Joyful Stick: The Dolls Gift
Good day everyone, and welcome yet again to Joyful Stick-our electronic media review series. Miss our last entry? You can read it here. Today, I’ve the good fortune of reviewing three titles sent my way by a dear friend. Let’s begin.
Good Dolls
I’ve a wide variety of friends in the kink community. Often, it wasn’t our aligned interests that drew us to one another, but rather the differences. We’d come together (sometimes quite literally) as we spoke candidly to each other about the hows and whys of our desires. This was universally an enriching experience for me personally as I got exposed to things I otherwise wouldn’t have-such as the doll, dronification and latex corruption fetishes.
As someone with both a very dominating personality and will, I’ve always found myself at odds with submission. Save for the few partners I was extremely comfortable with, the prospect always filled me with something adjacent to anxiety. I think, after all this time, it was rare that I felt that close to someone. That level of trust and vulnerability is something that’s difficult for me to summon on the fly behind the mic, much less in an actual scene with a partner.
Yet, I found an in with a group of people whose entire community seemed the inverse of how I experienced kink to the core. Dolls, drones, combat maids, robots and more seem like something pulled liberally from fantasy novels. But I personally know quite a few of them. I’ve heard them laugh, seen them blush. Whether their heart beats by clockwork or calculated code, they’ve proven themselves to be soulful people I am incredibly blessed to know. That comfort I sought in partners I was submissive with I found in their ranks. In time, I grew to understand the ideas and concepts behind their particular brand of kink. I even grew to love it, just a smidge. While it’s still difficult for me to submit, I think for the right person I could be quite a toy.
One such doll that I’ve known for several years was kind enough to send some games for me to review. One joke title, one small game-and another we’re going to spend the bulk of this review discussing. I think all three were facets of themselves they felt comfortable showing, as I too have shown myself to them.
Let’s start with the silly one.
Sakuya Izayoi Gives You Advice And Dabs
Touhou is something that exists at the niche intersection of web, shooters, anime and manga. I’ve been aware of it for close to five years now, but that’s the reach of my knowledge about the project. There’s witches that shoot things, fin. I couldn’t differentiate between one cast member and another. If you lied about their lore on the spot, I’d absolutely believe you.
However, I also know that Touhou is a largely community-driven collaborative effort and likely wouldn’t exist were it not for its fans. Between the memes, porn, fan art and more-if you’ve heard of Touhou, it’s likely because of fan work first. Sometimes those fan projects get really, really silly.
Sakuya Izayoi Gives You Advice And Dabs is one such project, and delivers exactly what is on the tin. With the appearance of a low-budget visual novel, Sakuya (who appears to have been drawn in MS paint) appears and asks the player a series of questions. The player has multiple choices to pick from, and Sakuya’s dialogue changes to match the emotional maladies of the player’s answers. And at the end, she dabs. It’s an incredibly short game (perhaps five minutes?) with a billing of one american dollar. If you need a fun joke to give your friends, this absolutely will work-and perhaps expose them to a series that can become their new hobby.
Milf City
Hey, remember my review of Witch Halloween? Remember how I stated it had the “Newgrounds Aesthetic”?
Milf City by Milkpoison does everything that Witch Halloween did wrong, right. The title wears early 2010 art aesthetics well as it pulls you into a relaxing 30-45 minute ride through some mahjong. It’s simple, but I couldn’t help but think of Mirror as I matched the titles and watched my date for the afternoon bounce through various states of undress. If you need something to kill a lunch break, there are far worse options than Milf City readily available on Steam. And at least the girls here are incredibly cute. Price of admission is roughly $2.
Latex Dungeon-Dronification, Submission And The Allure Of Corruption
Right-o, so this is the one you want to buckle up for deviants.
Trigger warning for things directly taken from the game’s storepage: “Latex Dungeon” is a game centered around themes of defeat, rape, and body modification.
This game also includes brainwashing, futanari, as well as sexual encounters with tentacles, parasites and monsters.
Latex Dungeon is a (still developing!) RPG maker stylized affair that centers around protagonist Laven (who is most definitely not Raven from Teen Titans) reading a mystical tome that transports her away to a Slightly Generic Looking Fantasy universe (™). The moment she arrives, Laven runs to seek refuge in a nearby Church. Within she’s told by a priestess that latex demons have run amok, corrupting and transforming all of the local women into highly sexualized and exaggerated versions of themselves, sometimes altering them so radically they cease being a person and become a thing. It’s on Laven to use her magic and save them.
Or like. Not.
Laven is the one that ultimately chooses to aid the church in rescuing the populace, or falling into corruption and spreading the “hive” with as many people as she possibly can. While the story elements fell bare in several cases to anything you’d come across on Ao3, Latex Dungeon does a superb job of balancing corruption and purity out in a way I haven’t seen in this review series yet. You absolutely can do a “pure” playthrough. But let’s say you lose a battle against a boss, right? Laven gets back up the first time and has learned new, stronger magic to deal with enemies she’d not be able to defeat otherwise. Seeing the payoff for corruption (just a taste at least) organically encourages the player to engage more and more with the latex tentacles that pulsate from the landscape.
While a “morality” (for that’s precisely what the purity system is) slider isn’t unique in any way, I found that Latex Dungeon executed theirs in a way that encouraged replaying and extensively checking through levels. It also engaged with the morality of what you were doing in a totally natural, player-end choice kind of way.
Let’s say you choose to get corrupted. You eventually have to make your way back to the church that sent you out in the first place. While there, you can openly corrupt the staff and turn them into the very beings pounding against their doors. There’s penalties for this (the priestess will no longer cure your corrupt ailments, which can lead to combat difficulty increasing). Beyond that, the staff will actually talk about how good they feel as their newfound proportions and genitals pulse and throb before you. Which raises the question of if Laven’s quest is in vain when she could be doing so much good.
I’ve spent so much time squawking about the purity mechanic, because some themes in Latex Dungeon will be off-putting to people who haven’t ventured into more niche sides of the kink community. Quite specifically, the forced coercement, groping and more that occurs when facing off against corrupted drones and the like. From the outside looking in, it appears as though all of this is very much against Laven’s will in every single encounter.
Corruption is often a kink that’s grossly misunderstood, and I personally feel as though Latex Dungeon does a fine job capturing the kink in practice. Laven is resistant to the monsters, but through the course of battle and interactions very obviously and consensually is seduced. Her arousal is a mechanic you have to keep up with actively or risk “defeat”-IE, Laven getting lovingly and deeply fucked, corrupted and altered so she can fuck some more. The trigger warning is there for all the obvious reasons on the store page, but in play quite the obvious is visually represented. Laven enjoys every caress, lick and kiss she receives from her opposition and it’s clearly illustrated in the changing art throughout combat.
Corruption in real life is something that can only happen with express consent of all involved, and it’s important to remember that people who practice the kink usually have extensive conversations with all involved before going into the scene. Safe words, color systems and deep profound trust are the actual backbone of corruption kinks, which turns it into corruption in name only. Corruption, in my experience, is giving ourselves permission to enjoy our bodies via others encouraging us that it’s okay.
Things like the parasites (literally the self aware latex covering peoples bodies) and dronification that occurs are simply set dressing to encourage the player to seek out their relative orgasms. And holy shit, does the game very openly encourage you to cum. As you descend dungeons, you’ll notice more BDSM styled scenes and enemies. Nuns held in pillories, their breasts and throbbing cocks on display. Enemies who fully encase women just to stimulate their erogenous zones. If there’s endless paths for people to be comfortably corrupted, Latex Dungeon has a shotgun spread of them all. There’s an endless array of people moaning, grinding, cumming and fucking all around you.
Wouldn’t you be just a smidge tempted to feel that good, too? See how that ties back into the organic execution of the purity system? Clever, that.
Which brings me to the second theme that a certain group of players might find off-body modification. Laven at the game’s onset is a thin, pale gothic woman who is quite attractive. Over the course of the game as her corruption increases, that changes. Sometimes drastically. Laven can acquire a cock, bigger breasts, a pregnant belly and a fat, round ass. These proportions can get hyper exaggerated quite easily. Likewise, she can have her entire body radically altered to resemble the enemies she fights. Past a point, other adventuring humans will be sent in to rescue her and mistake her for a denizen of the dungeon. This can be fixed with a visit to the priestess-or not. You can just keep it, if you so choose.
Body modding, like the morality scale, definitely isn’t unique to LD. However, I struggle to think of a title that allows the sheer depth and variety of just what the player’s body can change to. Not even Bethesda’s seemingly infinite options in Skyrim’s character creator can compare. In terms of H Games, I know for a fact I haven’t seen anything with this level of depth.
Body modification and altering of our individual perception of the “self” and the vessel that it occupies is something that’s pretty widely discussed in the drone/doll/robot kink community. Quite frankly, it’s because the community is inherently a trans and gender non-conformist bunch. Many dolls, robots, AIs and drones wax philosophically on the merits and confines of even having a concept of “I, an individual”. Some use the community as a means to come to terms with gender dysphoria in an inherently welcoming space, using corruption as a vehicle to liberate themselves from the anxiety of never getting to be whom they direly wish they could be.
As someone who has joked several times about being “a sentient ball of light” and has “What’s a gender?” in their twitter Bio, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention body modification and means to achieve that were what initially drew me to drones and all the other lovely people there. The happiness they held in their hearts, being accepted at last as a part of a collective, was something I direly needed in my life. While I’m still figuring out just who “Jack” is and what’s up with this flesh I occupy, I couldn’t have gotten to the point of even realizing I could be happy existing without the help of all the dolls, robots, drones and more I know.
They “corrupted” me by planting the idea that I didn’t have to be a man if I didn’t want to, and liberated me from the gender binary forever for it.
If any of you are reading this, thank you. I love you very much. You’re a good doll. Or A.I. Or hive mind collective. Or Clown! I know I have a few of you too!
Which brings us back to the extensive body modding in Latex Dungeon. Could it be considered off putting? I mean, I know some folks aren’t into hyper proportions or impregnation/clutch mother-ing. But I would have been incredibly fucking surprised to see a title that so inherently habitats what I see as a queer space without it. Perhaps it wasn’t by design, but I can’t help but wonder how many people will play this title and maybe, just maybe start to see the daylight through the cracks in their eggs for it. I can’t not think that might happen, as it is almost precisely how it happened to me.
So-with all of this out of the way, we need to answer the obvious.
Is Latex Dungeon Actually good?
Yes and no. LD is incredibly bare bones plot wise while offering tons of choices for what happens to Laven. You’re going to spend a lot of time in combat and fighting bosses. Dungeons are standard “solve this minor puzzle and defeat the boss” affairs. Yet, if you choose to engage with corruption to any degree-the game actually opens up quite a bit. You’ve different ways to handle your objectives depending on how deep down you wanna get dicked down. The art style is shiny and wet, with massive breasts, wet cunts, pouty lips and tight asses waiting to get gaped. The score is very “Copyright Free No Ads Fantasy Music”. Laven’s moans, gasps and more all sound nice however. There’s a few bugs and translation errors, but nothing so bad you’ll catch them unless you’re looking.
Latex Dungeon is interesting and very fucking horny. I’d like to see the title’s narrative get expanded upon a bit. Yet, in a real sense therein lies the appeal too. The narrative is bare bones to provide the player a space they feel comfortable enough to engage with the sexual scenes. Which are emphasized by just how fucking horny every single encounter, level and more is.
At ten american dollars, I feel safe saying there’s enough content here for people both in the niche and those curious. It’s not deep, but I don’t think it’s setting out to be. I think what LD is ultimately trying to accomplish…
Is letting you, the player, achieve a comfort that is both unfamiliar and yet wanted.
-J