Sexual Puzzle (PC) review "A game that fails to live up to both parts of its name"

I opened my HG mail the other day, and someone left me a horrible, demeaning, disgusting piece of work to review. I saw the title and knew right away it was going to be one of those games. I was appalled to think anyone would create such a thing, and that others would potentially enjoy it. Honestly, I'm not one to go on a crusade to ban almost anything, but I think there's one kind of game that should cease to exist for the good of humanity.

I speak, of course, of sliding puzzle games...

Let's say I were to rank the different puzzler subgengenres. Puzzle adventures would sit at the top of this hill, with many arcade-style puzzlers (Tetris and Dr. Mario) and Picross products taking up the next few tiers. But aaaaaaaaaallllll the way at the bottom of the hill, somewhere in a drainage ditch where all the runoff, castaway garbage and dead vegetation ends up, lies the sliding puzzle genre, wallowing in the filthy water that pools there. It awaits any unfortunate critics tasked with reviewing them, clamps its jaws shut on their legs and drags them to a horrible, dirty, drowning death.

One of such creature is the delisted anti-delight Sexual Puzzle, a collection of sliding puzzles with pictures depicting scantily clad anime girls, some of whom sport ridiculously oversized bosoms. The objective is pretty simple: complete a sliding puzzle and you get to gawk at the picture it "hides."



I put that last word in quotations because the solved picture is already sitting on the right side of the screen for you, as if to mock you for foolishly wasting time on a series of sliding puzzles. This feature renders the effort of suffering through such a tedious game almost meaningless. Thankfully, completing a challenge takes you to further puzzles with different girls in a variety of poses, so there's at least some incentive to keep playing.

Above all, the pictures on offer are actually well drawn, so even if you're not planning on having a tug-o-war with the ol' cyclops over this one, at least you can admire the art. However, wonderful visuals only carry a game so far, and it's a shame to see them wasted on such a dull, laborious, unimaginative genre as this one. I mean, there are countless casual genres the developer could've choosen to house a partially nude gallery, but they selected the most boring of all. Even a standard matching game, where you flip over cards to match symbols, would've been a better choice than this.

Let's address one more elephant in the room, shall we? This is called Sexual Puzzle, and yet it doesn't offer any actual nudity. Personally, I'm not big on erotic games (though I do dabble in that realm occasionally), but were I in the market for a puzzler that calls itself "sexual," I would want the title in question to go for broke. It's really not that hard to hit up Google Image or tons of other online galleries to see all the sexy people and lewd anime chicks you could ever want. If you're going to force your audience to suffer through sliders, you may has well provide them with rewards that aren't practically all over the internet.



Seriously, though, have you seen what other developers have brought to the erotic table? You have a platfromer where monsters attempt to entice the hero to screwing them (thereby killing him in the process), a sci-fi hack 'n slash where you bone space elves, a side scroller starring a robot who watches people knock boots, an adventure game with cosmic horror elements that also features a gory interspecies orgy, not to mention countless dating sims and RPGs with sexual content... The list goes on and on. In terms of "sexual" games, Sexual Puzzle is as PG-13 as they come.

I can't tell you to avoid buying Sexual Puzzle because it's no longer on the market. Instead, if by some horrific chance it ends up in your library, just ignore it. Even if you're into games of this nature, you can easily find mountains of ballsier and bustier titles that utilize genres superior to the dreaded sliding genre.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (January 25, 2020) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.