Hello, fine people of the world!

The developer mailed me this, it looked interesting enough to get into – so here we go.

It is refreshing to see someone writing a competent letter, given how I occasionally receive requests by authors who can’t seem to be bothered to even link me to their material. Much less give a brief summary of what their game is about, beyond a few generic sentences.

I generally think RPG Maker is a wrong turn for devs. The template nature of it undercuts a lot of authenticity that could be had, not to mention that any allure to use the asset library doesn’t usually go well.

Luckily this time – Yorna: Monster Girl’s Secret is one of those projects that inspires confidence straight from first impressions.

Someone actually bothered to construct a respectable main menu, with the necessary basics for this day and age. Many people still underestimate this, given that it’s actually their game’s face. Combined with the email, it shows devs who care to prepare their game for people who are just briefly passing by. Even randomly and haven’t signed up to the fandom or looking in that direction at the time.

Music kicks in, relaxing the mind. The first girl illustration is quite well done and we start the story easy – puzzling over the meaning of some obelisk. Then the music stumbles as bad thing happens soon and it doesn’t reflect any rise in tension. If you are going to use sound, you have to puncture your critical moments.

The gameplay obviously takes a side step to the sexuality, the economy itemization and other features mostly serve so you can get around from one sex scene to the next. They are nice, mixed in with some good ideas, but I doubt even the devs would call them very compelling.

Plus, there isn’t a whole lot you can do with RPG Maker, that is not better in other engines.

The lead character can sell pussy to customers 🙂 But that’s not much of a money-making shortcut, so most people will use it for a bit of flavor. There is no distinct path to becoming a slut. In the story you are a noble and a mage, the devs weren’t interested in going with the corruption route, it seems.

Crafting is strangely organized as you have to pay a gold fee to craft. Not exactly clear what the gold is for, making it awkward. It’s one thing to have you gather or buy expensive ingredients, and another to have a workbench fee. It doesn’t make a lot of sense mechanics-wise or flavor-wise. It’s probably a shorthand balancing measure.

I would have personally flavored the “HELP” section as a quest book. But at least it’s available in some form.

The puzzles you find may get you annoyed if you are not into puzzles. The wardrobe is quite nice. The fashionista among you won’t be too impressed. But you usually never are 🙂 This game has more outfits than most.

The story shines more in the moment-to-moment things, especially situations related to sex, but the grand plot is sketchy and not really that well done.

There are some systems thrown in like castle upgrades, etc – they are helping variety more than being great in and of themselves.

Fetish-wise it’s very narrow, it has some straight and lesbian action, leaning more to the lesbian side of it – nothing hardcore if you are looking for that.

The characters don’t look distressed even when having sex with beasts, so we could say the girl has an opportunistic approach to sex with anybody 🙂 I’m fine with that, but I imagine a lot of people would be looking for more dramatic action. It’s a fantasy game about sex, maybe they could have pushed the fantasy a bit more.

A drawback is that a large chunk of action is at failure scenes, a lot of hentai fans are somewhat used to this, but perhaps a better balance could have been struck.

The character would have been better developed with more innuendo and social developments that lead to sex. Instead of just many sudden turns into sex after failed battles.

People should really rethink this approach nowadays, because it’s very old and nobody was super excited about it even when it was new. All the games that are famous for it really get carried by excellent art, sound and voice-overs, not the mechanic of failure to sex itself.

The simplicity of the game makes it easy to understand and follow, and it trades off any intrigue that could have been had with a bit more depth.

Either way, it’s a free game, full of quality visuals, in a decent world. I probably have one hundred 20$ steam games that are objectively trash, and have nothing sexy to show for.

This game is pretty good, all things considered. While I am critical, it’s because I’ve done too many games – Yorna Monster Girl’s Secret is certainly worth playing and supporting.

Perhaps the devs would carry over their strengths and improve on their shortcomings in the future. They have a nice fan base, so they just might get to do that.