Hello, fine people of the world!

Future Fragments is first and foremost a strong and evolving crowdsourced sexy game.

Walking into it, we get greeted by quite a chill music track and a bit funny voiced conversation that lets us in both on the tutorial and part of the story. Seems they are going to lean on the story seriously.

There’s strife in the kingdom, some threat, magic, time travel. Enough to get things going and drive it to the smut.

I played it for a while, came back to write a review. I laid out my complaints. (the original is archived below this) Then I received an email that they’ve been largely fixed soon after I made them.

Naturally, I looked into it and, apparently, the team behind it is fairly proactive. The complaints I had weren’t some new discovery, rather much of the same issues the community has been talking about.

And the developers, instead of being the typical pricks and responding to problems with content nobody wanted. They’ve actually filtered through all the information and have improved on most of the shortcomings the game has.

And even better, whatever remaining issues with the game were on a to-do list.

In addition to the review, I was reaching out to them for an interview, as I usually do nowadays.

So, I get talking to this guy “Hentai Writer”, the lead on the game. And he drops a line saying feedback is welcome and all that. They all say that, but I take a moment to play the game a bit more.

It is clear there are effort and passion poured into it. So I take the time to compile an extensive list of points. Literally, I like, spam the guy’s emails for a week.

Then he comes back to me and comprehensively sorts through all my points in a serious manner rarely seen even in long-standing career mainstream game industry people.

By that point, I am somewhat baffled. Quite impressed overall.

You see, Future Fragments is a sidescrolling platformer, with a few added niceties, but generally simple.

The interesting part is that it looks that way. There is a variety of hidden complexity under the hood, and various encounters and situations that most people won’t get to experience unless they play more.

At first, I thought that is a flaw and it can still be interpreted as such. However, its creators, fully aware of this, have chosen to keep the exploration that way and not really be super obvious about it. Perhaps more focusing on story development than the platforming but that’s cool too.

It is a quality production. Many branching decisions, quality art, lots of it. Quality voice acting. Lots of it. Spicy and plentiful sexy scenes.

And what’s more important – a proper connection to community – the rare ability to maintain artistic vision and still be able to effectively respond to player concerns.

That’s arguably supposed to be their job given the crowdsource nature of it, but not always the case with such Patreon projects.

The Future Fragments game has spent some good time in development already, there are plenty of goodies coming down the line, because it is certainly in the hands of people with vision. Any of the obvious flaws and gaps you see in the demos are usually just a placeholder for unfinished work. The entirety of the game is being developed at once. This means the levels you play have never been really finished. Perhaps the main takeaway being that this is something to be repeatedly communicated to people, so they don’t assume that new content coming out means the existing base won’t improve further.

This approach may not go great with players, but pushing out segments in raw states gives developers time to pull away, reflect and integrate feedback while the metal is still hot – so to speak. As opposed to fully completing it and having to go back and break it apart later, when it turns out you are not Mozart and your symphony wasn’t great on the first draft.

During this process, I have been convinced to be a patron supporter just on the attitude the creators have towards their creation. I might not even like the game when it comes out finished, because I have other tastes. But that oddly doesn’t matter to me now.

Future Fragments is a universe crafted with love and respect. Can’t wait to see it fully shaped into reality.

I encourage you to get into it here:

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~~~ The old outdated version of this review ~~~

(It has been brought to me that, the current issue of this review is unfortunately outdated – a cool reviewer responds to situations and adapts, so expect more to come, you can see the topic develop in the comments on the bottom)

There’s strife in the kingdom, some threat, magic, time travel. Enough to get things going and drive it to the smut. Given the amount of text, it’s a life saver for the game to be voiced.

Where I disagree is that everything has to be stopped in order to present story or tutorial.

Given that it is voiced, the text rectangles are heavily optional and all this can be done mostly while you are playing instead of stopping everything you are doing so you can talk or learn a mechanic.

Most people will be playing the demo, if you do, don’t be surprised that you might discover some knowledge gaps. The demos so far are set in later levels of the game, so you don’t know what happened in the beginning.

I don’t mind them leaning on story, but if the full game stops the player from the game as often as the demo does, it’s going to be a pretty disjointed experience. One that is already sliced apart by the game’s sex mechanics.

You can see the nudes by advancing the story, losing minor fights to enemies and completely losing a life gets you fucked hard in a customs scene. So, basically, the gameplay itself requires you to stop and often reset portions of your progress in order to see the sexy stuff.

Stopping you for light dialogue for extended amounts of time is an additional burden on top of that. This could have been entirely avoided if there wasn’t that platformer base that has the expectation that you need to be going places and advancing forward.

The content is pretty good. Perhaps the way to execute it could have used better planning.

The platforming bits of it don’t seem structured well either. I don’t mind the game being also more vertical and less linear than traditional platformers, but levels haven’t been refined well enough to warrant this extra exploration. It’s clear that the art and story direction are surpassing the gameplay and perhaps that it’s merely used as a vehicle to carry them, instead of being able to also stand on its own merits.

Maybe it’s just the indie factor and the devs have still to wise up to the minor graces of level design. Which as someone that has made games, I can say is not as obvious as people would think. A lot of minor detail things are taken for granted and you only notice later. One by one those are insignificant but the more of them you pack in together or don’t – it becomes a great mass at some point.

It’s not rare that games get made or broken on easily overlooked things, that some business school manager thought was unimportant until the review scores tank the game, because “How can you be so stupid and not fix something this obvious and easy to remedy”

One of the advertised features from the creators themselves is a variety of branching paths of dialogue and the levels also warrant similar amounts of tracking back to cover all forks in the road.

The items feel like they’ve been made to fill a quota rather than the game having an actual need for them. I also have to say that the level backgrounds are just too basic to sell the flavor of the game and that undercuts the potential for atmosphere. Having the game being cool and sexy cannot only hinge on the isolated smut scenes.

I’m not sure I’m particularly onboard for having the sex scenes attached mostly to failure, but the devs didn’t come up with a better way to frame it, so, this works too. Your “punishment” is basically getting fucked by the variety of enemies in the game. All in a specific individual animation or rather large splashes, voice acting included.

Normally, I’d press these shortcomings, however, the game clearly shows developer dedication, so that makes up for its crude edges. Not to mention that it’s still cooking, has a passionate fanbase and plenty of time to get refined.

They can go with a soft platformer with some super solid advice by the developer of Dead Cells, who also had a crude product on his hands until he figured out what they should do.

Going the challenging route will be harder for them. Challenging platforming requires some incentive, and while you may find difficulty in the game, it’s not organized well enough to avoid feeling like a free roam repetition with little purpose.

Even so, it’s a nice and prospering project, you can go and check it out at: