Being A DIK (by Dr. PinkCake, 2019-2025)
Episode 2.1. Easy Credits And Vaginas
In the opening chapter of Being A DIK: Episode 2, Peter and Derek find themselves abducted and made to participate in the DIKs' "CUM-petition", which Peter wins after tricking Quinn into letting him directly inside her pussy.
Being A DIK (by Dr. PinkCake, 2019-2025)
Episode 1.4. Easy Credits And Vaginas
In this chapter, Peter develops a closer bond with Maya, as he all but settles down for good in her dorm; shares his first Gender Studies class with Derek and a bunch of fierce feminist girls; and accepts Quinn's proposal for using her "take-out" services in the college bathroom.
Being A DIK (by Dr. PinkCake, 2019-2025)
Episode 1.3. Fresh Bait On The Panty Hook
In this chapter, things seem to be slowly picking up for Peter until he finds his guitar stolen by the jocks and gets thrown out of his own dorm by his unfriendly roommate. Trying to find shelter with the DIKs, he is tricked into invading the privacy of the HOTs' sorority, where he is sexually humiliated by Quinn and left naked in the streets.
Being A DIK (by Dr. PinkCake, 2019-2025)
Episode 1.2. First Impressions Of College Life
In this chapter, Peter's helpful Dad drives him to college, where a lovely first acquaintance by the name of Maya introduces him to the four fraternities (the Nerds, the Jocks, the rich Preps, and the as-of-yet DIKs) and the sole sorority (the juciy HOTs).
Being A DIK (by Dr. PinkCake, 2019-2025)
Episode 1.1. The Girl That Looks Like A Radiator
In the very first episode of Dr. PinkCake's Being A DIK, we meet our hero, a young boy named Peter, working as an assistant at a food store in his local town, courting his beautiful co-worker Josy, and dreaming of a new life at the local Burgmeister & Royce College.
ACTING LESSONS: The Official PatreonGamer Review
General Verdict: Simple, short, antiquated, but a powerful emotional roller-coaster if you agree to lower your intellectual defenses for a few hours.
There’s nothing surprising about that. Compared to Being A DIK, especially its later episodes, Acting Lessons does feel not only as a pretty old game, but also as a fledgling game — a game whose writer has no idea yet of what the future holds in store for him. In the realm of AVNs, Acting Lessons is like The Hobbit compared to Being A DIK as its Lord Of The Rings (and the comparison also makes sense because there are minor details in the plot linking both games, so you know they take place in the same fictional universe). But, just like The Hobbit, Acting Lessons still retains its own cute, cozy, «homebrewn» charm that gives it its own point of attraction — a special allure which Being A DIK is not meant to reproduce, and which in itself makes the game still worth playing on its own after all these years. (Besides, at least it’s actually completed, which is more than anyone can say about Being A DIK after all those years and years and years of development!)
From a certain point of view, it does make sense to play Acting Lessons as a «prequel», because it is formally targeted at an older type of audience than Being A DIK. In Dr. PinkCake’s magnum opus, you play as a teenager going through college, making the game more relatable to horny 18-year olds not getting enough of that sweet poontang in real life. In the «prequel», however, your character is a middle-aged guy — that exact same teenager with all of his college experience long gone by — who, despite all his positive qualities, has somehow never managed to form a steady relationship (this aspect is not really justified all too well in the story), and ends up subconsciously looking for a sweet young angel to lighten up his life... kind of a typical trope in AVNs with middle-aged protagonists, but Dr. PinkCake would not be Dr. PinkCake if he didn’t attempt to put his own pink-cakey twist on it. In any case, I can totally see all of us beginning to play Being A DIK at the age of 18, reaching 40 by the time it is finally finished, and then going all the way back to Acting Lessons for a «mature» ending to our imaginary life story.
The game is short — my complete recorded unhurried playthrough, even including most of the alternate paths you can take, takes about 16 hours, which is about as long as a single episode of Being A DIK runs these days — but this is not a criticism, because it achieves everything it set out to achieve in that time length (well, almost everything — read on). Much worse is the fact that, what with its representing Dr. PinkCake’s first experience with RenPy and Daz 3D models, the game is not as graphically satisfying as we’d like it to be. Although the girls are quite pretty, and the renders highlighting their prettiness are quite numerous, many still suffer from weird perspectives and unnatural body proportions — and all of the animations are in desperate need of remastering, as they mainly consist of 2-3 frames instead of using more complicated algorithms to ensure smooth flow. (In this, and quite a few other technical ways, Acting Lessons is adorably similar to PhillyGames’ Depraved Awakening — both of these masters would reach their technical peaks with their second game, raising the professional stakes but also inescapably losing some of the endearing innocence of inexperience).
Lack of experience is also evident in other areas: for instance, a relatively generic set of choices for music tracks, mostly the same old Kevin McLeod and other stuff that people use when they cannot afford licensing fees for more sophisticated compositions — although, much to Dr. PinkCake’s honor, he does manage to wring out the maximum emotional effect possible even out of these freebies (more on that later). The dialog between characters, while pretty decent on the whole, surprisingly turns to generic cringe during the sex scenes — it’s a bit off-putting when you have just sat through what felt like a meaningful, intelligent conversation with a girl and then it’s the usual "oh, your dick is so big! oh, I want your cum all over my face!" once the sex starts, unless the idea is that your intelligent partner intentionally imitates a brainless sex-robot doll porn star for your carnal pleasure, which I am not really sure the idea is. (Also, the sex dialog would get better in Being A DIK). And there are a few silly tricks inherited from regular video games that really do not work — for instance, all those ominous "Megan will remember that", "Melissa is upset with you", etc. warnings scattered all over the place that are just as useless as they were when TellTale Games introduced them in The Walking Dead adventure series. (Not surprising they would be gone in Being A DIK as well).
These are all problems I can easily live with, though, as long as the game tells a good story, gives you enough playing choice, and stirs up the right feelings. In all of these areas, the results are mixed — far from perfect, but efficient enough to admit that the game does work.
Let’s begin with the overall genre characterization: Acting Lessons is a 100%-certified soapy melodrama, intended to manipulate your feelings in fairly obvious ways. In the very first episode, you, the player, emerge as an affluent, but depressed character, mentally struggling after a humiliating break-up and desperately searching for just the right spark to light up your life. Of course, that spark just happens to take on the shape of a beautiful young girl, to whom you just happen to get a chance to play the role of the Knight In Shining Armor. Everything that happens after that develops in full accordance with the age-old textbook of soapy melodrama as well. There will be broken families, terminal diseases, household abuse, corporate power abuse, desperate love triangles, a black pal guy for comic relief, a detective mystery angle to prevent you from tuning out too early, and, of course, lots and lots of deus-ex-machina coincidences and «random» surprises. Officially, Acting Lessons may be taking place in the «real world», but this world is really about as real as any given world in an American (or Latin American) soap opera from the not-so-golden age of TV.
As long as you realize that, though, and as long as you consent, of your own free will and sane mind, to signing the Agreement To Be Manipulated, Acting Lessons is a cheesy little delight that truly has the potential to make you laugh, make you cry, make you feel ashamed of yourself, make you feel proud of yourself, make you feel small and insignificant, make you feel big and accomplished, and all of that without forgetting to make you feel, you know, whatever a porn game is supposed to make you feel (but beware, every once in a while you are going to forget that you are playing a porn game in the first place — and it’s not a bad thing).
Dr. PinkCake achieves these goals not with any kind of inventive plot brilliance, and certainly not with any amazingly well-written dialog (most of it is heavily clichéd), but rather with a clever combination of attractive visuals, aptly used music, and player agency. (And yes, player agency is very important. If, in real life, you found a gorgeous young girl standing on your porch in the falling rain, pleading for help because she’d just been evicted and had nobody else to turn to and no money to help her around, you probably wouldn’t be slamming the door in her face, thinking to yourself, sorry but no, I have no desire to turn my life into a cheap soap opera — on the contrary, it’d rather be, holy hell, I’m the luckiest guy on Earth whose life has just miraculously turned into a soap opera. That’s player agency, and Dr. PinkCake knows how to use it).
Most choice-based games follow three types of options: either your choices are simply cosmetic and do not matter at all except for elements of «flair» and your own world-building, or you have to decide between a «right» or «wrong» choice, with the latter locking you out of certain amounts of content or even leading to some sort of fatal outcome — or, in the best-designed games, it might be a choice between significantly different branching pathways. But while there is really not a lot of «true» branching in Acting Lessons, Dr. PinkCake’s main accent is on turning his game into a morality play — most of the significant choices you have to make will be testing your moral character, one way or another, and even if the tests themselves are fairly predictable, once you get inside the game, they work.
To make it work, though, Dr. PinkCake first has to get you in a tight vice grip. Your primary love interest in the game, Megan, seems to be very divisive. On one hand, she’s obviously nice, pretty (some would say gorgeous), physically attractive and all — on the other hand, she is intentionally depicted as very «vanilla», sort of a goody-two-shoes, saintly figure who might be willing to go for a tiny bit of theatrical mischief every once in a while (consider her Harley Quinn impersonation, for instance), but within such tightly restricted bounds that any idea of dirty talk in bed or, God forbid, anal sex with her will be utterly unimaginable. In other words, she probably resembles most of our girlfriends and wives, and who ever comes to the world of AVNs for that kind of partner?
However, for the entire first episode of the game, Dr. PinkCake tightly railroads you into establishing a connection with Megan — you cannot not dream about her, you cannot refuse to accept her into your house, etc., all you can really choose from is whether to be «just nice» or «very nice» to her. If you happen to be completely indifferent to the poor girl and her fate, you might as well quit in the middle of Episode 1, because whatever you do in the future will always revolve, at the very least, on the fact of your initial affection for Megan. Some might complain and call this a design flaw, but it’s not: Acting Lessons is not a free-roam open-world sandbox game, it’s a choice-based visual novel with a core story, and the protagonist’s obsession with Megan is as much of an inescapable core plot element as, say, Max and Chloe’s friendship in Life Is Strange. Take it or leave it.
Things become really interesting — and less rail-roaded — starting with Episode 2, when you are slowly, but inevitably begun to be bombarded with moral questions. Are you or are you not in a genuine «relationship» with Megan? How do you feel about cheating? Are you absolutely sure that she’s just the right type for you? Aren’t you really more attracted to any of the other major characters — such as Megan’s friend Melissa, who seems to be her complete opposite in just about every possible aspect of her life, being far more adventurous, uninhibited, and provocative (although, as it eventually turns out, with a long history of family abuse responsible for much of that behavior)? Or go even further and switch your allegiance to Rena, Megan’s partner in her acting classes, who has an even wilder streak going for her than Melissa? Is it OK to have affairs on the side with any of them, or, perhaps, even decide that one of them is far more precious to you than Megan, and ultimately leave her on the curbside?..
And I like how you have all these moral dilemmas thrown at you, and how you have to decide for yourself which ones are less or more significant (some of the «morally questionable» choices turn out to be quite safe in the long run, but others will ruin your chances forever). Dr. PinkCake has a knack for setting up temptation and playfully goading you into it — the sexy renders, the music, the pacing — and since we all know that the feel of the «forbidden fruit» can be ten times as orgasmic as any action gotten by a true Paladin, chances are you’ll spend about half of this game cumming like crazy in true sinnerman-mode, then feeling like treading the highway to Hell for the other half. Betrayal is a very powerful theme in the game, and even if you’re one of those who scream at the top of their lungs, «well I never did give a damn about that Megan anyway, the game just made me do it!», chances are you’ll be so loud precisely because deep down inside you feel bad about what just happened, and you need loudness to drown out your conscience...
It all culminates in THAT ONE AWFUL CHOICE you are forced to make by the author late in the game — yes, the one that is probably responsible for the majority of the negative reactions and thumbs down on the part of players who believe their agency has been insulted because they are being forcibly deprived of a potential happy ending. I understand their rage and indignation, but cannot agree with their rationalization. Want it or not, choice-based games are always about limiting your choices. Put it this way: if your character lives on a block that has a diner, a barber shop, and a drugstore on it and the episode starts and you get the options "Go to the diner" and "Go to the barber shop", you will probably not be raving and ranting about how the game fucks you over by not letting you "Go to the drugstore", taking your agency away and spitting on your player choice. One way or another, you are still playing the story pre-designed by the author for you, not truly inventing one of your own (though you may be served an illusion of it). And the story of Acting Lessons, like a Greek drama or an American romantic soap opera, simply happens to be designed with a tragedy in mind. If you believe a «porn game» should have no place for tragedy, I’m not going to argue, but I think that by the time THAT ONE AWFUL CHOICE comes along, you should have figured out long ago that Acting Lessons aspires to be more than just a porn game — justifiedly or not, doesn’t really matter — and should probably be exempt from that line of thinking.
Besides, it’s not as if the player is being thrown inside the ONE AWFUL CHOICE completely unprepared (though I confess that it did come as a shock to me) — throughout the game, cheesy lightweight humor is consistently mixed with dramatic elements, and while the elements themselves are all too familiar, their pacing is decent and the overall mix is well-balanced (better balanced, I’d say, than it is on the whole in Being A DIK, where large stretches of humor and large chunks of drama tend to get annoying after a while). In addition to humor and drama, there’s also a mystery which I find pretty well constructed for such an off-the-cuff genre as adult visual novels — I don’t know if I could call this an Agatha Christie-level piece of work or anything, but, again, to me the denouement came as a surprise, though, honestly, it’s not as if I spent a ton of time wrecking my brain on the issue of the villain’s identity.
My chief complaint about the game’s general design is, perhaps, that it seems to be way, way oriented at the player reaching a «canon» ending (SPOILER: MC ends with Megan, of course, and his best friend Liam ends with Rena). Again, it’s not really within our rights to tell the author about how to shape his own story, but I’d think that if he does leave space for at least two alternate endings with other love interests, then a big part of the game should not have been written as if Megan were still the central character. (Note that the only major unskippable sex scene in the game is with Megan, which makes dumping her in the aftermath look extremely awkward and unnatural). In fact, I have a suspicion that both of the alternate endings might have been designed almost as an afterthought — so as not to make this into even more of a «kinetic» novel than it already is — and although the alternate love stories themselves are pretty well fleshed out, both leave you feeling like an awful cheater, sacrificing the one who was really meant for you in favor of... well, you know, girls who wouldn’t mind taking it up the ass. Most importantly, Megan’s story, if you happen to dump it, just kind of... fizzles out without a satisfactory conclusion.
What I mean to say is that even if we generally accept the warped realities of Dr. PinkCake’s alternate universe and its soapy-melodrama-meets-porn-game rules, the game is still far from perfect even according to those rules — and I, for one, would be glad to see the developer revisit his first creation after he’s finally done with Being A DIK (say, a hundred and fifty years from now or something?), because Acting Lessons fully deserves a complete redo, starting with the technical aspects (graphics and animations) and ending with a bit more variety of possible paths and playstyles. (Or, perhaps, some inspired modders could take a hint).
Nevertheless, I was glad to play the game even as it is, completing all the paths twice for my recorded playthroughs and somehow still being emotionally touched each time. If you think about it real hard, this is weird, because essentially the game is all about getting you on a serious guilt trip for being way too irresistibly hot for the ladies which is, you know, not even your fault really (you’re already made this way). But then it actually does happen sometimes in real life, you know — people sometimes do break girls’ hearts by doing absolutely nothing and simply existing — so even in this respect, the game may ring a genuine bell or two.
One thing I would not want to change much are the musical choices: even if most of the tracks are generic free-use compositions, they have been very carefully selected to enhance the required moods — casual, ominous, joyful, melancholic, tragic, romantic, lustful — and I absolutely could not imagine the game without them. (One track in particular, ‘The Last Breath’ by Nicolai Heidlas, gets me every time — it’s the slow depressing piano-led composition that plays at the supposedly most heart-breaking moments in the game). Of all the people in the AVN business, only PhillyGames and Dr. PinkCake really care about having relatively tasteful and diverse musical backgrounds in their games — and Dr. PinkCake definitely has PhillyGames beat in terms of diversity. It’s weird that so many game developers do not understand how huge a role the choice of music does for these things — particularly in the absence of proper voice acting — and settle for either no sound at all, or just a few generic / ugly tracks on endless repeat. I’m pretty sure Dr. PinkCake could not have built himself up such a mighty fanbase without realising the importance of this aspect — proper use of music is that one secret ingredient in his recipe that makes you a fan without even realizing it.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 16. Rena Makes The Right Choice (The Cum Slut Ending)
In this third (abridged) alternate ending, it is neither Megan nor Melissa but Rena that emerges as Jonas' true love - unfortunately, at the expense of Melissa's death and Megan's broken heart.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 15. Melissa Gets The Best Of Both Worlds (The Milk Ending)
In this (abridged) alternate ending, it is not Megan but Melissa who is saved by Jonas from the fire - otherwise, however, the story largely unfurls the same way...
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 14. Megan Nails Her Act (The Red Carpet Ending)
In this final episode (the first and probably most "canon" version of the ending), the awful truth about the fire and all the other strange happenings at Jonas' place finally comes out, and after a few tense moments in which Megan's acting talent finally pays off like never before, the hitherto concealed villain of the story gets what she deserves.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 13. And The Lamb Lies Down In Limbo
In this chapter, after the terrible choice Jonas has to make in the aftermath of the fire in his house, we skip ahead several days to see our hero trying to make an emotional recovery in the office of Jessy, Rena's mother, as he slowly recollects the chain of events that left him in a near-catathonic state.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 12. Nothing You Do Will Change What's To Come
In this chapter, Liam gets to complete his "bucket list", with a few last happy moments in his life - such as a camping trip with Jonas, Megan, and Melissa; getting to crowdsurf; and patching things up with Rena, whom Jonas manages to convince to hook up with Liam for his remaining time on Earth.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 11. It Takes Two Ex-Lovers To Do The Horizontal Boogie
In this chapter, Megan's chances to win the audition for a promising movie part seem dashed when the person in charge of the audition turns out to be Ana, Jonas' ex-fiancee.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 10. Lose The Fucking Pigtails And Open Wide
In this chapter, while Jonas is busy keeping Liam company during his chemo treatment, Melissa prepares Megan for her own date with our hero, helping her change her image to something a bit more "adult" and build up her confidence.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 9. No Dates, Just Good Old-Fashioned Shower Sex
In this chapter, after another bit of sexy rehearsing with Jonas, Megan takes off for her regular acting classes, leaving Jonas in the care of Melissa for the day. As it turns out, Melissa has a much easier time letting her lover spread his jizz all over her ass in the morning shower than actually letting herself be taken out on a proper "date".
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 8. The Blue-Haired Girl Makes Her Own Move
In this chapter, Jonas and his friends end their weekend in the country with three significant events. First, Rena, driven by a little too much weed and a little too much envy for Megan, gets to seduce Jonas and fuck his brains out, leaving him with the feeling of having achieved something absolutely wonderful and totally stupid.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 7. The Cabin Of Polyamorous Temptation
In this episode, Jonas, Liam, and all of our favorite girls retreat to a log cabin in the woods for a day of partying and general fun.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 6. Let's See If Those Butterflies Are Real
In this chapter, Jonas finds himself unable to resist the seductive pull of Leah, whose flirting winds him up so much that the two end up having wild sex right in the men's restroom at their restaurant. Upon returning home, however, Megan quickly drives Leah out of his mind, as she continues exploring her own feelings towards Jonas and realizes that they are very real indeed!
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 5. Just A Bunch Of Hotties In An Ice Cream Cafe
In this chapter, Jonas escorts Megan to her improv acting class, generously accepting the invitation to join her for this experience, which comes with a bonus - getting acquainted with Megan's super-hot acting partner Rena, who, like everybody else, is immediately wooed over by Jonas' charming personality.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 4. Have You Ever Been With Two Cheerleaders At Once?
In this chapter, Jonas gets to realize every man's ultimate fantasy, spending the night with two young, hot, and willing cheerleaders at once after convincing Liam to let him cross that wish off his bucket list. That same evening, he finds Megan asleep on his couch and carries her to his bed, sharing a passionate kiss in the process.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 3. A Girl Named Melissa Is Looking For Trouble
In this chapter, Jonas meets Megan's gorgeous (and much wilder) friend Melissa, who, unlike her shy counterpart, immediately goes wild for our hero and - especially after he rescues her from an abusive situation at home - wastes little time to seduce him and have him cum all over her tits as soon as Megan falls asleep after the dinner party.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 2. Mr. Redfield Gets A New Personal Assistant
In this chapter, Jonas finally manages to get back in touch with Megan, to whom he has quickly developed a strong attraction - and when bad luck strikes for the girl, who has been fired from her job and evicted from her home, Jonas wastes no time offering her to stay at his place and maybe even work as his personal assistant.
Acting Lessons (by Dr. PinkCake, 2018-2019)
Episode 1. A Girl Named Megan... And A Nurse Named Leah
In the opening chapter of Acting Lessons, the first ever title from Dr. PinkCake, we play as Jonas Redfield, a middle-aged retired investor still suffering from his recent break-up with his dashing and adventurous ex-girlfriend Ana, but now accidentally led by fate into an encounter with a young gorgeous shop clerk by the name of Megan.
CITY OF BROKEN DREAMERS: The Official PatreonGamer Review
City Of Broken Dreamers is the second and so far the last AVN by PhillyGames, whose previous title, Depraved Awakening, as I have already written elsewhere, is easily my favorite AVN of all time, if (maybe?) for all the wrong reasons. Technically, however, DA was a water-testing effort from Philly: relatively short, graphically and sonically underwhelming, and only slowly getting better and more confident in itself as it went along. So, naturally, for his second game expectations were set pretty high — there was a clear unique talent here that was finally on the verge of being properly supported by technical expertise.
And by all means, Philly leaves no one disappointed, as, from the very start, CoBD demonstrated a huge leap forward in effort. Static renders became more detailed and exquisite. Animations became plentiful and properly rendered, no longer confined to simple 2-3-frame repetition as it was in the early stages of DA — and not just confined to the sex scenes, either, as they now served additional purposes of marking classy screen entrances for the ladies, or, sometimes, just to illustrate the overall atmosphere of the game. There was much more music, much more exposition, extra little game-y details like «secrets» to look for... overall, on the technical front, CoBD remains an important milestone. Every now and then you can hear somebody grumble about how the render and animation quality has become antiquated for the standards of the mid-2020s, but that’s just nitpicking. If you’re expecting atmosphere and seduction rather than graphic-card-taxing heavy-duty realism, CoBD remains every bit as visually stunning today as it was on the day when Philly unleashed the first episode upon us.
Genre-wise, CoBD at first seems to go in a completely different direction from DA: where Philly’s first game was a blatant tribute to the classic «noir» genre, focusing on a private detective investigating the dirty, seedy underbelly of the modern big city, CoBD takes us into a sci-fi, cyber-punkish, dystopian future where... uhm, a private mercenary is investigating the dirty, seedy underbelly of the futuristic big city. As you can see, not that much has changed: Philly merely transports us a few imaginary decades into the future, where the corps and the creeps are running things even more ruthlessly than today, and sex, just as it was in DA, acts as one of the most common commodities for bad and good guys alike. The atmosphere may be more Blade Runner now than it was a Chinatown / Requiem For A Dream mix in the earlier game, but the essence remains the same: you are going to meet a lot of impossibly hot women, some of whom will be trying to corrupt you with sex and some will be trying to save you with it — and some will offer a mixture of both at the same time.
However, unlike it happens in DA, here the sex itself is formally not at the center of the game itself, but rather acts as a peripheral device, framing all the circumstances of the main plot — in which you have to help rescue a young persecuted girl in distress from the usual evil corporate overlords while exposing the evil corporate overlords’ corrupt schemes to the public. The plot, as many have pointed out already, is not particularly original and not particularly thrilling to deserve such multiple layers of convolution — but I do not think we should be too harsh on it, given that this is, after all, a porn game first and an ambitious take on the cyberpunk genre only second. On its own, without all the sexual content, it would hardly have a chance to endure as a sci-fi classic; but as a derivative exercise whose main goal is to provide a credible, immersive context for all the dick-and-pussy action, it certainly holds up better than most of the plot-based porn movies I’ve ever seen — and the sheer love that PhillyGames holds for the genre is evident from just about every single shot of the game.
Speaking of the sexual content itself, I am a little on the fence here. On one hand, there is no arguing that the design of the girls is gorgeous. Of the five or six characters with whom you are going to get intimate on a regular basis (or not — it’s your free choice to enter or not to enter in a relationship with each of them), each single one has a distinct appearance and personality, and these personalities are going to determine the dynamics of their sexual evolution as well. Sure, they may be somewhat stereotypical and cliched, but in this day and age, good luck finding a well-written character that is not stereotypical anyway. What matters is how believable (and fappable) these stereotypes are — and I found myself drooling over most of them.
Dr. Katie Hamilton is the classic «intellectual cutie with big tits» nerd dream, shy and blushing and polite and still adventurous enough to both accompany the MC on his dangerous missions and to try out anal penetration after having explored all the conventional boundaries. Ellen Lane is the feisty, dominant punk MILF with an attitude, though surprisingly resistant to anal action for her type (she’s not my favorite for all the tattoos and weird hairdstyles, but I’m still glad she’s in the game). Then there’s Chandra, the adorable-slash-terrifying glitzy spoiled teen brat who finds it fun to fuck older strangers just to piss off her corporate Mom — but Philly paints her as psychologically mature and stable enough to handle the consequences of those actions, and there’s an irresistible artistry to her narcissistic depravity that has, understandably, made her a particular fan favorite. Her horned friend Abby (the horns have to do with her medical condition, which is the central theme of the game) has an even more interesting character arc, going from being emotionally broken and suicidal to gradual redemption and a «healthier» embracing of her sexual urges as she eventually begins to represent a more mature and responsible counterpart to Chandra, while being every bit as wild on the carnal side of things. And Shanlon Russell is probably the quintessential image of the «corrupt TV celebrity slut» we all have in our minds: dashing, bossy, and bitchy in public — and a big fan of rough BDSM activities in private (the scenes with her and, later, with her loyal-but-treacherous assistant Teri, while not particularly disturbing, are still among the nastiest PhillyGames ever created).
The two «main» characters (appearing most frequently and generally serving as the game’s primary advertising cards) have the largest amount of character evolution and are also notable in that they are «moldable»: depending on your actions in the game, you can put them on very different paths — a Paragon or a Renegade one, to use a Mass Effect analogy, with the Paragon one providing more moral satisfaction and the Renegade one essentially leading to more dirty and salacious outcomes which (you guessed it) also offer far more tasty sexual rewards. (The ruthless part is not really quintessentially «evil», though, so you’ll feel more like Donald Trump than Hitler for taking it — yes, with all that sweet pussy in tow.) Gloria, the innocent, traumatized blonde beauty whose warden you eventually become, is basically the equivalent of Judy from DA (except this time around, at least you’re not her father — CoBD is completely incest-free, by the way): you help her find the meaning of life and happiness not so much by saving her from the corps or curing her condition as you do through romance and sexual kinks (or you result in making her shape a far more cynical and nihilistic outlook on life, which reflects poorly on romance but does even more wonders on the sexual kinks). Her sex scenes come late in the game and are a bit on the so-so side at first, but quickly heat up to 100% (the "corrupt" finale with Victoria and Meredith is an unforgettable experience).
And then, of course, there’s Victoria Shields. With Vicky, I think Philly’s goal was pretty obvious: create the ideal 3D woman for us — classy, intelligent, traditionally-aristocratically beautiful, perfectly shaped everywhere where it matters, bold, uninhibited, and a demon in the sack, just the kind of lady for one night with whom some people might agree to sacrifice their lives in the real world. On the whole, I would say he succeeded: at the time when Victoria first appeared on our screens (in 2019), there was nobody like her in the entire AVN business. Much more perfectly engineered than Mass Effect’s Miranda Lawson (the red hair and freckles alone are worth an extra million), she is the quintessential devil-in-disguise — although as you proceed with your choices, you have the subtle option to either transform her and make her find redemption, or, on the contrary, be transformed by her and dissolve yourself in her overriding, ruthless, dominant personality. (I always try to keep both paths open with different saves). Some might complain that, perhaps, she gives in to the MC way too early (we can go all the way with her already in the very first episode), but I think that Philly himself knew — with a gal like Victoria, there’s no such thing as too early. You can ravage her as many times as you want and you’ll always be left wanting more of the same as if it were the first time all over again. Seriously, every time a scene with Victoria comes along I am reminded of why I love these 3D AVNs so much: there is hardly a single real porn actress alive who would exude as much sexuality and do it with such devilish flair.
That said, while I like, love, or adore all of Philly’s characters, it is also hard not to acknowledge that many of the sex scenes feel a bit... gratuitous. In DA, where the actual plot all revolved around sex — perverted sex clubs, sex trafficking, sexual addiction, etc. — the scenes were always in their perfect place. City Of Broken Dreamers, on the other hand, is not really a game about sex. It is about preservation or loss of humanity, about fighting against The System, about survival, about technology, about dystopia — seriously, you could cut out pretty much every sex scene out of the game and it would have still made sense (though, as I said, the relatively generic plot would not have left a lot of space for serious enjoyment). Much of the action follows along the lines of «oh, we have about an hour to kill before the mission, wanna fuck?» or «hey, we might not be alive tomorrow if the plan goes wrong, wanna fuck just in case?» or «I feel really shitty right now because of all the terrible things going on in the world, can you just fuck me to make me feel better?». Yes, you can actually establish strong romantic connections with one of several potential love interests — but this comes very late in the game, by which time you’ll probably already have had sex with everything that moves (strangely enough, Philly is quite conservative in that he gives us no harem endings).
Of course, this cannot be a serious criticism, because this is a porn game supposed to have a lot of gratuitous sex; I’m just saying that every now and then there will be a sex scene feeling weirdly out of context — and that the overall plot is a bit undermined by that, as if we’re being instructed that in the technologically advanced, morally dystopian world of tomorrow everything will be beginning and ending with sex. If you’re OK with that, no problems.
My main problem with the game — a serious one, though it still won’t deprive the title of a 5-star rating because I like to judge games by their strengths, not weaknesses — is the sheer length. I think that Philly made pretty much the same mistake as his main competition in the world of AVNs, Dr. PinkCake, is still continuing to make: after the success of Depraved Awakening and all the newly-gained confidence in his own strengths, he decided to stretch out his next title for as long as possible. My full recorded playthrough of the game takes about 50 hours as compared to DA’s 19, and, frankly, much of that — even including some of the sex scenes — is padding. The plot eventually runs out of fresh ideas, turning into an endless series of similar action scenes (run, hide, save a party member, have sex, run, hide, have sex, save a party member, run, hide, have sex, rinse and repeat over and over again).
Worse, the sex scenes eventually run out of ideas. In the first third of the game, we are already introduced (including carnally introduced) to all the main characters. In the second third of the game, we pretty much get to go as far with all of them as possible (in Philly’s case, "as far as possible" usually means anal — really rough stuff is restricted to a few totally freaky characters like Shanlon, and it is introduced very early on). In the final third, it’s mostly just going through the motions, and it feels like the creator himself was getting tired of his creations — most of the final scenes seem very perfunctory and unsatisfying, unlike in DA, where Philly was just getting into the proper mood as he rounded off the plot. (The only exception is the final scene with Gloria, Victoria, and eventually Meredith — because it is the only scene from the finale that introduced a new angle to one of the characters).
In other words, CoBD overstayed its welcome by a good 4–5 episodes at least — ironically, it still leaves us somewhat hanging, since it is clearly shown in the end that the "bad guys" have only suffered a temporary setback, and that the story about a few good guys battling futuristic corporate evil is only just beginning. It is unlikely, however, given the tired feel of the final episodes, that a sequel to this will ever happen — and maybe that’s for the better, since the game must have creatively drained Philly, for a while at least.
That said, when CoBD is at its best, it shines like a bright cyberpunk star against the background of so many uninspired or unskilled other titles. Katie, Victoria, Chandra, Gloria, Abby, even Venus the nearly-sentient sexbot (is it just me, by the way, or did Philly sarcastically model her face after Taylor Swift?) — they’re all among the best-written and best-rendered characters in 3D AVNs of all time. Romancing all of them feels almost cathartic (even Chandra, the glitzy brat who seems to just want to use you as a revenge tool against her mother, shows a human heart under the pretentious facade), and there’s always a touch of exquisiteness in Philly’s approach to rendering and animation that makes you feel elevated even when you’re at your dirtiest. It’s like watching all those old «glamorous» Europorn movie scenes from studios like Private, but with ladies that are both prettier and warmer in terms of personality.
Gameplay-wise, CoBD is the same choice-based AVN as Depraved Awakening, with your choices largely serving to determine which of the girls you want to pursue / keep around as your sex partners / romantic interests and how kinky / depraved you want to get with them. A few really stupid choices can lead to the death of several of these characters, so it’s not entirely a matter of totally random clicking, but if you read what you click on you don’t really need any walkthrough to make the right selections. Other than that, the only addition are small random «secrets» (hotspots) to click on in order to unlock extra gallery renders — since the game always flashes a warning at you whenever these come up, this is extremely simple, not much of a challenge at all. (Then again, it might be preferable to all those non-advertised easily missable secret images in Dr. PinkCake’s Being A DIK, where you either have to play with a walkthrough under your nose all the time or waste hours of time on each new screen to find tiny clickable journals or rolls of toilet paper).
As usual, Philly shows excellent taste in his music selections — this time, he picks out a bunch of extremely moody, atmospheric «futuristic» tracks from the electronic music circuit that sound appropriately «sinister», «romantic», or «nasty» depending on the particular plot or sex scene they are supposed to illustrate. The only problem is that there are not a lot of them, and with 50 or so gameplay hours to burn they will quickly become too overtly familiar. But in the early episodes they really helped spice up the experience for me (I even ended up adding a few of them to my casual playlists).
Overall, I noticed that CoBD is one of those games that commands quiet respect on the part of the average player (it remains one of the top-rated titles at F95Zone, for instance) but is not actually played nearly as often as that respect would surmise. Possibly, this is because of its glamorous and exquisite setting, rather than in spite of it — experience shows that many more people are interested in games depicting the usual «girls next door» (preferably with big T&A) than these kinds of exotic personalities and settings which they find more difficult to identify with and, on the whole, more boring. In other words, CoBD may be too much of a weird fantasy for people to take in, and I can see that point of view (again, same reason why more people watch casual gonzo porn than lavish big-budget Private movies). But those of us who do hold a soft spot for high production values and hi-class glamour girls with a futuristic flair will have to agree, I think, that few, if any, other titles match these values when filtered through PhillyGames’ vision — at least, for as long as that vision remained fresh and inspired, which is still quite a long period.
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 15.5. Even The Twins Deserve A Happy Ending
In this chapter, we take a break from Biff's major love interests and show instead some of the more extravagant (and rare) sexual escapades in his relatively peaceful post-Baynard existence - including another sweet, if short, VR experience with Kleo (who even allows him to experience her in a non-futa state); a visit from Teri, who, so it seems, is keen on surpassing her old teacher Sharon in the arts of sexual wildness and perversity...
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 15.4. You Prefer Sweet Or Spicy Along With Your Hooters?
In this chapter, we show two more alternate endings to the game, which respectively lock in the Love Path option for either Dr. Katie Hamilton or Victoria Shields. Although, as usual, the two ladies' personalities could not be more different from each other, with the sweet, intelligent, and empathetic Katie representing everything that the bold, sensual, and cynical Victoria is not, the features that are most important for us remain the same...
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 15.3. Running Wild In That Fresh Country Air
In this chapter, Biff decides to accept Ellen's proposal for himself and Gloria to lie low in her mother's remote cottage in the countryside while life slowly gets back to normal in the big city.
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 15.2. When The Work Is Done, All You Gotta Do Is Cum
In this episode, Biff continues to analyze the fallout from his group's successful infiltration and exposure of Baynard Industries, sadly concluding that most of his work will only allow even larger corporate vultures (like Vostok) to feast on the ruins.
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 15.1. Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss
In this chapter, Biff makes a detour to Shanlon, who is ready to conclude her business with our hero by paying him a hefty sum of two million dollars for Baynard's secrets - and having him fuck her insides out one last time in an unforgettable rough sex section.
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 14.2. Everybody's Trying To Be My Doctor
In this chapter, push comes to shove as Katie manages to complete the procedure of Gloria's cure while Biff and Sonja hold off wave after wave of Baynard security forces and Victoria takes her own chances with Meredith.
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 14.1. Exactly Thirty-Two Seconds To Destroy Two Asses
In this chapter, Biff and his loyal harem set in motion the assault on Baynard Headquarters, resorting to covert infiltration tactics where possible but never shying away from a good fight with both human and synthetic guards whenever they get the chance. After cruising around for a while, they finally discover the secret lab where Katie helps Gloria undergo the anti-GDS treatment, while Victoria leaves the group in order to settle her own account with her former boss, Meredith White...
City Of Broken Dreamers (by PhillyGames, 2019-2024)
Episode 13.3. Ready To Fuсk Shit Up, Once And For All!
In this chapter, Biff and his friends rally for the last time at The Noir, putting things in order and preparing the last details for the covert aussault on Baynard, as well as taking a few extra minutes to relax and, just in case, say their goodbyes to each other (which also includes Venus, the now-sentient sexbot, offering some genuine oral and anal love to her new master).
