Office Rivals starts with something stupidly simple: overtime, dead office air, screens burning your eyes, you hating your life but still trying to win that imaginary productivity war. Then Nanako walks in, all sharp tongue and big boobs pressed into that tight shirt, and suddenly Excel is the last thing on your mind. It feels like that coworker you swear you hate, but you remember how she used to laugh with you in college, how you used to check out her chest and then pretend you were noble. Here it hits way harder, because the game does not pretend this is just cute romance. It lets you be horny, petty, jealous and soft at the same time. One moment you are arguing about who closed the deal, next moment her hand is in your pants under the desk, stroking you slow while the monitor light hits her face. It is intimate and kind of mean at the same time, and I love that.

The whole thing is from your POV, so when she leans in, you see her tits fill the screen, buttons straining, just waiting. There is this one scene in a meeting room where she pretends to be all business, glasses on, talking about quarterly numbers, and under the table she guides your hand under her blouse. Fingers push her bra up, you feel the weight of her tits, and when you pinch, she gasps and tries to turn it into a cough. Then the game just goes all in. She is on her knees between your legs, licking the tip, drool sliding down your shaft. They actually animate the teasing, the tongue circling, her eyes looking up like she is saying "yeah, I win, you lose", while she jerks you with both hands. When you finally shove it between her boobs and start fucking those big soft tits, the physics are not perfect, but somehow that makes it hotter. They even give you internal view when you finally bury yourself inside her, watching the head push deep into her, stretching her open, like you are invading this rival you are not supposed to care about anymore. You do. A lot.

What really messed me up is how the game ties all this filth to your choices. You can play it like an idiot who just wants to pump her full of cum and brag in his head, or like some lovesick fool who pretends the creampie is just "stress relief" while clearly wanting to knock her up. There are multiple endings, so that first time you lose control and finish inside, you are not sure if it is just a hot office accident or the start of a pregnancy route. There is this one path where she holds your dick at her entrance, smirking, saying she forgot her pills, and you can either pull out and watch the cum spray on her belly, or push in and keep thrusting until she wraps her legs around you and milks you dry. Later you see her nipples swollen, a bit of lactation starting when you suck hard, and it is such a small detail but it stays in your mind. The voyeur angle shows up too, like when a coworker almost walks in and you are balls deep in her, her hand slapped on the glass to keep from moaning. I was literally alt-tabbing between this and my work Slack, thinking "if Nanako was real, she would absolutely ruin my life, then make me thank her while she rides me again in that stupid office chair." And I would let her, obviously.

Last night I boot this thing up thinking, ok, one last jerk before YGGDRASIL dies, log off, go sleep. Instead the whole vibe goes full “what if your porn game suddenly took you serious”. You’re in Nazarick, sure, but it’s not just click scene, jerk, done. The NPC girls actually look at you like you’re a real bastard who walked into their story at the worst possible time. Enri asking you why your hands are shaking while you’re trying to act all cool, Albedo leaning over your shoulder way too close while you poke around menus that shouldn’t even exist anymore. It feels like when Chrome freezes on a hentai tab and suddenly you see your own reflection on the black screen. That kind of tiny shame but also “yeah ok I’m into this now”.

What got me was how the harem stuff doesn’t feel like a checklist. Albedo is still obsessed with you, but the game really lets you be a perv about it. You can push her into this “perfect wife but with breeding brainrot” angle, going for raw vaginal all the time, watching her panic when you don’t pull out, talking pregnancy like it’s just another buff. Then you slide over to Shalltear and she’s a whole different kind of crazy, like the devs asked “how horny can one vampire be before it breaks the engine” and then did not stop in time. I had this scene where she made me finish inside her on purpose in front of a mirror, then licked it off her thighs while complaining I didn’t push her hard enough. Next minute I’m in the same save file drinking tea with Evileye like some awkward virgin who only knows sex from porn. No smooth transition, just emotional whiplash in the best way.

The monster girl stuff is where it gets weird-good. Entoma and Solution are not “oh look cute bug/maid, press F to fuck”. Solution basically treats your dick like a thing to store in her body like any other item, calm as if she’s sorting inventory, and that was way hotter than I expected. Entoma’s voice vs face vs body combo messes with your brain, and the first time she asks if she can “keep some” of what you shoot in her, I just sat there like, excuse me what. Kyouhukou exists, I will say only that, and if you go down that tunnel you do it on your own risk. Interracial hits different here because it’s not just human and dark skin, it’s you and literally inhuman girls trying to understand why you get off from using them like this. At one point I had Lupusregina riding me raw in a storage room while Mare walked in and pretended he didn’t see anything, and the game lets that awkward silence breathe just long enough to make you feel like a total creep, then rewards you with another creampie option like it’s nothing. The sandbox part is janky as hell sometimes, you can wander around doing random prostitution gigs for cash you absolutely don’t need, but that messy structure kind of fits. Feels like being stuck in a dying MMO that decided it wants to be your porn-filled second life instead. You think you’ll just log out after one quick masturbation session, and the game quietly goes, “No you won’t, slut”, and you listen.

Guy wakes up as the only dick in a whole village of monster girls and somehow this is considered a “problem” that needs to be solved. The goddess of fertility looks at this scrawny orphan warrior and goes: yeah, you, go breed a thousand girls, that’ll fix it. No ceremony, no romance, just straight up “go fuck until my numbers look good again.” And the crazy part is the game actually treats that like a main quest, not just flavor text. Every scene, every cut-in, every little turn-based fight is quietly ticking that counter up, like you’re grinding EXP but the EXP is how many times you’ve blown a load inside some thirsty monster girl with ridiculous tits.

The start makes you think it’s going to be generic: small village, tutorial fights, “you’re still a virgin” jokes. Then you walk outside and the first monster girl that tries to kill you is also begging to be filled once you beat her. The combat is that old school turn-based stuff, nothing fancy, but it works because half your brain is already planning how you’re going to break her in after the last hit lands. You pick skills, poke weaknesses, manage a simple party with that elf girl and that demon girl trailing behind you, pretending this is some heroic journey, while actually they’re just lining up to be next on the breeding list. One moment you’re counting damage numbers, next moment you’re watching a creampie scene where the camera just stays there a bit too long on the cum slowly leaking out of her pussy, like the dev was a little too proud of that detail. And the pregnancy thing isn’t just a joke line either. Girls talk about it, worry about it, beg for it. You finish inside, belly twitches, and she’s already talking about giving the goddess more kids while your character is still panting.

Weird thing is, it’s horny but kind of cozy. You go from village to village, collecting monster girls like you’re building a harem-shaped party menu. Lamia with heavy tits, shy slime girl that clings to you, grinning demon chick that treats every fight like foreplay. The elf is supposedly the “serious” one, but she’s the first to moan like crazy when you finally fuck her on some random forest path after a boss fight, legs shaking while you pump her full and the game quietly updates that invisible “mission for the goddess” shit. On mobile it actually plays fine, tapping through combat, then using the same hand for, well, not combat. Pornhub on one tab, this in another, and suddenly you’re way too invested in whether knocking up a dragon girl gives better dialogue than the cow girl you bred earlier. It’s not classy, it’s not subtle, but when the main loop is “win, pin her down, slide in raw, fill her up, move on,” you don’t really need subtle. You just need your battery charged and maybe one more round with that smug demon girl who keeps calling you a weakling until you’re pushing her into the mattress and spilling inside her anyway.

Your dad bails to the Caribbean with his side piece and a bag full of stolen cash, the house is basically broke, and the only thing he leaves you is a mess of women, old feelings, and a mortgage-sized headache. That is literally your “welcome home” after college. You roll back into this big family place that used to feel safe and suddenly it has to become a half-legal college dorm full of horny students, stressed milfs, and people who remember you way too well. Some of them remember you as the sweet kid, some as the idiot who left town, some as the virgin who never got to finish what you both started. Now everyone is older, hotter, more desperate, and the walls are thinner than you remember. It starts slow, just little teasing looks, sleepwear that is way too short, “accidental” gropes when you squeeze past in the hallway. Then the game throws you straight into this mix of romance, messed-up family tension, and filthy humor that honestly feels a bit too real sometimes. One minute your stepsis is mocking you for still blushing at a footjob joke, the next she’s planting her heel in your lap under the table while your “aunt” with the huge tits talks about rent and pretends not to see anything.

What I liked is how the game leans into the awkwardness instead of pretending everyone is some perfect porn robot. There is actual teasing. Like, she will jerk you off halfway and then stop just because you picked the wrong dialog line two scenes ago and she still remembers you flaking on her date in high school. The POV stuff really hits when you’re lying in bed and a girl you kind of grew up with quietly slips under the sheets, thinking you’re asleep, grinding against you in the dark. No loud music, just breathing and half-whispered curses. If you play as a good guy you can wake her gently and turn it into this soft, romantic thing. If you lean into corruption, you pretend to be asleep and let her keep going, or grab her hips and push it further than she expected. There are scenes where the twins tag-team you with this fake innocent attitude, one riding your face while the other milks you, and then they start arguing about who gets your “first” creampie like you’re their personal trophy. There is a milf who is stressed about money, leaking milk through her shirt while she tries to stay professional, and the game does not shy away from that. You can help her, comfort her, or push her into this messed up lactation scene on the couch in the living room, with you switching between titfuck and oral while the TV is still on. Some routes will let you slowly turn the house into your own harem, from anal with the cocky college girl in the guest room to raw vaginal sex with the girl who swore she’d never forgive you, and yeah, pregnancy is on the table if you lean into it. The netori angle is also there: you seduce women who technically shouldn’t be yours, some already taken, some kind of “spoken for” by your missing father, and the game knows exactly how dirty that feels. It’s not subtle about incest themes either, but it wraps them in this weird mix of love, guilt, and constant horny tension that fits the whole “dysfunctional family home turned sex dorm” vibe. You get multiple endings depending on who you focus on, who you knock up, who you ignore, and whether you keep pretending you’re the good guy or finally accept that your new life is just one long, fucked up, very hot line you crossed without ever going back.

First time I launched *House of Shinobi*, I kinda laughed because the main menu music tried *so hard* to sound grand and brooding that it looped in this weird offbeat way - almost like the composer’s laptop was overheating. But then something strange happened. I got pulled in. The way the game paces itself - slow, quiet scenes between sudden bursts of raw, filthy intensity - reminds me of watching late-night anime on a borrowed DVD player when the volume button didn’t work and you had to ride the tension between “God, this is hot” and “Please don't let anyone walk in.” That feeling’s still there, buried under all the messy UI. I swear I stared at the save screen for full five minutes wondering which thumbnail was my actual progress. But that’s kind of the point: it’s accidental intimacy mixed with clunky obsession.

When the game goes erotic, it doesn’t hold back. The moans aren’t cleanly recorded; they’re layered like someone mixed them through an old cassette filter, and somehow it fits better than most ‘HD’ adult games. The scenes with Tsunade and Hinata hit different moods - one warm and messy, the other oddly gentle, like you’re being dared to keep eye contact. It’s not just pixel art but deliberate rhythm: the breathing, the softened thuds, the moment right before a slap lands. Even the humiliation stuff - which I usually skip - felt written by someone who hates and loves their characters at once. That inner contradiction, man… it gets under your skin.

The funny part? Every now and then, the sandbox sections drag you into managing chores or wandering alleyways, like filler episodes in the middle of chaos. I both hated and loved it. It kinda reminded me of grinding in *Honey Select* but with accidental moral consequences. And let’s be honest: nobody needs a moral lesson after three back-to-back creampie routes, yet when Kushina looks at you afterward and says nothing, that silence lingers. Maybe the game isn’t trying to say anything deep. Or maybe it’s mocking the idea that desire ever needed a reason. I still don’t like the font, though.

You wake up like some discount isekai protagonist, except instead of a goddess you get a smug catgirl perched on your chest, flicking your nose and calling you “pet” before you’ve even remembered your own name. She’s got a tail that never stops moving, ears that twitch every time you stare at her boobs for too long, and this stupidly cute collar that looks harmless until you notice the tiny shock symbols on it. Her “friend” is a floating robot ball with too many lenses and zero shame, scanning your body like it’s doing a hentai route speedrun. It keeps popping up in the worst possible moments, recording things, projecting things, adding “achievement unlocked” sounds when you manage to make someone squirt. The tone is somewhere between horny fever dream and slightly cursed sci‑fi, like someone mashed a harem fantasy together with a broken VR assistant and said: yeah, this is fine.

The game throws you into a sandbox city that feels normal for about five seconds. Then the catgirl drags you to a “training room” that’s basically a BDSM gym. You’ve got stocks, benches, magical glowing restraints that cling to skin like liquid metal, paddles that track “spank combo” count, and a weird high‑tech milking rig that starts as a joke and very quickly is not a joke. She teases you like hell, grinding on your lap, brushing your cock with her tail, then hopping away the moment you’re close because “good pets don’t cum without permission.” Orgasm denial hits early and it hits hard. The childhood friend shows up right when you’re half naked, sweaty, and frustrated. She’s tanned, short‑haired, built like she actually wins wrestling tournaments, and somehow straight up chill about walking in on you pinning the catgirl down. Next thing you know, she’s challenging you to a “friendly” grapple match where you either get your face smashed into her tits or taken down and ridden until you’re begging. She laughs when you lose, but her voice cracks a bit when you slide your hand along the tanlines on her hips and squeeze.

What caught me off guard is how the game keeps jumping from horny clowning to actual weird tenderness. You’re making a monster girl elf blush while she’s chained by glowing runes and calling you “master,” but then she shyly asks if you’d rather go slow and break her hymen properly instead of just ramming her. The robot orbits around you, projecting voyeur scenes like a perv Netflix: group sex in a bathhouse with steam barely covering bouncing big tits, a cosplay café where the maids are locked into orgasm denial belts until closing time, lactation experiments gone “accidentally” wild. There’s this one moment where you use your new powers to freeze time for everyone except yourself and your chosen girl, and it’s romantic for exactly three seconds before you realize you can reposition them, pose them, edge them, spank them, and even line up an anal creampie while the clock is still paused. You feel like a god and a creep at the same time, which is kind of the running joke here.

The pregnancy stuff ramps up once you stop pulling out. The game casually tracks who you’ve filled, who’s potentially knocked up, and then a few cycles later you’re getting messages like “my tits won’t stop leaking, can you help?” and suddenly you’re hand‑pumping milk out of a catgirl while the tan wrestler is kneeling behind you, stroking your dick with one hand and slapping your ass for “motivation.” There’s actual pregnant sex, big bellies bouncing while you go hard from behind, milk spraying when you pinch nipples, and that messed up but hot mix of them being embarrassed and proud at the same time. Sometimes the pacing is weird, you’ll go from spooky hallway with glitchy horror noises and a monster girl creeping along the ceiling to a goofy titfuck scene where the robot comments on your form like a coach. I kind of hated that shift and still replayed the voyeur scenes way too often. Oh, and there’s this tiny bug where the catgirl’s tail clips into her own ass right when you’re about to finish, and now I can’t unsee it. Still kept fucking her, of course.

In this small community, things are not quite what you might expect. Our protagonist is an imperfect young man who grew up as the target of bullying, a real nobody with a literal bag over his head. As much as he can’t help what he looks like, he also can’t help but be empathetic to those around him. Players are challenged to look beneath the surface and explore the depth of rich storytelling within. After a series of tragic circumstances, his life will change completely! He will be given the chance to rise from his outcast origins to become either the biggest pimp the world has ever seen... or overcome his primal urges to stand up against an organization that has become the world's worst bully, all while seducing, romancing, and exploring the residents of his home town. Will you choose to be an enslaver or a noble savior of the world? Or will you blow it all up and lose everything? Will you discipline and corrupt those you meet? Or will you show compassion and love, perhaps leading to romance and fatherhood? The choice is yours...

You wake up, horny, confused and a little annoyed, and the game just shrugs and drops a catgirl in your lap like that’s a normal Tuesday. She’s not the cutesy “nya~ master” type either, at least not at first. There is this weird mix of needy kitten and bratty roommate who looks through your browser history and then pretends she didn’t. One moment she’s pressing those ridiculous tits against your arm while her tail flicks, next moment she’s acting offended you looked. Classic. The robot friend beside her is even stranger. Not some cold metal toy, more like a pervy Alexa with a body and no shame, scanning everyone, throwing humiliating comments about body temperature, arousal levels, “fertility status” in your face. It feels like a therapist that skipped ethics class and went straight to “how can I make you blush harder” mode.

Where it gets fun, or fucked up, or both, is how the game handles control. You’ve got the usual dating sim stuff, choices, gifts, events, blah, but then it slides quietly into serious kink territory. Orgasm denial isn’t just a line in the menu, it becomes part of the daily routine. A handjob that stops right when she starts to squirt. A blowjob where the robot keeps count of thrusts and locks the toy on your cock if you cum too fast. You get a catgirl on her knees, drooling on your shaft, and at the same time a cold voice in your ear rating your self control like it’s grading homework. It should be stupid. It kind of is. I liked it anyway. Then there is the childhood friend, the wrestler girl with short hair and tan lines that tell you exactly what kind of bikini she wears and how long she stayed in the sun. She suplexes you on the mattress, sits on your face, calls it “training”, and the game treats her virginity like a big boss fight. When you finally break her hymen you feel half proud, half guilty, and the stupid part is that the game never actually asks you to feel anything at all. It just lets the blood, the creampie, the shaking legs speak.

Fantasy and sci fi keep mixing like someone spilled two different games together and never cleaned the floor. One route has you dealing with elves and a monster girl that squirts milk when you grope her too hard, another throws in cybernetic restraints and a “safety protocol” that clearly is not safe. Pregnancy stuff is everywhere, but not shoved in your face, more like a quiet threat. You watch bellies swell after one too many creampies, lactation dripping through cosplay outfits, the robot calmly explaining hormone changes while you’re busy pounding an ahegao-faced catgirl in anal. There is this voyeurism system where you can spy on girls masturbating, or on two of them going full lesbian, one more dominant, slapping ass and making the other lick her own juices off a toy. Then the same girl later kneels for you, calls you master, and it actually feels a bit too easy. That annoyed me, not enough struggle, not enough real humiliation, but I kept playing anyway. The sandbox part sometimes feels like a mess, wandering around just to trigger a titfuck scene in the shower or a quick spanking in the locker room, and I kind of hate that I had to open Notes on my phone to remember where the best scenes were. But then the game throws a horror-style event at you, lights flicker, some superpower shit activates, your slave girl starts floating and moaning like possessed, and you still end up with her pinned under you, begging for more vaginal and anal at the same time like that’s totally normal reaction to paranormal activity. It’s trashy, it’s inconsistent, it pretends to care about consent while letting you push way too far in group sex scenes, and I still found myself tabbing away from Telegram so I could focus when the robot whispered “orgasm denied” and the catgirl looked like she might cry if I didn’t let her cum. I wanted more actual fear in the horror, more sting in the BDSM, less harem softness, but I know I’d complain even if it had all that.

Ariana is the kind of heroine who really shouldn’t be in charge of saving a damn thing, which is exactly why she works here. She’s a thief first, a horny mess second, and some kind of reluctant savior only if she can squeeze it between getting railed and looting pockets. The village of Pyrewood is already fucked in the head when you arrive, infected by this weird lust plague that basically tells everyone “forget self-control, just fuck.” It’s not subtle. You walk past the church, hear chanting, and for a second you think “ok, serious religious scene,” then suddenly you’re watching what looks like a holy bukkake mass while Ariana pretends to look shocked and still doesn’t move away. The story pretends to be dark fantasy but keeps tripping over its own horny feet. One moment Ariana is investigating strange symbols on a wall, next moment the wall opens and some tentacle creep decides to check her insides like she’s part of a quality control test. And yeah, of course she fights, and of course the fight quickly turns into moaning and sloppy animation. It’s that kind of game where “corruption” doesn’t mean slow moral decay, it means she goes from “I shouldn’t do this” to “choke me and fill me” in like, two scenes.

What I actually like, as someone who nerds out over leveling and choices way too much, is how the factions feel like three different flavors of porn brain. The Inquisition path is all about discipline and punishment, lots of “you sinned, now take it” vibes, with Ariana flagged as the naughty sinner that needs to confess with her legs open. The Mage path is basically “science, but horny,” with magic circles, weird experiments, and scenes where masturbation is treated like a diagnostic tool. Then you have The Orgy faction, which just gives up on pretending and goes full “everyone fucks, everything moves, liquids everywhere.” It feels like the dev sat there and said “ok, what if the corruption bar is less a stat and more a porn playlist.” You see it in small moments too, like Ariana trying to resist a cult ritual, the camera lingering on her face as she hesitates, then suddenly she’s surrounded and her body gives in before her dialogue does. Or when she ends up bred in a scene you didn’t fully expect, and the game quietly tracks that, acting like pregnancy is just another logical result of spunk flooding her every hole. It’s messy, horny, sometimes stupid, sometimes hot as hell, and the game never really decides if Ariana is a victim of the plague or its happiest customer. Which is probably why it works at all.

You close your eyes in your boring bedroom and open them in the kind of fever dream only people who stayed too long on hentai subreddits would recognize. Floor’s not even yours. Gravity feels slightly drunk. There’s a catgirl kneeling on your chest like you’re furniture, tail flicking over your mouth while she argues with a floating robot about whether you count as “property” or “partner.” She’s wearing this half-assed cosplay mashup that looks like someone tried to mix maid uniform with battle gear and gave up halfway. She keeps “testing” your reactions. Fingers tracing your crotch through your pants, nails dragging just a bit too slow, telling the robot to record your pulse when she gropes you. She keeps saying it’s “for science” but she’s grinding on your thigh while she says it, so yeah. Science with nipple clamps and a collar.

The game plays like some horny sandbox dating sim that drank too much sci-fi and shonen anime. You wander a weird city that looks medieval if you squint, until a neon sign pops up over an elf brothel and ruins the illusion. There’s monster girls tending stalls and they all look at you like you’re a walking virgin buff. Some of them actually say it. Out loud. One big-titted cyclops girl literally bets you she can make you cum from a handjob without letting you thrust at all, and the game actually locks your inputs and makes you watch her smug face while she squeezes and strokes and slows down right before your bar hits full. She spits on your tip, smirks, denies you on purpose, and then asks if she can tag you as a “denied client” in her app. I swear it felt more humiliating than losing in ranked on Valorant.

What really messed with me was how often the world pretends sex is just another stat. There’s an elf matron who checks your “breeding potential” like she’s scanning a QR code, talks about your balls like they’re gear in an RPG, then drags you behind a curtain and mounts you slow, riding you raw while lecturing you on proper thrust rhythm. She keeps squeezing her pregnant belly against your stomach, milk leaking down on your chest, telling you this is your “future” if you keep signing slave contracts without reading them. Then, same game, you’re in a dirty alley watching two girls in cosplay dom gear spit on a chained-up maid and use her face for practice. One sits on her nose, the other pinches her nipples till she squirts all over the ground, and you don’t even get to join unless you agree to be collared too. The childhood friend with the short hair finds out later, pins you in the wrestling ring, sits on your face and rubs herself all over your mouth while punching your stomach lightly every time you try to breathe, calling you a perv and making you say whose slave you want to be. She keeps pretending she’ll let you cum if you answer “correct,” then pulls away right when you’re twitching, laughing in that half-cruel, half-affectionate way that makes your brain melt.

Group scenes happen so casually it almost feels wrong. You walk into a bathhouse and suddenly there’s a harem of different races arguing over who gets your cock first. One girl wants anal, one wants your mouth, one just wants to milk you with her tits. They line you up, use your body like a shared toy, switch places without asking, and the camera just lingers on wet skin, dripping cum, drooling mouths. A robot hovers overhead and records everything for “research,” again, but secretly you find that same recording in your room later and, yeah, you end up jerking off to your own humiliation. Sometimes the game makes you just watch. A lesbian dom scene behind a glass wall, another girl getting spanked till her ass glows red, then shoved full of a dildo while she cries and smiles at the same time. You can’t help. You can only stare. And worse, the UI tracks how long you watched, and some characters tease you about it later like they saw your browser history. Not gonna lie, some of the animated ahegao faces look stupid as hell, tongues flopping like broken gifs, but then one of them starts squirting on your abs while begging for more and your brain just forgives everything.

I kept wishing they’d at least let me change one stupid tiny thing, like that ugly default collar you get tagged with in the early slave arc, but no, it stays in every sex scene for hours, mocking you quietly. You go from shy virgin to the guy who’s creampied an orc, an elf, a catgirl, and something with too many tentacles, and still that same cheap collar sits on your neck, reminding you you’re never fully in control here. It’s messy, horny, mean, sometimes sweet by accident, like when the pregnant catgirl curls around you in bed, leaking milk on your chest and purring while you lazily finger her and she tries not to moan too loud. Then she ruins the moment, calls the robot, and asks it to replay earlier footage of you getting pegged so she can laugh at your face while you cum again inside her. This whole world feels like that: one long, sweaty joke on you that somehow keeps you hard anyway.