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[b]Hacking With Benefits[/b] is a kawaii-esque puzzle reveal style game where you get to see a picture of a naked or partially naked girl as your reward! I like that it’s not a standard ecchi/hentai puzzle, and it has an interesting aspect of how to open up the pictures. Basically hearts come across the screen in some sort of manner, and you have to move your mouse over them at specific points on the screen. The picture gradually shows up from the top to the bottom as you make more progress. You have a meter that slowly decreases if you miss any hearts. At certain points your meter refills and you have to fill another progress bar.
While it’s fun, trying to complete this to 100% is something I won’t even attempt. The difficulty of getting lucky types of patterns that are easier to corral, along with the speed at which things happen and having to have exact spacing makes it a nightmare for anyone on medications that slow your reaction time, or people with catch up saccades, other things that slow one down mentally, etc. There is no way to have any save in between as you progress, so it is seemingly get everything right in one go without a single mistake, or just pass each level and move on. This gives me little incentive to want to get 100% on any pictures. Needs margin for error and more balancing fixes to make the experience more challenging or easier for some.
I don’t feel it is worth going for in my case, since I am on several meds and herbals in conjunction that make things a bit slower already, and it’s too precise and fast for my brain to keep up with. I did complete each puzzle though. It’s not too terribly hard to just finish each level, though certain patterns are harder to get correct in a sequence than others. If it were something I could progress through slowly, carefully and accurately, or something that was super repetitive, then I could get used to what’s coming. The random nature and more-or-less luck of what you end up getting can help or hinder your chances for a “pervect” round.
♪ Anyway - that’s my breakdown on how the game goes. So without further blabbing, here’s some cons and pros. ♪
[h1]Pros[/h1]
The style and presentation of the game is nice! It’s simplistic in nature, but feels clean and the backgrounds and art give off a nice vibe and feel that all works together in proper order.
I like the music, as it isn’t overly distracting. There are cute little voice sound effects that help you stay motivated to work on the puzzle as you’re rolling along between sub-section completion and so forth.
The way the puzzle works is innovative for me, and I had a pretty good time trying to finish all the levels. Its overall unique nature make it a refreshing game to try out and play.
The art is again very vibrant, and has a light and natural sort of style to it. The artwork of the ladies are done in a nice kind of style that fits the setting, and the depictions are more normalized and natural than some that have a more barbie doll or comic book-like perfection thing going. I like both, but this might be a plus to some, so I figure it is worth noting about the artwork.
[h1]Cons[/h1]
The randomness of the levels made it very difficult to try to go for 100% completions on any of the pictures. There were segments you have to be precisely in the right place with little time, and the speed can make it difficult to try and finish mistake-free. It’d take me some time to get all levels to 100%, so I didn’t even bother trying as crazy random and more reflex-based it seems to be.
There are not a lot of levels. I think I revealed about ten pictures total, or somewhere thereabouts. It would be nice to see a little more for the overall price. It’s not too terribly expensive, but some more options or more art would feel more fulfilling to me overall.
On some of the moving bar parts in the puzzle, if a heart goes in the correct section while the bar is moving and you move your mouse cursor over the heart slightly after the heart reaches the line where the rectangle starts, it occasionally misses it. And if there are other hearts you’d get following it in a triplet, it’d miss all of them, instead of getting all, which is what should happen since I am technically over the rectangle. Tested this a few times, and it happened each time I was slightly late with the hearts still within the appropriate spot.
More tweaking of the levels would be nice to make 100% possible for different types of people. Maybe make a speed adjustment, or easy/hard difficulty change or something to that effect. Might motivate people like myself to put a few extra hours into trying to go for all the achievements it offers.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Overall, the game is fun if you’re just wanting to try something different, and you like lewd pictures (not insanely lewd, but a couple of beyond panties shots) of posing women, then you might enjoy this one a little more, since there is some extra challenge involved. Levels didn’t usually take me more than an extra try if that, aside from a couple of times, and as mentioned above, I am on a few meds that make reactions slower than my normal ones would be, so probably not hard to pass each for most people. Getting that 100% for each and every photo is a different story!
I liked the refreshing approach it took towards going beyond the basic slider puzzle or something comparable out there, as it takes a little more effort overall to get your reward. Tweaking some settings or difficulty options would be nice for those who see no chance or don’t have the patience, or simply don’t have the reflexes to precisely stick mouse cursor in given spot every x amount of seconds, so hopefully at a later time there can be some added features or more levels. Otherwise, I’d say it’s easily worth your time to at least try out! You can figure out for yourself fairly quickly if you’re remotely interested in the game style, so for those that fit the above, I’d say give this one a go!
