One hundred and sixteen people are playing a game about a demon seducing nuns. Steam gave it a Featured Win slot. And one player with ten and a half hours logged wrote, with what appears to be complete sincerity: “And the combat system is absolutely exceptional.”

This is Sisters in Sin, developed by Lewd Star and released April 18 on Steam. It’s doing something that dozens of new releases this week aren’t: getting people to actually play it. Ninety-seven percent positive reviews. A concurrent player peak of 127, according to Steambase. A spot on Steam’s Featured Wins chart. Not bad for a game whose premise is “horny demon disguised as a preacher infiltrates a convent.”

But here’s what makes Sisters in Sin worth talking about beyond the obvious, and it isn’t the nudity tags.

Two Kinds of Reviewer

Scan the top Steam reviews and you’ll see a genuine split in how players engage with this thing. One reviewer, two hours in, describes the premise with obvious relish: “Sisters in Sin – finally, a game where you can be a horny demon pretending to be a priest. Your mission? Turn a holy convent into a thirst trap.” They go on to compare it to The Sound of Music, a sentence fragment that raises questions best left unexplored.

Then there’s the player who sunk ten and a half hours in and offered this assessment: “A great game with wonderful puzzles. And the combat system is absolutely exceptional. The visuals are top-notch.”

No mention of the adult content. No winking acknowledgment of what’s obviously the draw. This person played a game whose store page warns of “nudity, sexual acts, BDSM themes and dubiously consensual sex” for over ten hours and came away wanting to talk about the combat. Either Lewd Star built something with genuine mechanical depth beneath the titillation, or the primary content has a powerful biasing effect on critical faculties.

A third top review cuts through the ambiguity with admirable directness: “Pops, butts. One hand is faster, or slower—the choice is yours. But a smudged screen is guaranteed.”

The Curation Question

Sisters in Sin landing a Featured Win matters because Valve’s relationship with adult content has never been more fraught. According to Kotaku, Steam recently delisted hundreds of adult games following a quiet update to its developer guidelines. The new rule prohibits content that “may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers.” Games themed around incest, rape, and slavery vanished overnight — though enforcement appears wildly inconsistent, with some titles bearing those exact themes still on the store.

The driving force isn’t Valve playing morality police. It’s Mastercard and Visa. Rock Paper Shotgun reported that developers of adult RPG Tales of Legendary Lust: Aphrodisia were told all new adult content must now go through formal DLC review processes. The developer, posting as Frenzin on Reddit, was blunt: “Valve isn’t the problem here. The big credit card companies are.”

So Steam is caught between banking compliance and a storefront absolutely saturated with adult games. As Kotaku notes, “scrolling the new release lists reveals the astonishing number of both crap and quality adult games that are released every day.” The vast majority are shovelware — static images and looped animations priced around $5 with zero reviews.

Why This Game Made the Cut

Which circles back to Sisters in Sin and its Featured Win. Amid a purge of adult titles and a sea of zero-effort releases, Valve chose to spotlight a game at $14.99 (currently discounted to $9.29) with genuine player engagement and reviews that praise specific mechanical systems rather than just the, well, mechanics.

The signal is clear enough: Steam isn’t purging adult content wholesale. It’s drawing a line between shovelware and games that — whatever their subject matter — demonstrate actual craft. A 97% rating across 31 reviews with meaningful average playtime suggests Sisters in Sin delivers more than a vehicle for screenshots.

Whether the combat is truly “exceptional” or merely exceptional relative to the competition — a bar that, in the adult visual novel space, sits somewhere around ankle height — is a question more playtime will answer. But 116 concurrent players on day two, a Featured Win, and near-universal praise is a launch most indie developers only dream about.

The smudged screens are, presumably, a bonus.

Sources