Fucking Goddamn Sandbox Games >_<

[Twistedrem]

Does anyone actually-- really and truly-- enjoy these damn things?

The first game I ever played from this community, I think, was Dreams of Desire. That was a fun time, and that had some light sandbox elements, I guess, in that you could click to move your horny ass around at certain points. But-- really... what's the point? And of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg. So many sandbox games are just these giant grindfest click-happy clusterfucks where you're tap-tap-tapping your way around the same few rendered scenes, over and over again, just trying to find the magic time and place to progress the damn plot.

I was just playing Lunar's Chosen last night-- honestly, got suckered in by the cute looking futa, sue me, she makes my nether regions happy-- and while I don't think the writing is *great*, there's enough there that I was interested in following the story. But I quickly got irritated at having to click my way through the environment, finding the right place to go when, just to have a conversation to move things forward.

I guess it offers a form of gameplay...? Maybe...? But personally, I don't play visual novels expecting much out of the gameplay department. I play them looking for appealing characters, an engrossing story, and at least a decent amount of choice with which to affect the narrative.

Am I in the minority here? Do you, my fellow men and women of culture, enjoy sandbox games? I'm curious. If so, what's your reasoning? Maybe I'm missing something. Help me out, here.

 

[HopesGaming]

It's simple.
People like to feel immersed and in control.
Sandbox gives that feeling.

 

[K115]

I really do understand where you're coming from, the only click-happy games I've played and enjoyed were mostly whore trainer type of games (like Akabur's Princess Trainer). But when it's a VN type of game with that ''stat grind'', I just instantly drop it. It's just not fun to spend so much time grinding stats to get the story to move a little bit forward and THEN you go and discover that if you didn't grind a particular set of stats before a given time on some games, you lose a scene.

Tl;dr
I agree, they're just annoying to play, I drop those type of games all the time.

 

[khumak]

A lot of sandbox games are excessively grindy but IMO it can be done right. The type I like are the ones where you have scenes that have additional options that can be unlocked as the game progresses. So you're not repeating the same scene over and over. You might be repeating a scene that starts the same but you can get farther than before or there is some new branch to take that leads to new scenes.

I also think it can be a good way to allow for bad choices to be "fixable" without a reload. I find it incredibly annoying to have to play a game with a walkthrough open to get the scenes I want. That's rarely needed in a sandbox game. It might take some trial and error to figure out, but you can probably eventually figure everything out without any walkthrough and without any reloads in most sandbox games.

Sandbox games can also be set up to be more event driven but with the option to do things in a more nonlinear fashion than most pure VN type games. I might pick an option that's currently impossible to succeed at and have to come back later but I can still try that scene right off the bat instead of having to wait til the end and get a hint of what's in store later.

 

[Droid Productions]

I guess a lot of people hate grind. Which is different from the basic sandbox design, but very often present. Being able to navigate the world, tackle it on your own terms, explore and unlock events. I personally feel that just straight VN (or worse, kinetic novels) lack the gameplay element I look for in a game. But it's good that everyone has different games they enjoy.

 

[Joshua Tree]

Biggest issue with sandbox games when it come to these kind of games, is they come in piecemeal. So they wont really come to their own right before near completion (or completed).

You can have a sandbox game with 15 mins of content, and you can have a straight vn based one with the same, where you just get handheld to end of content. Chance is the sandbox game is the one that get the most abuse for lack of content and so forth even they still got same amount of content.

The best advice is really stay away from things you don't like, and stick to the ones you do like.