The Mating Season

Is it Mating Season? I always had a lot of questions growing up and watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I wondered how they could survive on a diet of pizza instead of bugs and crap they found in nature. I wondered how Shredder could manufacture an endless amount of those foot solider robots. I also wondered if April O’Neil ever gave it up to the boys, and if so, what their dicks looked like.

Well, those questions and more are answered in The Mating Season, a wildly popular visual novel where the Ninja Turtles finally get laid. It’s created by Akabur, one of the most popular indie porn game developers around. This dude has nearly 3,000 Patreon patrons just throwing money at him every month so he can develop games like this one, Star Channel 34 and Witch Trainer. His Patreon page says he’s “creating Educational Materials for GROWN-UPS”, so let’s do some learning.

Saturday Morning Cartoons with a Side of Viagra

Goddamn, I really appreciate Patreon. Where else can you crowdfund a computer keyboard with a built-in poop emoji AND subscribe to some exhibitionist’s homemade butthole-fingering movies? The indie game developers on the site are some of my favorites for a couple reasons. For one thing, they typically work pretty closely with their fans to ensure a better, more fappable final product. Secondly, they usually give out the games for free even if you ain’t throwing money in the hat.

Akabur does that, so go ahead and download the game for free on Windows, Mac, Linux or Android. It’s about 140 mb for any version, so it ain’t going to take up your whole hard drive or anything.

The Mating Season is built on Ren’Py, which is a pretty fucking common engine for creating visual novels. The thing is, Akabur ain’t your typical creator. This game doesn’t have the amateur feel you get from a lot of the Ren’Py visual novels on sites like Gamcore, with poorly posed CG models depicting incestuous households and lolicon perversion. The Mating Season features high-quality art that looks straight out of the show, expect much, much dirtier.

It’s also worth noting that Ren’Py is known for triggering anti-virus software. Don’t get your panties in a bunch, because it’s a false alarm. Akabur wouldn’t be this fucking popular if his business was infecting suckers. Install that shit with confidence!

Seven Episodes of Scaly Perversion

The Mating Season is broken down into six different episodes. If it’s your first time playing, you’ll have to do them in order, unlocking them as you go. You choose the eps from a photo of VHS tapes, action figures, beer, ninja swords and condoms. It’ll bring you back to the old days of Saturday mornings watching TMNT while dear ol’ dad was blacking out, banging hookers, and menacing the neighbors with ancient weaponry.

Akabur does a really good job setting the scene and giving the game that early ‘90s cartoon vibe. Besides the episode-selection photo, The Mating Season actually rolls out the full, classic cartoon intro before each level, complete with some degraded VHS fuzz. Good luck getting that song and accompanying turtle banter out of your head for the rest of the day. “Hey, get a grip!”

The original music for the game is fucking killer, too. It incorporates the main melody and themes of the classic theme song while creating something fresh just for The Mating Season. It sounds and feels professional as hell, and also helps set that ‘90s vibe.

You’ll meet the turtles individually over the course of the first few episodes. Donatello is up first, and the beginning ain’t too far from wholesome. April is down in the sewer, hanging out with a mutated reptilian, just like most well-adjusted redhead reporters are known to do. They’re having what seems like a pretty regular conversation, until Donnie blurts out something that doesn’t go over too well.

“Michaelangelo jerks off to your news reports!” he says, flustering himself even as he freaks April the fuck out. As tight as she is with the green boys, she’s pretty fucking shocked. I’m really not sure why. She’s got a nice rack and the turtles are hormone-raging teenagers who have very minimal contact with the rest of the world. Of course they’re misinterpreting her kindness and journalistic curiosity, and of course they’ve all good wood for her.

April, completely fucking overwhelmed, feels dizzy and has to sit down. She doesn’t even realize yet that it’s not just Mikey who’s got the hots for her. Donatello helps her into a crusty old chair, where she finds comfort by laying back with her legs spread eagle up in the air. She’ll be in this position for the rest of the game.

Can a Turtle Really Consent?

The Mating Season has a kinky, engaging storyline, but it doesn’t require much strategy or planning, and definitely doesn’t require quick reflexes or puzzle-solving skills. It’s a visual novel, which means it’s really fucking easy to jump right in and play.

Like other visual novels, most of the “gameplay” consists of clicking through the dialog as the conversation unfolds. Akabur does do a pretty good job of varying the art, so you’re not just staring at the same static image as you click through 100 lines of chatter.

Every once in a while, you’ll get a choice of what to see or do. The first time this happens is right after Donatello gets April on her back, when you’re prompted to either start jerking off or liberate her tits. Personally, the boobies have always helped me with the fapping, so I went with the second option.

I’ll tell you right now, the #MeToo crowd is not going to be happy with The Mating Season. Your options don’t necessarily take April’s feelings on the matter into account, and sometimes you’re given choices that fly in the face of what she’s telling you to stop doing.

The question of consent is pretty fucking nebulous the entire way through. At some point, April says, “I let you rape me,” which brings up a whole metaphysical discussion on the topic of rape and consent. The turtles posit that if she lets it happen, it can’t be rape. Somebody should really tell those old birds at The View, because I’d love to see a daytime TV discussion on whether a reptile can truly force himself on a willing human.

Short, Sweet and Full of Reptile Meat

One of my biggest complaints about The Mating Season is that it’s relatively short. The episodes are maybe 10-15 minutes each if you’re taking your sweet-ass time and jerking off the entire time. They’re probably a lot quicker than that. The game is so short that I don’t want to give away too many spoilers. There are some real “holy fucking shit” surprises in this game.

Despite the short length, there is replay value. The auto-skip button (CTRL) will help you jump to your dialog/action choices, which do alter the story in subtle ways. Are you going to put on a condom like April asks, or just raw dog it? If you do use a condom, are you going to dump it on her face, throw it over your shoulder, or craft a necklace out of it?

My other complaint about the game is that April is in that same position throughout the entire game. Sure, she starts in that yellow jumpsuit and ends up in a much more scandalous set of rags, but other than that, she doesn’t move much. I would have liked to see her bent over that crusty chair, but then again, I’m an ass man. Turtles don’t have round asses, so it makes sense they wouldn’t be attracted to them.

The furry/scaly element of The Mating Season means this game ain’t for everyone, though the human fuck puppet should appeal to anyone who beat off to April growing up. This game is so well-made and bizarre that even TMNT fans who never beat off to the show are going to have some fun playing it. If you had your sexual awakening to the original cartoon, prepare to play the best fucking game ever made.