So I tried this thing called Mysterious Ways, right. It's one of those point and click visual novels but with sex stuff. The whole setup is about this guy Anon who watches the same woman every day on his commute. Creepy already, I know. But then one day she actually looks back and everything goes sideways. The game splits into two paths after that, exploration or encounter, and I went with encounter because honestly I wasn't there for puzzle solving.

The art style is... look, it's deliberately rough around the edges. Not polished at all. But somehow that works for the whole obsessive, grimy vibe they're going for. The animations during the sex scenes are basic but functional. There's this one moment with a sex toy that caught me off guard, not gonna lie. The way the power shifts between them during the vaginal sex scene, it's uncomfortable but also hot? I don't know how to explain it. The game wants you to feel weird about being turned on.

The writing tries really hard to be psychological and deep. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it's just pretentious. There's occult symbolism everywhere and I still don't know what half of it means. The BDSM dynamics feel authentic though, not like someone who just watched fifty shades and called it a day. But man, the point and click parts are tedious. You click around looking for clues and half the time nothing happens. I spent way too long stuck on one screen because I missed a tiny interactable object. Who designs this stuff.

The sound design is actually decent, ambient noises that make you feel like you're in some weird forest. But then the music cuts out randomly and it's just silence. Bug or feature? Who knows. The whole thing feels unfinished, which I guess it is since it's a teaser. The explicit content is there but it's not as frequent as you'd expect. When it hits though, it hits different. That power imbalance stuff lingers in your head after you close the browser. Not sure if that's a good thing.