Source: Cashmoneys
Price: Name your own price (Option to donate if the game pleases)
Where To Get It: Itch.IO

Content Warnings for the game include dubcon, drugging, mind control, mental programming, and hypnosis, light mind break, memory changes, restraint, oral, and edging. However, people who are going to cry foul at the mental aspects of this, read the review before commenting, thanks.

The game has a full list of content warnings (the majority of which have been presented here) in a TXT file in the main game directory.

The nice thing about queer kink media that has cybernetics involved is that it explores it. It engages with the subject. And, naturally, this one engages with the subject as applies to BDSM. Along with, as an example, the fact that testing controversies will still exist, parts need maintennance and proper usage, knowing your limits…

But let’s talk about the kink and sexuality stuff, since that is the focus. What effect could your short term memory being stored on a hard drive have on roleplay? What role could going into your code have in edging, or restraint? And if changing your primary or secondary sexual characteristics is as simple as going into a cyber clinic in a universal free healthcare situation, why worry about gender?

On that note, I am slightly annoyed there’s no he/him option. There are she/her, and they/them, which is good, but having all options just feels… Better, in a world where both characteristics and pronouns are a matter of choice. Anyway, back to things.

So, the story is that you’re going to a cyber clinic to have your primary sexual characteristics changed, by getting new parts fitted. But you’ve been curious about exploring kink too, so you go to one of the Full Service Shops (fitting and testing), to experience some of them.

And oh boy, you do. Those first two examples? Channery and Maya’s routes respectively. And while they don’t, as the disclaimer at the beginning of the game notes, follow SSC (Sane, Safe Consent) or RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink), although it does have a safeword mechanic (which is, in the story, 100% enforcable, because the cybered up doctors have installed code in themselves that stops them in their tracks.) But I want to concentrate on the cleverness of the two paths with the content warnings that would make people wary (or yell at me for talking about.)

Channery’s, at first, seems a scary route. But it is not what it seems. It’s a very cleverly constructed roleplay, and the clever part is in how it seems to seamlessly slip into what is still a content warning heavy scene from a normal conversation… But it is a roleplay, and the how of it is explained afterwards. It’s a big part of what reassured me this was reviewable, despite the heavy content warnings.

And the other heavy CW route, Maya’s, also handles things well, to the point where I happily consider this reviewable. And, as an added bonus, both of them are the doctors who performed the first complete brain replacement (with one of them as the test subject), creating massive controversy, so there’s some extra story on those routes. Including the oft relevant in fiction with cybernetics in Ship of Theseus “problem” (I put “problem” in quotation marks, because they both have things to say about it, things that are fairly argued.)

Aesthetically, the game’s visuals are solid. Good environments, slightly stylised characters, a good soundscape (there’s a fun sound trick with Maya’s route that makes me recommend headphones for this game), and the only part of the soundtrack I wasn’t too sure about was the somewhat halting and slightly arrhythmic title tune (which plays a few times elsewhere.) It’s a Ren’py game, and everything’s pretty clear.

Overall, this is an interesting queer kink VN, engaging with its subjects in an interesting manner, with a good aesthetic, and I enjoyed exploring all the routes. Its content warning file is responsibly handled, letting people know that safewords are a more complex issue in real life, that it is sexy to discuss your limits with a partner, to be responsible, and, importantly, that if this isn’t your thing, or you cannot accept the fictional nature, to not play it. I would recommend it to hypnokinksters, because of that clever take, and, since two of the four routes are primarily about the subject of mind control, however consensual it actually is in game, I would not recommend it to those not into hypnokink of any sort.

I need an e-cigarette after reviewing this. That just seems fitting, considering…

Filed under: Adult Only Games, Game Reviews by admin

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