This is an interesting game that seems to have been in the works for a while. As such, it's not a true 'alpha'; you'll find a decent amount of content in this game. This message is basically going to be a review and some advice to other players.
TLD's biggest strength is its art assets. You'll find a lot of custom art work, sometimes animated cut-scenes and even sound effects all for sex. Initially I played pretty much just because Ayla looked really good. However, for a game that's as developed as this, I have serious concerns and a few warnings.
As I played through the game, I noticed something; the scene & writing quality is completely inconsistent. In some scenes things go spot-on without errors and good flow between dialogue, action and images. But in many... the game is very rough, and it's not new content. Much of these rough patches are of older content; I am a picky reader, but I felt that even when there weren't typos or very bland scenes, the game somewhat struggled to hold my interest even during its best moments. This was very unfortunate. TLD has great art assets and its a shame these resources did not receive better writing.
Smut scenes are very short. You might have just a couple of boxes when you probably wanted at least a page of hanky-panky. But, it gets worse; many scenes often feel like a 'tease', and real sex in the game is somewhat scarce. Basically, there's a lot of good art and plenty of scenes / fetishes, but they're all very short and shallow. Little detail work was put into the writing and it causes the smut, which may be the most important component of a smut game, to feel sadly lacking.
I don't want to bash TLD, but I'd be lying if I said the writing didn't piss me off regularly.
However- the code and event work seems stellar. There are often variations to scenes, different interactions with NPCs based on your clothing (or lack thereof) and a lot of fetishes catered too. I wouldn't say the problem was ever that the game tried to hit too much content. If anything, it keeps you interested by constantly exposing you to fresh content-! The trouble is just that this appeal is perpetually unfulfilled... and that the writing meant to fill these scenes leaves them depressingly hollow.
In-game, there are three obtainable companions; let me pause to stress a point here- they're all female. Most enemies you can have sex, as well as NPCs, are also female with a rare few futanari / hermaphrodites. That's not a problem in and of itself but there was so much vanilla yuri as opposed to other fetish content that I steadily became annoyed with how often it was there. There's some tentacle fiends and a lumberjack-house where you can get creamed if you walk in naked, but I didn't think much of these scenes.
Strengths:
- Artwork
- Mechanical flexibility
- Wide content base
Weaknesses:
- Poor writing
- Inconsistent quality
- Very repetitive sexuality (too much plain yuri)
My advice to the developer isn't necessarily to cut back on anything that they're doing, but rather to examine the writing of many completed parts of the game and re-evaluate if they're really 'complete'. Many of the game's art and fetish content is really interesting... but the writing staggers behind everything else TLD has going for it, enough that I'm loathe to play it. If you're put off from it because of the writing, I advise just opening the game's image folder and scrolling through them.
I hope the game gets some polishing.
