Hello again Adult Gamers. Let’s kick things off by saying things in this family have way, way more than fifty shades. Not just Grey, there’ll be plenty of penguins in a blender for those that like the grit. Might be a pancake in there somewhere too.
I don’t know yet…
Download The DeLuca Family for PC
Download The DeLuca Family Android Version
At any rate, all jokes aside I have to admit I didn’t know whether to actually try this game out the first time I saw it posted. I’ve seen The Godfather, I skipped the second – don’t kill me, I know, I know… there are many who consider it untouchable. I also skipped the third, if that saves my bacon at all.
Carrying on before I get burnt for it, I was and would say I still am very glad I checked it out the first time.
Out of several contenders, this is definitely one of the best story-driven games I have played of this nature. With a few small caveats. Namely, your token hero. Well, for starters, he’s not really much of one.
Oh yes, you can do jobs and you will have to, you do get stats and can see them grow. Implementation is a little weak right now.
Certain items of equipment actively counter your gains in some areas while boosting not very much in the bargain in another. That’s to be expected as the game is still very much in development, but it is one of a few frustrating points.
There is also the fact the hint system is tied to a log that I swear to god I didn’t even see the tabs could change for, about three fourths into the game.
That’s partly on me. However, the game has a free mode, and a story mode. Most of it can be put down to free quite frankly, which you spend most of that trying not to suck so badly.
The problem there is one that I kind of get as you’re a new fish in the mob family, but you’re heavily implied to a mysterious import… and god damn if they drag out the question of why.
You will be very quickly thrown to the sharks. And I can see the dev deciding to make you choose a path that is darker than you intended from the first; by having something involving your blood heritage which is highly questionable, become a twist of one knife too many.
That said, it would be cheap, it would be a gotcha, and it might also be the only way your token hero can actually turn the family on it’s head to rule.
That whole paragraph was speculation.
My theory. I don’t presume to know what all the programmers intend.
Quite frankly while some of the banter is incredibly endearing, much of it will leave you wondering exactly how “x” character feels. Now, when you deepen the relationships, which you are supposed to do then it will be a bit more clear. Thing is, still in development hurts that. A lot.
None of the females you can try to woo, and there are at least two in this version – perhaps three depending on perception – that are a truly terrible idea from a survival standpoint, including very possibly the female head of the family.
Your “Mother” It’s explained in the story, and it’s a mob thing, so it’s not actually incest. We think.
Honestly, each of the characters has their own issues that you have to play the usual multiple choice/rubix cube to figure out.
Luna is particularly endearing to me. Yes, to those of you who play the game, I understand exactly what that says about me. Gracie is the “princess by day.”
Technically in the mob, this is the royal family, so you’ve got a queen, an heir apparent, and three princess’ though one by marriage to the heir. They have their own issues, and you can be the shoulder who may as well be the fox left to guard the chicken coop, as it were.
The art in the game is very good.
I would hazard that they go in story too much into making it so that your token character will never measure up to Luna. She is of course the daughter who’s “allowed” to be an assassin. Sibling rivalry’s a bit of a bitch when one of them likes to play with sharp things.
She’s a tsundere character. Honestly I usually hate them. A general thing, as I don’t do guessing games, and I tend to be very literal. However, this one is mostly done well. Mostly.
The competitive part marks her out as a battle couple option. I can say it’s my theory based on how hard she begins to fall for Token Hero (without admitting it, because gods above forbid) that in the end of her story-line, if you do get to choose to go against the family, she’d be right at your back riding the crazy train… or help you take the reins, if the heir and Mommy Snow Queen somehow bite it.
In the story, there is a good reason for me to think that she’d choose you over all. But I won’t spoil. There are a couple lines in particular that had me wondering, and that’s the mark of a good hook.
It is also the problem with a good story doled out in bits and bites over paetron. If no one bites to buy it, no one gets to read the end. The hook is meant to catch attention in writing. After that, the plot and character development are meant to keep you engaged.
Which it can’t do if the main character who is the audience doorway to this story in the world that was so pain-stakingly created, doesn’t ever get any fleshing out. It’s hinted that his parent is abusive. The other he doesn’t know. That’s part of the main quest for him, but it’s basically a side mission compared to how much they give about it.
I do know that they’re doing it with intent, and it’s almost well enough done. It just runs a bit too long. Unless they want a story about the size of war & peace. In which case, maybe Luna could use it to kill someone by ‘accident’. Actually by the time they work in full sex with her, I’ll probably be quite dead from pure anticipation.
Yes, that is also a very good thing, but if it’s lef too long, edging becomes a pain.
That’s basically what the drip feeding is, it’s just edging. Trying to hold off into a certain level of feeling good. A certain amount of want to keep going. I get it, I really do.
It’s not easy to sit down and code a game. To get a particularly anal piece of scrap metal that won’t like it if you get even one letter or number or asterisk wrong, to do anything functional. I have actually tried to muck about with RPG Maker, and let’s just say it didn’t go well.
For all in statements, I do love what they’re trying to build with this game. I expect when it’s done, you’ll have several meaningful paths that can differ wildly based on what I’ve seen so far.
Each girl in game has their own distinct personality, and their own issues. There is a hint system and a quest log, but for Gracie I ran into a problem where I couldn’t figure out if I’d gone too far in continuing the story mode against free play mode, to actually complete the event it was trying to share how I could trigger.
I think if it were me, I’d flesh out the girl’s stories first. Isabel has only three events. One of them comes so late in the main story that you’ll probably forget she exists trying to work around the more present Luna and Gracie. Cordia
(which may have been meant to be Cordelia, I don’t know but it’s what I saw in game) as the matron of the family has no events. However, she does get one scene in the main line that implies she will eventually be pursuable. Why Devs seem to think we want to pursue a forty-nine year old woman against her nineteen and eighteen year old daughters respectively, I don’t know.
No, that’s not ageist. The main character is only perhaps early to mid twenty’s as far as I can tell.
You don’t get an age for him, but if he was thirty or older there are a lot of people that’d find it creepy, so it’s best to assume he’s around the daughters’ ages.
That said, “Mom” does not look forty-nine. She could easily enough pass for thirty-three. She’s very definitely a milf. It’s just that she is the snow queen, and if Token Hero was looking to actually make kids with someone
It’s directly stated that any family he builds will be compensated if he gets buggered after a set point in the game. The idea that pregnancy is/will be possible in future is there.
The problem is that over eight chapters, there is not much you directly control. You don’t really affect much of an outcome.
Technically you are looked down on even while being held to a special standard. You can only gain the second rank as yet at this stage of development, and at every opportunity Luna and even Ms. “I Feel Pretty” get the chance to look like bad-asses.
You’re not allowed to fight, even though there are jobs that test your combat skill. There is a stat called attack, and they don’t frigging let you attack. I really hate that. I get the whole yeah females thing. That is not the proper way to empower anyone. It does a disservice to it in fact.
I don’t mind if a girl has to save my ass at the end, if I get a fair shot to make the attempt to do it my damned self.
Yes, you can argue Luna’s a hardened assassin and the Token doesn’t even want to be in this life. He goes there for his own, pretty much forced reasons.
However, he is learning and that is the point, to be a mob man. He’S watched people maim or kill, goes into fights in jobs (you don’t see anything but success or fail, which also happens way to frequently by the way) but he never has the option to ask for better training.
To show that he’s invested in really protecting himself.
Besides the tried and tired hidden cam versus audio logs bit. Yes, it’s a sex game, and yes we play them to see sexy bits. You know that, we know that. I wish people would stop using the term pervert so much. You’re using it wrong. Look it up. Actually that is my problem with the Japanese name for this kind of anime.
Considering how much of it there is online and otherwise, nothing pornographic should be considered perverted any longer. It existed on cave walls for crying out loud. It’s a personal issue I have; I’ll go sit in the corner now like a good little Wolfe, and think about what I’ve done…
I digress. The game over all is well done.
Even very well done. To the point it’s legitimately in my top ten games on the site. The story is outright packed with potential for whom the Token’s parent really is and how that will play into the grander scheme.
How much of it really is a scheme against several set into play, and whether or not the indentured servant will choose to stay that way or have come up even from before the start with his own to work out in the end.
Hell, I can honestly say that even with the ice queen personality of a cardboard box, the matron has some serious potential. If things can heat her up. Well, his things… if you catch my drift.
Since I snowed the issue, and I’m sorry for the flurry of impassioned soap box flakery, I do reccommend the game. Highly. It has probably one of the greatest sheer potentials I’ve seen in any game on the site. It’s just, really, not done yet.
As long as you’re aware of that going in, well maybe you’ll get out before they pull you back in to see how well ‘Not-So-Hero-Yet’ can swim with the fishes. Otherwise you might just get permanently canned.
