Best type of adult game?
- Thread starter Juicer97
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- Sep 18, 2017
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I dont see a point in RPG or Sandbox Elements. The Games should focus on what makes them special: Story, Dialogue, Choices and Characters.
I can't make you love Sushi if you hate Sushi (or Sandbox or RPG etc) but the rational behind adding such elements would be to enhance the sense of achievement when "conquering" a new girl.
In a classic VN (and I love many of those) your only challenge would be to hit Space enough time and wait for the pussy to happen. Adding more gaming mechanism adds a certain thrill of "earning" the fuck. I understand it doesn't appeal to all people and that done wrong, it's a huge distraction but this is what gaming elements are supposed to do.
Take, for example, Summertime Saga's pizza delivery games. You want to bed a girl but you can't because you need money to but X so you need to deliver those pizzas to earn money. The more of them the player delivers, seeing their money count grow, the more excited the player is supposed to get, feeling they get closer to their prize: a virtual pussy.
As for the poll: I didn't vote since I love all the options listed and don't think any of them is superior to others.
- May 25, 2018
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Same boat here, but I understand why people hate sandbox games.
Sandbox games are usually repetitive by nature and grindy.
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- Jun 10, 2017
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Your introduction is perfect, since personally I have the opposite view. Game mechanism, like sandbox or RPG, that exist just to make you conquer the girl, generally feel like artifact to hide a poor story. When not, worse, poor writing skills ; "I don't know how to write a seduction scene, so I'll replace it by a mini game".
And the example you took (Summertime Saga delivery mini game) is, from my point of view, precisely the example of useless mini games. It add nothing to the story, except frustration for those who have to wait longer before they can have the girl ; simply because they suck at this mini-game. In this regard, the fishing mini-game feel less useless, because you've a bit more control on the result. But just "less useless", because in top of this extended control, there's also an increased difficulty.
The game mechanism, whatever it is, should match the story and enhance it.
If you put free roaming in your game, then the player should be able to select the scene he want, the girl he'll go after right now, or really influence the game on a long term by choosing to fulfill a task in place of another.
If you put RPG parts in your game, it should make the girls react differently depending of your stats, or have an effect over another part of the game (like the combat system, by example). If the girls fall as easily for the MC, whatever if he have his charisma at 10 or at 0, where's the point to have a charisma value ? If all the girls need the player to have a strength over 5 before being seduced, what's the point to have a strength value ? And in top of that, the said girls don't have deep enough personality, since they all fall for the muscular type of guy.
If you put a combat system in your game, then the battle have to make sense in regard of the story. Too many RPG Maker games put them because it's RPG Maker, leading the player to fight just for the purpose to fight. I'll go with my usual example here, this (now really old) RPG Maker game where you have to fight rats in the sewers every time MC leave his home, or go back to it. It make even less sense that the said house is supposed to be in town ; why the hell do not just use the main door ?
At most, if one want to add "useless mini-games", then why not create a recreational area in the game ? At anytime in the game, the player can go there, and play some mini games for the pleasure to play them. It add a touch of interaction and challenge for those who want it, without depriving the others of content because they suck at this. And if you want to reward them, add a special render at the end of the said mini-game. Those who don't finish, or don't reach a high score will still have access to the whole game, and those who are better at this will see a beautiful image.
Same for me.
I like VN mixed with other gameplay mechanics like management/strategy/tactical combat the more complex the better. It is always hard to find good games like that.
I voted for VN + sandbox but in truth it should be like 60-70%VN + 30-40% sandbox/free roam. In the end it's the fetishes and writing which have the biggest impact on my enjoyment.
I actually agree with one of the posters above - sandbox mechanics/minigames/etc. are there to hide dev's mediocre writing skills. There are tons of games with decent renders and somewhat complex gameplay(for a porn game) yet the writing(story, dialogues, pacing) is often subpar, if not straight up garbage.
I dont play porn games for "challenge" or intricate gameplay mechanics, theres plenty of normal games for that with production value and quality which is impossible to match by some indie porn dev.
I actually agree with one of the posters above - sandbox mechanics/minigames/etc. are there to hide dev's mediocre writing skills. There are tons of games with decent renders and somewhat complex gameplay(for a porn game) yet the writing(story, dialogues, pacing) is often subpar, if not straight up garbage.
- Apr 13, 2021
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Not sure.
More importantly, when does a game end?
Most games, i have to say, aren't great. So it does not matter if they have sandbox or something else.
In most games, these elements are more a distraction than enhancing the actual game.
In a game like Room2Rent i can kind of see why i need to do things, because i move in.
Games were there was RPG, weren't good. At least i haven't a good rpg game.
Sandbox is very common but usually mini games that are repetitive tasks and then a cheat is created to avoid that.
Even choices are sometimes bad. I appreciate if a choice lets me chose a path but then punishes me with either and ending or no other choice.
I think the worst to me is, if the choice of engagement is taken away and i "have" to engage with another NPC. Usually harem games or games that are hidden harem games.
To me a game that gave me good responses was Light of my Live as it made me very emotional. Plus i was able to avoid other NPC if i did not want to. Not many games do that and that is a shame.
I purely arguing as a player but i recognize that as a dev its quite hard (i imagine) to offer different path or real meaning to sandbox, rpg or other mechanics. Mostly games that have a grew for development usually deliver fairly good games. Just my opinion.
More importantly, when does a game end?
Most games, i have to say, aren't great. So it does not matter if they have sandbox or something else.
In most games, these elements are more a distraction than enhancing the actual game.
In a game like Room2Rent i can kind of see why i need to do things, because i move in.
Games were there was RPG, weren't good. At least i haven't a good rpg game.
Sandbox is very common but usually mini games that are repetitive tasks and then a cheat is created to avoid that.
Even choices are sometimes bad. I appreciate if a choice lets me chose a path but then punishes me with either and ending or no other choice.
I think the worst to me is, if the choice of engagement is taken away and i "have" to engage with another NPC. Usually harem games or games that are hidden harem games.
To me a game that gave me good responses was Light of my Live as it made me very emotional. Plus i was able to avoid other NPC if i did not want to. Not many games do that and that is a shame.
I purely arguing as a player but i recognize that as a dev its quite hard (i imagine) to offer different path or real meaning to sandbox, rpg or other mechanics. Mostly games that have a grew for development usually deliver fairly good games. Just my opinion.
- Apr 14, 2021
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Making any game is hard, let alone a good one that has to have lewd elements threaded into the main gameplay loop. If games were easy to make, the entire gaming industry would be producing hit after hit... and reality is the exact opposite, with most games being shitty for one reason or another. So it's very optimistic to expect amateur porn devs to crank out quality titles that push the frontiers of game design. I'm not saying there aren't any, but most porn games are not very good, just like most games in general are not good.
Also I voted for RPG in the poll, 'cause that's the genre I enjoy the most, and I think it has the biggest potential in ero games.
- Apr 13, 2021
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I am just curious if there are any 3DCG RPG games out there. I never gave it much thought i must admit but the notion that action have consequences is something i actually do like.
I'm not really saying that I'm expecting amateur devs to defy genre and push the frontier of game design in general, but adult games seem like they should have more room to grow than where they are as implied by the thread poll. Precisely because the field is composed almost entirely of amateurs who aren't beholden to money making corporations I believe it's unfortunate that we're not seeing more innovation/experimentation. (Which I know is easy for me to just type without actually doing)
It could be that:
- Potentially innovative people aren't choosing to apply their thinking toward ideas for developing adult games and are going elsewhere (most likely non-porn game development but who knows).
- Developers who may be thinking of innovative ideas for their games don't believe that there is an incentive for them to actually go through all the extra step of implementing them either for time, monetary, or other reasons (adult gaming's culture of piracy, inability to attach their name to their product for social reasons, needing to learn a new engine, etc).
- There are developers who would be willing and able to experiment into new areas of adult game design, but they don't have all the skills necessary to create a full game from their ideas. Maybe they lack ability to write/create art assets/balance mechanics or whatever, and then the less than socially acceptable nature of adult game dev means they don't have a good way to pitch those ideas to others who may help realize them.
This is IMHO the main reason. The current erogame market doesn't reward extra effort. If someone made a game like Rance today, it would probably do worse than a Summertime Saga ripoff, because most players want sexual gratification over game mechanics. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just the way things are. I've seen many heated debates over the inclusion of game mechanics into otherwise simple sex-games, and people for the most part don't care. Sure, there's a vocal minority that wants both, but most players are OK with simple VNs that tickle their fetishes.
Now take into account the example from above: why would a prospective dev make an effort to create a complex game, when they can just cash in on the VN craze? The difference in effort between building an RPG/RTS and a simple VN is astronomical, so why go the extra mile if the market won't reward it? The only reason to pursue such projects and try to push the envelope is if the dev is doing it because they want to (I speak from experience here; we're developing an RPG, and it would've been a 1000x easier and quicker to slap together a VN, than trying to wrangle things like free-roam and looting mechanics and branching dialogue and a billion other things that even a baseline RPG needs to function).
You'll start getting more complex games once the adult market matures a bit, and reaches wider adoption. The mass of newcomers will push for it, and this will drive innovation (or at least piggybacking off AAA titles and their game loops). This entire branch of entertainment (ero-games) is still in its infancy, things will take off once bigger players in the West start entering the market and opening studios that'll cater specifically to the adult gaming niche... sort of like they have over in Japan, where h-games are made by salaried professionals.
IMHO Cyberpunk 2077 was a great opportunity to break adult gaming into the normiesphere, but CDPR botched it not just with shitty gameplay and tons of bugs, but a bland and vanilla game loop that shied away from fully exploring the cyber dystopia and its panoply of sexual deviances. A missed opportunity, for sure. One of the selling points of that game was the supposedly indepth character customization that fed into the setting's brutal dehumanization of humans and their sexuality (we all remember the promo posters with transgirls and their cyber-dicks), but CDPR got cold feet and went nowhere with it.
TL;DR: We'll start seeing much more polished and complex erogames in a couple of years as the market matures.
I would tend to agree with this. I believe the other points do happen, but the lack of incentive is probably the biggest thing, yeah. The audience within this sphere isn't necessarily demanding, and all adult games being lumped together doesn't help with that. You can see it in reviews on this site where people give mediocre stories with little/no gameplay innovation (or just no gameplay at all) 4 or 5 stars with just a "well the girls are hot and it hits my fetishes", because to some degree that's all they really wanted out of it. The scale they're evaluating the porn game on doesn't match with the scale they would use for an actual video game experience.
As someone who is secretly (not so secretly) working on a more complex game that doesn't necessarily fit into any of the categories in the poll, I had a proof of concept demo put out to a small group of people. One of those people who tested it mentioned that "horny people playing horny games may not pay 100% attention and when i got into [mechanic] I was just lost and ended up spamming [command] and watching [things happen] for me." Even though she still enjoyed the game and saw the potential in what I was making, there was a need for me to pause and consider how to manage the complexity of bringing out something new. It's difficult just because adult game/porn material consumption is by nature a very passive sort of activity.
And I mean, I get it. I've been in the same boat plenty of times. Sometimes you just want something quick and dirty to get your rocks off and don't have the patience to sit through anything complex. Sure I could argue that many of my better experiences have been due to forcing myself to take time to sit through build-up, and really understand what I was doing and how to drag as much enjoyment as possible out of the story and context, but people don't always have that kind of time.
So in general a part of me hopes that as things go on people will become more interested in more complicated adult game experiences, both for the growth of the market and the success of my own (eventually public) project, but I guess we'll have to see.