Recent reviews by CripInABox

TLDR; Its a good DLC, on its own might not be worth the full £12, BUT the backend work gone into the Free Update and the impact this will have on future modding and Game content makes it worth every penny supporting the devs. Some better integration with existing expansions would have been much appreciated.

Sunset Harbor is a DLC that seems a bit lackluster on the face of it, despite a rather thought-through approach. There's a nice bit of content to provide more "life" to the city, as well as a new waste infrastructure and some lovely transport content. This review is a combination of the free update and the Sunset Harbor DLC.

--- Free Update: Transport, Healthcare, and Backend ---
The Free update comes with good content. The Metro system has been rebuilt, moving from a purely underground system to an under/overground Public Transport System, adding more life and depth to your city – I’ve enjoyed using it as a substitute to Trams and Overground Trains.
Healthcare has also seen some additions, with the Eldercare and Childcare services - basically a Care home and a Kindergarden. These benefit happiness and lifespan, and seems to space out the deaths of the elderly so your crems and graveyards arent dealing with waves of dead bodies, but will reserve judgement on the overall impact in a longer-lasting city.
The backend has had some lovely work, with improvements to the tutorial message system, introducing a log, some subtle tweaks to water mechanics (will cover in a bit), and the introduction of "biomes", outside of the Snowfall expansion. Its unclear if this is just a buzzword being used to describe some different map types to explore the new water mechanics, or if there's an actual change in the world engine, but I will be interested to see how this impacts the future of the game and the modding community.

--- Waste and Water Infrastructure ---
The new waste buildings are freaking sweet. They come in two variants - garbage, and sanitization. The new garbage system is pretty great, but the water is rather subtle, yet really useful.

The new waste system introduces a Waste Transfer Facility and a Waste Processing Complex. The Transfer Facility acts as a buffer for garbage, meaning you dont have to have landfills in the middle of your cities anymore. The Waste Processing Complex uses the Waste Transfer Facility to ferry garbage from Landfill to be processed and then refines it down to split into recycling, energy (built in incinerator), or re-distribution to other landfills. It will be interesting to see the longer-term effects of multiple Waste Transfer Facilities on a larger map.

The water sanitization additions are subtle, but introduce some BRILLIANT versatility into sanitization. The Large Water tower is an obvious addition and is very useful on maps without flowing water. The major introduction is the Inland Water Treatment plants, and their Eco equivalents (if you have the Green Cities DLC). They're pretty similar to their water-based counterparts, but trade off water pollution for ground pollution. The introductory cost of the basic Inland Water Treatment Plant makes it a valid alternative to the sewage pipe too.

--- Fishing Industry and Water Mechanics ---
Oh boy, this is the big one. This was one of the major "selling points" for the expansion, which I feel is rather misplaced, although I've found it highly enjoyable. (DINKY LITTLE FISHING BOATS!)

The fishing industry comprises of two types of building - Fishing Boat Harbors and Fish Farms, both requiring a body of water to work on. I'm disappointed that there's no integration with the Industries Expansion, as a Fishing Industry Zone would have been SO much fun to play with. I would also like to see some form of differentiation between Freshwater Fishing in rivers and Ocean Fishing, but I think the water mechanics would need a much greater overhaul in order to calculate that.

Speaking of, the fishing industry takes advantage of a new water measuring mechanic - Flow Heightmapping. I cant speak from a dev perspective, but it seems to be observing water flow and depth at the same time to create regions that are optimized for the different kinds of fish; Anchovy, Salmon, Shellfish, and Tuna. As a lover of Macro-scale landscaping and building water flows myself, it's mesmerizing watching the Fishing Overlay change in realtime as the water flows change and impact. Likewise, the impact of the water pollution on fishing regions is incredibly well done.

It's a fun Industry to play with and provides a LOT of jobs to areas where water is your primary asset, helping to make some of the more "aquatic" maps more viable to play without sacrificing precious land to industry and industry zones. I would like to see this expanded upon though with potentially more fishing boat models (all the same size and same type currently), some more in-depth fishing options as mentioned above, and maybe a more impactful use of them – such as proper integration with the Industries Expansion. As one of the major selling points of the Sunset Harbor Expansion, it does feel lacklustre in its implementation, despite the amazing backend work.

--- Transport and City "Life" ---
Besides the Metro system update, Sunset Harbor also adds some interesting transport options - although some are based directly off existing counterparts, the tweaks to them give valid use-cases in a number of contexts.

First off, Trolleybuses. Although it may seem like a Tram reskin if you've got the Mass Transit Expansion, it's more than that. The technical challenges undertaken to make them work properly is very impressive - the dev notes go into the maths really well. The benefit of the Trolleybusses is, although providing an almost identical service to Trams, that THEY DONT TAKE UP A LANE IN THE ROAD! If you've got traffic issues, but want a tracked transit solution, the Trolleybus is a great solution to this, although subtle in its implementation.

Speaking of Busses, the Intercity Bus Service opens up a new outside connection for tourism and university students (Campus Life FTW). When putting down an Intercity Bus Station, you can access a whole new tourism intake for a very minimal cost. I havent had the chance to play with it in-depth yet, but from what I've seen its very promising and a significantly easier way to introduce toursim easily than Airports or Passenger Harbors, particularly on inland maps.

On the subject of Air Travel, there's two new sky-high additions - the Aviation Club and the Passenger Helicopter. The aviation club is a unique building that helps with city entertainment and adds more air traffic to your city, giving it a bit more life. The passenger helecopter is effectively a variant of the Blimps, providing lower capacity but higher speed air transport. The requirement for lines is a little frustrating, as I a similar implementation to the Taxi-cab system given the vehicle, but it’s a good city “life” addition if you don’t fancy 20 blimps in a row waiting for the same station.
Finally, the biggest transport addition is the overhaul of the Transport Hub system. There’s pretty much every variant in there so far, and the Train-Metro hubs are useful for my kind of designing. I look forward to seeing the modding community build a modular variant so you can design some high-detail transport hubs as you need them.

Overall, Sunset Harbor is a good expansion, but it could have used better integration with the other Expansions. The fishing industry would benefit from fleshing out a little more, but the rest of the update (free and DLC) really adds quality of life to cities in ways that I will be defaulting to from now on. Given what it Sunset Harbor provides, it may seem a little overpriced, but considering the amount of work going on in the background, I am more than happy to pay full price for this. Keep it up Devs, but maybe integrate with your existing Expansions a little more.

Short short: Good for killing time, but a lot that could be improved. And not really the "educational" experience that was particularly advertised.

Long story:

The game has little control. No audio options, not even the basic "Mute Music" Option that even web games have. The minute you click outside the window (which DOESNT scale to match the screen - it's a set size and that's it) it pauses and gotta click back into it, which is kind of expected as the game is time restricted. As for the actual doll controls, they're alright - you can only rotate the dolls in a single direction, so if you mess up, you have to rotate them the whole way round. X/Y controls are mirrored around a central axis, but then again no more controls are really required. A harder mode could possibly be added, where each hand has individual control.

As for gameplay, frankly it's boring. You move two dolls into each other and try to line up their crotches before smashing them together - Think the Team America sex scene, but with none of the comedy appeal.
And that's it - you smash dolls together till your mum gets home, followed by a "You maybe had sex however many times". If you get caught, your mum is clearly embarrassed, but otherwise there are no consequences.

The graphics are very retro, but in a warm, less mechanical variation than some other retro games. Warm colours, and basic sprites. Sorta like some of the early 90s educational games I played before my parents started giving me money to buy my own games.

Music is... interesting, potentially out of place, as it doesn’t really add much, and even distracts at times. Sound effects are really basic, but they work, again fitting in with the retro feel. And as I said before, there are no audio controls.

As for the intent of the game? No clue.

It doesn’t match up with the "experience" the devs promise (purely going from the promotional video and the description here). I can understand how children will try and recreate sexual acts with dolls or soft toys, but from my own memory, there was a lot more "passion" involved, starting off with some kissing, followed by gentle cuddles, and then some crotch bumping or rubbing, rather than the pelvis-shattering hip motions illustrated here - maybe this was meant to be a reflection on sexual activities in modern society, and how we lack a lot of intimacy within out sexual relations. Or lazy dev work, but I'll leave you to decide that.

What I can determine though, is that the controls are limited, the Audio is quite nice but could do with some controls, the gameplay and story leave a lot to be desired, and there is no sense of realism, which I wouldn’t really mind had the devs not promised something based on real experience.

However, this is a free game. I admire the devs for working on this and creating something for the community. What bugs me is the fact that it delivers something other than what the devs seemed to intend on delivering.

In summary? It's good to kill time, but if you were looking for anything deep and meaningful, vaguely exciting (sexually), or a way of introducing sex to the kids, don't even download the game, because you'll be sorely disappointed and maybe even angry.

Then again, ANYTHING would help ease the pain of the GTA 5 delay, so knock yourself (and maybe the dolls) out.