Pale Carnations feels like someone took a very proper medical student, stripped out his sense of safety, then tossed him face first into the kind of club you normally only see mentioned in Telegram chats that vanish after a week. You start as this uptight guy who really believes he’s still on a straight path, and then your old friend drags you into the Carnation Club, which is basically a brothel pretending to be an art space. The game doesn’t even try to warm you up slowly. One minute you’re talking about exams, the next you’re standing in a “performance hall” where three women are being judged like twisted idols for how well they take pain, shame and a whole lot of cum. The first night, when you have to guide one of the girls through a show, pushed to choose between making it romantic, cruel, or just filthy efficient, that’s where it clicked for me. This isn’t just porn with clicks. It’s about how far you’re willing to go when everyone keeps telling you it’s normal to choke a girl on stage while rich assholes clap in the dark.

The sound in this thing really surprised me. Not “triple A” surprised, more like “why does this muffled moan in the background feel more real than the entire Spotify sexy playlist I’ve got”. There’s this scene where you’re backstage with an older woman who clearly knows the club better than you ever will. She presses your hand to her ass while she quietly instructs you how to handle your “performer”, her voice soft but absolutely in control, and in the distance you hear the audience roar when someone gets spanked hard enough to cry. The track underneath is this slow, slightly dirty lounge loop, a bit off tempo, almost cheap, but it fits so well that I ended up replaying that scene just to hear the way her breathing synced with the bass line. Then later the game swaps to this almost tender piano piece while you’re literally arranging who gets groped on stage and who gets humiliated in private. I liked that a lot. Or maybe I didn’t. It made it harder to pretend this is just mindless fap material when the music keeps whispering “you’re kind of a bastard for choosing the harsher option, you know?” and then rewards you with the wettest, messiest creampie CG three clicks later. The game loves that contrast. Romance on the surface, anal and public bukkake in the back room, ahegao faces in full view while the MC still tells himself he’s a good guy. It’s not subtle, and it’s not trying to be. There’s cheating, masturbation breaks that feel a bit too honest, toys pulled out at the worst possible time, and a lot of rich people treating human bodies like decoration. I wish the little clicking sound on some menu wasn’t so loud, actually, it annoyed me from the start and I kept meaning to change it, then got distracted every single time some milf in heels called me “doctor” and bent over a piece of BDSM furniture like it was a confession booth. Anyway, the club keeps going, the performances get rougher, and your choices keep twisting the knife, mostly in you.

Free City is trashy in the best way, like that one bar where the floor sticky, the cocktails weak, and somehow you still end up naked in the bathroom with someone you met ten minutes ago. You play this private eye who is supposed to care about some "suicide case," but baby, the man investigating is thirstier than the whole police department. Every time I tried to follow a clue I ended up following a pair of tits instead. And the game knows it. It throws curves at you all the time, big boobs everywhere, big asses trying to distract you while you pretend to be professional. You question a widow, she is crying, mascara running, and two clicks later she is on the couch with her legs open, asking you in that fake innocent voice if you can "comfort" her. Sure, girl, I bring the comfort and the condom. The whole visual novel flow is slow enough to tease, but not that boring otome slow where you need three hours just to see a hand touch. Here, one wrong answer and suddenly you have her on all fours, her ass up, and the screen full of thick cg that looks like it came straight out of someone’s secret folder named "do_not_open". Then you realize she has a husband. Or had. Or has a boyfriend too. Honestly I lost track, because everyone cheating on everyone and I was sitting there sipping my iced coffee like a messy therapist watching a live soap opera.

The best part is how the game keeps pretending it is a serious noir story while you are busy corrupting half the city. One moment you talk about crime, motives, evidence, being all "hard-boiled detective", the next you are balls-deep in some interracial group scene where you forgot why you came there in the first place. There is romance if you want it, that sugary "I care about you" vibe, but the romance quickly turns into "tie me up and spit in my mouth" if you push the right dialogue options. Some of those bdsm scenes come out of nowhere. You flirt a little, do the soft hand touch, then boom, she is naked, wrists bound to the headboard, big tits pressed together with rope, and you decide if you want to be gentle or absolutely ruin her. And sometimes the game just goes, "Oh, you like girls too?" and hands you a lesbian scene with a side of voyeurism, while you stand back like a sleazy director watching two women go from shy kisses to full tongue, fingers, and one of them riding the other’s face until the bedsheets look like a crime scene by themselves. The group sex bits are wild but messy in a fun way, people grabbing whatever body part in reach, someone taking it in the ass while moaning about how they should not be doing this, someone else with cum dripping on their big boobs, and the story still trying to tell you, "hey, remember, murder mystery?" No, babe, I remember her legs shaking when I picked the "harder" option. The only thing that annoyed me was one tiny sound effect during a climax that sounded like someone stirring mac and cheese in a plastic bowl, threw me right out for a second, and now I cannot stop thinking about it. But anyway, every time I thought I would play just a bit and close the tab, suddenly I am six choices deep into another affair, lying to one character while fucking another in an alley, my detective morally bankrupt and my browser history screaming help.

Fatima looks like the type of girl local aunties point at during weddings and whisper about. Proper clothes, shy smile, all that “good Muslim girl” energy, but the game just laughs at that and throws her straight into a marriage with a guy she doesn’t even know. It starts all stiff and awkward in the bedroom, like two strangers trying to act out porn they never watched. The first time they fuck is clumsy and weird in a way that actually feels right. No instant porn star bullshit. She’s nervous, he’s trying too hard, the bed squeaks like it’s judging them. And little by little, the game stops pretending this is a romantic love story and turns into what it really wants to be: this girl discovering she’s a horny mess with way more desire than her “proper” life allows.

What I liked is how her brain is always lagging behind her body. She tells herself she should be grateful and loyal, that nice little obedient wife, then you get a CG of her riding him with this desperate look like she just unlocked a new drug. There are scenes where she’s lying there after a creampie, staring at the ceiling and thinking about God and sin and all that, and the next scene she’s secretly replaying the feeling in her head while her husband is at work. And that’s before the other people show up. The game doesn’t play coy with the cheating at all. One moment she’s politely chatting, next moment she’s pressed against a wall with a thicker cock stretching her way beyond what her husband ever managed. The contrast is brutal and honestly kind of funny. Husband’s sex is “we should do this, we are married now.” Interracial dude rolls in and it’s “oh fuck, I didn’t know it could feel like this, I’m gonna break.” You get that nice dirtiness from watching her try to act like nothing happened when she goes back home with his cum still inside her.

And it doesn’t stay straight either. The lesbian stuff doesn’t start with some cheesy “I always loved girls” nonsense. It sneaks in as comfort. Another woman showing her how to touch herself properly, how to actually chase the orgasm instead of waiting like a passive doll. There’s a great bit where Fatima is half crying about being unfaithful, and this woman has her hand between Fatima’s thighs, calmly telling her it’s alright while pushing her to climax anyway. You can practically feel her morals snapping one by one. She’s supposed to be this obedient wife, but by the time you’re deeper in, she’s tasting another woman one day and then taking a raw cock the next, big tits bouncing all over the place while she tries not to say out loud that she likes the forbidden stuff more than the “normal” sex she’s allowed to have. The game doesn’t pretend to teach a lesson or be deep. It just keeps asking the same question in different scenes: if a girl like this grows up caged, what happens when someone finally opens the door and tells her she can fuck whoever she wants and nobody’s watching? The answer is not pretty for her husband, but it is very fun to watch.

Michelle looks like the girl in your office who always leaves at exactly 5, hair perfect, life probably on rails. Except here she is in sweaty, neon Hong Kong streets in 1986, slowly losing her grip on that “good daughter, good employee” mask because one tiny, stubborn, chain-smoking woman named Sam keeps flirting with her in ways that are way too gentle to ignore and way too dirty to be innocent. The game starts pretty tame, all long bus rides, quiet apartment scenes, small talk about movies and clothes, but the whole time the camera lingers on thighs under skirts, fingers brushing on handrails, the little hesitation when Michelle looks at Sam’s mouth while they share a drink. It’s a slow, frustrating kind of heat, like when you’re stuck on Zoom meetings and sexting on Telegram on the side, except here it’s cassette tapes and payphones and cramped bedrooms with thin walls and parents one room away. The erotic stuff doesn’t explode in your face with instant porn. It creeps in. One kiss in a dark cinema where Michelle is stiff at first, almost scared, then you see her lips part, her hands tremble, and you can almost hear her swallow before she gives in and pulls Sam closer. Tongues, teeth, that wet sound, and she keeps her eyes half open like she still cannot believe she is letting another woman taste her like that.

When it finally goes past kissing, it hits like someone yanked the curtain down. You get these long, quiet scenes on a bed where the sheets are a bit messy, clothes half off, bras sliding down arms, Michelle trying to cover herself at first and Sam just laughing low and kissing every bit she tries to hide. There is a moment where Sam goes down on her, and it’s not some porn-speed blowjob logic. It is slow and almost awkward, Michelle gripping the bedsheet because she does not even have the words in her own language for what is happening between her legs. The text describes every tiny reaction, how her thighs twitch, how she tries to keep her voice down because her mother could walk past the door, how her hips start grinding against Sam’s mouth anyway, shame turning into this fucked up relief. You can tell the writers actually understand how it feels when you are eating pussy like you care about the person, not like you are checking off positions. There are pauses, deep breaths, a little laugh from Sam when Michelle whimpers a bit too loudly, and then she doubles down, tongue and lips and fingers working together until Michelle is shaking so hard she almost pushes her away. That first orgasm is not “perfect”, it feels real, messy, emotional, like she just broke some rule she has been obeying her whole life.

Under all that sex there is this heavy layer of family and culture pressure that honestly turned me on more than I expected, because the guilt makes everything spicier and more fucked up. Michelle sneaks back home smelling like cigarettes and someone else’s perfume, lies to her mother at the dinner table while still feeling Sam’s fingers inside her if she closes her eyes for a second. There are choices where you can lean into the romance, keep seeing Sam, or try to “fix” yourself and go back to the safe, straight, lonely path everyone expects. Some endings feel like a punch in the gut, some feel like a small rebellion that might not last forever but at least burns hot while it exists. It is a romantic story, yeah, there is sweetness, hand holding, soft kisses, that feeling when you are falling in love and every bus ride feels like a music video, but the game never really lets you forget that this is two women trying to build something intimate and wet and tender inside a world that keeps telling them they are wrong. That clash is what makes the sex scenes hit so hard. When Sam whispers “you’re mine tonight” while Michelle’s family photos are literally watching from the shelf, it feels dirty in the best way, like she is betraying everything for the chance to have her own life, her own pleasure, even if it all goes to hell later.