things work in this town. Your American dollar won’t work here, they use a local currency. And by that, I mean they seemingly super-glued their mayor’s face onto a regular dollar and added a few zeros.
As sketch as that story she just told you appears, she then offers you some of their currency if you satisfy her. Apparently the only thing to eat in that diner is her, and you get paid for it. Being ten Dailand dollaroos richer, you walk out of there and must explore the town for some clues towards your sister’s whereabouts. That is easier said than done. As good as the fog makes the atmosphere look, it is so thick that you can barely see a few feet ahead of you. Simply trying to find things is how you will be spending the majority of your time as you flounder about the place.
Not helping matters is the level design. Things are not laid out in a fashion as to help or guide the player. That is not ideal, but wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it wasn’t for that fog obscuring your vision so much. To further add fuel to this flaw, there are a ton of invisible walls around the place. These are at times not well placed either, and simply serve to further obscure vital locations. Exploring in this game is the equivalent of stumbling about in a dark room while blackout drunk. According to the key bindings, there is actually a map. Pressing M doesn’t do a thing though, and even if it did, you really shouldn’t go into the menus or pause the game for any reason.
You see, trying to access any menu has a good chance that the game will then lock up, forcing you to Alt+F4 your way out. After having blundered your way to any amount of progress, the last thing you want to do is start over. There is no save feature in this title, so you will have to play the entire thing in one sitting. Whatever you do, don’t pause or pull up the Journal, Inventory, dress up, or ANY menu. I have replayed this title seven times until I pinpointed just what the issue was. The eighth time went without a hitch, aside from the headache I now possessed.
Luckily, none of the menus are ever needed. This is as simple as Adventure games get. The challenge is actually finding what you need or where you should be. Dailand has a ton of physical maps scattered about so you could get your bearings. They don’t tell you what anything is, but you can see where there are buildings and get a feel for the layout of the town. I actually liked this system and didn’t even miss the fact that our own map is nonfunctional. It’s once again just that the fog is far too overblown, to the point that you can’t even tell what a building is when you have your face pressed up against its walls. That makes all the scenic dead space and invisible walls quite the hassle. There are also collectible lewd magazines to find if you hate your vision that much.
What really makes Lustful Valley standout aside from its decent horror atmosphere is the town’s inhabitants. Everyone here is a complete nutjob or flat-out make you question your own sanity. It’s like an entire season of Twin Peaks packed into one small town. This is an incredibly short game, so I’ll not spoil it for you. The people themselves are interesting, but the quests some of them offer are not. They are dead simple things like finding a skull or letting them eat you out. All are straightforward fetch quests or busywork that make this world feel even more empty. It never makes you use any amount of brainpower. The most you’ll get of an actual puzzle is getting a key-card and finding out what to do with it, which depends entirely upon stumbling on the answer.
I wasn’t expecting the world from a five-dollar hentai game, yet the gameplay detracts from all the lewd content as they are interlinked. There is no Gallery mode or way to view them without replaying the game. Equally puzzling is that there is nowhere to view the collectible magazines either, and they respawn every playthrough, making them pointless to collect. The sex scenes in this game come in two forms. One has you passively waiting until it is over and the other will have you left-clicking to continue the animation. The latter are over really quickly. You only have to click a handful of times before it is all over. During both, you can change the camera angle using the cursor keys to get a better look or zoom in on the uncensored genitals.
Lustful Valley really banks on its weirdness in both its lewd content and its story. Do not expect to find a well-told story or much to get ye ole loins riled up. It is more of an experience than an adventure. That is completely fine and what actually drew me into this title in the first place. The horror tone of this game is well-executed, and its uncanny nature more deeply disturbing than having a clear enemy. What lets it down is everything around it, ie the reasons to want to explore, the fog, and especially its technical issues. Character interactions are limited and can not carry the game, while the horror quickly goes out the window from blindly walking circles around the town. There is no way I would recommend a title where the simple act of pausing it will likely cause it to crash either. It does have its good points and with the low price it is far from the worst purchase one can make, yet I strongly urge you to at least wait until it is patched into a technically stable state.
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