Others - Completed - Under the Hood [Final] [Shady Corner]

Honestly not even worth playing. Just don't bother. The gameplay is a mess of RNG and fundamentally stupid decisions by the devs, and the "rewards" for playing through it are just not worth it. Points further deducted for the busty character teased at the start and saved for the end having what feels like the worst collection of CGs, all being way too heavily shaded and with the most minimal differences, on top of just, not even getting to visibly fuck

I don't know how, but this Dev managed to mess up a breakout styled game, it was a bit scuffed BEFORE it added the second bar but after that it became one of the most annoying games I've ever played. Half the time you are trying to either control the wrenches movement with the second bar (which is really scuffed) or you're trying to get a wrench that went in-between them out since the yellow bar despite being faster seems to always block your slower one.

Pretty fun little pinball game with some fun mechanics. Good VAs, good art, engaging game. Nothing to mald about while playing. Has controller support as well as keyboard use.

The only thing to really complain about is it takes some time to grind out the nuts you need to unlock the CGs. But then again, that just encourages replaying the game which isn't all that bad.

For the most part, this game has the really high production value I've come to expect from Shady Corner. Everything is well-put-together and professional-looking, the art is high-quality, and the writing is charming.

However, where this game falls apart is simply in the core gameplay. It's bad. I would think that a Breakout clone would be one of the harder things to screw up the gamefeel on, but the entire main gameplay loop here is clunky, frustrating, and slow.

The way you unlock H-scenes (or at least, CGs with a bit of text accompanying them) in Under the Hood is by collecting nuts during levels. They're little bumpers that you have to hit multiple times to fully "screw them in." This would be a perfectly acceptable mechanic—if you had any meaningful control over where your wrench went.

However, you don't, really! This is because of a few key factors:

1. Your wrench (ball) violates the laws of physics: The way a Breakout ball bounces off a surface is meant to be predictable and intuitive. In almost every Breakout clone, your ball follows the law of reflection—the incident angle (the angle it comes in at) is equal, but opposite to the reflected angle (the angle it leaves at) with respect to the normal (a perpendicular line extending from the point of impact). However, in Under the Hood, your wrench frequently bounces back at the same angle it came in at—something which is nearly impossible to predict and immensely frustrating.
2. The speed of your paddle has no impact on the ball's speed: Again, this is a basic and intuitive Breakout clone principle: you move your paddle fast, the ball bounces off fast. However, there is no such mechanic in Under the Hood, leaving the speed of your wrench mostly out of your hands.
3. Stupid double paddles: Later levels give you a second paddle above your primary one, which is slightly smaller and slightly faster. You're clearly meant to use the faster speed of the second paddle to move it out of the way of the first paddle, but this straight-up just doesn't work. You don't have enough space, so if a wrench falls below the second paddle, it'll just bounce between them uncontrollably, probably resulting in you losing a life.

Unfortunately, I'd advise you all to stay away from this one. The frustrating gameplay just isn't worth it in the slightest.