Hentai Platformer Review: Future Fragments

368

Written by Flamecaster, edited by Otaku Apologist

“Future Fragments” is hentai action platformer in development by a core team of three people: HentaiWriter, TriangulatePixels, and FrougeDev. The game has been in development since early 2015 and is supported by patrons participating in the game’s Patreon campaign, pulling in just over $11K per month as of time of writing. The game supports Windows operating systems.

We’re taking a look at the current build of Future Fragments.

STORY

The “Future Fragments'” story starts with a lengthy, fully illustrated introductory cutscene. To keep the synopsis simple for the sake of this preview, the story begins in 1000 AD, where the ruler of Spell Kingdom is working to protect the kingdom from enemies. He spent years training gifted individuals into mages who would protect the people. Among these individuals were two talented women: Talia and Faye. The two became the kingdom’s most powerful magicians, while the kingdom itself was drifting towards its downfall.

The king searched for a solution that would save the realm. He came upon a powerful weapon fragmented and scattered, far, far in the future. He sends Talia and Faye into the future to retrieve these fragments. Whichever girl returns with the most fragments will be appointed the king’s right hand. With the promise of power, their future, and their own personal agendas on the line, the girls begin their journey 2,000 years into the future.

While the main game will presumably start shortly after Talia and Faye land in the future, this demo takes place in the middle of the game, in what will be the third level of the full release. As such, some scenes and events assume you have some prior knowledge of the story. My greatest grievance with the story in the demo is that the ratio of gameplay to story is heavily skewed towards the latter. The player isn’t left with much breathing room between cutscenes, info dump, and lore.

GAMEPLAY

Future Fragments is a side-scrolling 2D action game. In the demo, you play as Talia fighting through an industrial level. Her task is to disable six milk chambers in the far corners of the facility. Upon starting the game, you’re greeted with an optional tutorial, which forces you to watch a primer on the controls even if you choose to skip it. Beyond the tutorial rooms, you’re thrown into a small hub room that branches out into four different paths, including a locked door you’re trying to open. From here, the demo allows you to venture out and explore the maze-like level.

The core game mechanics in “Future Fragments” are straightforward: Talia can run, jump, crouch, and cast magical projectiles. Additionally, Talia can also make use of more specialized elemental magic. A fiery dash and a freezing projectile are available in the demo. These attacks run off of a special, regenerating meter and can’t be spammed recklessly. In addition to these mechanics, there are various pieces of equipment strewn throughout the level. Up to three of these items can be equipped at a single time, each of them useful in varying degrees.

That’s the simplest breakdown of “Future Fragments'” basic mechanics and what the objective of the demo is. Describing anything beyond that in any coherent, succinct manner is akin to playing Jenga on a rowboat in a hurricane.

When I was able to play the demo beneath the stream of cutscenes, I was exploring the several different paths available. From what I leamed of my experience and based on what HentaiWriter himself has said, the level design in “Future Fragments” is geared towards non-linearity, encouraging experimentation and replayability. Even the demo encourages repeat playthroughs with a large number of scenes being altered depending on your actions.

While the incentives to pursue replays are nice, it feels like it comes at the cost of decent level design. There were a few points in the level where it felt less like a field to test the player’s skill and navigation abilities, and more like a museum filled with various exhibits and sights. It feels like the demo is more interested in getting you to the next story bit, than doing anything meaningful with the mechanics. Even the equippable items are sometimes lying around haphazardly in the level, no real thought behind their placement or even their utility. Some of these items are downright useless.

GRAPHICS

The art design and character design in “Future Fragments” are handled with a great degree of polish. Everything from the lighting to the design of the backgrounds in every area. The detailed animations of the heroine and the enemies is meticulous. The use of light and shadow creates a particularly eerie and tense atmosphere. While the variety of locations may leave something to be desired for, the attention to the detail is amazing.

MUSIC

The Future Fragments musical score is reminiscent of most modern “Mega Man” games with its electronic and techno beats. All the tracks are dynamic, upbeat, and a little bit frantic when the action kicks in. When things slow down and the more plot-centric moments of “Future Fragments” rear their head, the music appropriately slows down its pace, becoming ambient enough to relax the player’s nerves.

SOUND EFFECTS AND VOICE ACTING (SFX)

Future Fragments has English female voice acting. Some of the performances in the data terminals and cutscenes are more amateurish than others, but the main issue with the voice acting goes hand-in-hand with the game’s writing: it overstays its welcome. The novelty of having every single element of the story fully voiced means that listening to every scene pulls you away from the game for minutes at a time. You can disable the voices, but that doesn’t disable the sheer amount of scenes.

HENTAI

The erotic content comes in three forms. First, there are optional hentai scenes you can access while playing. Second, when you are in a weakened state and an enemy jumps on you. Third, the game over, which leads to enemy-specific game over sex scenes. Of the three, the game over H-scenes are easily the highlights, displaying higher quality artwork and showcasing perhaps the best of the actress’ acting talents.

The sex sequences are all enemy-specific, to the point that some are of the “go out your way to trigger them” variety. Fortunately, even the demo has a gallery to watch all the enemy-specific animations once the boss has been defeated. This gallery will be expanded even further in the full game to revisit not only every type of h-scene but also the various data terminals and cutscenes through the game.

If there’s one complaint I have with the erotic content in the demo, it’s that the writing can pull you out of the scene. Even in the midst of a scene, the quirkier, drawn-out aspects of the writing still persist. In some instances it works in context, when the situations are absurd. Other times it makes the scenes drag on.

CONCLUDING WORDS

Future Fragments has great potential. The main mechanics work great, and the presentation is solid. Clearly, the game is a passion project. That said, I can’t shake the feeling it’s also a self-absorbed project too deeply invested in its own world, sacrificing the player’s time to tell a story. I have no doubts that “Future Fragments” will be an adequate experience once it finally finishes, but the promise of a highly replayable title influenced by the player’s actions in seemingly endless ways, is a tall order for any developer, let alone an aspiring one. WOW! Hentai-onahole.moe!