Good day my lovely deviants, and welcome back yet again to Joyful Stick. Miss our last entry? You can read it here. Today, we’re going to be taking a look at Midnight Castle Succubus DX, a title from Critical Bliss. This one took me by surprise. Let’s begin.
Sourcing Games In a Post Bitcoin Hell
It’s odd to think that so many titles I currently play and enjoy can run on total, absolute dogshit hardware.
Between the graphics card market imploding due to a bubble caused by bitcoin, the prevalence of mobile devices getting more powerful and game creation barriers lowering every year though? It’s no longer a surprise. Much of what we’re witnessing with the current games market is a reaction to extrinsic factors that-while existing outside the market strictly speaking-overlap directly into end consumer experiences. Meaning, the “retro revival” craze we’ve seen with DUSK, the efforts of PuppetCombo and todays offering may not have happened without bitcoin mining fucking up part supplies. Neat, eh? Consoles help, but only so much when they’re being sold out within minutes. Anything that affects consumers ultimately affects developers as well, and the works of Critical Bliss reflect this.
You may remember them from our Snow Daze review. They also crafted My Breast Friend Sally.Critical Bliss specializes primarily on beautiful, fully voice acted visual novels that can run on pretty much any hardware. Their offerings are usually very fairly priced-which considering Splathouse is run on a shoestring budget with gear literally pulled from the trash is a god send. While I’m unbiased in what games get sourced to me, I tend to pay more attention to devs and publishers who have a catalogue of works I enjoy. Meaning, I tend to lean towards those devs first.
That, ultimately, is what led me to find Midnight Castle Succubus. The developer pedigree alone wasn’t the pull however. It was the fact it looked totally unlike anything else in their catalogue. Seriously, just go to their steam page and look at their other works. The contrast is damn near startling.
I know better than to judge a game by graphics alone though. Visual downgrades are, especially from respected studios, often the result of art direction and aesthetic choice. As I grew up in the NES/SNES/Genesis era and still play titles from those consoles today, I wasn’t miffed. I was curious. So I coughed up the dough, waited an entire five minutes for it to download (the file size is TINY!) and plugged in a game pad.
A Sticky Love Letter
Midnight Castle Succubus DX places you in the starring role of a demon hunter in hot pursuit of a succbus. She’s terrorizing a town and capturing all the women, and it’s up to you and all your bodacious sprites to stop her. Armed with a Belmont whip and a jump button, you set off ready to smack the shit out of ghosts, goblins, ghoulies and more.
The premise is incredibly bare bones and it’s executed perfectly. I’ll explain, but the closest comparison I can think of off the top of my head is actually Shovel Knight. No, that’s not a joke.
I absolutely loathe using community terms to describe products. Especially ones that exist outside of common consumer vernacular. However, MCS is a love letter to everything “metroidvania”. You jump and attack. You fight the boss. You get a cool power up and spend resources to get upgrades. It’s such an incredibly simple subgenre that getting it “wrong” design wise is next to impossible, but it’s also one which is very difficult to get “right”. Maybe the game is pretty but plays like dog shit. Maybe the dev goes the Ghost and Goblins route, beating the shit out of the player with a steep difficulty and learning curve. This doesn’t make a title “bad” in metroidvania games, but can turn the audience off from longer play sessions. De-engagement with video games is completely counterintuitive to design and happens way more often than the market would like to admit.
MCS takes these issues and irons them out with a level of finesse that’s startling considering it’s a “Porn” game. You can save absolutely anywhere. The difficulty aids rather than punishes a player for failure. Fall off a high ledge? You’ll just land in the “scene” (for the map is laid out in true 8 bit style “blocks” of level design) below without fall damage. Get your ass handed to you by a boss? Your character’s armor will gradually pop off until you get gang fucked by monsters. Then you just respawn slightly before that area at full health.
Progression, regardless of how long you play, feels steady. Finding power ups, allies and upgrades to equipment is a constant. The only way to fall behind is to constantly lose on purpose or not play at all. This stands in contrast to others in the genre, where upgrading was very much a “on-rails”, guided and often plot relevant point. Or similarly, missing upgrading at all because you don’t have the other upgrade you need, requiring hours of backtracking to max out your character for the boss fight.
Graphically speaking, MCS taps into the era of it’s aesthetics incredibly well. Gameplay sprites are simple and clean, but not to the point of being ugly. During cutscenes, this switches over to individual and highly detailed sprite cards. These feel incredibly reminiscent of early visual novels and appear with such a smooth transition you’re actively paying attention to just how you’re getting fucked.
Which brings me to one of my favorite aspects of this title, and a first in this series.
But What About The SEX?!
I know, I know. Dropping hints of monster gang bangs got a few of you hot under the collar. The scenes are what I would consider “standard hentai fare”. It’s a cute girl with large breasts getting deeply bred by monsters. While I won’t say it turned me on, I’ve reviewed far worse games that weren’t nearly as engaging. If you’re into sprite-based porn however, take this as a thumbs up.
Want to know what’s really great about MCS though? It’s a great game with or without the sex scenes. Which makes the ability to toggle an honest to god “safe for work mode” at boot flooring. I was completely shocked to learn this was here at all. There’s been several great games reviewed here where the sex scenes felt entirely out of placed or forced. They were a jarring break from a feature that otherwise had my full attention.
…I mean yeah, they made me hard, but then their control schemes didn’t allow for one handed play. Do you know how hard it is to get lube off a chiclet keyboard? Do you?
MCS featuring this option every time you boot it up speaks volumes to not only the consideration of Critical Bliss, but also how engaging the product actually is. It’s so good you want to play even when you’re not horny, which is a far cry more than I can say for some games on steam.
Conclusion: Recommended
Midnight Castle Succubus DX completely took me by surprise. While it’s rare my expectations get above “low” for pornographic games, MCS set a new bar for what I expect from the market, and the design choices made therein. It’s strictly a metroidvania title, which won’t appeal to everyone. But at this price point? If you don’t enjoy it, you’ve not broke the bank. The SFW mode ultimately makes this title far more approachable than others in the same category as well.
And before I go-if you really want the old school experience while you play, pick up an 8bitdo wired controller. Any wired Xbox controller will also work just fine.
Take care deviants. Love you much.
-j