HTML Degrees of Lewdity [v0.5.3.5] [Vrelnir]

[Evizzy89]

My main issue is that "it was just a hallucination" is unfalsifiable in fiction. If any potential evidence pops up, you could just claim that's a hallucination too. A crowd of people saw it? Mass hallucination. Same thing about claiming it was all a dream. How am I supposed to have any meaningful discourse when it can all be shut down by reapeating a single statement?

Side note: Since animal-people can be set to always active regardless of hallucination, that part is "depending on the game's settings" rather than "according to".

its been a very long time, but there is several instances where the TFs are acknowledged by others so the hallucination theory is pretty weak IMO this is a world where rape is a hobby, commonly accepted and nothing wrong with it and all sorts of weird shit happens everyone's pretty fucked up

 

[Ferghus]

the cow TF gives double milk/semen volume, which is something tangible you can actually measure
and it is measured when youre on remys farm or the cafe
you cant exactly hallucinate the lines on a measuring cup, or at least not when theres other ppl who can comment on the amount

unless you can somehow enhance the amount only through sheer force of will, in which case damn lol ig anythings possible

Could be a number of things. Drugs that increase production of body fluids, placebo effect, MC is hallucinating the amount and the responses from other people, or maybe it's actual milk from an animal, and MC's just adding their own to the mix and convinced themselves it's 100% their own contribution.

 

[Mrbeez]

On that note also, the TFs are purposefully implemented in the way where it's unknown whether the protag actually transforms in any way or runs around with paper ears glued to their head

The thing about transformations being visual and not physical is kinda dumb when traits like dark horns, sharp eyes, fangs exist along with certain events like students pulling on your tail or being able to fly/glide

 

[EmDotRand]

Oh look. A bunch of points (some of which I brought up in a similar conversation on Reddit) that would be perfectly valid to most sane people. The response I've gotten? "Why not?" Seriously, what's stopping someone from claiming some crap like "Everyone else is hallucinating too,", "You're just biting really hard", "Hallucinations make you feel things that aren't there, explaining how you can feel your extremities being grabbed," and other such ass pulls. At least mass hysteria could be countered easily (how are everyone hallucinating the same thing every time and they're in sync with your own every time?)

 

[EmperorGus]

Oh... FFS...
Why are people looking for logic in a porn game

 

[dan2danni]

How to get shopping with Whitney event?
She's already made me wear skirt at school

 

[EmDotRand]

Oh... FFS...
Why are people looking for logic in a porn game

Is the emphasis supposed to mean porn shouldn't have logic or games? If the later it because it's fun to discover the lore and systems holding the world together. Breaks in logic make that task tedious instead. If the former it's because breaks in logic make me soft so fast I risk rupturing a blood vessel from the sudden spike in pressure.

 

[ieatbab1e5]

Oh... FFS...
Why are people looking for logic in a porn game

i find just saying its "just a porn game" to invalidate all the thought and work put into it very disingenuous
at baseline, ye youre supposed to get horny/jerk off/nut to it, but that doesnt take away from the amount of effort and care put into its world building
its discussed seriously bc ppl feel strongly about its characters and setting, which goes to show that its not only a rape simulator; its a rape simulator that ppl talk about
and wanting to share your thoughts, opinions, theories, etc. on things you enjoy w others, and gaining new perspectives is what ppl do when they want to know more about the thing they like
a gamer may call this "immersion" or whatever

is this somewhat pathetic? yes, but the actual reason for this is bc any sincerity is shown at all and not being wrapped in 10+ layers of irony

 

[ieatbab1e5]

Could be a number of things. Drugs that increase production of body fluids, placebo effect, MC is hallucinating the amount and the responses from other people, or maybe it's actual milk from an animal, and MC's just adding their own to the mix and convinced themselves it's 100% their own contribution.

how convinient lol

hold on, i just came up w an absolutely bulletproof theory that will explain everything!
the PC is actually asleep the entire time and everything they experience is just a dream and the game technically never even starts :3

 

[Amhran]

One of the biggest things I dislike about 99% of NSFW content is how lazy or insincere all of it is* - often times both. It's not necessarily a matter of taking itself too seriously or not (after all, I think humor can be an essential part of most any setting, and it can come in many different flavors), but rather coming across as a complete and cohesive creative vision that allows the person experiencing it to mentally engage with and become lost inside it. DoL was very easy to get attached to because of an expansive amount of consistently interesting writing that works very hard to flesh out its world, but also because it doesn't resort to all the quick cliches and writing shortcuts that most everything else does. Even when DoL does make use of tried-and-true conventions/archetypes, the game approaches them with both enough effort and sincerity that the game owns it and it works. I can't say the same is true about hardly anything else out there, where even a single glance at how they present themselves is enough to tell you that they just don't really give a shit.

*Actually, I'd honestly say that this problem also applies to a majority of non-NSFW content as well, but not quite to the same degree. With NSFW stuff, there seems to be this completely overbearing thought that as long as it looks good, then nothing else really matters, which I think is an unfortunate mentality for any medium of art. You don't really see the same kind of thinking with books ("as long as the author's prose is good, nothing else matters"), music ("as long as it sounds good, nothing else matters"), movies, or games. Like, yes, the most basic element of each medium is very important, but there are also other things to consider, like world, characters, story, themes, framing, tone, style...and others, as applicable. Each medium has its own strength and limitations, but they can be surprisingly versatile in what they can accomplish given the right creative minds, and NSFW works shouldn't be any exception.

 

[sparrow_rose]

how convinient lol

hold on, i just came up w an absolutely bulletproof theory that will explain everything!
the PC is actually asleep the entire time and everything they experience is just a dream and the game technically never even starts :3

I laughed unreasonably hard at this. Like, for a good five minutes. I even teared up.

 

[noenchilada]

I think the game is vague enough with its story and elements so that people can form their own theories and run off with the one that pleases them most. For me, it's way more interesting to imagine that the player is mostly hallucinating due to a combination of trauma, the shady drugs from that one mysterious corporation, and some eldritch entity shifting the perception of reality to fuck with people. I feel like Vrel made the text to be purposefully ambiguous so that people could fill in the blanks however they like, so while I don't think it's absurd to be discussing the logic of a porn game, it does seem pretty pointless to be taking any one theory as being more or less likely than the others.

 

[Ferghus]

how convinient lol

hold on, i just came up w an absolutely bulletproof theory that will explain everything!
the PC is actually asleep the entire time and everything they experience is just a dream and the game technically never even starts :3

You joke, but at least one game posted here was like that. In the plot twist reveal at the end, MC was basically high, hallucinating, and basically jerked himself to death. I mean quite literally, he died. And then that dev somehow made a popular game that had none of that.

 

[ViviX12]

One of the biggest things I dislike about 99% of NSFW content is how lazy or insincere all of it is* - often times both. It's not necessarily a matter of taking itself too seriously or not (after all, I think humor can be an essential part of most any setting, and it can come in many different flavors), but rather coming across as a complete and cohesive creative vision that allows the person experiencing it to mentally engage with and become lost inside it. DoL was very easy to get attached to because of an expansive amount of consistently interesting writing that works very hard to flesh out its world, but also because it doesn't resort to all the quick cliches and writing shortcuts that most everything else does. Even when DoL does make use of tried-and-true conventions/archetypes, the game approaches them with both enough effort and sincerity that the game owns it and it works. I can't say the same is true about hardly anything else out there, where even a single glance at how they present themselves is enough to tell you that they just don't really give a shit.

*Actually, I'd honestly say that this problem also applies to a majority of non-NSFW content as well, but not quite to the same degree. With NSFW stuff, there seems to be this completely overbearing thought that as long as it looks good, then nothing else really matters, which I think is an unfortunate mentality for any medium of art. You don't really see the same kind of thinking with books ("as long as the author's prose is good, nothing else matters"), music ("as long as it sounds good, nothing else matters"), movies, or games. Like, yes, the most basic element of each medium is very important, but there are also other things to consider, like world, characters, story, themes, framing, tone, style...and others, as applicable. Each medium has its own strength and limitations, but they can be surprisingly versatile in what they can accomplish given the right creative minds, and NSFW works shouldn't be any exception.

Yea, there is a pretty big difference between a game I'm done with after a wank and a game that stays with me after I've finished it or end up waiting for more. I don't have good memory to giving out examples, but one thing I can remember is The Agony of Healthy Sleep, which stayed in my head because of the story for much longer than because of the porn. I'm also gonna remember games that I liked playing, not the ones I went along with to get titties on screen occasionally.
DoL is something for many sessions, and probably just about the only game I have multiple playthroughs in (even if none "finished" or super far), though I'm usually annoyed when a game has content barred behind replaying it. It doesn't have the most impactful story or particularly coherent one, but it's definitely building a wolrd around, and there's enough story to at least sometimes make choices based on more than just the stats.

 

[Deleted member 5596126]

It would be awesome if there were sprites & animations made for the bees/wasps, lurkers and spiders.

 

[Amhran]

Yea, there is a pretty big difference between a game I'm done with after a wank and a game that stays with me after I've finished it or end up waiting for more. I don't have good memory to giving out examples, but one thing I can remember is The Agony of Healthy Sleep, which stayed in my head because of the story for much longer than because of the porn. I'm also gonna remember games that I liked playing, not the ones I went along with to get titties on screen occasionally.
DoL is something for many sessions, and probably just about the only game I have multiple playthroughs in (even if none "finished" or super far), though I'm usually annoyed when a game has content barred behind replaying it. It doesn't have the most impactful story or particularly coherent one, but it's definitely building a wolrd around, and there's enough story to at least sometimes make choices based on more than just the stats.

The weakest part of DoL for me is the characters. And it's not that I think they're bad or that I don't like them (just the opposite!), but rather I think the lack of concrete structure around a central story is why it's difficult to really put them through the ringer and grow to truly love them like you would in a more traditionally told story. In more traditionally told stories, a character is either a major component of the work, or they're not. If they're not, maybe they're a particularly memorable/helpful/lovable supporting character...or maybe even less than that, just a cute/interesting one-off. But the open structure of DoL, the player being able to choose with whom they want to associate/spend time with (and there's a pretty good-sized cast of characters), and not having a real timeline for a story to occur because of the number of things you can choose (or not) to do which is pretty much required by the gameplay loop...well, they all conspire to make it so that regardless of how much the player might like an individual character or how much said character might, by their very nature, realistically write themselves into the narrative of a more traditional story, they don't, they can't. The player could simply choose to never run into them, ever, so no part of the game's story can ever be dependent on a character being a big part of it no matter how much sense it might otherwise make. You run into pretty much the exact same thing in other games with similarly open structure like Stardew Valley. Really, it's a basic truth of most any game where you have choice: if you have a choice about something, then nothing substantial that happens in the future can be determinant upon that choice, beyond maybe just an ending scene where the impact to the game (from the point of view of the developer) is very limited. It's the unfortunate little paradox of developers trying to make choices that feel like they matter. The exceptions are rare and they usually come with very noticeable limitations like the game splitting off into distinctly labelled branches, but I still appreciate it when games give it an earnest try.

For an NSFW game like DoL with a big and varied sandbox world full of interesting writing, situations, and mechanics, I think this is the way it has to be, should be. But I'd have been very interested to see a more linear story and game made by the same developer, see what they could do with a smaller cast of characters that they can write and weave into a much more direct/planned story - heck, they've already put so much work into it, they could still even make good use of their established DoL setting for it. It'd be a totally different kind of game and story, though.

 

[ieatbab1e5]

You joke, but at least one game posted here was like that. In the plot twist reveal at the end, MC was basically high, hallucinating, and basically jerked himself to death. I mean quite literally, he died. And then that dev somehow made a popular game that had none of that.

at least he went out having a good time lol

saying its all in le head is so often used as a cheap cop out to avoid thinking of actual coherent scenarios, that are able to be reasonably connected to each other
i actually do rly like the concept of hallucinations and loss of reality but not if theyre exclusively there to throw a huge "go fuck yourself" at the reader, at the very end

btw what game :0 im curious now lol

 

[MRN64]

at least he went out having a good time lol

saying its all in le head is so often used as a cheap cop out to avoid thinking of actual coherent scenarios, that are able to be reasonably connected to each other
i actually do rly like the concept of hallucinations and loss of reality but not if theyre exclusively there to throw a huge "go fuck yourself" at the reader, at the very end

btw what game :0 im curious now lol

Well lets be real here though. The game is fiction and you dont really have to justify fiction unless you want to. Why is all this happening? Who gives a shit? Its happening regardless. Sometimes trying to justify or explain something just ruins it and the best course of action is to just roll with things. Getting too involved trying to rationalize things just gets you stuck in the weeds and doesnt really do anything constructive. The game isnt trying to be realistic or explain any of the underlying rationale of its setting and it is better off for it.

 

[EmperorGus]

Well lets be real here though. The game is fiction and you dont really have to justify fiction unless you want to. Why is all this happening? Who gives a shit? Its happening regardless. Sometimes trying to justify or explain something just ruins it and the best course of action is to just roll with things. Getting too involved trying to rationalize things just gets you stuck in the weeds and doesnt really do anything constructive. The game isnt trying to be realistic or explain any of the underlying rationale of its setting and it is better off for it.

In other words:

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[Ferghus]

at least he went out having a good time lol

saying its all in le head is so often used as a cheap cop out to avoid thinking of actual coherent scenarios, that are able to be reasonably connected to each other
i actually do rly like the concept of hallucinations and loss of reality but not if theyre exclusively there to throw a huge "go fuck yourself" at the reader, at the very end

btw what game :0 im curious now lol

For everyone else, don't click if you don't want spoilers.
I'm talking about Succumate, from the same dev that made Summer Memories.
Through the whole game, you're exposed to news that men are dying mysteriously and their bodies look like dried husks. The MC suspects that succubi are the reason, since the one living with him wears him out to the point that he genuinely fears for his life, but the ending shows that there were in fact no succubi. He had been living alone. The very same drug he was using to keep up with fucking the succubus was the very drug that made him hallucinate in the first place. There's several points in the story where you have to make deductions to progress the plot, where the MC concludes it's not his succubus that's offing the other men, it's another one basically committing serial sex-murders. He ends up defeating and taming her, and the succubi and him fuck all night, which in reality was just him nutting nonstop, leading to his own death and becoming a dried husk. There were some one-off non-succubi sex scenes, but we don't know if the MC was actually fucking anyone at all the whole game, because he was basically never lucid throughout.