Occupational Hazards: Episode 1

[h1]At a Glance[/h1] [table] [tr] [td](Adult) Content[/td] [td]Yes, (FxF, FxM) sexual content.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Censorship[/td] [td]No. Woot! Woot![/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Hours of Gameplay[/td] [td]One or two hours.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Modding Support?[/td] [td]No.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Patch Available?[/td] [td]No, not neccesary.[/td] [/tr] [/table] [b]Occupational Hazards: Episode 1[/b] is a lewd visual novel about a fox lady's trip through outer space. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] You travel from planet to planet, each with one or more player choices. Each planet can only be visited once, and player choices will have little no influence on the ending. However, to see every event multiple playthroughs are required. There's also a cheat button, which will solve any stage faster than you can [i]money shot.[/i] [h1]Story[/h1] You're an anthropomorphic lady-wolf, and your trade is space ships. She is tasked with delivering a fancy-smancy, top-dollar spacecraft to her home galaxy, Umbrea. She's got twenty days to complete her mission, but she knows that it'll only take three. That means she has three seventeen days to ♥♥♥♥ around and explore the galaxy. What she does before delivering the goods is [i]up to you.[/i] If you're interested in reading my playthrough, be sure to check out the extended review (listed below). [h1]Visuals[/h1] I was not fond of the user-interface. I thought that it look amateurish, much like a cheap flash game of many years back. The artwork is alright, it didn't feel professional but it was competent. The CGs are not in the correct aspect aspect ratio to be fullscreened, and are marred by a poor choice of user-interface. Every piece has a snippet of user-interface that credits the artist, which strikes me as [b]really unprofessional.[/b] That's why there's credit rolls and signatures. [b]- The Goods -[/b] I thought the artwork was generally well drawn, though I found the inconsistent choice of artist to be distracting. There are a handful of artists behind this title, each with their own artistic footprints. Expect female nudity and male-on-female sexual intercourse. [h1]Verdict[/h1] I don't recommend this title, not unless you [i]really[/i] like furries and can forgive [i]less-than-stellar[/i] gameplay (see what I did there?) I wanted to give this game a "thumbs down", but it's not [i]that[/i] bad. I'd wait for sale, and lower your expectations. [url=https://wombattrap.com/review/occupational-hazards-episode-1/]To read the full review, click here (NSFW).[/url] [b]- Words for the Devs -[/b] It's been a while since I've done [i]this[/i] section. I think that CGs should be fullscreenable and be [i]without[/i] ugly user-interfaces. I don't want to see any part of the game, or any ugly border when viewing CGs. In my opinion, this game should not have been divided into "Episodes", considering the distinct lack of the content. While the art department was strong, the writing department (I thought) was lack luster. I wasn't attached to any characters, and players should not be expected to learn about the world via exposition (or the "Compendium") that isn't in-game. I'm sure I can rant about other things which bothered me, but I've been wanting search [i]greener pastures[/i] for some time today. [h1]Support the Wombat[/h1] If you enjoy my reviews, please follow my Curator page. Trust me, [b]you want to.[/b] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36272124-Wombat-Trap/ To stay up to date on announcements and [i]propaganda,[/i] click here! https://steamcommunity.com/groups/wombattrap

Some rather talented artists contributed to this, and while I confess to having gone in with low expectations, I found route-hunting for the last few scenes in the gallery to be surprisingly interesting. Hitting the requirements to fill out the last entries in the gallery was unintuitive, but that's not a complaint; I didn't expect this game to make me think. The game shows off attention to detail and an interesting amount of path dependency. Path dependency is under served in games, and the rest of this review is something of an essay about it. Common modes of path dependency in gameplay are single-pathing (linear), branch-pathing (set storylines), and wholly disconnected blobs of gameplay (open world). Titles where different paths lead to many specific variations seem rare to me. A path with many specific variations is one where the player can roam freely through the gameplay pieces, but the order in which they do so matters. The narrative design of this game is a bit tentacular... as is the theme. Tentacles are involved in the game's path-complexity. The content is short, but highly replayable due to the author's attention to detail. The brevity of the game helps make the complex pathing interesting, since trying more variations doesn't take a prohibitive amount of time. I'm impressed by the novelty of this enough to suggest that I think this game could suggest a gameplay category of visual novels, where the story breaks apart into many player-directed storylets whose order of events is chosen by the player, then sews together a conclusion at the end based on the storylet ordering and the specific choices made within them. I know there are already other titles which attempt that, and I suspect there are enough that a pedant might argue it into a seeming commonplace, but I don't believe I've seen many titles that help define the category. In this case, the protagonist also has a good in-universe reason why she can approach events in diverse order. She has little idea what state the region is in, but rather she's flying a ship through a sector of space under deadline when a traffic blockade gives her free time in front of that deadline. That's no spoiler; that's the start of the game. This gives her a reason to go sight-seeing on the clock, but she has little more than an in-system reference guide with which to form her reasons to go anywhere in particular. The star of the story starts out not in a high-stress position where urgent story events have to happen, but rather she's in an unexpectedly low-stress position where the urgent story event just got blocked with no recourse. Now she's reviewing her options somewhere she didn't really intend to be. That low-stress narrative construct is interesting, and it may have some under-explored potential in being true to life for people in ways that urgent narratives usually aren't. Similar concepts may help with developing excuses for complex path-dependency in games. Many of the specific variations possible in a game will risk seeming forced/unnatural if the tension level in the narrative is high enough that making one decision or another seems like an intense and difficult decision, so low-tension pathing keeps it emotionally credible that the events could happen in many orders. Something else, too... That structure of having to make something out of many low-urgency decisions because the high-urgency decisions are totally blocked, I think people get there in other situations. This game expresses that structure in both its gameplay and its narrative. I found it bite-sized and replayable enough to invite thoughts about its structure, and it reminded me of things that happen well outside of the usual blast radius for a pornographic title. Ah, of course, when I talk about true to life potential, I'm not talking about the setting... The setting is entirely about being a backdrop for furry porn scenarios. I mean Occupational Hazards did some things that were interesting here which could also work well with other characters in other settings starring in material for other audiences, too.

The game is very short and has a couple different ways you can interact with the encounters on the planets. I was expecting a lot more interactions then what was provided, but it shows signs of potential. The artwork and collaboration between a good handful of artist was my personal favorite part of the game, but sadly for now there isn't much more. The game ultimately doesn't have a lot to offer for now, but again the games potential and artwork keep me interested in it. If the game interests you, I would wishlist/follow the game and wait for more content or a sale to make it worth your your money. When more of the game comes out I'm sure I'll come back to this and change it accordingly.

uh...I love Ferretta's artwork but there is no RPG element in this, I played just a few minutes to try it out and definitely would not recommend, I dunno why the RPG tag was put in there.

Not even 10minutes long (if you take your time). As 'generally good' as the visuals are... This is a joke, in term of length. You don't even get anything new or different than the 'free' version available on Newground.

In 13 mins the game had been completed twice. Even at $3 it could hardly be called a game.

It's a fun enough short game that was released for free previously. I'd highly recommend buying to support the dev as they're doing great work on the sequel.

I encountered pretty much everything in 27 minutes and that's trying over and over again to make sure I got everything. The entire game can be "beat" in 5 minutes. I say that Trials in Tainted Space is better and it's free. This game should have been held back until there was actual content, bad ends, and... really, anything.

{\___/} ( • v • ) / >< \

Furries UwU Exploration >w> Self-Entertainment OwO