Homosexuals Beware... You're In For a Scare!
FlipWitch: Forbidden Sex Hex
FlipWitch: Forbidden Sex Hex (PC, 2023) by MomoGames is a sad, unfortunate disappointment of a metroidvania. This game has some major flaws which doom it to a terrible bore and unimpressive slog.
The chief issue is a lack of imagination and creativity. The game is, ostensibly, a "TF" or transformation game where transforming is a core mechanic. Gender is also a key part of the game. The game's "genderbending" premise inherently deals with a fluidity of body and mind with a character who seems at ease both as a man and woman. What does the game do with these when it comes to sex?
Absolutely nothing.
The game is a slow procession of hetero sex scenes which are entirely in the male gaze. Human penises are dehumanized and depersonalized, existing almost exclusively from the first person. Women, alternatively, are the only thing ever truly animated in the game with bouncing, bobbing, dancing, and such able to be performed exclusively by them. Nothing about the game is queer or queer leaning, despite being fully entrenched in gender.
Expect nothing from this game and you'll still walk away from it disappointed.
Likewise, this game has a sole focus on breasts. There is, and I can say this as someone whose unlocked every scene, a single scene in which a butt is involved in any form of sex. This isn't a pervert's random nitpick, I believe this is indicative of what the game is about and what it represents. There's nothing seen as aberrant or deviant truly within the game. The most "out there" things are slimes, goblins, and furries, though anything inhuman has sex with women and men have sex with big tittied women only. The game seems completely disinterested in anything beyond simple vanilla sex. There's very little kink. The best designs of the games, the giant sexy women, are fought or saved and then disappear. The one boss you can have sex with shrinks in order to facilitate this. I cannot think of anything less than this, as it's a game whose aesthetic is entirely pixel art! This means that large characters that take up most of the screen, like bosses and some NPCs, get to have more detailed avatars and more intricate designs. These are completely out of reach for sex, however. It doesn't matter how hot you may find those women: You can't fucked them. Not even one. Not even the last boss, who is also a giant evil woman.
Sex in the game is generally a reward for completing quests, spending special secret currency for tiny loops to see women with toys, and upon defeat. Women enemies are generally vaguely nude though not entirely explicit. Men, however, have varied designs from muscled brutes, lanky goblins, stocky demons, chiseled statue men, and your general slimes. Don't expect to see anyone have sex with these, however, without a game over screen. Even the women that the game notes as having distinctive bodily characteristics (aside from big boobs) are a single goblin woman with a long nose but who is otherwise the exact same as every other woman in the game.
The end of the game is so deeply rushed that they don't even ROLL CREDITS when you win! You're plopped back at the start, told by your mentor that you won, and then gain control of your character to boot yourself back to the main menu and watch the credits yourself. If you're a completionist who hungers for metroidvanias, this game feels underdeveloped. The map doesn't mark barriers that require powers to progress, so you need to remember each room individually, and there's no (that I could find) map completion percentage or secrets tracker. There's a small alarm item which tells you where secrets are but it's unlocked partway through the game and is very minimal while, simultaneously, being absolutely critical to 100%ing the game. Nothing in the game feels "good", especially transforming which requires equipping the item, swapping to it on your submenu, charging it up, and then activating it, all so that you can go through a single barrier and be unable to attack and in some cases even jump. There's two different forms and two transformations, each of which have no impact except for gameplay conceits. Indeed, even the game's main focus, the character's flipping between sexes, is mostly there for platforming. NPCs either don't mention you can transform or simply don't know, treating each version of you as someone unique and individual. Controls, at their very worst, are UNRESPONSIVE!! The demon air dash only works when you're either ascending or at the peak of your jump, so it requires precise and simultaneously frustrating timing as there's no cue for when your jump arc has gained just a liiiiittle bit of downward momentum. I can say with confidence that none of the platforming in the game is so dire or unassailable as to require this precision of performance from the player, leaving you gawping as you activate the dash just a moment too late, fall down a room, and then have to platform back up while taking minimal damage just to do it again.
The gameplay is likewise middling. The minute I jumped and walked in the game for the first time, my sole thought was "This game was made in Unity." It doesn't feel quite developed, it isn't snappy, it's slow and floaty with tiny tiny jumps that you use to traverse the whole game. Walking is a chore. Rolling to dodge feels alright and there's actually a fair bit of challenge in some boss fights. However, once you find a strat that works for you and level up, the bosses become trivially easy.
The one thing I can say in the game's favor is that the soundtrack and, to a lesser extent, voice acting are superb. This game has an OST that blows other game's, even those apart from the H sphere, out of the fucking water.
Frankly, however, I think the art in the game is downright ugly. One thing I noticed was frequent mixels, pixel art done in different resolutions so that some pixels are small and others are big. It's very distracting, especially when you can watch them (for example) grow a small pixel ring into a large circle that encompasses the screen. Constant jaggies abound as well, lessening the art each and every instance they happen and making the game look cheap and unrefined.
It's an absolute shame that the game is AS BAD as it is. I know queer people and queer allies who care for games like this and see potential in them, as the only people I know who have the game wishlisted are trans women. The friends I know that have played this said they booted up the game, saw the pixel art's proportions had been either squashed or stretched, and then put the game down once they realized it felt like ass to play. This is a game, unlike many H-games, you can tell your friends about. It is not a game you can recommend them, however, as there's so little to actually enjoy.
FlipWitch: Forbidden Sex Hex feels like a heterosexual void. This can be seen even into the very designs of the main character, who can either be a sexy woman or a bland and unassuming male. Women are all the same person with different heads pasted on and men are stock still jpegs who can only move where a woman touches. No penis is rendered in sincere detail with an inconsistent color and body in each scene, apropos of nothing. Nothing in the game is truly forbidden, with the only motions towards anything queer or kinky as various stops on a sightseeing tour. You can look and wave but you're trapped behind a glass pane before moving on to the next thing, able to look and never touch.
In its Favor: - The OST, including a mixtape remix, is fantastic - I was very surprised to learn the game has unique and fun voice acting! The sex noises are very fake but I enjoyed each NPC saying hello and whatnot Some Flaws: - Gameplay is objectively mid and boring, being only just engaging enough to capture the attention after a rough adjustment period - Women are all the same, dudes are varied but only just - Artwork is simply ugly - None of the characters have personality beyond "I want this thing!" and "Thank you for giving me that thing! Here's sex." - Secrets are unengaging, bosses are difficult until midgame where you become powerful, combat isn't fun - Traversal and movement are completely centered and underdeveloped - Little reward beyond unlocking more and more ugly sex scenes. Villains are all the same with no variation, including the last boss.
Overall, I think the game is a 3.5 out of 10. You can technically play it but I think nobody really should unless they're desperate for a generic metroidvania.