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.

The earthquake drill thing is such a weird plot device, honestly. Like, who thought "natural disaster simulation" would be the perfect meet-cute scenario? But whatever, it gets you roommates with Riley and that's where things get interesting. This femboy graphic designer has serious emotional baggage - the kind that makes you want to both protect him and corrupt him at the same time. His whole deal about being harassed and discriminated against feels real enough, even if the setup is janky.

Riley's got this vulnerable thing going on that hits different. He's not just some stereotypical uwu softboy - there's actual depth here with his insecurity about his work, his sexuality, his place in the world. The visual novel mechanics are pretty standard fare, nothing groundbreaking, but the writing around his character development surprised me. When he opens up about his past relationships and the shit he's dealt with, it doesn't feel like cheap trauma porn. Though I gotta say, some of the dialogue choices are weirdly specific - like why can I ask him about his skincare routine but not his actual job stress?

The adult content builds naturally instead of just throwing sex scenes at you every five minutes. Riley's sexual awakening feels earned, especially when he starts getting more confident and assertive. The art style works well for what it's trying to do, though I wish there were more clothing options during the... interactive moments. Also, why does every yaoi game have to make such a big deal about who's topping? Like, switches exist, developers. The emotional payoff when Riley finally trusts you enough to be completely vulnerable is genuinely sweet, even if the path there involves some questionable dialogue trees. Could use more variety in the intimate scenes though - feels like they ran out of steam halfway through development.

I played Brothel Virgin like I was trying to sketch lace on a body that wouldn’t stay still. It’s messy and kind of hypnotic, and that’s probably what I liked about it first. The world feels like velvet that’s been worn too long - soft but a bit frayed, and when the screen fades into the room at the Crimson Reverie, there’s that quiet hum I only get at the end of a runway show when everyone’s pretending not to be aroused by the models. Jenny’s laugh sounds like lipstick smudging against a glass; I kept replaying her intro scene hoping she’d say my name differently, slower. She doesn’t. Small thing but it bothered me. Still, the lighting in her room (well, if you can call it lighting, it’s more like a blush across the walls) made me forget it fast.

Matty’s design confused me. She looks like she was drawn by someone who loves stretch marks too much and I respect that deeply. Her scenes go from comforting to - how do you say - sticky? I’m used to games where every gesture feels rehearsed, but here her hands have this clumsy warmth that almost made me feel guilty touching the screen. Maybe I’m just too sentimental. Then Raven shows up and she wrecks all that tenderness with one smirk. There’s a sound cue before she appears - like a zipper halfway down - and it’s cheap, but it works. I hate that it works. Her storyline plays with all those moments between dominance and longing, and I kept thinking about fabric texture again: latex pretending to be silk.

Some transitions drag; some dialogues feel written by two people who never met. But that’s part of the charm. It’s not perfect, not even close, but neither are the bodies it celebrates. Sometimes I caught myself wondering why the brothel walls shimmer like oil, or why Jenny doesn’t blink enough. Doesn’t matter. The thing is, if you stop expecting polish and just lean into the heat, like, really lean, you’ll find your own reflection looking back at you through those impossible colors.

Drok'tar looks like the kind of orc that should be smashing skulls, not asking polite questions in a sleepy little town, and that contrast is the first thing that hooked me. He stomps in with this huge body, thick arms, heavy chest, everything about him big and heavy and absolutely not subtle, yet the game starts with him basically doing detective work. You’re chatting up nervous villagers, poking around the outskirts, checking tracks, talking to guys who clearly just want to stare at his chest instead of answering anything. There is this funny rhythm where you’re half focused on clues and half distracted every time some other beefy guy shows up and the game camera suddenly decides that pecs and thighs are more important than whatever crime or bounty you were supposed to care about. It feels like the game also lost interest in the investigation, which honestly matches how I was playing it.

The pixel art is doing a lot of work here. It is chunky and simple, but still very horny somehow. Drok'tar’s torso is like 80 percent of the screen in some scenes, broad as a door, nipples clearly defined even in tiny pixels, and when you meet the dragon guy in the hills, the scale is just stupid in a good way. Huge neck, long tail curling around the rocks, that smug face looking down at this orc like “you are not bringing me in, but I might let you worship me.” The sex scenes do not waste time pretending they are classy. Once you hit the right flags in dialog, things flip from rough small talk to “ok, strip, kneel, open up” with almost no transition. There’s a werewolf encounter in the forest where the whole tension is just “is this guy about to maul me or mount me” and the answer is both. Claw marks on Drok'tar’s back, then the wolf grabs his hips and slams in deep, and the screen shakes a little like some old SNES game glitching. It is ugly in a way I actually like. It feels raw, like a horny doodle that turned into a whole scene.

What surprised me is how the town gossip matters. You say the wrong thing to some random furry blacksmith and suddenly your next scene changes. Maybe you get pinned against the anvil and he fucks you rough, or maybe he just stares at you cold and the game denies you that whole route. I kind of hate that I missed one orc-on-orc scene because I said the polite answer instead of the slutty one, and there is no simple rewind, so I had to replay some boring walking. The writing is oddly sweet at times too, which almost annoyed me. One minute Drok'tar is swallowing a dragon’s fat cock, choking and drooling all over his abs, the next minute they are having this soft little conversation about work and loneliness. I liked it, then got mad at myself for liking it, then got distracted again by how the dragon’s balls are drawn almost too big for the sprite box. Also, tiny thing, the text box sometimes covers the best part of the art and it drove me crazy, but I kept clicking too fast and never really fixed it, just kept complaining to myself. Anyway, the game swings between horny interrogation, clumsy investigation and full-on bara porn with orcs, wolves and dragons taking turns on each other, and somehow that messy mix makes it feel more alive than a lot of slicker stuff.