Koji feels like that guy from every boring salaryman meme. Stable job, stable pay, stable marriage, stable everything, like his whole life is one long default setting on a porn site filter. Got the nice quiet wife at home, Minako, older but still lowkey hot in that “housewife who pretends she doesn’t know how good her ass looks in those leggings” way. Nothing really wrong, nothing really thrilling either. Then Rin drags home this smug little punk as her boyfriend and suddenly the whole safe little world Koji built starts dripping filth in the corners. Not in some overdone drama way, more like your brain just catches one angle too long and suddenly you’re rock hard and pissed off at yourself at the same time. You know that feeling when you watch something on XVideos that you swear you’re not into, then three tabs later that’s exactly what you’re searching for on purpose? Yeah. That.

The good part is how the game sits you right in that ugly horny spot. It doesn’t pretend Koji is a noble dude. He’s working late, tired, scrolling shit on his phone like FapHouse and Pornhub on the train, thinking about his sweet loyal wife while also getting turned on by clips where wives get passed around or talk back to their husbands. Then you come home and Rin’s boyfriend is there, way too loud, way too confident, way too handsy even when he’s just “helping” Minako with something. One scene you’re just watching them make dinner together and it feels normal, next second the camera goes a bit closer on Minako’s chest when she leans over him and Koji’s inner voice goes to a real dark place. Not dark as in murder, dark as in “why does it turn me on seeing my wife standing too close to another man” and then you get the choice to either shut that down or lean into it. Of course you lean into it, you animal. Tiny touches matter here. Stuff like Minako asking if her dress is too tight to meet Rin’s boyfriend, just casual, and Koji can either say “you look modest” or “you look a bit too sexy” and then secretly hope she doesn’t change. The tease is slow and kind of mean.

It plays a lot with the whole “who is stealing who” angle. Sometimes it feels like Minako is being taken from you, sometimes like you are the one serving her up on a plate and pretending to be upset. One route I had her texting other guys at night while Koji sits in the next room trying to focus on some boring company data, pretending he can’t hear the little alert sounds. Another moment she’s sitting on the couch with Rin’s boyfriend, both of them watching some stupid Netflix show, and you stay standing in the doorway too long. He spreads his legs, she doesn’t move away, your chest tightens, and suddenly the game throws you an option like “imagine her on his lap” that you didn’t ask for but your dick did. It’s not just straight “wife gets fucked and you cry”, it slides between jealousy, arousal, shame, actual love for her, and that fucked up happiness when she smiles more after getting attention from other men. And yeah, sometimes it goes full-on cruel, especially if you push the more hardcore stuff, but I liked that it lets Koji be complicit instead of only a victim. He corrupts himself, not just his wife. Though I’m still mad the game never explained why Rin’s boyfriend chews like that in one dinner scene. Couldn’t focus on the dialogue, just wanted to choke him and also watch Minako suck him off right there at the table. Anyway. The whole thing feels like someone recorded that phase where you discover a new kink from some random porn recommendation and turned it into a slow burn story that keeps rubbing salt and cum on the same wound over and over.

Riveroaks looks like one of those nice West Coast towns from Instagram, but this game keeps poking the dirty meat under the skin. You play this broke guy who gets kicked out of home and suddenly finds out his estranged dad is a porn mogul with a new gay studio that needs a handler. Not in the fun BDSM sense. In the “sign contracts and worry about profits while staring at six packs” sense. Half the time you are trying to pretend you are a professional businessman, the other half you are trying not to get a visible boner during casting. The fun part is how casual the world treats sex. Everyone already knows you are Leonard King’s kid. Baristas flirt with you like they want a role, gym bros stretch way too close, and every conversation has this small chance to slide into filth. One second someone is talking about lighting, the next they are describing exactly how they want to be fucked on camera, and the game just goes “yeah this is normal”. As a horror nerd I like when a city feels like it has a pulse, and Riveroaks kind of hums like something alive and wet. Every location feels like a different fetish altar. The arcade with sticky neon, the gym with its sweaty muscle cult, the cute café where the “nice guy” director talks about art and then asks if you are comfortable filming a three-way with a choke scene. None of this is subtle. Sometimes it is hilarious and awkward and horny at the same time, like when you are reviewing test footage and realize the actor is staring straight into the camera, dirty talking you of all people, and the dialogue actually acknowledges your flustered silence instead of pretending you are a blank self insert.

What surprised me is how much the management part and the romance keep stepping on each other’s toes. You choose what kind of scenes to produce, who to cast together, what kinks to push, and later you have to sit with the people you just turned into “content” and maybe flirt with them, or listen when they tell you about their trauma, or both. There is this one moment where you schedule a shoot with a cocky twink and a quiet older guy, thinking “ok, this will sell, simple power play vibe”, and by the time you watch the preview cut you realize they actually clicked emotionally in between all the deepthroating. Then the game asks you, softly but not really gently, if you want to push them harder next time for profit or let them have a slower, sweeter scene. Of course I picked the darker option because I am weak and also curious. The aftermath hit harder than I expected, but then the next scene is just a stupidly funny argument in a bistro over whose ass looks better on camera, so your feelings never get to settle. It is messy, like real life, only with a lot more cum. The main character is weirdly relatable too. Not some porn god, just this slightly lost young dude who keeps flipping between horny, bitter, and accidentally caring. One route has you teasing a muscular cameraman in the locker room, trading nasty jokes until he corners you in the shower and asks if you are just playing or if you want him to ruin you for real. Another has you sharing late night drinks with an actor who looks like he walked out of a yaoi doujin, talking about family while his hand sits a little too high on your thigh. The sex scenes commit. They use the dirty words, they linger on bodies, they let you taste that feeling of being looked at like fresh meat. Sometimes the pacing goes weird and you jump from intense emotional build up to “ok, we are sucking dick now” with almost no breath, but honestly that clumsy cut has its own charm. Porn is rarely tidy. In my head I almost read Riveroaks like a cult story, only the cult is gay porn, and instead of summoning Cthulhu you are summoning audience engagement with horny thumbnails. There is something quietly corrupting about how normal it feels after a while to treat desire as a spreadsheet thing. And then a cute guy smiles at you from across the studio, half naked, and you stop caring where exactly your soul went.

You start as this mafia prince kind of guy, rich kid with a target painted on his back, thinking life is just booze, guns and pretty women, and then everything goes straight to hell in like two minutes. One ambush, a lot of bullets, and suddenly your powerful crime family is just red stains and broken windows. The game throws you into that chaos from inside his head, so it feels less like “I am playing a character” and more like “oh shit, that’s my dad getting executed.” It’s all from your eyes, even the sex, so every scene hits kind of personal. Not deep-artsy personal, just “yeah, I’m really here, my dick’s out, this is happening” personal.

Natalya, the bodyguard, basically steals the whole thing. She gets you out alive and then you’re stuck with her in this dry, endless desert, hunted, tired, horny, scared, and somehow still flirting in the middle of it. She’s not some shy anime waifu, she’s tall, scary, a little fucked in the head, with that soldier mindset. One moment she’s snapping a guy’s arm like a breadstick, the next she’s pinning you to a rock with her boot on your chest and asking if you’re “still a man after all that crying.” Half the scenes with her feel like foreplay even when nobody’s naked. There’s one bit where you’re hiding behind a broken car, bullets hitting the sand around you, and she just grabs your face, kisses you hard, then shoves you away and goes right back to shooting. Totally not realistic, but it made me laugh like an idiot.

It calls itself a visual novel, but it’s not only dialog boxes and “do you love her or do you love her more” kind of thing. You’ve got choices that mess with your score, some little combat-ish moments, and a bunch of paths where you can act like a loyal heir, or a petty asshole, or some horny idiot who thinks with his cock while hitmen are literally tracking you. Sometimes the pacing is like a wild house party where the music keeps changing mid-song. One moment you’re digging into who betrayed your father, interrogating some bruised thug about which rival family ordered the hit, and then boom, horny desert campfire scene where you’re half traumatized and half grinding against someone who probably killed more people than you ever met. It’s weirdly hot and also kind of messed up. There’s romance too, but “romance” here means guns on the table, bruises on your neck, and girls who tease you about being soft while they unzip your pants. At one point I forgot I was chasing the truth behind the massacre because I was too focused on getting a better “score” with one of the women, and when the game suddenly threw more soldiers at me, I actually said out loud: “bro, can I finish getting laid first?” That mood sort of sums it up.