TD's Adult Game Spotlight

The second game I have the pleasure to highlight on this blog is a bit of a wild card. A game that, from bottom up, distinguishes itself from its peers through an iterative narrative structure, unique visuals, and an overall bold presentation that quite frankly makes it a tough sell.

I’ll sure as fuck try though, because I adore this game, and I believe more people should give it a chance. 

That game is Pervert Action Timelapse (PAT), an apt name that not only proudly extols its premise, but puts it in a lineage of games to be admired.

On the Subject of Professional Admiration

And I do mean that earnestly. Finishing development on a single game is praise-worthy, a feat that is extremely rare especially in the current world of serialized, patreon-funded visual novel slop. 

PAT is not only the fourth entry in the Pervert action series, but it’s not even BBBen’s only ongoing project. Which is what I want to touch on before I get into an overview of the game in question, because BBBen is an adult game developer’s developer. A pervert crafting worlds, blending western and eastern adult game sensibilities, and putting a unique spin on gameplay abstractions and story beats that are warmly familiar. His body of work isn’t of someone chasing trends or trying to carve out a niche for himself in an overcrowded space, but of someone in it for the love of the game.

Someone who enjoys adult games, wants to make adult games, and does make adult games.

I don’t know the guy, though. Perhaps I’m projecting, but I don’t think so.

BBBen is cool.

On the Subject of Continuity 

Despite Pervert Action Timelapse being the fourth in a series, you don’t really need to play the others. I encourage you to, because they are uniquely enjoyable and especially interesting if you’re not familiar with the adult interactive fiction side of porn game world, but Pervert Action is a spiritual designation not a narrative one. There are nods, and even cameos, but you can very much start with the focus of this review.

On the Subject of Time

Okay, let’s get into this properly. Beyond vague, generalized praise. To start with, I’ll put what makes it a tough sell at the forefront:

Pervert Action Timelapse is a sandbox game, made with visual novel maker, whose central premise is retreading the same 21 days over and over in a perpetual time loop, with each go around unlocking more characters, features, and clues to what the hell is going on. 

So, breaking it down, the sandbox being a potential negative needs no explanation. It is a quality you either enjoy (like me), hate, or at best tolerate. It is the visual novel maker thing you may be unfamiliar with. To put it simply, it’s a niche option, and I can only think of a few games that use it. All of them are slow and clunky at best, bug prone at worst. And for a game who insists that you replay it many many many times, you’ll feel those loading times.

With that said, those are just minor quibbles in the face of what makes Pervert Action Timelapse a unique gem amongst adult games. You see…

…Dun, dun, dun! Pervert Action Timelapse is a harem game. 

Okay, okay… that’s not supporting my case, huh? I meant to say PAT is a deconstruction of a harem game. Ugh, please forgive the term. What I mean is it takes the inherent, inexplicable quality of beautiful women flocking around an at best run-of-the-mill Joe, something we all accept through suspension of disbelief, and puts it under a microscope. PAT is a game about, to the player character’s own disbelief, how that could ever come to be.

So, Shuji is just that. He’s a guy, living in a crummy apartment, not particularly successful and not doing a job he enjoys. Besides idly navel gazing on his commute over existential shortcomings, he has a few simple pleasures, like innocently flirting with his married (literal) landlady.

–and then the story gets kicked off.

Shuji awakens and… there’s a famous model. There’s his landlady. There’s a creepy mute girl with a camera. Not only are they all intimately concerned about his health, but they are also equally surprised that they’re not the only woman in his life. He’s surprised too. How did he swing that? He has no fucking clue. Partial spoilers ahead.

It turns out, in between the inciting incident and Shuji waking up in the hospital bed, he wasn’t quite himself. He was an out of character asshole, and he has NO idea what possessed him figuratively or maybe even literally.

So, that’s the crux of the game. You manage a cast of jilted lovers, taking them on dates, and unlocking flashbacks that shine a light on how they were drawn to Shuji in the first place. This doesn’t clear much up on the mysterious circumstances that he’s in, or the eyeball monster stalking him, but its a start. Unlock one girl’s ending, a fourth girl gets added to the mix. Unlock four girls ending, there’s a fifth.

Each play through changes the world of PAT in a small way: Shuji has feelings of deja vu, there’s alterations in the opening sequence, new dialogue is offered… and at some point, there’s a very conspicuous narrator where there previously wasn’t voicing his anxieties.

All the while, you can (optionally) choose to send your girlfriends on dates with your friendly douche, effectively pimping them out and further confounding the expectations of a prototypical harem game.

The iterative story telling is just so interesting, and that is the novelty and genius of Pervert Action Timelapse in my opinion. It’s a high concept scenario that unravels backwards, brimming with personality, and filled with some gooooood smut.

On the Subject of Smut

At the most base (and important) level, PAT ticks a lot of my boxes. It features sharing, voyeurism, prostitution… aw, shucks. There sure are a lot of similarities to why I like Photo Hunt, isn’t there? But let us keep going:

• You have the twisted, self-loathing, self-stylized “Mistress-of-the-harem” model. Comes with a one part masochistic and two parts exhibitionist streak .
• There’s the lonely, voracious older woman w/ cuck husband whose open to taking all comers.
• You have a voyeuristic school girl who films everything – sometimes even unbeknownst to you. I particularly like how this becomes a game mechanic, as you can ask to playback scenes and watch them with her. This creates an interesting design space where you can view old content in a new light, while adding a sexy scene on top a sexy scene.
• Then there’s the virgin gyaru type, complete with thick southern accent. This proved a very specific cross combination that I did not know I needed.
• Lastly, there’s your bitch of a former boss, the newest girl and currently lacking in development. I have a feeling she might become one of my favorites, though.

So, that’s the primary cast, and each…

• Have solo scenes and on demand content.
• Have multiple threesome scenes with every combination of the harem.
• Have optional NTR scenes (phone messages, video clips, and spying), plus MMF sharing content.

I’ve illustrated it that way because there really is what feels like a gamut of scenes, contingent on juggling your relationships states across the girls. You’ll have runs where you’ll work on two of ’em and see where it goes and what unlocks. Then you’ll have runs where you’ll focus on pimping out a specific girl or two to unlock that line of content. Even after 7+ playthroughs, I haven’t quite seen everything PAT has to offer. Fear not, though, as the game does take some strides to make this easier for the player, but I’ll get into that later.

Over all, it’s a pretty kinky game, with stuff like verbal degradation, body writing, double penetration, toying content, lezdom… yeeeeeah.

Good stuff.

The icing on the cake is the voice acting. People usually cringe at putting voice acting in an adult game, but I’m a believer. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, boy it works. There are some lines in the game that just take it over the top.

For my money, Emi is my stand out favorite. Her character is awesome, seamlessly switching from bratty to submissive and sowing chaos amongst the cast. She’s got the some of the best voice acted lines and any group scene with her included is instantly improved.

On the Subject of Sandboxes

I’ve already done the “sandboxes are contentious” spiel in my inaugural review , so I’ll just talk about what I feel is effective and what is less effective.

The sandbox in PAT isn’t too complicated. You have your apartment in which you spend time with the game’s heroines, the train station from which you collect your flashbacks, and a shopping center.

The shopping center has a few items that you can buy, but besides the sex shop, the other stores are under cooked. We’re talking one or two items each. There are some secrets you can find hidden around about town, and some of the flavor building selections do a great job of establishing the fictional multinational setting of PAT. It is not needed, but I appreciate the quality of care. Besides that, wandering around the shopping area will trigger various sexy phone messages.

The game’s economy is pretty simple. You have three core attributes (hand, mouth, and eye), a limited amount of money, and an even more limited amount of time.

• You primarily earn cash passively each morning or by allowing your girlfriends to go on dates with your friend.
• Yoy spend time on going on dates, collecting flashbacks, and selectively training an attribute.
• Cash is used on dates, to buy items to unlock scenes, or to raise your stats with expensing time.
• Your core attributes increase the efficacy of the date action.

These are the ingredients that go into the game’s primary objective: raising the girls’ love stat, collecting flashbacks, and making sure their jealousy doesn’t get too high.

On your initial play through(s), you’ll feel the effect of the 21 day limit. You can only unlock one ending at a time, but things get easier as you progress This is because after unlocking a girl’s ending, getting her affection up in subsequent play through is extremely fast. This means you can start focusing on threesome combinations as early as your second playthrough. On top of that, the game offers a helpful option to cut down on the grind. There’s an advanced start that begins you on Day 7 (skipping all the fluff), puts the girls you’ve previously completed at their “end game” state, and basically sets you up to run the aforementioned gamut and spend the rest of the game collecting scenes.

I wouldn’t say it’s the most engaging game play loop, but it gets the job done, delivering the sexy scenes to the reader’s brains while facilitating the game’s time loop conceit.

On the Subject of Art

Pervert Action Timelapse, as you have undoubtedly realized by now, has a unique look. No surprise there when everything about PAT has that quality. From the engine it uses, to its wonderfully topsy-turvy scenario and presentation, and to -of course- the art. There is simply no other game that I can think of, outside BBBen’s own work, that remotely resembles it. It has a vibrant, deliberately anime-like veneer that maaaaaaay take some time to get used to, but works heavily in PAT’s favor. When you close your eyes, and think of the name, you’ll instantly recall its characters and backdrops.

Seriously, it just has a warm quality to it, like watching a morning cartoon. I love it. Whats more, its got some pretty good animations, and employs some cool overlay effects that sell the voyeuristic elements extremely well.

In Conclusion

Truly, I am enamored with the scenario and unique delivery of PAT, just as I admire the creative spirit behind it. With a lot of hope, and a little luck, I aspire to still be making adult games 10 years down the road just like BBBen is.

PAT is a game unlike any other, and if you end up liking it, please throw some support its author’s way. He releases a new update every month and he clearly puts the money back into his work paying voice actresses to say smutty things.