Girls x Lust Review

Title: Girls x Lust
Release date: 2016-09-23 (Public release) / 2016-09-17 (Patreon release)
Developer & publisher: Pizzacat

"Girls x Lust", or GxL for short, is yet another free non-VN western eroge that accidentally attracted my attention. And when I say "accidentally" I mean it, as I haven't heard of this game's development before suddenly encountering it on the internet and choosing to download it.

Apparently, "Girls x Lust" is a sequel to another game from the same developer, called "Maids - Perfect", but I have never played the prequel and, according to the developer, it's not a requirement to play it to enjoy the newest installment.

Just like a majority of non-VN erotic games, GxL is made in RPG Maker, though it differs from most of the similar games by not having any RPG elements whatsoever and simply being an adventure game. While I do like RPGs, sometimes such elements are wholly unnecessary and get in the way of enjoyment.

In GxL we are introduced to a very unusual family: a married lesbian couple Elly and Mimi and their children Colette, Sophia and Midori. Recently they have moved to a house they purchased on a completely different continent and decided to make their home there. Moreover, it's also useful to mention that the game setting is a world not unlike our own, which, nevertheless, is not Earth and includes some supernatural elements.

Nah, the game is not that sadistic ;-)

We enter the shoes of a capricious teen Colette, who is a biological Elly's daughter and a twin to Sophia. Colette is not a pleasant or likable protagonist - she is vain, contrary, arrogant, mean, badmouths her own family, and dislikes books and learning (my own pet peeve). On the other hand, it does create an experience like playing a child character, and make no mistake, Colette is definitely not "over 18 and legal". Her age is not explicitly stated, but it's easy to peg her being somewhere between 14 and 18. Unfortunately, she acts more like she's 12, but I suppose no one ever said that it's a prerogative for a story to have a likable protagonist. As the game progressed, Colette grew up on me, even though her mean behaviour constantly rubbed me the wrong way.

GxL doesn't have a clear plot, at least at first, unless you count Colette's quest to buy a strawberry parfait, only to realise that no one in this backwards town even knows what a strawberry parfait is, as the event that kickstarts the game. Colette explores the town and engages in such wholesome children's activities as peeping at grandfather incest, farming, helping a horny pharmacist to kidnap young girls, prostituting herself for a pony and being murdered by jealous yanderes. Eventually you will reach the finale of the story and get one of the four different endings, but only one ending will have Colette finally getting her precious parfait. :-)

The quest for a magical parfait.

Erotic games have two main elements going for them: plot and ero content. One of them can be weaker if the other manages to stand on its own. GxL has a plot that is kinda simplistic and doesn't really manage to surprise the player. It's obvious that the developer tried to throw many curveballs to the reader, hoping some of them will hit right, but maybe it was his poor grasp of English, or the lack of writing talent, but the story is rarely funny and cannot be taken seriously due to constant overuse of deus ex machina. On the other hand, there are some pretty well written events, like the bigoted moralfag town mayor immediately changing her tune and welcoming the new family upon learning that they are rich or Colette defending her prostitute friend against a judgmental burger flipper. Additionally, the game presents a happy wholesome sexually-free family environment, where children frequently see their parents in various states of undress and even get to share their sex toys. Fun for the whole family! I was especially fond of a scene where, after Colette manages to snag herself a boyfriend, Elly gives her a condom, but states that she hopes Colette will not use it and get herself knocked-up. Yeah, this family is messed up... in the best possible way.

I'll take all three.

The characters are pretty flat... except for Pure (LOL). I mean they have very little actual personality and are simply characterised by one or more of their traits. Elly is a slob and a pervert, Mimi is bossy and a pervert, Midori has a big butt (and Colette never lets her forget that) and so on. It comes to head at the end, where whiny brat Colette, who doesn't change at all throughout the game and always lambasts perverts, can suddenly enter an ending, where she becomes a happy whore working in a brothel. It's abrupt and unrealistic, and the developer failed to convincingly transition their protagonist through such a change.

But I suppose plot was never the main element of GxL to consider - H-scenes are much more important and they are numerous. They are not really author's manual creations, but were produced using 3D Custom Girl software, which is a minus against them, as that doesn't make them very pretty looking. Nevertheless, there are 46 scenes in total (34 of them animated) and they cater to quite a large repertoire of fetishes, which pleases a pervert like me. The themes range from vanilla butt-sex to loli, shota, incest, futanari and even bestiality - in other words everything for a healthy curious player. Unfortunately, some scenes are more WTF inducing rather than erotic - everything Divina related falls into that category. Not to mention, I consider it a crime that the pregnant maid Alice doesn't have even a single H-scene, despite the situation being ripe with opportunities.

Yes, Colette swears like that all the time.

The developer describes GxL as "having open world elements" and emphasizes a farming system. Both of these points can be easily contested. The farming simulator is just a small minigame, which is only useful for farming (pun intended) money if you want to buy a pony, and the pony itself is basically useless, as it just unlocks one sex scene in the gallery (which isn't even a horse bestiality scene like I have hoped). As for the "open world elements", that is distinctly untrue - the game is completely linear and follows a very strict path with all events happening one after the other. There are a few side events (some of them easily missable), but the main storyline doesn't change, even though you have to scout for key events by walking all over the town.

There are two invisible stats that the game keeps track of, called "Depravity" and "Moral Degradation", and witnessing or participating in lewd activities raises those stats for Colette. There is another huge missed opportunity here. The aforementioned stats do not influence basically anything in the game, save for a few sex scenes that are not accessible if the stats are not relatively high. They do not influence the plot or the endings. No matter what you do and what side activities you engage in, you finally get to choose which of the four endings you want to see at the very end of the game. Admittedly, one of the endings is not accessible if you punch Filla into her stupid mug, but it would have been nice if, for example, you would have needed high depravity to enter the Pure route.

Grow grow little... er, lettuces.

There are also three bad end gameovers, where Colette stupidly gets herself killed. Two of those happen immediately after making a poor choice or taking a wrong turn, but one happens at the very end, hours and hours after you have made that one fateful decision. Never fear though - for those who find the game challenging, the developer provides a full walkthough included with the game archive. I almost didn't use the walkthough (only checked how to get some optional sex scenes) and had no problems beating the game. With my completion time of 8.5 hours, "Girls x Lust" is about the same length as most western non-VN eroges, but I suppose I could have halved that time if I played using a walkthough.

GxL also boasts a day/night cycle with some events happening only during the day, and others - during the night. One second in the game corresponds to 1 minute IRL, thus the game rotates the full 24 hours in 24 minutes of real time. Strangely, GxL lets you to freeze the time at any time without impacting the gameplay, thus defeating the very purpose of even having day and night. The only place where, for some reason, the freezing is not possible is the farm fields.

What kind of sex game would this be without cute girls kissing?

The eroge mostly uses stock RPG Maker assets for graphical and aural representation. With the exception of the main characters, all sprites, background elements and BGM tracks are not customized and come straight from the core Run Time Package. The only original graphic elements are the sprites of the main characters, their portraits and the H-scenes.

The last thing I want to mention, is the fact that the developer is obviously not a native English speaker. Not only the grammar is atrocious (I don't think I have seen a single completely correct sentence in GxL), but the script itself is written in such a way that frequently leaves the reader scratching his head in wonderment.

Anyway, "Girls x Lust" is a game of missed opportunities. I do realise that it was a passion project of a single guy, but Sierra Lee is also just a single girl and take a look at her projects! Even checking the script for grammar errors would have helped a lot. Better yet, if he got a competent writer to go over his script he could have improved the game tenfold. Everything else can be easily forgiven and the graphics are acceptable as they are. The H-scenes are pretty hot even with the 3DCG models and I was honestly astonished that during my whole playthrough I didn't encounter a single bug, which should net the author a special medal. As it is now, "Girls x Lust" is mostly an average game with an unimaginative story and little replay value.

Links of Interest

Download the game on the developer's site
Pizzacat's Patreon
ULMF thread

Final Verdict: 62 %