This is a short game but is incredibly entertaining imo. You play a himbo boxer that is abstinence until m̶a̶r̶r̶i̶a̶g̶e̶ 20 years old. He gets mixed up in some shady stuff out at a club one night. You go on an adventure to find out whats going on and how your stuff is related to more crimes.

I enjoyed the art style and the writing (but it is based off a book so i don't know how much is lifted from the text. it is enjoyable and I might pick the book up to see how good of an adaptation is and/or how much inspiration they got from it)

This thing is pretty on rails, its kinda like a point and click mystery game with stealth and turn based combat moments and is really engaging the whole time.

One man's harrowing journey to not fuck bitches so his semen retention technique will allow him to turn into Goku the second he turns 20.

This game is such a pleasant surprise. It's a few hours long. The interactive turn-based combat, along with the narratives, will keep you entertained throughout. The art style is nice as well.

This game is on everything so you won't have a hard time finding it.

In this adaptation of the the Boris Vian novel of the same name (written under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan) you play as Rock Bailey, the world's strongest Volcel. His efforts to remain celibate lead him to be kidnapped under mysterious circumstances , and he must get to the bottom of why and who is behind it.

If To Hell With the Ugly excels at something it is style. The gorgeous mid 20th century cartoon art style and jazzy music really lend themselves to the charm the game has going for itself. The game consists of adventure game detective sections moving the investigation forward, paper mario style turnbased battles with pseudo QTEs and the odd stealth section. They all work reasonably well to convey the tone and pace of the story and on normal difficulty arent particularly challenging but that suits me just fine, personally.

The only thing that bothered me slightly is at times the videogame adaptation clashes slightly with the established story (which I have not read but I can only assume is the culprit for this) and we get one of my least favourite gameplay tropes : "Win the battle in gameplay but lose anyways because the plot demands it". I guess its to be expected and there are also some sections where it just feels like the 90s thing where movies were adapted into point and click adventure games by just gracelessly inserting inventory puzzles into roadblocks for the player to continue the story. Admittedly they are easy here but arent usually complete busywork, so they strike some sort of balance for the most part.

Rock Bailey is an interesting protagonist, he's not particularly likeable but he's interesting to play as for the most part. The story's pretty fast paced in general and events move so fast it can be sometimes hard to take stock, but admittedly from what I have gathered this is pretty faithful to how the book is written. The humour and absurdity give way to certain... surprising elements I wasnt expecting and the ending in particular I imagine won't be to everyone's liking but feels appropriate. What thematic throughlines I could gauge on a first playthrough are mainly about the vapidness of at the time contemporary american culture, the worship of superficial beauty and superficial friendships.

It occurs to me something Ive been thinking for a while, why is it that videogame adaptations of novels seem to (usually) exceed in quality that of film adaptations? Surely one audiovisual medium should translate to the other easier than literature which is not. Now obviously there are great movie adaptations that people love like goldeneye, escape from butcher bay etc, and Im not blind to the fact that most movie adaptations were rushed tie-ins given the same importance by the studio as the colouring book and matching tea-towels, thus a tendency for them to be bad, whereas a book adaptation is more likely to come from a genuine desire on the part of the designer to adapt a beloved work. But even with all this I can think of more examples of good games based on books or short stories than films. Metro, Witcher, I have No Mouth, the dead money DLC, Disco Elysium kind of, Parasite Eve, Pentiment and Edith Finch arent strict adaptations but take a lot of influence etc. I don't know, maybe I am just cherry picking but I think there's something to this theory. Perhaps precisely because Film and Games are more similar there is less room to change and add or maybe its the structure of Book and Game being more active in involvement of the audience than the more passive nature of film? Idk if anyone has any thoughts on this or wants to call me an idiot youre welcome to respond in the comments section. For Further Reading, the game's lead designer shared an article on the subject of adapting the novel into a game which I found enlightening

As for To Hell With The Ugly it was a lovely surprise, a short game at 3 hours long which didnt outstay its welcome although ends rather... abruptly? Intentionally of course but I can see it being off putting to many.