Couples: Lustbound drops you into Katy and John’s bedroom at that weird point where everything looks fine on Instagram, but in the dark they’re just kind of… touching each other out of habit. They’re young, married, they still care, but the kisses feel a bit too polite and John keeps grabbing his phone after sex. The game leans hard into that slow, itchy tension. Katy starts catching herself staring a bit too long at other guys, especially when one of John’s friends cracks a dirty joke and she laughs a little too hard. John notices. Or maybe he pretends not to, depending on what you make him do. It’s not about instant filth from the first click. It’s more like watching a flame catch on something that should not burn and thinking, “Eh, it’s fine” until the curtains are already smoking.

The visual novel structure gives you both sides of the mess. One moment you are John, pretending you’re totally cool with Katy going out in that tight dress that shows way too much thigh while you’re “busy with work.” Next moment you’re Katy, drunk on the attention when some guy’s hands stay on her waist a bit longer during a dance, feeling his fingers press her ass in the crowd where everyone can see and kind of hoping someone is actually watching. There are scenes where you’re basically voyeuring your own marriage. Like when John sits in the car, screen lit up with a text asking “You okay with this?” while he imagines what’s happening inside the bar: Katy laughing, a big dark hand on her knee, her lips brushing someone’s ear when she whispers. The game loves that sick mixing of jealousy, arousal, and guilt that sits in the belly. It lets you push them toward swinging nights, sneaky handjobs under tables, hotel room oral that starts as “just trying something new” and slides into “there is another guy finishing in your wife and you are not stopping it.” Or you pull them back, but not really. Even the “safer” choices still feel loaded. A simple shower together can be cruel when Katy teases, strokes John just enough to get him hard, then walks out, wrapped in a towel, annoyed but horny, checking her messages.

What I liked a lot is how the corruption doesn’t just turn Katy into some brainless sex doll. She remembers what she’s doing. When she spreads her legs for a guy who is not her husband and lets him slide inside bare, knowing creampie will leave a sticky reminder, she has that tiny moment of “I am a terrible person” right under the moan. John too is messed up in his own way. Sometimes he stares from the sidelines, watching a live porn show that involves the woman he promised to protect, and his dick is rock hard while his heart punches his ribs. It feels wrong and hot and pathetic at the same time. There are scenes where he joins in, hands roaming, groping her in front of another man like he is trying to mark territory, only to end up sharing her mouth, her pussy, everything. And then there are the quiet shots: Katy alone on the balcony in panties, knowing the neighbor across can see her, fingers inside herself while she replays what happened that night. Or John “accidentally” opening a video he shouldn’t have, seeing her knees on a hotel carpet, lips wrapped around someone else’s cock, and he just sits there, watching the whole thing in silence, breathing heavy. The game is at its dirtiest when it hugs that line between love and pure selfish lust, and doesn’t say which side is winning. It just lets you poke, twist, and watch them both fall apart in a way that feels way too real.

You open your eyes in a garden that’s way too pretty for how fucked up you feel. You remember dying… kind of. It’s fuzzy, like that morning after too much vodka when you’re checking your phone and praying you didn’t text your ex. Except now the “ex” is literally your life, and instead of hangover you get a smug angel, a smug demon, and a bunch of confused hot dead people who all like girls, guys, both, neither, or “it’s complicated” in different flavors. They tell you this isn’t Heaven, not Hell, just the Garden hanging out in Limbo, like some cosmic waiting room where everyone’s bisexual or worse. You’re told you can pick your body and gender, like character creation but with the weight of “what the fuck am I actually” behind it. Female, male, futa, trans, something in between, something off to the side. The game doesn’t blink. You can just… exist the way you wish you had when you were alive. That alone hit harder than some porn games ever will, honestly. Then five minutes later you’re flirting with a demon girl who looks like she can ruin your life and you’re fine with it.

What really sticks in my head is how one scene goes from tender to horny to sad so fast it feels wrong, in a good way. You’re sitting under this glowing tree with another lost soul, talking about what you regret from your life. They’re quietly telling you about the first time they realized they liked girls, how they kissed a friend behind a church, shaking and happy and terrified. The garden lights reflect in their eyes, they lean closer, and your choices appear. You can joke it away, you can pull them into this slow, nervous kiss, or you can go full thirsty and grab their hips and push them against the tree. If you go thirsty, the way the writing describes hands sliding over still unfamiliar bodies, the awkward “is this okay” mixed with raw need, feels more real than half the polished porn out there. It’s not just “and then boobs appeared, wow.” It’s messy, people hesitate, someone laughs at the wrong time, it reads like two queer disasters horny in Limbo who never got to be honest when they were alive, so now they’re making up for it in one go. There’s even a moment where they say “I never had sex like this when I was alive” and you can answer “me neither” or pretend you were a huge player. Which is funny, because the game will totally call you out later on that lie.

In between the horny stuff, you’re doing trials, talking to angels that act like burnt-out office workers, demons who act like they run a queer nightclub, and other dead people trying to figure out if Heaven is worth the rules, Hell is worth the chaos, or if Limbo is secretly the best place because nobody really knows what the fuck is happening anyway. Sometimes the tone whiplash gets tiring, like you’ll go from heartfelt talk about dysphoria to a gag about someone’s ass in two lines and it almost kills the mood. There are parts where the pacing drags, especially when a character dumps lore on you about how Eden ended up stuck here and you just wanna go back to worrying if that cute trans boy is into you or only into your “tragic backstory.” But then later, one small choice from an earlier date suddenly changes how a big late scene plays out and you realize oh, okay, it was paying attention the whole time. There are multiple routes and endings, you can flirt with women, men, futas, trans characters, some are soft, some are monsters in a sexy way, some are just emotionally unavailable but so hot you try anyway. It’s not afraid to be horny, but it also doesn’t treat sex like the only reward. Sometimes you get a tender cuddle in the afterlife instead of a full-on scene, and weirdly that feels more intimate. Still, I got annoyed that one character keeps mentioning some specific snack from when they were alive and you never actually see it anywhere. No CG, nothing. That bothered me a lot more than it should have. Anyway, it all feels like a queer afterlife dating mess where you can be a lesbian, a dude, a trans futa, whatever, and still end up kissing under a divine tree while arguing about whether Heaven even deserves you.

Erik comes back to this private island after a year away and the whole place feels like it’s holding its breath. That is basically the mood of the novel. Sunburnt paradise, empty villa, two twins walking around each other like they’re scared to breathe too hard because one wrong look and they are ready to fuck on the nearest piece of furniture. The story sticks you inside their heads a lot, both him and Lyna, and it hits that awkward horny childhood memory vibe, where you remember things you shouldn’t have stared at, touches that lasted a bit too long, late showers with thin walls. There is no “click this, choose that”, you just sit there and watch the tension grow while they pretend to be normal. It feels slow for a while, almost like the author is teasing you on purpose, with stupidly wholesome things like headpats, soft hugs, holding hands on the couch under some trashy Netflix show. Then there is that first real look, the moment he realizes her ass is not “little sister” anymore, and you can basically hear his brain break in silence. I run NSFW events, I saw people do kink performances in public, and still that quiet bedroom scene with nothing but eye contact and careful breathing felt filthier than a gangbang.

When it starts to go over the line, it really does not bother to pretend it is classy. You get a lot of dirty family talk, like, they lean into the taboo instead of hiding it. She teases him while he is trying to be the responsible one, climbs onto his lap, grinds slow, makes him admit he’s been watching her sleep. There is POV stuff that feels almost too personal, like you are the one between her thighs while she still calls you “bro” and says she shouldn’t like it this much. The game flips between him and her sometimes, and that makes the corruption hit harder, because you see how she talks about being a virgin and in the next chapter she is planning how to get his tongue between her legs without him running away. There is also a lot of focus on small physical kinks: toes on his lips, her foot pressing on his cock while she pretends to watch the waves, her sitting on his face like it’s totally normal. Then their mom Helga is on her way to the villa, and the vibe shifts again. She is not just “MILF appears, dicks out”. She has her own messy thing going on, a controlling presence, a bit of soft female dom energy, and she changes how both twins act. One moment it is this romantic, almost sweet incest bubble, and the next it is him getting jerked off under the table while Helga talks about family values and pregnancy like some twisted sermon. I actually hated one thing: there is a throwaway bit with a phone notification mid-scene, totally killed my rhythm, and then the story never mentions that chat again. It lives rent free in my brain. Still, when the anal and titfuck and all the other stuff finally explode after so much build up, it feels less like porn clips glued together and more like you followed two idiots all the way from “I will just hug you” to “I am going to fill my sister on the same bed we used as kids”. It’s wrong, it’s hot, it’s surprisingly emotional, and it really does not apologize for any of it.

Goblin Down feels like someone took a messy affair from a cheap motel, stitched it into a fantasy story, then forgot to iron the seams. Which I mean as a compliment. As a lingerie designer I kept thinking of it like a jealous little boudoir drama: tiny space, three bodies, way too much skin and not enough honesty. You start as this rookie adventurer who once got saved by a goblin girl, then years later she’s your wife, Qilka, and she’s basically the only one in the house with any common sense. Her design hits weirdly close to how I sketch green-skinned models: short, soft belly, those slightly too-big eyes that look innocent even when she’s getting railed, and that cheap village dress that screams “I can be pulled aside in one motion.” It’s not elegant, but it works. Like lace that scratches but looks hot in photos.

What hooked me most wasn’t even the orc at first, it was how fast the mood in the house rots once he shows up. One scene you bring this huge hurt bastard home like some stray dog, next scene you’re watching her fuss over him, wiping his chest, his thighs, pretending she’s just doing first aid while her cheeks are already a little flushed. There is this early voyeur moment where you peek through the cracked door and the animation has her hand hovering just a bit too long over his crotch, like she’s “accidentally” brushing it. That’s when the game stopped feeling like a heroic fantasy and more like catching your partner sexting with someone bigger. The actual sex escalates in a way that made my stomach twist: first it’s innocent tending, then a clumsy handjob where she looks like she’s not even sure how she got there, then full-on sloppy oral with her ears twitching and eyes rolled up, that classic ahegao face that would look stupid if the guilt wasn’t so heavy. Sometimes her expression is a bit too cartoony for the mood, by the way. I wanted one scene where she just looks wrecked inside, not only drooling and cross-eyed. But they never go there, they stay in that porn comic style, which annoyed me and I still kept going.

What I like, or hate, is how the corruption isn’t only about her. You as the husband are kind of pathetic and it’s hot in a really bad way. The game gives you these choices where you can pretend nothing’s wrong, go back to your guild work, or poke around like a paranoid idiot. I picked the coward route first, just left them alone, and later there’s this animated loop of the orc lifting her by the hips and pounding her from behind in your own bedroom, her ring still on her finger, and I actually paused and stared like it was some lingerie catalog shot I needed to analyze. Her little tits bounce against his stomach, the camera lingers on the creampie dripping out of her while she whispers how “it’s fine, he’ll never know.” It’s filthy and sort of beautiful in a trashy way, like mismatched bra and panties that somehow look better than a full set. There’s one scene where she rides him in your bed, looking back at the doorway, almost like she wants you to walk in and watch. That voyeur energy is crazy, even if a few transitions feel rushed, like they skipped a beat between nervous groping and full surrender. Still, the whole thing left me thinking about designing a set inspired by her: something green and torn at the hem, a little too small, like it belongs to a wife who says she’s loyal while her thighs are still sticky from someone else. And then I remembered this is just a short visual novel and I’m overthinking it while she’s taking orc dick again in the next CG.