This Time

That fucking stopwatch. It's this chunky old thing with a cracked face and it just... works. You press the crown and everything freezes. Cars stop mid turn, pigeons hang in the air like ugly ornaments, and people, well, people become very interesting. The firefighter guy, he's a wreck when you meet him, all stubble and regret, hunting for some friend who vanished. The game doesn't give a shit about making him likeable right away and I respect that. He's just this sad sack who finds godlike power in a drawer basically. The first time I used it was in a coffee shop. There's this barista with a permanent scowl and I thought, what if. So I clicked the stopwatch and the ambient noise just died. Dead silence. You can walk around and click on things, mostly people. The art is that kind of overpolished CG hentai where everyone's skin looks like wax fruit, but honestly it works for the corruption stuff. You start small, maybe just lifting a skirt, and the game tracks these little choices. The barista's expression doesn't change because she's frozen, obviously, but the scenes get increasingly fucked up. By the third encounter I had her bent over the espresso machine and I actually laughed because the protagonist's internal monologue is so casually degrading. He's not some cackling villain, he's just a guy who stopped caring. The domination path gets dark quick. There's this one scene with his ex, I think? Or maybe just a woman who rejected him before, the writing is a bit sloppy about backstories. You can make her do things while she's conscious again but somehow compelled, and the dialog choices are things like "You know you want this" or just straight up threats. I picked the worst one because why not, and the scene that followed was... a lot. The corruption mechanic isn't just for the women either, the protag's face actually changes over time, gets this hollow look. I wish the stopwatch had a battery or some limit though. It's just infinite power with no real consequence except the story getting more unhinged. At one point I froze an entire hospital ward and the game didn't even acknowledge how insane that was, just let me do my thing with a nurse. The sound design is minimal, just these wet noises and occasional voice clips that don't match the text. I kept playing anyway. The friend he's looking for? Still haven't found him. Don't really care anymore.

• choice
• cg hentai
• visual novel
• stop time
• corruption