The bus lurches and my phone almost flies into someone’s armpit. Perfect time for Starlewd Ranch. The title screen is this weirdly clean 3DCG ranch house that looks like it was rendered on a calculator from 2014. The main guy, a virgin of course because these games never let you forget, arrives and immediately the first girl’s tits are just... there. No buildup. She’s got this vacant smile and her chest is practically a shelf. You can grope her within the first three dialogue boxes. I tapped the screen and the animation looped, this janky up and down motion that made her whole body wobble like jelly on a train. I laughed out loud. The guy next to me definitely saw.

The sandbox part is weirdly aimless. You just click around the ranch, finding girls in different states of undress. One minute you’re feeding chickens, the next a redhead is asking for a titfuck behind the barn. The ahegao face she makes is so exaggerated it circles back to being funny, eyes completely white, tongue out like a dead fish. I wish the fingering mechanic had any feedback at all, it’s just a static image with a looping sound effect that cuts off abruptly. Won’t be fixed, I bet. The whole thing feels like someone took a more famous game’s skeleton and d*** it in horny wallpaper. There’s a harem forming but I can’t remember any of their names. One girl with a massive ass keeps getting stuck on the porch geometry, her stripping animation playing on a loop while she vibrates into the wall. I spent way too long watching that.

My stop’s next. The oral sex scenes are the most polished bit, which says something. The blowjob animation actually syncs with the sound, a rare victory. The male protagonist is a silent plank of wood, but that’s standard. I discovered I’m more interested in the glitchy groping than the actual sex scenes, which is a personal revelation I’m not unpacking on public transit. The game crashed when I tried to talk to the last girl. Perfect ending. Dare to play it alone, or invite company?