Mandy’s Room Review: A Voyeuristic Journey Inside Steam’s New Adult Game

This VR experience will have you coming back for more.

As many of you have no doubt heard by now, Steam has recently lifted its restrictions on developers selling adults-only titles on its distribution network.

This, as I mentioned in my previous article discussing the game giant’s brave move, is a huge step in the right direction for the adult game industry.

So I’d like to thanks Steam and the developers over at HFTGames for sending us a copy of the virtual reality experience Mandy’s Room. As one of the first uncensored games released on the platform, we’re getting our first up-close-and-personal look at what the future of adults games in the mainstream may look like.

Mandy’s Room puts you into the body of a small, curious little robot named Mr. Jenkins. He/you embark on a voyeuristic journey accompanied by his new owner Mandy, a free-spirited nudist obsessed with masturbation and, of course, her new friend Mr. Jenkins.

As well as being semi-intelligent, Mr. Jenkins can also read Mandy’s mind and learn her every waking thought as well as every secret desire that crosses her mind. It doesn’t take long to discover the game’s star seldom thinks of anything other than pleasuring herself.

How does it ‘play’?

Since Mandy’s Room is one of the first adults-only “VR experiences” available on Steam, it’s more of an interactive movie than a video game.

While playing, the closest experience resembling player interaction is during scenes in which Mandy asks you questions. As the erotic story is mainly designed to enjoy with virtual reality headsets, you must vehemently nod your head in agreement or violently shake your head from side to side to disagree with Mandy.

It’s also a shame that the only interactive element of Mandy’s Room is where I found my first issue.

Over the course of the game, Mandy will telepathically ask you sexy and alluring questions to progress the story. The game demands you to answer, but it is only an illusion of choice. In fact, you are only able to give the “correct” answer, meaning nothing happens if you answer “no” instead of “yes” when Mandy, for example, asks if you can keep a secret.

The first few times this happened, I sat in front of my PC, forcefully shaking my head like I was having a seizure and thinking my game was broken until I nodded my head gently indicating the affirmative. Then lo and behold, the game acknowledged my action and progressed.

You are creating an immersive VR experience, not a movie. if I can’t actually answer no to a question, do not give me the option to. That’s just a great way to break immersion.

There are a number of different scenes/levels in Mandy’s Room generally broken up into instances when Mandy activates Mr. Jenkins. Or the peeping-tom bot decides to activate himself and spy on our hot protagonist during one of her regular pleasure sessions.

The more Mr. Jenkins watches, the more he wants to please his sexy new mistress. The wee robot eventually opts to buy Mandy a huge piece of autonomous sex machinery to give her pleasure while he gets his voyeur on.

This is where the VR experience began to give the user some meaningful options by way of selecting a pre-animated sex routine for the robot to perform on the innocent young lady.

When the VR experience reached this point, I perked up a bit and thought perhaps the last hour was just a really long intro sequence and perhaps Mandy’s Room was about to start. But alas, as soon as you perform the three predefined functions of the sexbot, the game ends and you are thrust back to the main menu.

So since I was already at the main menu, I checked out the mini-game included in Mandy’s Room and instantly thought to myself, “Why wasn’t any of this included in the main plot?”

The mini-game consists of Mr. Jenkins standing patiently outside of Mandy’s Room as a lookout after her father removes her bedroom door as a punishment.

Why does Mandy need a lookout? Because she is super horny and needs to masturbate. This mini-game is won by shaking your head to alerting Mandy when her father is coming up the hall so she can stop masturbating and pretend to study.

It is a little strange you only need to keep a lookout for Dad. As Mandy has stated, Mom knows she's masturbating, so you won't get “game over” if she walks into the room while her daughter is going at it.

Sound and graphics

The visuals in Mandy’s Room are definitely up there with some of the best interactive adult VR experiences I have had the pleasure of reviewing. Mandy’s skin textures are beautiful and alluring, her animations are smooth and sensual, and the environment is organic and littered with tiny details that lend well to any VR experience.

I’ve said many times before when reviewing these titles that I tend to spend a lot of time looking at the details of an environment. Mandy’s Rooms definitely gets a pass, although using free assets from various 3D warehouses should be avoided when releasing a game for $17 to the public.

As with the visuals, the sound quality is also great. Mandy is fully voiced by a talented voice actress and the tone and style fit her character well. It’s not often you come across a small indie studio that is able to sell passable voice acting.

While we’re still on the subject of sound, I was unsure whether to I mention this next gripe of mine. But yes, we need to talk about the premise of Mandy communicating telepathically with Mr. Jenkins, specifically in relation to the graphics, gameplay, and audio, since it’s an annoyance to all three.

I spent almost the entire playthrough thinking about this issue. Even after I stopped playing, I kept thinking about it.

If it was the intention of the developers to have Mandy only communicate telepathically with Mr. Jenkins, then why does she “think” sex noises and breathing sounds at him while masturbating? Why does she laugh uncontrollably in her own head without showing outward signs of joy?

Perhaps this bothered me more than it should have, but once I noticed it I couldn’t stop seeing it.

While playing Mandy’s Room I challenged myself to give it a go and tried really hard to laugh inside my own head, as Mandy does frequently in game, for longer than 10 seconds. It’s really hard work.

I don’t know why HFTGames didn’t take the extra time and just animate Mandy’s mouth and have her deliver some spoken dialogue. It feels like the developers were unsure how to animate the character to speak, so they came up with a convoluted story gimmick to mask it that just doesn’t work.
Final thoughts

Despite the small annoyances I found with Mandy’s Room. I honestly cannot say the game offers a bad experience. I did play it through twice over, once initially for this review and a second time because I forgot to grab footage for this review.

Even on the second playthrough with steam coming from my ears, I still didn’t mind sitting through it again. If you have a spare hour and want to try out of the very first adult-only title released on Steam, Mandy’s Room is definitely worth checking out.

Overall I happily award Mandy’s Room 4.75 Pervy Voyeur-bots out of 10

Do you agree with our review of Mandy’s Room? And have you begun taking advantage of the new adults only games on Steam? Let us know in the comments

Image sources: Mandy’s Room