There is this trashy little tropical resort game that feels like somebody mashed a sleazy dating sim with a lazy idle tycoon and then asked, “how far can we push the horny?” and just never stopped. You show up on this sunny island because daddy died and left you a resort, and instead of grief you get a UI and a to-do list that’s basically: hire busty women, pretend to care, squeeze both their labor and their bodies. It’s not subtle. The first time you promise a girl “a real career” while the dialogue clearly nudges her toward stripping down for “special client service”, it feels like a hentai parody of every fake inspirational LinkedIn coach. One moment you’re adjusting room prices and assigning shifts, next moment you’re in a Ren’Py scene where she’s bent over a desk, tits bouncing, you clicking through lines about “team building”. Very professional, yes. Totally HR compliant.

The part that actually got me is how fast your brain switches between numbers brain and degenerate brain. You’re checking profit margins, then a new horny event pops up: that island cutie you put at the front desk is complaining she can’t pay rent, and suddenly the “solution” is you fucking her brains out as “staff housing benefit”. The game pretends it’s comedic, and to be fair, some lines are actually funny in that dark, mean way: jokes about selling “emotional security” while your dick is literally inside her, side comments about your dead father probably doing the same shit before you. Sometimes the humor hits, sometimes it’s like your uncle discovered hentai memes and tried to write them himself. The girls are written like classic eroge archetypes, just with the morality slider ripped off: the shy one that folds under pressure with a wet moan, the ambitious one you bribe with promises of promotion if she swallows, the island girl who “owes the resort” and works off her debt on her knees. Ren’Py makes it all feel familiar: click, fork a choice, watch an H-scene, open another menu to make more money off the same girl you just creampied. It is trash, but that kind of trash where you catch yourself min-maxing your harem and thinking, “ok, but if I make this one my personal assistant, does that unlock more office sex or just better income?” and then you realize you don’t care, because she’s already moaning your name in another event window. Tropical capitalism, but with cum everywhere.

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.