Unity - Alice in Cradle [v0.25f] [Hinayua]

As of v0.25f, I think this game has the potential to become one of the best H platformers along with Holy Knight Ricca. In summary, this is a (currently 4 hours long) metroidvania which follows a mage girl called Noelle. The story, characters and music are phenomenal and I'm excited to see how these progress further into development. There are two main downsides currently: The H content is very limited with only 2 "real" scenes, and the development of the game is still in its early stages despite starting a few years ago. Here are my thoughts on some facets of the game:

Gameplay:

There were some complaints about the main character feeling unresponsive in earlier versions of the game. Thankfully, this is not the case in the latest version with a controller and the base character movement almost feels as polished as a game like Hollow Knight.

Unlike that game, however, Noelle is a mage who really struggles with melee combat. Your basic melee is like slapping an enemy with wet noodles. Therefore, you must rely on your spells to keep distance and exploit the enemies' attack patterns. The spells right now are limited but each of them satisfy a different niche.

Also the game has a dodge mechanic but this is primarily used in the plentiful parkour and puzzle sections of the game. Your main means of defense in combat will instead be simply moving around and jumping. Speaking of the puzzles, I found all of them interesting as they may sometimes require you to use your spells in way that you would have not thought off earlier. The rewards for these are also great as they give new abilities to Noelle in addition to simple upgrades like increasing HP.

H Content:
If you were to give me this game without any context (before I played it), I would assume that this is just a normal and cute video game. This highlights the seriousness of the developers and their focus on creating a game with porn elements rather than porn with gameplay elements. As a result, there are very limited porn elements in the game so far. Regardless, here is a summary of the different types of scenarios I encountered:

- Brothel (1 animated scene):
Noelle's sister is an alchemist who needs sexual fluids for her work. You can help her out at work and there are two paths for each scene (only one for now) depending on the materials used to create an aroma. If you succeed in creating the aroma, Noelle becomes really horny and assertive. Conversely, Noelle feels afraid of the process and tries to get it done as soon as possible. In both cases, the scenarios are consensual.

- In Battle (? animated CGs)
When fighting against the ink coloured monsters, they will violate Noelle if she takes too much damage. These animated CGs are really weird with the animation times but I found them enjoyable regardless.

- Boss Scenes (1 animated scene)
There is only 1 boss scene if you lose to the worm when saving Noelle's friend. This is a proper animated scene where both of them get pumped with aphrodisiacs and violated with tentacles. Noelle enjoys the process yet you still feel bad for her as she laments being powerless.

Some thoughts:
I played the game on normal difficulty and it was generally smooth sailing. The only times I lost were on purpose or when encountering an enemy for the first time. Still, I can see why those inexperienced with platformers might struggle. The characters and the story also start off with a lot of novelty and personality and it will be interesting to see how the devs develop these over time. While Noelle might be a magical girl, there are hints of a deeper lore in the story like her abilities being the result of advanced technologies, an ancient structure that blocks the night sky high above the clouds, and how all monsters originated from the sea.

The biggest red flag, I have about this game are the incredibly long wait times between versions. I originally played the game 2 years ago but I have seen little progress since then (brothel scene introduced, main hub with moving NPCs created, and game length increased by maybe 10%). Based on the scope of the lore, I expect that the game is far away from being finished and I'm concerned about how long we would need to wait for before the release of version 1.0. Nonetheless, I am still hopeful as the Dev's Ci-en seems to be more active lately. As a programmer, I understand that creating all the mechanics of the game can take a seriously long time. Now I hope that all of these mechanics are complete so the devs can focus on properly creating the scenarios in their work.

In conclusion, I would recommend giving the current version a try since it is not too long. The genres of the game might be daunting to some but fellow degenerates might find them exciting. If you do enjoy the game, be warned that you are going to be spending a long time before more content is released.

Current Verdict: 4.5/5
Estimated Release Date: Hopefully before Half life 3

Good game, wonderfull art, i like it. I hope it get more updadates, and pls if you like to help the communit, remove the censor from the game. I centanly will buy the game. The prologe is amazing, does someone know where to find the game to buy?

The developer is focusing on the wrong things. Cooking, alchemy, other crafting, combat challenges, f*cking puzzles? Why should I be interested in that if there's poor H content, bruh.
Thanks but if I want to play a classic platformer there are TONS of games that are better and worthy of a playthrough.

I first played this game on 0.24g, so I can't say anything about its earlier versions.

This game is really good. The combat mechanics, art style, UI, and soundtrack are all distinct and set it apart from other similar games. It was made with Unity, but you wouldn't even know it apart from when you boot the game.

With that being said, there are some things that need to be addressed when considering playing the game.

1. With unique combat mechanics come steep learning curve. It is not your run-off-the-mill combat platformer side-scroller game where all you need is swing your stick to kill your enemies. You are playing as s spell caster, so you are going to cast the spell, dang it. You are also going to change your keybindings or at least change your approach for its combat aspect as its keybindings are sub-optimal. A lot of people before me did, I did, and you will too
2. Steep learning curve. Wait, didn't I already say it before? I'd fucking say it again. This game starts off with a few tutorials, but there are already numerous mechanics to learn. After that, you have to review what you've learned after dying from mindlessly challenging a random floating diamond with three smaller diamonds inside. Yes, I made that mistake.
3. This game is hard on Normal, but too easy on Casual. You aren't going to enjoy this game for fapping purpose on Normal since you'd die fast and all you are gonna see is the repetitive dying raped scenes. But, you won't enjoy the challenge this game has on Casual until you get to 20 danger levels because you are super tanky on that difficulty. So, you have to choose.
4. Precise platforming on some areas. I'm not saying that the entire game is on Celeste level, but some puzzles do. That means you only have so much attempts on Normal before going back to nearby benches.

In terms of bugs, the most common issues I encountered were visual glitches with lava and overlapping functions. You may also come across these issues, or you may not. Hopefully, you won't.

If you enjoy challenges, are familiar with the short jump and high jump in platforming games, and don't mind a game that can be quite difficult in some areas, then you might want to give this game a try.

Regardless, I have faith in this game. It has everything it needs to be a great game.

This game has a lot of potential. the art is good, theme is good, and the core gameplay is good. It is unfortunately plagued by some very serious issues that make it lose two stars.

First, the h scenes, the characters regularly talk about the monster will violate your character if you lose but most of the monsters don't really lewd you as they beat the shit out of you. the only monster whose animation shows copulation is the wolf enemy who is also burning you at the same time.

Second is the platforming. for a first act in a platformer, some of the jumps are brutally precise. which becomes very frustrating after failing a jump in the third or fourth room because the dev decided to make a death ceiling that grabs you and sucks you in if you're just a few pixels off.

Lastly the combat. the combat is actually pretty fun. however, to cast a spell you have to choose your spell every time which not only breaks the flow of combat but if you rush too quickly you end up not selecting your spell and having to pull up the spell selection and wait for it to actually catch this time. You should make spell selection and spell cast two different buttons so if you're just using the same spell, you can just streamline the process.

One of the most interesting side-scrollers in this genre. Great mechanics, controller support, and the level of polish of it all is really nice. Some textures, text, etc, could use a resolution bump, but it doesn't take away from the experience too much.

0.24

dogshit game with unresponsive dodging skill while being a jump simulator where that dodge skill is needed to use precisely in the air... else you get fked by disgusting worms... which can plant an egg in you... and guess what... you can remove the egg "outside combat" or in a save point "bench"... but it's "work in progress" so you cannot remove it LOL. what a bad game design decision. shows how bad this game is and how it probably never will be a good game with a dev like that. while you have egg in you have 40% max mana and some debuff. and sometimes you are locked out of opening an area with a spell if you dont have enough max mana.

like why would anyone implement a debuff feature where you don't implement the cure feature...

although the egg after a very long time hatches so you will have normal mana again... so you can be tired of seeing worm H-scene for 1h and which are not even erotic.

plus H-scenes are dogshit in general so there is literally nothing to look forward in this game. you can relatively early have sex with a guy (since your older sis is a prostitute and she teaches you the ropes...) but the dick is censored, and animation is laughable. it 100% looks like someone is moving the heroines as marionette puppets. really. without exaggeration. despite what the in-game text says, your sister hands touch everything around randomly except your heroine's pussy LOL. it's laughably bad. i swear it would have looked better without any animation even though animation is clearly superior to still pictures.

maybe later it will have some decent monster sex but imo this game is total garbage. bad gameplay and bad animation for H-scenes so i dont think it deserves more than 1/5 even if the art looks decent enough. like easily 5/5 if we forget about censored genitals.

altogether it's really frustrating to play this jump simulator where you get fked by trash worms, so even if it was responsive and even if the H-scenes animation were on point, it still would never be a 5/5 game just from how dogshit boring the game is. with a long story-explanation of many boring elements which add nothing to gameplay yet it doesn't explain basic stuff (like the melee magic move is explained wrongly, you can probably lock yourself out of the game if in the beginning you go to the right and not following the quest of going back, and things like that, which should be the first things corrected and not a long list of useless infos dumped onto you like alchemy and cooking). it's just very bad game design all around.

Pretty bad H content. The girl is cute, but the animations pretty much just have a basic loop and on top of that, throw a lot of flashing static or semi-animated images at you, cycling them really fast hoping to make it exciting? It doesn't replace actual quality animations such as those found in Night of Revenge, just to name one. A similar technique can be used better however, such as seen in the second Sol Rui game or Luna in the Lewd Lost city. Plus the monsters are so far just shadows, which makes the intercourse all the more unsatisfying.

[Since this is Early Access, so some of my con might be improved in the future]
Pro
- Nice Artstyle, Nice CG, Nice Animation
- Doesnt need to got lose and fucked by everyone everytime to unlock the CG, except by worm and normal monster
- You come for both experience and playthrough? yeps you can play this, SFW mode also available, which surprisingly exist for NSFW game (Just dont die when your parent are around, rape after 0 HP still there tho)

Con
- Tedious Platforming, especially if you inexperienced, tight time attack puzzle, tight timing for dashing midair, and confusing control may lead this, but if not a massive problem if you had played game with similarly "confusing" control
- Like previous point, Control, but since it's configurable, the problem quite mitigated, in my case, i rarely using dodge/guard in battle because they hardly serve purpose (except miasma) and easier to just dodge, tank (actually just my skill issue here), or simply cast spell. And they should make a way to choose White Arrow faster
-Gallery to all kind of monsters would be nice, sadly at this time review was wrote, the only gallery available are Losing on First Rescue (NSFW content), and post "King of the Forest" (No NSFW here), so make another save before fighting bosses since there is no pre-fight gallery yet
--
Is it hard by design? Not really since there is Casual mode that make fighting things easier, as long you not suck your entire mana in 5 seconds and let yourself got raeped by monsters

The artstyle is beautiful, the gameplay is engaging and the world and the premise seem so interesting, that i'm eagerly waiting for this game to fully release just like i would do with any other big metroidvania.

Honestly don't have much more to add to that than any other reviewer before me. I just felt like leaving a review since some guy with skill issues decided to give this beautiful game a 1/5.

What the fuck are the people in these reviews smoking? The gameplay is tedious, especially the aiming of different projectiles, half of the time you straight up run out of mana making you vulnerable, melee attacks hit as hard as wet farts on a cloudy day, the platforming is filled with traps which one-shot you making you restart the last checkpoint, the only H-scene I saw after playing the demo was the first boss, even with the map you are lost almost always wondering where exactly you are supposed to go.

The devs need to increase the melee damage, add better map waypoints, add more H-scenes and maybe I will rate this a 4, but until them please skip this game.

The game looks very good, with nice pixel art and also the full images and portraits. Thing is you are basically a weak healer, so it's expected that fighting is a nightmare for you, what can push some people away.
Once you get used to the controls it's fine to fight the earlier bosses. Because for some reasons there aren't enemies around: everything is a boss fight.
Later on you'll fight different enemies, covering the place with gas making you faint or messing up your already clunky controls. Some will be very fast so you barely will be able to hit them before they hit you interrupting your casting making you lose even more MP.
MP in the game is critical and it's the thing that most scarces. You can heal your HP sitting on a bench but MP is just recovered during boss fights breaking the plants or hitting enemies and using expensive gummies. There is some mechanic that I completely despise due to the extremely importance of MP: embarrassed (leak). When you are affected by this, no clue if permanent after you get it, once you are above certain MP level, you'll start to lose it, usually leaving you with half of your MP. MP is needed to run and dodge but behold, to traverse most areas you need to run/dodge or use magic. Not to mention the bug walls that suck your HP and MP if you get too close to them.
There was this time that I was stuck in a place that I couldn't reach a platform because I couldn't run or dodge midair, and the other side had a boss fight. I managed to beat it but it's astonishing the design made to make you lose. Boss arenas getting thorns or lava while simply hitting enemies with your staff pushes you away into whatever that kills you. To make it worse, you can't heal while getting damage. That's is why I'm trying to use a potion ffs... I still don't know exactly how many enemies a boss fight has, because there are times I kill 3 or 5 and they keep spawning.
The increase in difficulty each time you beat a boss is fine, which also increases the quality of the loot.
The loot is random using slot machine mechanics. You could always save somewhere and try again till you get what you want. You can get extra slots by killing bosses, giving you more of the item, gold and other stuff.
And there is quite enough content for a version 0.21 even if it seems to be released slowly but hopefully be finished eventually. It'd be a shame if it was abandoned.
Overall, a nice game with potential but big flaws that rather than make it challenging they make it frustrating. There is no need to make every game like this a dark souls-like game especially when the controls aren't very responsive like hitting midair, or the terrible way to cast spells, holding down X and using your movement arrows to select the spell you want to cast. Too much time wasted on both things when you need several direct hits to kill anything.

Really pleasant atmosphere with some great graphics and music. Gameplay is a bit clunky. One word I'd use to describe this title is: potential.
There's not a whole lot of hentai, so I'm hoping that will be expanded upon in further updates. But even if there ends up being no hentai, I'd probably still want to buy this game from Steam, because it's really cool.

What a fantastic game. The menus, the music, the art, everything is incredible cute and very well designed. It hurts my heart that this is a game where you will see Noel get hurt, she is just too adorable. Unbelievable such a well made game is a hgame. That being said, I feel the movement and air control not very well responsive. The combat also did not impress me, specially with the many blinking and fancy effects covering the screen getting in your way to properly see what is going on. Great game, not perfect but sure is a near 10 for this genre, being made in ever-clunky unity and so low budget indie.

Pros:
Gorgous renders and animations
Great music
Lots of monsters and no humans

Cons:
If you aren't extremely good at platformers this game is impossible to beat. I spent 2 hours trying to beat the worm section and before deciding to give up. The jump is extremely floaty. I legitimately have to question how anyone managed to get past that section. I've legitimately had an easier time fighting bosses in fromsoft games than i did making that jump. I know i'm medicore at best at platforming but porn games aren't really meant to be challenging.

Honestly outside of the overly diffcult platforming this is a solid 4/5 experience it's just the platforming was so annoying that I removed two stars.

Edit: platforming is way easier in the newest version (0.20s) which you can get for free on the offcial page that jump i spent 3 and a half hours on i got on my first shot after running the newest version. Massive difference there.

were the devs brain dead when they designed this broken and malformed movement system.... because everything its supposed to do when you press keys... not only fails to do what I believe it should... but having a fucking dodge for a dash button... not only fails to help any way in any form... but also hinders everything in maintaining any momentum... to put it lightly... this is the first platform game... I cant play because of the Absolut atrocious movement system and having maps that force using of the absolutely biffed system... I honestly felt rage due to how much this movement system failed in its task... I was interested in this game... but it truly failed due to movement mechanics

This actually exceeded my expectation. Not a fan of lolis but hey, she's 100 years old since she's in the magic realm
- really enjoyed the fighting system. Might be too hard for some people, but there's the training chapter that should help
- Erotic content is very pleasing as well. I don't like vore, but the vore is skippable (kinda. Just git gud). The way she got progressively weaker towards ero attacks is also very nice, but maybe too subtle.
- Story is cute.
Really looking forward to future update

As of v0.20a Alice in Cradle has the potential to be one of the best H-Games ever created. Why is that the case? The quality of the content is immense. This ranges from art style, which is a 10, to gameplay, which is also a 10. As for the story, currently it is translated and has a lot of world building with a few likable characters. The only thing I will say it lacks as of the moment is the platforming aspect of the game as it can be frustrating.

I was incredibly excited about this game, as the music is great, art is cute, and the combat is flashy. Sadly, the more you play, the worse it gets. The platforming in this game is absolutely dreadful, having some of the most floaty and least responsive movement tech imaginable.

This games biggest flaw is how hard it's trying to be an intense game that you have to genuinely play. Were it made well, I'd be all for it, but it's just not. The music sets the atmosphere incredibly, really making me want to play as intended, but the spell casting system is as basic as it is gorgeous. Attacks are constantly rendered useless by the environment, have essentially no tracking to circumvent the former mentioned issue, and don't have independent keys for quickly casting. In a word, it's clunky.

Dodging is some of the worst movement I've seen in quite some time, especially from something as visually polished as this. You can block by holding shift, and dodge by pressing shift while moving. That being said, you can't activate your block and then dodge. The biggest issue with this is that you also air dodge the same way, and air block the same way. Blocking deletes all moment, meaning you plummet like a rock. You also go almost no distance when dodging, but the game immediately gives you several platforming sections where you MUST clear a gap that's almost wider than the distance you can dodge. If you jump at all, you die. If you miss, you lose time. Then, you're given more of the same terrible platforming and have to fight floaty controls and terrible movement tech.

The demo really hyped me up for this, but gameplay is bad enough to kill off any 'excitement' I've gained. As for the H content, it's REALLY a mixed bag of quality. So far, it seems most of what you get isn't much more than "touching", the only penetrative thing I've seen so far being the pits you fall into/get sucked into. Other enemies so far either shoot out little eggs that go in you and make you fall over, or just grab you and squeeze. The lewd content so far has been really lackluster, which is just a huge let down. Top that off with horrid controls and this game just falls flat.

Again, the music is gorgeous, the graphics are flashy and captivating, and the art is adorable! The h content, however, is incredibly lackluster so far, and the movement feels absolutely wretched. I'm not trying to control a train, but it sure does feel like it.

The game is extraordinarily well-crafted. Props to the developer for the high quality design and game mechanics. My only recommendation is that the platforming sections are made less tedious somehow, it can get in the way of enjoying an otherwise great experience.