languray submitted:
Haydee is a legit actual game, you can buy for real money ($14.99 USD) on Steam. The dev team for this game was made up entirely of Creepy Marketing Guys. The main character is literally just a pair of (constantly jiggling) boobs, on top of an ass in a thong that screams chafing, and bare legs with pumps. In a sci-fi action game. The worst part is, the character doesn’t even get a face! Literally her head is a blank white surface, robbing her of any humanity or agency beyond pure sexual characteristics.
Here’s a game TONS of readers asked us to talk about. @languray’s summary seems pretty spot-on.
A faceless pair of cyborg boobs and prominent butt (carefully shoved in the third person camera at every angle) running around environments that can be summed up as Poor Man’s Portal.
It’s also quite impressive how uninspired the official Steam description is:
“Haydee” is a hardcore old-style metroidvania mixed with modern-day third person shooter and platformer mechanics. As well as a sexy character.
“[Insert title] is [insert adjectives that pander to stereotypical gamer] [insert buzzword game genres]. As well as a sexy character.”
Funnily, despite not sharing the same aesthetic or mechanics, Hydee’s “more like this” recommendations on Steam are for Sakura games and similar titles including nudity and/or sexual content (also, for reasons unclear, one casual platformer about Jesus). No other “metroidvanias mixed with modern third person shooter and platformer mechanics”, though.
Guess it’s official that having gratuitous female sexualization front and center means otherwise completely different games are basically the same genre.
~Ozzie
This game is a worrying example of how much the myth that sex sells can distort design priorities. It seems clear that the main character model was basically the main focus of the developers, and the fanbase.
This model is not only used for the Player Character, it’s used for:
- decorating walls (starting in the very first room)
- signaling danger with pre-populated corpses in pits and traps
- providing loot off pre-populated corpses in other places
So basically they’ve used it to tell players to go over to an area for a reward, to avoid an area due to danger and to tell the player this room was boring so they added boobs. Another “sexy corpses” game. Just what the world needed.
Unsurprisingly, given it’s target market, it’s reviews are in many ways more entertaining than the game. If the achievements are to be believed, less than 3% of players have finished the game and less than 50% earn an achievement after the tutorial… yet it has “mostly positive” reviews.
That and well everyone who might be interested in judging it on it’s merit can tell not to bother spending the money or time on it.
– wincenworks