Strange Flesh

For the first twenty minutes with this game, I thought I was being punked. It was supposed to be a porn game. I expected gay shit. They broadcast it very heavily. This is a game for cock havers who are also cock lovers. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. But, when I review porn games, especially ones that are not Japanese visual novels, I expect to actually see some pussy within the first half hour. In this case, I guess I was holding out for cock. I saw no cock at all for a long while and I thought that maybe this was one of those video games that are softly erotic with romantic themes or some shit. But the game’s website promised smut so I didn’t know what to think.

I booted up Strange Flesh and was greeted by some really well drawn old-school cinematics. They told the story of Joe, a random nobody with a desk job. He was clearly one of those stereotypical dudes who’s been stuck in the same job for years, wasting away through an uninspired life. Immediately, I noticed that this game was lacking sexual motivation. Joe wasn’t dying of loneliness or whatever. He wasn’t horny or even undatable. He was just… generally bored of himself. After work he made his way downtown and discovered a bar called Strange Flesh.

A Welcoming Gay Bar

The narration on screen explained that this was exactly the type of bar that Joe would feel welcome at. This was the game’s clever way of revealing that this was a gay bar. At this point I was thinking that maybe I’d get to see some action. Maybe this was one of those kinds of gay bars where dudes suck each other off in-between vodka shots. No such luck. It was a regular gay bar. Then, our boy Joe walked up to the bartender, asked for a drink and got punched unconscious. This is roughly where I kind of lost touch of what was going on. It became clear afterwards that what had actually happened was that the bartender took pity on Joe so he decided to enter Joe’s mind and help him sort his life out from within. We’re getting really fantastical here. I can dig it.

It's worth noting that the bartender was very much what gay men describe as a bear – i.e., he was huge, hairy and all-around jacked. There’s a huge misconception about bears being overweight. That’s not the shtick. Sure, they can have beer bellies, but the defining bottom line is not obesity, it’s size, hairiness and power. Bears are very powerful. They’re the kind of dudes that could clearly kick your ass at any time, but they’re way too loving to resort to violence. Our fair bartender is … a bit of an exception to the rule. Yes, he’s huge and attractive, but he also really likes punching things. He’s also an extremely heavy smoker. This game has a very romantic approach to smoking cigarettes. It’s almost fetishistic in nature.

Gay Inception

Once our bear bartender makes his way inside Joe’s mind, the game begins properly. You get to control the bartender, walking through the various fictional avenues of Joe’s subconscious mind. Throughout, you beat the shit out of various iterations of Joe that represent his repressed personality traits as well as the shitty traits that he has developed over the past few years. So, you fight his horniness, his laziness, his confidence and so on, in physical bouts versus different iterations of Joe. You spend this entire game fighting Joe. It can be easy to forget that the whole point behind the bartender’s efforts is to help Joe. I guess the idea here is that by destroying inferior versions of Joe within Joe’s mind is somehow going to liberate him.

Strange Flesh’s writing gives me mild Inception vibes. I like this idea of digging into someone’s mind and solving problems with your fists. It’s a nice metaphor and it makes for great gameplay. What I don’t understand is how the inside of a gay man, in a porn game no less, is so lacking in sexual content. The world that represents Joe’s subconscious looks roughly the same as our world, with a few differences in environmental decoration. I especially liked the ad billboards that make fun of smoking. Apparently, smoking turns you gay. That’s what they said; I’m just recalling it.

Fighting Around the Mind

As you can imagine, I got through a large chunk of this game without seeing any real smut and this is what had me thinking that maybe this game wasn’t worth playing, at least for fapping purposes. There turned out to be huge compromise down the line, though. In the first half of the game, all you really do is beat up random iterations of the same guy with the option to blow cigarette smoke in their mouths. You basically get to kiss them whenever you want and sap their health while doing so. Ok, fair enough, it's a good start.

You have to wade through this lukewarm content until you get to the real smut, though. I thought they were going to give me an episode break in-between chapters with pornographic cinematics, but the reality was much more arousing. After a while, the fighting just happened to get sexier, especially when the more unique, more dangerous Joes entered the fray. There were boss fights with large, monstrous versions of Joe and while they also involved the standard fisticuffs combat, they culminated in extreme penetration. I honestly wasn’t expecting it at this point. The bartender, i.e., you, beat the boss down until he couldn’t move then brutally penetrated both of his holes mercilessly. It was great stuff, I won’t lie. But it did make me think about the amount of smut in this game and how conducive it is to a good fap.

A Tiny Bit of Gay Smut

The art and game design to Strange Flesh makes this game a must-play if you like erotic beat-em-ups. It really is that simple. This is a free porn game that you are sure to enjoy, provided you like this kind of combat. As for fapping fuel, well, I’m torn. The scenes you do get to see are indeed really hot and super original, but they’re few and far between. I can’t be expected to fap once per an hourly gaming session and neither should you.

As for the regularly available content, throughout all the combat, it’s not bad, but it’s also impossible to fap to. You get to see the bartender kissing ugly dudes while breathing smoke into their mouths. Who is this arousing exactly? I get that it’s spicy and it could make for a fun play in real life, but in a video game that looks this fucking retro, what’s the fucking point? You could probably jack off to this shit if there was some nudity involved, but as it currently stands the whole thing just feels like an homage to smut, rather than an actual pornographic experience.

At the very least, Strange Flesh is a free game that’s available for download right away, with no limitations. It’s clearly a passion project. You can tell that whoever made this game was very dedicated to both homosexual sex and bear love specifically. This dude really went out of his way to put together a lovely fantastical rendition of bear love and I can respect that.

Uncover the Possibilities

For what it’s worth, there’s a deeper meaning to the bartender’s actions in this game. The game itself has several endings depending on how you played through all the fights. I haven’t discovered them all yet, but what I have seen varied greatly. The bartender is basically going out of his way to change Joe’s life by fighting his demons for him, so to speak. Spoilers ahead: At the end of the game, the bartender leaves Joe’s mind for good and Joe makes a huge change in how he lives out the rest of his life. This change depends on how you played the game and almost all the endings are extremely sexual in one way or another.

I think that Strange Flesh has a lot of potential and some room for additional content, but that’s optional. Even in its current state I would say that this is a complete game that gives you a proper story, beginning to end, even if that story isn’t necessarily that sexual for the most part. If they amped up the sex scenes in this game it would definitely be one of my recommendations for hottest gay action porn games. Right now, it’s just an awesome beat-em-up. Either way, I recommend that you try it. It’s completely free, so what do you have to lose?