Hermaphrodity and the Mystery of the Missing Specimens

Fapforce5 Games released a new game called Hermaphrodity and the Mystery of the Missing Specimens and the version is 0.22. The game’s story is about The game is broken into 3 chapters. The first chapter is the most linear chapter with several side quests planned Its purpose is to provide the player with an introduction to the game mechanics and the main cast of characters. For the Transformation chapter and Final Chapter, my goal is to give the player the option on how and what is transformed on their body. I thought I would try a point-and-click game for something different. A lot of the art is placeholder (I drew it), I’m working on getting it changed over to a real artist.

Overview:

Hermaphrodity and the Mystery of the Missing Specimens v0.22 by Fapforce5, Hermaphrodity and the Mystery is a game about of the Missing Specimens is a point and click transformation game about a young man’s summer adventure.

The game is broken into 3 chapters. The first chapter is the most linear chapter with several side quests planned It’s purpose is to provide the player with an introduction to the game mechanics and the main cast of characters. For the Transformation chapter and Final Chapter my goal is to give the player the option on how and what is transformed on their body.

I thought I would try a point and click game for somehting different. A lot of the art is placeholder (I drew it), I’m working on getting it changed over to a real artist.

User Evaluate：

While there's a lot to play here, and much nice artwork, the tone won't please everyone.

My personal opinion of this is conflicted, as there were things I really liked, and other things that were either annoying or disappointing.

As far as the simple facts go, this is quite a substantial amount of content and the visuals are some of the best around. Sure, it's not Secretary sized, or even Hornstown, but it's not something you'll finish in a single session either. It's a huge relief not so see a bunch of stiff-looking rendered images - the hand-drawn "anime style" art is really good.

If you have time to spare, it's worth a look, but ultimately the unfinished nature is going to leave most people frustrated and wishing for more. That's probably a good thing. At least I wanted more rather than simply wishing for it to end, or not even caring to explore.

The content is incomplete, but on the plus side, the incomplete parts are clearly labelled, and you don't waste hours on something that is exhausted. There are some bugs that would be less of an issue if there were workarounds. A panic button for when navigation breaks would be nice but I don't think there is one - at least that I'm aware of. Currently, it seems the only thing you can do when navigation dead-ends is to reload a save.

The engine: my mixed feelings begin here, it's an attempt to create something that feels like RenPy in HTML, but with a Hornstown-style map-driven approach to travel. Visually, it's nice, but in practice interior navigation is glitchy, and the exterior map's vertical scrolling is a little awkward. Hornstown executes this in a more satisfying and intuitive way. The map also hints at a lot of content that doesn't exist yet - and perhaps never will.

It's better than most games, and it's nice to have visual navigation. On the other hand, some of the locations have unintuitive visuals that take a little while to get used to, and the map clicking contributes to an overall click-heavy experience that pervades every interaction. I think the way the map is organized could be more logical and helpful to the player, but you can't complain too much - at least there's a map.

The character interactions are typical of one of the more sandboxy RenPy games, but the setup of the main character and his house feels unimmersive and unsatisfying. It's clear from a dig through the assets that originally, there was a significant incest aspect to the story that has been retroactively written out, leaving a scenario that doesn't quite make sense.

What was clearly once a deadbeat MC living with his mother and sisters is now a college dropout staying with a landlady and two female tenants who share a bedroom. The landlady's reactions to sexy goings on with your co-tenants is seriously hard to justify, as is her eagerness to let you back in later. In later states of the game, she will pay you to stay in her house, which seems a little backwards.

The entire storyline with the female "co-tenants" ends up being very secondary to the plot, and I didn't find it very interesting - it was probably more "edgy" originally, but now it's the tamest part of the game. Also, the main character's position on his sexuality is ... hard to get a handle on ... and his transition is very abrupt, all or nothing - if completely pivots on the single detail of whether you can wear feminine overgarments or not - there's no gender-fluid or non-binary stage.

The side-story of living with the sex-shop girls is one of the best parts of the game at the moment, but sadly, lacks completeness and is troubled by bugs, or questionable features (you decide which).

The main story with the cult is OK, and in the current version you can play a good chunk of it, but it's still not finished. The new cult sections are some of the best bits of the game, though it feels like some intriguing ideas are insufficiently developed - it's unclear if they ever will be. It ends up being more linear than you might wish. There's potential there, and some great parts, but the linearity and lack of completion is disappointing, for now.

There's a combat system, and unfortunately it's become one of the weakest parts of the game. There isn't an awful lot of skill to it, and improving your stats is grindy and tiresome. Because of the lack of skill or involvement, combat is a boring clickfest, and doesn't add much to gameplay. There are also problems in the clarity of what's happening. The animations are unclear, the text can vanish before you can read it, and the interface design requires explanation when it could easily have been completely intuitive. While the game demands clicks to progress in so many places, in combat, click-to-progress is sadly lacking where it should be present, and yet there's still too much clicking.

The combat system is slightly similar to the basics of Corruption of Champions, but lacks the rock/paper/scissors logic of CoC and similar. Also, the efforts put into the art seem wasted when the overall experience is so dull. I'd like to see the whole system reworked somehow, so there's some kind of skill involved, or at least, faster stat improvement.

A recurrent bug is navigating to a place and having no way to leave. This occurs particularly in the forest, but also in the MC's house. Some kind of emergency home button would be useful. Maybe there is one, but I couldn't find it.

There's a massively detailed feminization and bimbofication skill "tree" you can navigate, but the downside is that almost none of it has any impact on the game. There are a couple of key points where the story is gated on feminization, and the rest is basically meaningless except for visuals. It doesn't even have an impact on your sex activities, except in an all-or-nothing way. Some characters simply won't have sex with you if you're in chastity, or wear female clothes, but that's the extent of the impact. So, it doesn't matter if you have no breasts, or massive melons, it doesn't matter if your lips are normal or inflated to the point you can't close your mouth. It doesn't matter if your penis is a tiny nub or a massive member ... and so on.

There's also a way to undo the changes, but I'm not sure what the point of it is. You would probably not buy those changes unless you wanted them. Also, as they have no impact, there's no point worrying about them. 

Also, chastity, though one character mentions making "Missy" your keyholder, the entire the game you have the key, and it's really just a piece of uniform you need to wear at work sometimes but otherwise can ignore. This is probably a good thing, given the way a lot of the events are structured around an expectation of you having a big hard penis, but as a result, it feels like there's no point to it.

The diner, and fashion show sub-plots are pretty good. The diner progression would be better if it were easier to guess the right answers first time for all the characters though. The fashion-show/maid story is highly incomplete; I'd like to see more - it has potential to be interesting or tie into your physical changes but is currently incomplete.

The "pink floor" part of the game is one of the more complete bits, surprisingly so, given that it's new. The only downside to this is that your appearance and skills have next to no impact on your income there. I expected something interesting to happen in the "glory hole" part of pink floor, but ... maybe one day? Speaking of glory holes, the unfinished content in the park is a little frustrating, and I'd like to see that progressed, as it prevents you from having sex there during the weekend for a large part of the game.

My experience may be non-typical, and for some, things might play differently, as I didn't bother unlocking the pink room until after I'd done a lot of other things. I had some sequencing issues with the sex-shop girls, and that entire plotline "stuck" for me. Visiting the fortune teller somehow unstuck it.

They simply weren't appearing in their rooms, and so I couldn't learn makeup, or do any of that content. By the time I managed to unstick it, I'd already bought all the physical "upgrades". I think this bug was caused by triggering the return to landlady's house after moving into the towerblock but not progressing any of the content.

The "bimbo" NPC also vanished after an initial awkward first encounter and was never in her house, ever, after that. She vanishes and leaves a note even if you trigger her correctly, but at least that's explained. When she initially rejects you, then vanishes, the unexplained empty house you can just wander into is ... weird.

Another thing that was clunky, was that I couldn't find how to check my underwear without removing top-clothing. I'm sure this was possible before, but either my memory is wrong, or it's become broken. I also found the visual indicator for arousal unclear, and a simple bar for horniness would be better. 

I spent a lot of hours playing, and it was strangely complling, but there was a lot of clicky grinding, quite a few bugs where plots got stuck or characters wouldn't show up, or navigation was missing. It's an experience where you want it to go on ... to be better paced but offer more stories ... it's fun while you're playing, but there are also big problems, big deficiencies, and very clear boundaries on what is finished. It feels like even if it's finished, it will be a fairly straightforward one-time playthrough to see almost everything. While that's not a bad thing to aim for, it's also a shame to see so little value obtained from all the artwork.

Definitely worth a look, but if you do look, you will want to wait a LONG time before coming back and trying again. For most people, waiting until it's "finished" might be the best course. If you have a lot of time, and love this kind of game, try it now, and come back again later. There are some tools for managing replay, but I didn't try them, so I can't say how useful they are.

Game Version Changelog:

v0.21

A lot has changed with this version. Below is the playable parts

Missy / Sissy School

5 different work events

Different afternoon events

Sissy school, the first 2 rows are playable. The test is still in progress

Land Lord

Sperm donation

Events up the first kiss

Lola / Eva

They only have the massage events right now

Dick

Only him doing the sex with the landlord are viewable now

v19

Candy

Updated Candy’s story line.

Go on a date before you move into the apartments

Get cucked by Candy and Chad

Get Invited to be a cheerleader!

Cheerleader

10 events to practice and do the big game!

Landlord in the kitchen

Added a bonus scene with the landlord in the kitchen when you progress far enough

Lola’s swim locker

You can now use the code for Lola’s swim locker for a bonus event

Character Schedule

When you check a character’s events it will list their schedule (If there is one)