Arcticu Kitsu's blog

Heyo! Let’s try touching on something that’s ‘not safe for work’ while somehow keeping things in the ‘safe for work’ region of things. Just some perverted teases while loosely reviewing HaremMate and showing you loads of images. I seemed to have found my new 3D Custom Girl ‘replacement’.

(NSFW Warning: Game itself is R-18, an hentai game, yet it still has a nice posing feature and studio for posing. Article contains suggestive swimwear and poses, yet no ‘loose bits’. View at your own discretion.)

I’m aware that what I’m posting is R-18 related, yet trying to also show you why I’m posting this overly perverted game on my blog. There’s a very good reason. Having checked out Artificial Girl 3, Artificial Academy, and Artificial Academy 2, along with Premium Play Darkness (all awesome in their own manner) I wanted to see what HaremMate had to offer to the table. I was netted in with HM’s advertised features, and then some, along with how it actually played out when I checked it out. The posing feature winning me over in the end.

I’m loving how for a small game it has nice mostly polished features to allow you to pose and customize things. The biggest feature is being able to add more than one character into many scenes, both perverted and casually manner without ecchi. Posing in itself is where the game is actually focused at. Posing, adjusting the camera, and carefully setting up the scene for what could be considered the idol’s photo-shoot, or fashion shoot, as this is themed around idols. The whole posing and setting up a scene is what I enjoyed the most from Busou Shinki’s Diorama Studio, 3D Custom Girl, and PPD’s posing features. The game itself however is still currently (date of posting this) young, bland, and ‘generic’. It needs a strong helping hand and love from both Illusion and the modding community to see it lasts a long time to reach its full potential with the great features it laid down.

I tend to enjoy the games Illusion tends to make due to the freedom the characters have in it. They walk around, interact, and do as they wish which is something I find ‘normal’ games failing to do. Illusions’s games however thend to be extremely sloppy needing severe modding assistance to keep it afloat at times. Maybe pervertedly sloppy. If they wanted to, or if they could, they could easily make a very nice strong game in both a ‘SFW’ and ‘NSFW’ manner at the very same time. Tons of messy and sloppy coding. Even so, HaremMate is quite a nice pleasant game to mess around with seeing as it is now a sloppy mess from an engine transfer to Unity as a ‘tech-demo’ type game.

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– Related Links & Articles:

– Hongfire General & FAQS thread.
(Go here for help and information! Don’t ask me how to fix your game.)

– Hongfire Character Postings.

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– Features:

HaremMate’s purpose is basically to screw digital woman. To basically jump in, screw, screw many (new feature) and then feel satisfied doing so. As the name implies, you can have your harem of either gender to ‘play’ around with,  That’s not really what I want to point out, yet it’s something I have to note before jumping into the other neat features that had me all excited.

If anything, all the features here are considered to be ‘tech demo’ type features as the game has been put onto a new ‘Unity’ engine. Hoping for more fun games to spring out from Illusion.

1.  Visual Novel Experience: Not really a VN, yet it behaves as such. It’s basically something slapped on to give further purpose while testing it out in a tech-demo fashion. You’re basically forced onto each girl in a ‘railed’ manner to screw each, and then to unlock further scenes after appropriately ‘pleasuring’ them after. Play once through rushed, go back to unlock further scenes.
2. Produce & ‘Free-mode’: Both these options allows you to have a opposite gendered harem. They’re similar in ‘Produce’s Free-roam’ and the actual ‘free-roam’. They both allow you to have your typical 1+1 fuckery, up to a 6p orgy fest. Two pairs having the most sex positions with the more people having the least amount of positions. Almost feels gimmicky, or ‘tech-demo-ish’. Jump in and fuck, or jump in and pose.
3. Character Creation: The strongest point out of all the Illusion games is creating characters. At the start, when you find the option, you can customize all sorts of things that you normally would expect in your typical RPG that doesn’t deal with combat stats. Personalities being the plus side here. You can’t cloth them here, that’s done in the profile option after. the character creation has my praises here. Down side being the personality options seen in both Artificial Girl 3 & Artificial Academy games.
4. HaremMate Poser: This is where the biggest chunk of the game is located. The middle option on the bottom of the screen in ‘Produce’ mode allows you to pose your girl in various scenes. Up to 7-8 scenes, or slightly more when you customize each scene with different props and furniture. Granted, a poser feature isn’t new, yet it is done nicely enough that it becomes quite fun and amusing to toy with. Selecting through the numerous poses, facial expressions, scenes, the option to have them placed, and etc.
5. Poser’s Scene – Furniture: It’s actually quite amusing and neat how you can switch between pre-positioned furniture placements. You can only customize your room by even giving it a dungeon, or theme it in a specific manner. You can even comically turn it into a dungeon. Modding this further would add into interesting level of layers of customizability for scenes. It adds a bit of variety into the limited amount of scenes, if lazily. Biggest complaint coming from the low number of scenes to play with, and how it only fits one scene.
6. Character Profile – Profile Cards: The poser program is basically a feature to take profile pictures for your ‘special girl’ while posing them for such shots. Luckily, they made the poser dual-purpose for both card making and to pose your girls. The cards and backgrounds are actually very nicely designed. A nice comical and amusing feature that may also turn your girl into a WIXOSS (Anime) card. You may also add in the back and front of the cards to further design the cards for your girl’s profile or sharable images. The horrible part of this feature is forcing you to printscreen the card into photoshop to share. It’s intended to be a 1-use profile card to be both used to share and be a profile card.
7. HaremMate Studio: Similar to the poser, you can do a lot by creating more in them. You can add more, animate more, and even see your idols dance. You can even create more poses (IK) to add to the girls. The Studio is also pretty straight forward, when you understand it, as to how to do things. Nicely listed, organized, and user friendly. The downside being the stuff created in the Studio doesn’t carry over into the main game. Such a shame.
8. Idol Scouting: This feature allows the game to randomly generate up to 9 girls, even with the ability to grab them from an online setting. Game takes about 1-2 minutes to load up the girls for you to ‘scout out’ in an idol manner. You scout the girl you want in your lovely idol harem to screw you for luck and to pose in the poser. Think fashion shoots scouting.

I however have to note that HaremMate is in serious need of mods when it comes to character creation. What it has currently is solid, it however needs more accessories and clothing mods, even a kemonomimi pack for cat and fox girls. It needs a major mod dump even for a mod-pack to keep it alive long-term, or to use it as how it was intended to.

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– Card Examples:

A few examples of what you can do with the card features, making sure that the card you took is from print-screening into a Photoshop program and onto an image hosting site. Here are my two girls: 1) Eone Vitsu, my cat spirit girl & 2) Letri Gitas, a loose inspired WIXOSS girl of ‘LRIG’ from S2.

There’s bound to be more where that came from. Eone and Letri being the first two when it comes to experimenting and similar.

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– Idol Scouting Stage:

As mentioned, the game has an option to randomly generate nine girls for your choosing. It’s also been mentioned that you can even grab them from online by checking that box, or so I was told, to gather more girls for your idol harem dreams. I’m curious to find out how well this game will handle mods as it’ll be more of a computer-side type of generation.

(Left button: exit  | Middle: Regenerate all | Right: Pick one & regenerate. Box: Online picking, or so told.)

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– Sex Modes – Produce & Free-roam Ramblings:

In this game sex is viewed as a ‘good-luck’ charm. All the idols desire a ‘good luck pounding’ in a form of a lucky charm. Hentai, porn, and R-18 logic right there. Ya, I do hope you’re shaking your head as it’s quite silly.

The sex positions and actions are actually quite nice. Obvious flaws at times, yet nice when done right. There are times when animations don’t match up due to height issues, or just clip and fail to show. The facial expressions during the various positions tends to be mostly, not fully, respectable. The ‘cumming’ face for the girls needs fixing. I however did have some nice alternate expressions during those moments so not all that worried. Pounding a girl until she reaches ‘ahegao’ (tongue out) moment for some ‘good luck’ fortune, all thanks to the VN (visual novel) logic of the game.

Illusion’s AG3, AA, AA2, and even PPD all have decent sex modes and models. The biggest features being ‘harem’ mode for 2-6 person actions, something lacking in the previous titles, though it still comically suffers in this version as well. Yuri is however frustratingly removed in this, as is yaoi for those fan-girls enjoying guy-on-guy action. No yuri, or yaoi, what so ever. Illusion is never good at recycling content and material, something they should look into doing more often.

Japan also tends to confuse the hell out of me when it comes to vagina censoring. Dicks can fly with wings on a unicorn’s back, uncensored……, yet the whole vagina flashing (or making a canoe) lands you close to being murdered as a demon. This game once again has to rely on community produced decensors for an irony of sex censors in games. Silly. Is this why teens and young adults are hiding behind sofas in fear of nudity in the media this generation? Blue blood treatment in our society.

I don’t mind showing you some H scenes, though carefully hidden to make them more ‘teaseful’ and ecchi-ish.

Alright, that’s enough of that……I don’t want to come off as a creepy perverted bastard. Teases are fine for me. Gotta keep things somehow appropriate with the struggling level of teasefulness………Back to the poser and all its glorious features……

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– Modding Potentials & Desires/Wishlist:

This game shows great potential to the amount of detailed mods one can add onto it. It however is still youthful in its age, though it may show its true strength once given the full love and respect from both the Japanese & Hongfire community.

Similar to AG3, AA, PPD, and AA2, this game has the potential in being complimented well with clothing, hair, accessories, and map mods. All these mods can easily add onto the uniqueness, longevity, the creativeness, and life-cycle to it. I’m hoping people indeed do compliment this game nicely. The added bonus now being the option of modding furniture into the mix to spice up scenes.

– Mod Wishlist:

I shall cross these out as they become available to me. I’m hoping to see them in some way, shape, or form in the game. Please help me

• Busou Shinki Content – Doesn’t matter if it’s prop related or an actual idol girl, furniture, or whatever. I’ll grab anything. I don’t mind having a Busou Shinki themed furniture with Shinkis displayed on it. Renge, Fubuki, Kohiru, and etc. It can even be a scene. Anything!
• Fox Ears & Tail | Cat Ears & Tail – Desperately need a fox ear and tail set to spawn up Varakitsu to pose around with in the game. This game has shitty default cat ears and tail so needing a properly made ones from a creative user. I shall be keeping an eye out!
• Snow & Festive scenes – Having a snow map for Vara would be most appropriate, as with anything Busou Shinki & festive themed; Christmas, Halloween, Autumn, and etc.
• A Proper beach Scene – Holy hell, the one this game has is shit. You’re not even supposed to wander over there. I’m looking forward to what people make or import into this game.
• Sky-Related Content – Anything that adds lovely props and scenery into the sky would be awesome. City maps for example, or Star Wars’s Cloud City. Anything.

Now to look forward to see what modders shall make.

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– Poser Images:

Now onto the main side of why I enjoy HaremMate as much as I do. The poser and the images I happily took with it.

And that’s a wrap! More images to be shared at a later date. Now onto my final thoughts….

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– Concluding Thoughts:

Quite a great game, for a R-18 type. A nice poser, studio, card maker, character creation, and studio. It all has a nice foundation as a game themed around ‘harem’ idol by fucking for luck, scouting others, posing them, and making cards. The girls and characters are also using the design from AA2 while using a new ‘Unity’ engine to do this.

I had my loads of fun, and I can hype and defend this greatly. I’m however disappointed with the variety in scenes and clothing, the tacked on VN, and the limited vibe it has. It desperately needs a DLC add-on, severely strong mod support, and just lots of love to keep it going, and/or to see it reach its intended high stage. Great potential, just suffering at the moment that it needs to age like wine with modding assistance. Even so, the foundation it has laid down is sturdy enough to allow it to last for quite a long while.

I always did enjoy what people did with Busou SHinki’s Diorama Studio, 3DCG, PPD, and etc. Seeing people’s Busou Shinki scenes, seeing all those Minecraft and Anime in 3DCG, Jormungand’s Koko in PPD, and etc. People’s creativity always a plus here. Posing programs may not be new, yet it is nice nicely enough in HaremMate that it’s highly addicting. Studio also complimenting the Poser with new animation types to be crafted up.

I’m saddened the kemomomimi accessories, or any accessories for clothing, is highly limited and generic. It’s boring, ugly, and just…..quite plain. I mean, they’re great, just when it comes to variety it is highly disappointing. Mods need to add in fluffy, or more detailed, mod-packs all around to keep it coming back strongly. I really want to see both Hongfire and the Japanese community modding this as strongly as with AG3 and AA+AA2. It has that potential.

This shall be my next 3DCG with the way things are going.

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– Pros:

• Harem mode – Allowing for 2-6P action in the sex scenes. Interesting at certain levels, just gets old and gimmicky quickly.
• Profile Card Function – This has to be the best side function I seen by giving your character a unique profile. A step-up from AA2 allowing you to customize your girls’ cards, even creating WIXOSS type cards.
• Poser – Being able to pose the girls around in a Diorama Studio, 3DCG, and PPD manner is quite awesome. It’s done so well that it has become a great amusing feature, the strength of the game. It’s what actually holds the game up 80%. The amount of poses, clothing swapping, teleporting, and scene setting.
• Studio – Even if I haven’t messed around fully, I did see and hear great things about it. Adding new animations, new poses, even dancing idol girls. It’s all neat.
• Character Customization – It’s great, nicely detailed and everything. Gives you nice access to everything you need to design a character. Personality seems to be the weakest option in this game as it doesn’t behave as it does in AG3, AA, & AA2.
• Idol Scouting Stage – Interesting how you can scout out nine girls at a time to add into your ‘idol’ group. You can ‘scout’ out any girls of interest using the accessories provided in vanilla, and amusingly the same when mods add more customization to clothing and accessories.

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– Cons:

• Censorship – Censored dicks and vaginas seems quite stupid when it comes to creating R-18 content. What’s the point if you’re just going to censor it right off the bat while worshipping uncensored during the Kanamara Matursi. To me that’s Japan’s way of creating a blue blooded race that can’t handle nudity with a populace that hides behind sofas and couches in fear. On the bright side, Japanese girls happily and teasefully wear fundoshi during this event. Expose their kitty and they’ll be slain on the spot, I bet. Exposed buttocks and eyes being both perfectly fine.
• Feature Lock – The VN locks up all the features forcing you to go through the VN once to then go back and complete it on your whim. It’s nice as a tutorial I guess, just not so fully. Quite silly when you look at it fully.
• HaremMode – As it is this game’s greatest strength, it is also its greatest weakness. A double-edged sword. The majority of the features lies in 1-3P with the rest failing to contain any extra poses. It’s just……Gimmicky and ‘tech-demo-ish’.
• Visual Novel Story – It’s more of a lazy add-on attached to a linear rail. You’re supposed to fuck each idol because they believe the producer’s dick shall give them fortune. You’re then supposed to go back to unlock more scenes after by ‘ahegao’ing’ the girls both indoors and outdoors.
• Limited Accessories – It’s just a handful of clothing, accessories, and animal parts that add a slightly uniqueness to the girls made. Severely needs mods to further widen the gap of uniqueness.
• Limited Scenes – Roughly 7-9 scenes to wander in with an idol theme to each. Sure, you can customize them to add onto them, just not that much at times. You can amusingly attach a dungeon to your rooms. Mods once again need to compliment the variety and quality to keep things interesting and fresh for long-term fun.
• Poser Camera Options – You’re not really meant to have flying type characters. Taking pictures in the sky tends to screw things up horribly. The camera doesn’t even allow for free reign to accomplish things.
• Scenes Boundaries – Maps were created in the manner that you’re supposed to play within the sandbox, not the benches and play-structures around them. This is quite frustrating when you’re trying to pull off ‘clever’ shots using the map’s themes to your advantage. The beach with the pool is one such example.
• No Yuri, or Yaoi – Illusion hopelessly struggling with sex acts when it comes to yuri and yaoi moments. I prefer yuri myself, yet those seeking yaoi shall be equally depressed. It’s just a Idol Haremed themed game.
• Height, Glitches, & Clipping – It’s quite polished, just not so much so when it comes to height and clipping issues. Animations tend to not match up when it come to various customized assets to the character.
• Room & Furniture customization – Just as it is a nice new feature, it is also a silly gimmick only used for ‘your room’. If it was stretched out to other scenes you could add a layer of customization to it. Luckily there’s the Studio for that, just that it tends to complicate things in a sloppy manner. Wish this furniture mode was used in all the scenes.
• Studio & Animations – It’s a shame dancing, poses, and such made or seen in there can’t carry over into the main game. There needs to be a way to send it all back into the main game to see the girls dance, posing them, and etc. It feels like two separate games at this point with how the Studio eventually becomes the main place to be.

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Thanks for viewing! Hopefully you enjoyed the images taken using the game’s poser feature. I’m willing to show more for those interested.

See you next time, and Happy Holidays!
(Merry Christmas and New Year!)