Teo Talks Steamy: Aurelia
The Overview
So I’m gonna start this review series alphabetically and just feel my way out from there. That said, our alphabet starts STRONG with Aurelia. Published by Critical Bliss on steam in 2024 and developed by MirthalGames, Aurelia bills itself as a sort of old school visual novel rpg. And at a glance it leaves a strong impression with that via its remarkable spritework.
Gameplay
As mentioned above, Aurelia plays like an old Visual Novel RPG. The bulk of the gameplay is traveling between various beautifully rendered locations to engage in conversations and tasks with the similarly beautifully rendered characters. As you help out the villagers, the large cast of female characters will often pull you aside to reward you by increasing the game’s maturity rating.
Some of these tasks may involve small minigames that incorporate your characters stats which you increase by leveling up or manipulating with temporary single use consumables. For example there’s a siege defense archery minigame that has you defeating swarms of demons for a crafting material windfall the longer you can keep them at bay. The variety of minigames is enough to be interesting but much of their gameplay can be a bit shallow. The exception to this being the Dungeon Crawl.
Rather early in the adventure you unlock a magical dimension presented as a randomly generated dungeon. You travel between rooms collecting treasure and money and “defeating” the various monster girls that accost you. These dungeon encounters account for a large portion of the games H-scenes.
Unfortunately as the game progresses, you’ll max out stats fairly quickly, and the later half of the experience seems to devolve into simply hunting for the last cutscenes for the gallery.
Story, Tone, and Theme
Aurelia begins with your male main character (whom I affectionately named Brick) inheriting a summer house in the kingdom of Aurelia. Soon after he moves in he finds that his inheritance isn’t quite that empty. A runaway witch has been squatting there, and after a brief accident and misunderstanding our generous hero allows her to stay in the guest bedroom indefinitely. With some mutual benefits. From there the game goes on the be about your character exploring the town, building relationships with his neighbors, and discovering some of the more fantastical elements of the world he finds himself in.
The sexual connections of the game tend to be about the female villagers wanting to thank you for your help then establishing that that’s the kind of relationship you’ll have. That said, if you’re sensitive to cheating or NTR themes, the openness of these relationships isn’t necessarily explicit in the text and some characters refer to the MC with a clear passion. Interestingly the dungeon minigame being a magical dimension, the defeat of the monsters in the game is in-universe presented as sort of altering the code of the realm to change their programming and the immediate situation to be horny. There’s no egregious instance of sexual violence I found in my time with the game.
Overall though the writing and story is charming. There’s an interesting backstory to the world and its characters, the girls mostly feel three dimensional, and the variety of situations, archetypes and quests are excellent.
The Porn
The meat I know you’re here for. The porn….
Is good! Before I go into more detail the porn scenes are mostly all straight couplings, with a small number of threesomes and even one small foursome scene I recall. All of which involved the male hero surrounded by sexy women. So if you’re looking for LGBTQ stories, this one probably won’t scratch that itch.
If that IS what you’re looking for the sex scenes in this game are plentiful, varied, and gorgeous. The smut itself is very grounded in the world, with surprisingly little porn logic dictating the story. You’ll see plenty of light BDSM like bondage and some impact play, and all consensual, but it never got harder than that while I played.
That said, the caliber of the porn can be a bit swingy. Some key sex scenes are tremendously gorgeous animations presented in lushly detailed pixel art. Other sort of interim scenes might present themselves as charming animations with a much simpler less detailed palette. And then many of the dungeon scenes are more akin to slideshows. Very pretty slideshows. A change of still frames shifting between different levels of pleasure and messy sex. Given the sheer variety of scenes, situations, and characters present though you absolutely can’t hold that against MirthalGames.
There’s a LARGE variety of monster girls as well (which Im very weak to), with some pretty hot, cute, and funny writing between them but again they don’t really get out of “big boobs and tentacles” territory. Not necessarily a mark against it but if you want eldritch horrors this isn’t it.
Closing Thoughts
I would call Aurelia a must play for those horny gamers reading this. Its strength in presentation, strong visual style, consistent engaging writing, and depth of gameplay should be the standard for any adult game to set itself to.
