Original Release: Pixel Factory, 2013, PC
A lewd 2D survival horror title with a noteworthy gameplay style, but leaves something to be desired in terms of length and level design
Parasite In City (PC, Pixel Factory, 2013)
Where to Buy: DLSite (free demo available)
Review by: Master-B
The name and design of the heroine recall the Parasite Eve games, but Parasite In City is pretty much a merger of traditional Resident Evil survival horror style with a 2D platformer. It’s interesting because I can’t recall a non-porn game offhand that ever tried to do this over the years; there was that 2D Resident Evil for the Game Boy but that took a whole different approach that was almost RPGlike. The only rough analogue I can think of is minor indie hit Lone Survivor, which was still pretty different from this (and came out in 2012, so just slightly before this). Funny that doing Resident Evil mechanics in 2D seems like such an obvious thing for commercial publishers to try, but nobody really did save this one porno game that came out almost two decades later.
The style actually translates pretty well, and is the strong point of the game. The weakness is one unfortunately common to H games, especially “doujin” ones out of Japan; it seems like the developer just wants to get the product to Minimum Viable Cooming as quickly as possible and pushes it out on a digital download site for $10 when so much more could have been done with it.
The game handily has button prompts and menus in both English and Japanese, but the story is wordless and easy to follow from some minimal on-screen cinematics. Our poor heroine awakens one day to find the city is going to hell outside her window. For some reason going downstairs to get a closer look in only her sleepwear, she is immediately accosted by horny zombies and forced to flee on foot with only a pistol and several clips of ammo stolen from a zombie cop.
The game gets off to a bit of a rough start as it chooses to open with a sewer maze. It’s not overly difficult but it is long and kinda tedious (just go north as much as possible), but gives you a relatively gentle field in which to come to grips with the game’s controls. You have a crotch kick attack that is surprisingly effective on some of the zombies, and when you hold Shift this pulls your pistol and allows you to aim up or down in addition to standing or kneeling (for a crotch shot or to get one of the assorted creepy crawlies). It seems when it comes to sex zombies, shooting them in either the head or the nads is equally effective. You also have a stomp attack, best used when you have the high ground with certain dopey zombies whose attacks can’t reach you. The button selection is rounded out with a reload, which doesn’t complete if you’re hit in the middle of it, and a gratuitous self-pleasure button that doesn’t seem to serve any gameplay purpose.
The strategy boils down to two things, basically: ammo conservation by recognizing when a zombie enemy is uniquely vulnerable to something else, and exploiting terrain to get an advantage on them. For example, the most common zombie type can easily be kicked to death once you get a little technique down. But that’s only if they’re isolated, others can easily cheapshot you while you’re in the middle of the five or six seconds that process takes. You also don’t want to try exploiting a height advantage to stomp them, as their attack can hit you up there; but this same technique works wonderfully on the bigboi zombies that are harder to go toe to toe with.
It’s a good system, though made somewhat academic by how much ammo you get. You start each level with a generous amount of clips and there are numerous more scattered about, so you can almost just shoot every single enemy and still get away with it. H content is in-game if the monsters grab you, in the usual porn platformer manner. Depending on which ones you’re killed by you may also unlock a short full-screen animation for the Gallery mode, and there’s an Omake where you can unleash any monster combination you’ve yet encountered on our poor captured heroine.
Aside from the gameplay, the game’s big strength is the detailed pixel art. Our heroine looks like a more voluptuous Aya Brea with longer hair (more like Aya Breasts hey-ooo) and is very appealing with a wide range of animation, there are only about seven enemy types but they also get a fair range of detailed animation as well.
What really holds it back is the level design. You only get three, and the first is a tedious sewer maze. The second level really picks up with more background detail and a varied collection of enemies and situations to test your grasp of the controls and strategy of the game. And the third is pretty good essentially having a horde of zombies chasing you off and on while you have to deal with oncoming obstacles.
But that’s it, and there’s nothing else to do once you’ve completed all three. That also seemed to be the end of the road for the mysterious Pixel Factory, which had only one prior release (a kids game for iOS of all things) and never surfaced again in the gaming world. Though the game does remain available on what appears to be their official DLSite.
Videos
Investigative journalism that suggests the developer got thrown in jail in South Korea due to anti-porn laws (??) and word of a sequel