BeelzeRog looks into one of the most influential porn games. Bonetown

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BONETOWN IS AVAILABLE ON STEAM

SPICY COMMENTARY: BONETOWN WAS ONE OF THE MAIN GAMES THAT BROUGHT NLT (TRASURE OF NADIA) INTO THE INDUSTRY. YOU CAN READ HIS INTERVIEW HERE

So this is a long time coming

I bought this version of “Bone Town” when it was released on Steam back in June 2021 because it looked like it was going to scratch a lot of my itches for what I look for in video games, especially adult video games.

• Open-world easy to explore *check*
• A game where sex was part of the game, not the endgame *check*
• An adult game with actual gameplay in it *check*

And for the most part it did what I expected, but there were definitely things that were off, and I’m not talking about the political incorrectness or the graphics. And when I went over this with Rini, with her questions and impressions, it made me realize I had to scrap my original review and start all over again.

Let’s get the details out of the way first. Bone Town was created by D-Dub Software, a group of college friends who decided to make a game based on “Grand Theft Auto”, but inspired by “South Park” and the “Leisure Suit Larry” games and their own party experiences, having felt that the sex was gone from video games, replaced with only violence. Released in 2008, Bone Town originally received mediocre reviews, but managed a following. In 2013, it was greenlit to be released on Steam with the nudity removed, but this ‘Mature Edition’ was never completed. Finally, it was released in 2021 as “The Second Coming Edition” with all gameplay intact, plus some tweaks and added content. It has since had more upgrades and DLC, including modding support through Steam Workshop. And more is promised on the way.

In the game, you’re an anonymous nobody who wakes up on the beach to a drunk party bro peeing on you. With that, you are quickly brought up to speed of the mechanics of Bone Town by Candy, a Bone Town native. You are also introduced to “The Man”, a corporation that has recently moved into Bone Town and is attempting to reign in the hedonistic city. A “Man Agent” knocks out Candy to place her under arrest and knocks you out with a warning to not cross them. The drunken bro, Billy, sends you off to his Redneck Jewish uncle Uzi, who gives you the ability to steal other people’s identities and sends you off on a mission to free Candy and take down “The Man”, with a lot of side tracks along the way.

While an open world, Bone Town is split into several areas, starting with Missionary Beach and including the Redneck Jewish trailer park called Homeland, the Havaho Indian Reservation, and a 'pristine' jungle filled with trash. Every area has at least one or more "Man" Watchtowers, which will spawn 'Man' Agents if you do drugs or have sex within range. There are also collectables which will give you a special weapon spawn in that district if you collect all of them. There are no cars and you must walk, or run, everywhere, which can be time consuming. But a new addition placed in a few maps, the VIP Lounge, will allow you to travel directly to certain areas through it. Bone Town is completely open from the start of the game, but you will need to upgrade your character in order to complete the tasks.

Your character levels are placed in terms of “Balls”. The larger your “Balls”, the stronger you are and more hot women you can have sex with.

Rini: You know, that’s not really how it works.
BeelzeRog: It’s a game.
Rini: Just saying. Balls are squishy and squashy and if you touch one wrong, the guy goes “AAAAAH!” and falls over. Trust me, I know this from experience.

Your character model also changes, from a skinny guy to a big hulking Chad (though D-Dub is promising the ability to alter your character at some point). You gain larger ‘Balls’ through story missions. Giving women orgasms fills your Ball meter, Blow jobs fill your Health, Anal sex does both. Combat is simple punches and blocks, with various blunt weapons adding to your strength. Drugs can give you special abilities normally or in combat, which you can learn from defeating various mini-bosses in the game. Getting knocked out removes most of your clothing and depletes your Ball level, which will require you to steal another identity and then refill with sex. Different identities have different effects on your Health, Strength, and Ball level, plus you take any racial and ethnic markers as well, from your pick-up lines to random speech.

And now we get to the more offensive material. Bone Town, much like its inspirations, leans heavily into racial and ethnic stereotypes. Probably some of the most in-your-face I’ve seen in a while, and I’ve seen a lot.

Rini: Yeah, he’s married to one. (Rini is Korean-American)
BeelzeRog: An in-your-face ethnic stereotype?
Rini: Sometimes. Or you’re the in-your-face ethno-stereotype, white boy from Nebraska.

Let’s talk about spicy food.

But, also like its inspirations, it attempts to place a spin on it that is ridiculous enough that it loops around to actually being funny. Like the Redneck Jews, the Native Americans and Subcontinent Asians fighting over who gets the right to use the name “Indian”, or fake white-trash rocker dudes who threaten to call their Senators when you hit them. Everyone gets the treatment, no matter their race or religion. And as to whether it is actually ridiculous enough to circle around to be funny is kinda up to the beholder, but I appreciate the attempt, even if I feel it doesn't always land.

Rini: Doesn’t quite push it quite far enough into the absurd. It tries, but it needs to just be that one step more absurdly offensive. It does a pretty good job with the Redneck Jewish trailer trash, though. I know some lawyers I’ve worked with that would appreciate that. But they’re, ya know, retired in Florida, fishing.  

Let's talk about The Sex. First of all, this is a strictly male heterosexual game. You can’t play as a female or a non-straight character. A few gay characters are in Bone Town, but their overall absence is explained as they keep to themselves. Lesbian characters are limited to two prostitutes performing for you. Otherwise it is heterosexual sex… in the street, in the dance clubs, on park benches… you will probably be unable to walk around too long without seeing or hearing some couple getting it on or stumbling on someone masturbating in a corner. Women will not be randomly asking you for sex, so the onus is on you. Much of the game mechanics are centered around giving women orgasms. This is done by matching their desired speed and power without you running out of endurance. Unfortunately, this is only used as an actual game mechanic once, where the desired speed and power would bounce back and forth. Otherwise it’s just a steady climb until climax.

And this is where a bit of progressivism pokes its head into this game. “No” means “No” in Bone Town. While the only barrier to sex is Ball size, or money if you decide to pay a prostitute, if a woman refuses, you can’t really do anything about it. Getting violent will only get them to cower or run away and 99% of the time, you can’t get them to reset to be receptive to you again. You also can’t knock them out like men. There is one mission where you protect a passed-out woman from being sexually assaulted, others where you need to stop men from copulating with a conscious woman for a time limit. I mean, one could argue that in a world where women’s ‘No’ is respected, then they are more likely to say “Yes”, though maybe not exactly at the levels of Bone Town women. But I digress and editorialize.

But for a game that is supposed to be more about sex than violence, you do spend a lot of time fighting. Even some of the sex contests require you to beat up the other contestants before you can score with the ladies. And this is where some of the problems with the game stand out. Random fights happen frequently, almost as often as random sex in the streets. If you try to pick a side, both sides will attack you. If you accidentally hit a bystander, even during missions, they will attack as well. Not that the fights are completely a bad thing, but it points to there not being a lot of variety of activity in Bone Town. There is one race that doesn’t involve fighting, unless you smoke crack next to a Watchtower, but you can usually outrace the Man Agents that spawn. There is one challenge where you pick the hottest girl and another where you match ethnicities. Otherwise everything else is fighting or having a certain amount of sex within a time limit and frequently both. Even some of the other challenges that don’t seem based on fighting usually devolve into fisticuffs, like stealth peeing & mastrubating.

Two other big problems is that there is no actual reason to complete the story quest plus the difficulty of finding the last couple upgrades needed to even be able to do so. You need the full bong upgrades to jump high enough in one section and you can’t get that upgrade without the last drug upgrade, which is in the Mushroom Marsh, which is not marked on the map (Behind the big mansion in Nobbing Hill, fyi). But even if you go through all of that and fight your way to the end boss, it makes no difference in the rest of the game. The Man Watchtowers still work and nothing in the outside world changes. While I don’t mind the ability to do story missions again at my leisure, there’s no feeling of accomplishment for having gone through all that other than seeing the cutscenes.

As mentioned before, there were some upgrades when the game was re-released, and some other upgrades and added content since release. There are still problems with NPCs not rendering very fast, leading to empty streets when you first enter a level. More is promised on the way, including buildings devoted to different fetishes, like BDSM & threesomes, as well as gay sex. D-Dub has stated that trying to add gay sex into the general game mechanics would require them to completely rewrite the game’s sex mechanics, so it is easier for their small studio to limit these additions to specific areas.

Rini: Why….That doesn’t make any sense. If they allow anal, or if they allow blowjobs, but you just change the skins. That’s lazy.

BeelzeRog: No, you don’t just change the skins. I’ve watched some of the mod makers and how they do things and you have to change the physics up when you go from men to women.

Rini: Why? What is the difference? What. Is. The difference?

BeelzRog: When you are on the receiving end of something, it’s different physics than being on the front end. They would have to render a bouncing penis…

Rini: Oh, yeah…

BeelzeRog: And they would they would have to change meshing things together. On one hand, I understand where they are coming from. On the other hand, I can see where you are coming from.

Rini: That’s not a satisfactory answer to anything.

BeelzeRog: NOPE! It isn’t!

They have also added modding support through the Steam Workshop, though if you look through the game files, it’s not that hard to do texture mods. I even replaced some of the generic ocean artwork in the seaside bar to photos from wet-tshirt contests because I figure that’s an official sport in Bone Town.

All in all, I really like and enjoy this game. The cartoony, low-detail textures and characters actually help sell the cartoonishly unreal world it presents, much like the cartoon characters of “South Park” or “The Simpsons” can get away with saying or doing outrageous things that wouldn’t fly in a more realistically rendered world. The world is fun to explore, full of little jokes all over the place. The soundtrack has mostly laidback party jams and I do like they added in the ability to change music in different areas. I’m looking forward to the promised content, plus what people might come up with modding. If you like games like “Postal 2” or “Leisure Suit Larry”, this game is going to be up your alley.

Were I to have my own wishlist, I’d like to see a larger variety of gameplay. I’m not a prude to violence. I can run over pedestrians or engage in gun battles with the best of them in other games. But even GTA has little side quests like delivering pizza, picking up and delivering packages, handing out flyers, and more. I thought up a mission idea based on the wet t-shirt idea, where you help out a bar by handing out flyers, gather materials for the contest, recruit the hottest girls, and maybe even handle the water sprayer yourself. Simple, fun, easy (he says, as he could barely handle coding Cascading Style Sheets). Other ideas would be making a female character you can play, maybe Candy could be unlocked if you finish the game, which should be easier since the animations would be the same, and also have the ability for women to ask your male character for sex, maybe once your Ball level is high enough. Something that might make this a fantasy world for everyone, not just heterosexual males.

So, after that rather long review, I want to just reiterate that I do recommend the game, it is a lot of fun, but just needs some polish and the guys at D-Dub seem to be open to that from the interactions I’ve seen.

I’ve got more reviews on the way, though maybe not so long-winded, so if you like the ones I’ve done so far, maybe consider helping us out at SUBSCRIBSTAR and we’ll give you some behind-the-scene and some input on other episodes. Later!

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