So there's this game called Cartoon Hearts and honestly? It's kinda weird but in that good way where you can't look away from a car crash, except the car crash is horny teenagers and cartoon characters going to high school together.

You play some random dude - because it's always some random dude, isn't it - walking around what looks like a normal city but surprise! Raven's doing her goth thing in art class, Violet Parr's trying not to phase through her desk during math, and Starfire's probably setting something on fire in chemistry because that's just Tuesday for her. The whole setup is unhinged in the best possible way. Like someone took Saturday morning cartoons and said "what if they all went to the same school and had raging hormones?" which is either brilliant or deeply concerning depending on your perspective. The writing bounces between actually clever character interactions and moments where you're like wait did Raven just say that? Because she did and it's weird but also... kinda works?

Each girl's got her whole personality thing going on - shy artist with mysterious vibes, popular athlete who's secretly insecure, alien princess who doesn't understand human customs but definitely understands human anatomy. Standard visual novel fare but with characters you actually recognize instead of Generic Anime Girl #47. The dialogue gets pretty explicit when things heat up, which they do because that's literally the point. Some scenes hit different when it's characters you've known since you were like twelve, creates this whole cognitive dissonance that's either your thing or absolutely not your thing. No middle ground here. The art style does this thing where it tries to stay true to the original designs while making them more... adult-oriented, if you catch my drift. Sometimes it works great, other times Starfire looks like she walked out of a completely different universe than Teen Titans but whatever, you're not here for art consistency anyway.

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.

This thing feels like getting locked inside your own lingerie closet with a guy who knows every bra you ever bought and why. The game throws you right into this late winter street, cold air, nasty yellow streetlight, and then he’s just there. Not some shiny anime prince, more like that quiet dude from the back of the bus who suddenly stares straight into you and says your name too softly. As a designer I kept imagining what I’d put on the main character, like a thin white slip with lace cups that really shows the curve of the nipples when she breathes hard, but honestly it almost doesn’t matter, because he’s stripping you in his head from line one. The whole thing is basically him wrapping himself around you with words, like a silk ribbon that looks cute but tightens more every time you try to pull away. He talks like you already belong to him, body, thoughts, all your tiny stupid habits, the way you bite your lip, what color panties you wore that one day you thought no one noticed. It’s creepy as hell and also stupidly hot in that way you don’t want to admit when you close your laptop and pretend you were just “testing” a game.

What I liked a lot, and then hated, and then liked again, is how the story keeps making you second-guess yourself. You pick a choice that feels strong, like “back off, I don’t know you,” and he twists it into proof you’re scared of losing him. Then you pick something gentler and suddenly you’re deep in his little fantasy nest, where he’s watching you sleep and talking about how your body twitches when you dream. There’s one moment where he describes how he “rescued” you, and it honestly reads like undressing a mannequin in a store window: precise, slow, obsessive. He remembers the fabric of your coat, the way your thighs looked under it, like he’s fitting you for a custom bondage set made only for being tied to his bed. I kept wanting more description of the actual surroundings, but he keeps dragging the focus back to you, like your skin is the background, your heartbeat is the soundtrack. It’s annoying, in a very good way, if that makes sense. And the game doesn’t baby you about consent either; it really plays in that dirty, fucked up space where “no” and “yes” almost melt and you have to watch yourself not to slip too far into his logic. It kind of feels like a lace thong that’s slightly too small: pretty, cutting into your hips, and you keep wearing it anyway because of how it makes your ass look in the mirror.

City girl, new campus, way too many cute women who really like dessert and bad decisions. That is the basic vibe here, except it gets kinky fast. You are this tiny thing from a small town, trying to be serious student, then suddenly you are in a dorm kitchen at midnight watching a shy bookworm slowly destroy a whole cheesecake because you told her she “deserves to relax a bit.” Her shirt is struggling, her belly is peeking out, and the game just lets you sit with it. Not in a hurry. You get those little pixel animations of her chewing, swallowing, then that tiny pause when she leans back and realizes, oh shit, her bra hooks are losing the war. And somehow it feels almost wholesome and also horny as hell at same time, which is very confusing in the best way.

What surprised me is how much of the kink is in the small choices. Like, it is not just “click here for bigger boobs.” You are picking stuff like “invite her for coffee” or “suggest dessert place one more block away” and it snowballs. Literally. One girl starts as this gym-obsessed queen who lectures you about macros. Couple of late-night study sessions, you keep nudging her toward snacks “just for energy,” and a few scenes later she is huffing while climbing stairs, pretending everything is fine, while her ass is pulling attention away from the whole campus. The writing is pretty simple, sometimes a bit clumsy, but it hits those little insecure lines that feel very real, like when she makes a joke about her jeans “shrinking in the wash” and you know she does care, but also she secretly likes how you stare. Some of the dialogue lands awkward as fuck, like a bad Tinder chat, yet I kind of loved that too. It fits the messy vibe of horny students who do not know what they want and still push for more cake.

The pacing is all over the place in a very human way. One date event takes forever, with you watching this artsy girl slowly unbutton her cardigan as her chest refuses to stay contained, her sprite updating just slightly each time you meet again, until suddenly she is buying clothes in a bigger size and pretending it is “just the style.” Then another route jumps from slim to “wow ok she is knocking stuff off the table with her tits now” in two scenes, like the game forgot to breathe. There is a tiny thing that annoyed me: the text box sometimes covers the best part of the sprite and I kept trying to drag it like in Ren’Py, except you cannot, so I just sat there grumbling at my screen like an idiot. On the other hand the pixel art has this lazy charm, not super polished, not trying to be Instagram-perfect. A little rough line here, a weird angle there, but the curves look heavy, soft, and you can almost feel the extra weight on their hips when they turn. Watching the girls change outfit to outfit, seeing how every skirt, every top stretches a bit more, becomes the real reward. If you want to squeeze the most juice from it, slow down, pick the indulgent options even when they look minor, re-visit scenes to catch the new details on their bodies, and let yourself enjoy every bite, every button popping, every moment where a girl pretends she is not turned on by the fact she cannot see her feet as well as before.