Gameplay that goes well with smut
- Thread starter Off-Color
- Start date
- Dec 4, 2018
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Honestly, any of those can work well with adult content. You're only limited by your skill and imagination (and time).
pick what YOU think is most appealing. you won't survive the development hell unless you really like what you're making.
- Nov 3, 2017
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I think the main bottleneck is "how much time do I want there to be in between sex scenes?" And whatever it is, it should be something that the player can learn pretty quickly, either because it's intuitive or because they're familar with the mechanics from other games. Not many people who want to fap are willing to read a manual first.
If you want to make a good adult game, you have to learn from the failures of other adult games.
What nearly all adult games fail to either realize or do anything about is presentation. Presentation is about how the smut or porn ties into the gameplay and how the player can use it. The harder it is to seperate the presentation from gameplay, the better. Here's a good example for a melee fighter type:
It should never be "breaks" or "rewards", because that leads people just wanting a gallery. The gameplay itself should be inherently lewd.
Oh, and one last thing: Keep the pacing consistent, don't make the gameplay slow down because there must be a dating sequence.
What nearly all adult games fail to either realize or do anything about is presentation. Presentation is about how the smut or porn ties into the gameplay and how the player can use it. The harder it is to seperate the presentation from gameplay, the better. Here's a good example for a melee fighter type:
"A play can use (nut) busters on enemies when they are stunned enough to deal damage and heal themselves. The lust meter (built up by doing damage) determines health healed and damage from busters. Beware that enemies often have their own busters which will deal more damage the higher your lust, and may even heal themselves."It should never be "breaks" or "rewards", because that leads people just wanting a gallery. The gameplay itself should be inherently lewd.
Oh, and one last thing: Keep the pacing consistent, don't make the gameplay slow down because there must be a dating sequence.
Personally, I think it will depend on the story you want to tell.
A 'Landlady/roommate' story doesn't fit really well into an adventure/dungeon crawl style game and would be better off in (probably) a management style game.
Conversely, a 'good vs evil' story would go well with the RPG style game, but not so great for a rhythm style.
The way I see it is Porn in adult games can be used in a few ways.
The most obvious one is a reward mechanism. Complete challenge, get porn, simple. Pretty much every game has reward mechanisms like how you grow stronger in an rpg, get more guns in an fps etc. Porn as a reward mechanism is usually tied into the narrative but pretty much type of gameplay can accommodate reward mechanism porn.
The next one is making the gameplay the porn. This is much harder to achieve but has been done successfully like in Karryns Prison. Sidescrollers occasionally do this too but it usually fits more with the next example.
The one female protagonist games are known for is porn as a reward for failure. I despise this mechanism because it's completely antithetical to the point of a game which, in one way or another, is to win. Game over rape and run or rape specifically.
The final one is porn as a tool for delivering narrative. Many games use this and ties in with porn as a reward mechanism. VNs are the purest example of this, simply telling a story involving sexual themes.
So it's clear to see that depending on how the porn is implemented, is how it meshes with a specific type of gameplay. Some mechanisms work better for specific gameplay types than others.
Thank you for reading my essay.
The most obvious one is a reward mechanism. Complete challenge, get porn, simple. Pretty much every game has reward mechanisms like how you grow stronger in an rpg, get more guns in an fps etc. Porn as a reward mechanism is usually tied into the narrative but pretty much type of gameplay can accommodate reward mechanism porn.
The next one is making the gameplay the porn. This is much harder to achieve but has been done successfully like in Karryns Prison. Sidescrollers occasionally do this too but it usually fits more with the next example.
The one female protagonist games are known for is porn as a reward for failure. I despise this mechanism because it's completely antithetical to the point of a game which, in one way or another, is to win. Game over rape and run or rape specifically.
The final one is porn as a tool for delivering narrative. Many games use this and ties in with porn as a reward mechanism. VNs are the purest example of this, simply telling a story involving sexual themes.
So it's clear to see that depending on how the porn is implemented, is how it meshes with a specific type of gameplay. Some mechanisms work better for specific gameplay types than others.
Thank you for reading my essay.
Whatever the hell you do, never make the game about using porn as a reward. It makes gameplay meaningless and leads to people wanting to cheat through it. Porn needs to tie into the active part of gameplay.
That being said, the sex shouldn't be an "all bad" mechanic either. Any kind of way to rape enemies back lands the game automaticly in B tier, if not already higher.
VNs aren't games, and thus do not count. Based off the post, Off-Color seems to be trying to make a game based around gameplay.
- Sep 13, 2016
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I have no idea what OP used to put all those different gameplay categories together. I mean Stealth and Rhythm together? what.
Also Idle is not a "gameplay" mechanic but more like a mechanic to skip gameplay instead...
Also Idle is not a "gameplay" mechanic but more like a mechanic to skip gameplay instead...
- Jun 16, 2018
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I disagree, from Wikipedia, "An adventure game... the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving." Seems like a good fit to me.
So you are stating that this, https://f95zone.to/threads/fresh-starts-v0-0-25-lordofchange.87412/, is an adventure game?
In that game, you assume the role of a protagonist and there is exploration.
Personally, I would not consider Fresh Starts to be an adventure game, but if you want to insist on using that definition and declare that, that game is an Adventure game, okay.
This is dumb as hell.
Every game operates with reward mechanisms. The porn in an adult game is just another reward. If that makes people want to cheat through it, it's the same as cheating through any other game with challenges. If people want to cheat to get to the porn they should just watch videos on pornhub.
Games are appealing because they make you work for the payoff by completing challenges. Adult games just make one of those payoffs porn.
Yes, every game does operate with reward mechanics. Thing is, most games reward you with satisfaction, not porn. The enticement of most modern games is getting better at them and improving yourself. A good game should reward you with the gameplay itself (generally called depth and mastery), not by dangling porn over you with a fishing hook.
The "porn reward" also breaks fap rythm because you have to wait to bust for that reward, which may not even be that good. As flawed as Karryn's Prison is, it gets the general idea across well. There isn't any "reward", you simply fuck the enemies mid fight.
Anyways, what I was saying is that when you use porn as a reward, the player isn't being driven by just the challenge itself or their curiosity or whatever; they're being driven by horniness. This is espcially bad in visual novels where you have to preform some abstract minigame to get part of a series of renders.
Would you agree that if the game is well crafted, having challenges driven from the game itself, it can be reasonable to have an emotionnal payoff as a reward sometimes (doubled with some adult scenes)?
Yeah I guess you are right there, but most games can't do that very well. It also very badly hurts replayability.
Well, I guess it hurts just as much as knowing the ending of a game...
Still, if we bother to put a cute waifu in an adult game, I'm pretty sure people are going to want some adult time with her as well, no? I feel like it would be hard not to add something like that at one point or another.
If you don't add it as a payoff or reward, when would you add it?
I've sacrificed nuances for the sake of a shorter list of options. Sorry if it's confusing.
These are both about reaction and precise timing.
And thank you everyone for your input.
I think I have my answer, but I'll leave the voting open and check up on it for a couple weeks.
That's in my Idle/Auto category.
My classification comes from my perspective on the implementation.
These are both about reaction and precise timing.
And thank you everyone for your input.
I think I have my answer, but I'll leave the voting open and check up on it for a couple weeks.
The only one that doesn't work that well is Roguelikes since getting the sex scenes means you end your run, which is something you want and don't want. Especially if every enemy has their own scene in which case you want to lose to particular enemies and don't want repeats.
Idle games are about "Optimization" similar to Management Games or Diablo style Character Building and Grinding, especially if you unlock sex scenes you want to do it more efficiently and faster.
I guess the question asked in the title is resolved with another question, is the gameplay loop part of the smut (the player is directly doing thing during sexual acts and and of itself, and that is the gameplay), is the smut part of a larger gameplay loop (i.e. player-controlled sex acts are part of a larger loop alongside base building or interaction), or is the smut part a reward for winning a given scenario (i.e. solve the puzzle, get porn)?
Take, for instance, a hypothetical match-3 puzzle game. Is the sex represented by the Match 3,with responses according to how well or poorly the player is doing and how good/lucky they are at getting combos, or is the Match 3 used as an abstraction of multiple things that may be tangentially related, such as a date, cooking, or what have you? Or do you beat the level and get a scene?
Take, for instance, a hypothetical match-3 puzzle game. Is the sex represented by the Match 3,with responses according to how well or poorly the player is doing and how good/lucky they are at getting combos, or is the Match 3 used as an abstraction of multiple things that may be tangentially related, such as a date, cooking, or what have you? Or do you beat the level and get a scene?