SKUFS AND ALT-GIRLS

SKUFS AND ALT-GIRLS is not a game, it's a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. The vast majority of this E-book is just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". To answer that question: When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This particular E-Book/CYOA does have some "stats", numbers added to create the illusion of gameplay, and a couple of ploddingly shallow, minor minigames that really are less effort than turning the page on a physical book. So these numbers are less meaningful than the stats in an old Fighting Fantasy novel, and have little bearing on the various E-book endings this visual novel provides. Nobody finished reading a Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy book and said "Boy, what a great game I just played!". Because books aren't games. And neither is this. The idea behind this godawful E-book is you pretend to be a girl and you take a slob…

[b]"Skufs and Alt Girls" is a great example of a game made with soul and great enthusiasm. This is exactly what the main game should have been like.[/b] I bought this game on a whim, not expecting anything serious. However, I was just amazed at how well everything was made. Perfectly selected backgrounds (sometimes drawn, and sometimes photos from real life), a huge number of mini-games and most importantly - Voice acting. Arina tried her best and voiced every phrase, both the girls and the hero. In some places she even made mistakes in stressing words, but it was very nice and you could feel that the voice of a real person. [h3][i]Plot.[/i][/h3] The plot here is the same, the government decided to give each skuf an alt girl. But here even this was played up with the help of a popular Russian meme "We need sex at any cost, but for free." We go to the site, take our lady. And the most interesting part begins. [h3][i]Gameplay.[/i][/h3] Now we have a Tamagotchi life simulator. We need to eat, sleep, play games, exercise, and wash ourselves. You can also play Russians vs. lizards, learn programming languages, play [strike]Hamster[/strike] Bear Combat, and even get a visa to another …

Aloha, this is my review for Skufs and Alt-Girls, is a humorous tamogatchi simulator with a twist, you take on the role of an Alt-girl [with new ones unlocked as you play] that is tasked with turning a skuf [a dude with no prospects or hope] in to a productive member of society; bath, feed, clean-up his mess, take him to work, teach him to invest in stocks, while levelling him to do new things like "going to a gym" or "quit smoking" all while increasing his happiness by letting him play games, look at funny Russian memes. The Good: great sense of humor, decent background music, funny Russian memes [the water drop one was so good], funny premise, wacky minigames to play [lizard survivors, sidescoller beer chaser, tank battle], pleasant voice over work, good translation, and did I mention its quite funny? хорошие, хорошие! Also, you have a variety of Alt-girls to play as and fit your style which I liked, and new ones get unlocked as you play, so you can do multiple replays! The Bad: some of the controls are a bit janky [like the jumping in the beer chaser level] but overall, nothing is bad, this is a funny indie game that will make you laugh for the price of a sandwich. The Ugly:…

SKUFS AND ALT-GIRLS is a deliberately unconventional indie title developed and published by Sempiternal Rain that sits somewhere between a life simulation, a narrative experiment, and a piece of internet satire. From the very beginning, the game makes it clear that it is not trying to follow traditional design expectations. Instead, it leans heavily into absurd humor, meme culture, and social parody, presenting a bizarre yet strangely earnest premise in which you play as an “alt-girl” tasked with rehabilitating a “skuf,” a deliberately exaggerated caricature of a socially stagnant, middle-aged man enrolled in a government-style improvement program. The core of the experience revolves around daily care and micromanagement, borrowing loosely from tamagotchi-style mechanics. Players are responsible for maintaining the skuf’s basic needs, such as food, hygiene, and entertainment, while also attempting to nudge him toward marginal self-improvement. These systems are intentionally simple, relying on stats, timers, and menu-driven interactions rather than deep simulation complexity. Progress is measured less by dramatic transformation and more by incremental shifts, reinforcing the game’…

This game is better than it has any right to be. The game is narrated by one voice actor and it is done beautifully (well I don't speak the language but I assume its as good as its sounds to my ear. It could be littered with errors as far as I know). It can get a bit grindy but equally with speed running strats it can be too easy in some ways. There are only two problems with this game, firstly there are no accessability features and as one of the major mechanics used in minigames is button mashing that sadly makes this game inaccessible to those who have issues profforming that action (quite frankly I had a hard time of it sometimes and I don't have issues). The other issue is that each characters storyline is a little too short to become emotionally invested in. Infact it didn't even need to be longer, it just needed a bit more dialogue to give the game more content. This leads to the player slowly trying to speed run later characters and skipping dialogue that is there to get to the end. This game is truely brilliant, and weird. It just is a vibe, but a bit more dialogue would ease the grind and prevent players just trying to blast through the thing. One piece of advice to ot…