Unity Focus Point: Being Visual

[Saki_Sliz]

So about half a year ago, one of the patreon creators I follow decided to start making a game, and after playing one of the recent demos, I wanted to bring up something I noticed with this and other games.

The game I played is called House of Pleasure, which I believe to be a fan recreation of another nsfw game (possibly with the same name? I am not too sure)


The game is a point-and-click, life-sim, dating-sim, almost visual novel game. Granted, it is still being developed and the story and characters do not progress very far, but the artist's patreon page is full renderers and story events they have ready and made to be brought into the game.

The artist and maker of the game is deepandsilent3dx and their patreon can be found

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A daz artist with their own unique twist, with stylized character and a stylized post-processing effect.

The main thing I noticed with this game is it has a very specific focus: focus on the art, focus on the visuals.

The first case of this is the very minimal UI, click on this icon to see simply clicking icons to navigate.
I even praised the artist in their first tech demo for allowing the ui to be turned off, as seen here and dialog boxes can be hidden as well.

The primary thing the game focus on is to always have a large image that take up the whole game window, images do not hide behind any game mechanics. Not only are they nice renders, but to keep the game interesting, just about every situation has a variation, or alternative angle/pose, and time of day variation,

Like many dating sims, you either go around collecting resourecs, and or, favors, getting on peoples good side and eventually unlocking story content. as far I as can tell, while a lot of work has been done, not all of the artist's work or story has been put into game format yet (and still a bit buggy).



What I wanted to bring up was that many people want big games, to play big games. As far as I can tell, the reason for this is so that the story is deep, the fun keeps coming, or to make sure that a player can customize the experience to their preference, and that's all fine and dandy. But I have also found that many games benefit from having various things they focus on, whether it's a particular type of fetish, game mechanic, art style, etc. It seems while some games either pander to a specific focus or are simplistic, while less is certainly not more, it does seem to help the game. Not to say that the smaller scope allows the game dev to better focus on making the game to a higher quality, but rather, it seems that in the absence of too much content, the content that is still there tends to be amplified. A typical case being, when you have to work to unlock something, the work makes the reward worth more.
An example being this scene, while still under development, every now and then I could find this situation.

Without too many game mechanics in the way, this game enhances its focus on its art. In the future, I hope that this also leads to benefiting the story as well, but much of that still needs to be added. Various other games reap similar benefits.

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is a challenging shooter game, where your score unlocks a bit of a comic, and I found it to be good fun, albeit a quick hour spent.

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had characters I found to be pretty simple, one dimensional, and stereotypical personality types, but despite the simpler character writing, I found it really improved the experience because you could quickly figure out what the character was like, how they would act, and so you could play accordingly. House of Pleasure is somewhat similar, in that, you don't need a tutorial to learn how to play it, you can get started fairly quickly.

I just wanted to bring up an observation, and possibly discuss situations where specific traits in a game help made that game good/special/worth it. An often, such traits tend to relate to a form of simplification that ends up helping to exaggerate some other aspect of the game beyond what other games have done. In the case of House of pleasure, I was pleasantly surprised by everything it did to keep the players focused on the art, and to keep the art interesting. But in the future, I do hope the maker adds the ability to at least see what characters are feeling or thinking at any given moments, there is a lot of no talking parts in the demo so far, and a bit of context would go a long way to add to the experience.

Here are some more images I had collected, if you are interested in the artist and their style, feel free to check out their

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[anne O'nymous]

The game I played is called House of Pleasure, which I believe to be a fan recreation of another nsfw game (possibly with the same name? I am not too sure)

According to the screenshots, I would say that it's yet a remake of Big Brother.

I just wanted to bring up an observation, and possibly discuss situations where specific traits in a game help made that game good/special/worth it.

While I agree with you, it's not always true. Take A Wife and Mother by example. Visually it's a hit, but after few minutes of play, you discover that it's (almost) all the game have for it. And in this particular case, the writing is too absurd to make the game effectively interesting, while being also too serious, which prevent us to see it as a parody.
And it don't only apply to the CG. From my point of view, there's really few games that are effectively saved by something else, if their story is badly wrote/done. This while I forgive more often bad CG or average game mechanism, if the story is wrote more than correctly. But it can come from the fact that I'm both a book addict, and lived most of my life in the previous century (better than saying that I'm old ). Younger people, born and raised in a fully visual world, can have the opposite opinion ; forgiving more easily for a great visual, because it's what they care for at first.
It probably also depend on what the player is seeking. If he play to fap, then the visual is probably what he will found appealing, while someone in search of entertainment with a bit of excitement, will probably place a strong story above everything else. And if he's in search of a interesting challenge, then it will be the game mechanism. But, while being the center of the game, it seem to be what players care the less. As long as the game mechanism and User Interface aren't horrible, it seem that we just accommodate.

 

[nillamello]

Being an artist myself (studio at major at the turn of the century before digital stuff really started taking off), I really appreciate a visually impressive game. I'll use the deluca family as an example. He put some effort into introducing the characters in a cisual sense as well as through story, which also happens to be pretty good.

That said, I've ditched many games before ever reaching the main plot because the writing is shit. And fashion business has some really good renders.... But the premise is so impossible that I just can't play it.

That said, I fully support the move to minimize gui elements when not in use. If that doesn't improve the game, then the visuals are subpar.

To comment on working for something, I agree that time spent improves the reward. At least to a degree. What I really don't like is the constant repetition of the exact same scene. I think adding a few random modifiers to the set event schedule (different dialogue or scenes that play at random for each encounter in a relationship tier), would go a long way in holding my attention.

 

[JWGameDev]

I don't have too much experience with NSFW games (relatively), but I've found that the two things that can keep me hooked into a game are much like you've said: pretty visuals and simplicity, or rather, ease-of-access.

What I mean is, easily being able to traverse the game, for example through short and instant dialogue boxes that I can fly through, if necessary. I'd rather that than have to slog through paragraphs of poorly written exposition, but that's a given.

I may be of the young sort anne O'nymous mentioned, because some of my favorite porn games growing up were the Meet n' Fuck games. The artwork was usually fantastic, you didn't have to go through too much hassle to get to the sex scenes, and they were short. Nice for a quick jerk off session. The writing was typically corny and pervy, but it was quick enough that you didn't get hung up on it.

I think big games are fine though as well, granted the storylines are interesting and well-written enough. With those two things, even average artwork would probably be worth it, although good artwork is always better. But even with big games, simplicity and ease-of-access should still remain key, for my tastes at least. Complicated game mechanics may be good for someone that likes games and porn on the side, but I personally want the porn first and just the game as a medium.