Developer: Male Doll
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Platform: Switch (2), PS4, PS5
Tested on: Switch 2
Love Chemistry: Sibella’s Formula – Review
These days, EastAsiaSoft is perhaps best known for cheap and simple puzzle games, although there was a time when the vast majority of their releases were a bit more… spicy. They haven’t completely given up on lewd games, as anyone familiar with the Pretty Girls series can attest, but we’ve come a long way since Giant Wishes and Neko Secret Room. This is why we were kind of surprised to see Love Chemistry: Sibella’s Formula in the publisher’s lineup. The key art for this platformer wasn’t exactly subtle. Is EastAsiaSoft returning to the days of old or is there something else going on here?
Story
Interestingly enough, what you’re getting with Love Chemistry is a toned-down, safe-for-work console version of a much lewder PC game, Lustful Chemistry. The premise of Love Chemistry is that our protagonist, the buxom scientist Sibella, has developed a formula that will make everyone fall in love with her. She sets out to try out this chemical concoction on unwilling subjects. That’s about the gist of what you’re getting here. We’re quite certain that the original story is a lot more fleshed out, but this censored remake didn’t intrigue us enough to seek out what the hell is going on. No effort was put into providing any context about why our heroine finds herself facing off against different enemies and bosses, and frankly, since the game doesn’t consider this important enough, why should we care?
Graphics
To Love Chemistry’s credit, the pixel art that the game uses is quite good, with distinct enemy designs and cute animations. That said, even if you’re not aware that there is a more fleshed-out version of the same game, it’s clear that a lot of content was cut here. Upon defeating certain enemies, you’re given the chance to interact with them, and this is where we assume naughtiness is supposed to happen. In Love Chemistry, Sibella simply hugs or kisses the enemies in question. These simple animations can be viewed from the gallery, again hinting at more to be seen, without outright telling you “hey, there’s a version of the game where you can see what really happens, wink wink”. In terms of performance, the simplicity of the visuals means that the game isn’t too demanding and it runs as well as it should.
Sound
Apart from moans (no, really) whenever Sibella gets hit, there is no voice acting present in Love Chemistry. The game’s music is energetic but does get quite repetitive real fast, even keeping the game’s short runtime in mind. In-game sound effects are serviceable, but nothing to write home about.
Gameplay
Strip away the lewd stuff and what you’re left with is a fast-paced and responsive platformer. It’s not a remarkable game by any means, but then again, this is the kind of game that is trying to appeal to players by showing off Sibella’s *ahem* assets through its key art. As far as the platforming gameplay goes, the controls are easy enough to get into but the overall experience is dragged down by poor balancing and shoddy level design. Even at normal difficulty, we found that Love Chemistry was frustrating due to the game’s unforgiving nature and distance between checkpoints. More often than not, we found ourselves having to replay lengthy level sections. We suspect we know why checkpoints are so few and far between too, but we’ll get to that.
For now though, let’s focus on how enemies work. Sibella is armed with an arm blaster that fires syringes, which will chip away at enemy health. Organic enemies will fall in love with Sibella once defeated, although there is seemingly no real point to interacting with them when this happens. Robotic enemies are devoid of emotion and will simply take damage until slain instead. Some robots will only take damage once you hit their weak spot, which often means getting way too close for comfort. In fact, most enemies will require you to get close enough that you almost certainly take some damage before you can take them out. As we mentioned, checkpoints are rare, and healing items are even rarer. You’ll often breathe a sigh of relief when you reach a checkpoint with barely any health left, only to realize that you’re about to run out of lives anyway. Once it’s game over, that means restarting, so unless you’re lucky enough to find another life, that checkpoint didn’t matter anyway. With no timers, high scores or other standard platforming parameters to keep in mind, more often than not it’s better to ignore enemies and instead avoid everything instead of engaging with the game.
That does bring us to why the game is so punishingly difficult. Love Chemistry is woefully short, with just under an hour of gameplay present in the game. By stacking the odds against you, the game tries to pad its runtime in an attempt to justify that €5.99 price tag. Of course, we’d be more forgiving if the time you’re spending here was actually fun, but with the game’s main reason for existing cut from this specific version, it becomes painfully clear that there is very little substance here. It’s functional, and if you happen to be a glutton for punishment, a more difficult version of the game exists, which has even fewer checkpoints, but we fail to see why you’d want to play through this sorry excuse for a platformer when there are hundreds of better ones out there. You’re not even rewarded with cartoon pixel boobs for completing this one.
Conclusion
We’re not going to judge you for wanting to ogle Sibella’s most prominent features, but we’ll judge you for picking up Love Chemistry. There simply isn’t a compelling reason to add this one to your library, as without the stuff that you can find in its Steam counterpart, this is a poorly balanced thirteen-in-a-dozen platformer.
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