Games which you long ago thought were awesome, but then outgrew?

[Agent HK47]

I think most of us have been there at some point. You play a game and think "Omg, this is the fucking shit!" and then sometime later you go back and realize "oh, it's more like a pile of fucking shit..."
For me, it was Big brother and DmD, back when I first found this site, around 2 years ago. I was amazed by the amount of playtime on BB and the amazing renders, and I really enjoyed the sweet little daughter in DmD. After a couple of months, and after having played a lot of other games, I went back and tried both games again and was.... less enthusiastic.

BB has lots of content, yes, but almost all of it is pure grind and would be quite short if it was a more liniar novel. Speaking of which, the game is presented like a sandbox, but acts more like a VN, with a couple of branching paths. Most events needs to be triggered in specific orders, and often requires other events with other characters to be completed first, so you can't simply "ignore" characters which you have no interest in dating/fucking.
I was always a sucker for Kira and Alice, and the other characters I couldn't care less about. However, I couldn't just ignore them, cause the game wouldn't let me. Also, how the fuck does Kira know every goddamn thing going on around her? Was she dating John Kramer at some point in her life? Did she hack into the cameras Max set up?

DmD was also less amazing when I returned to it. The daughter seemed more stupid than innocently naive, and her constant ignorance to things, which NO 18 year old girl should be unaware of, was getting very annoying. Just HOW can you be so amazingly naive and sexually uninformed, when your best friend is a horny little slut, who seems to never be able to keep her mouth shut about her sexual adventures?
Also, the father is obviously a manipulative bastard. He tries to convince himself and his daughter, that he loves her, but to me, it is very obvious that he is only in love with her sexual appeal and her innocent nature. Also, I have never seen a game blue-ball its players this much before. You must pour countless hours of work into the game, before you get a blowjob, let alone any form of actual sex with the girl.

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

Elena's life
It was hot to start off with, now she's just a slut who'll bang anything that moves.

DMD
I agree with you on some points; no eighteen-year-old girl would be that innocent unless they have led a very sheltered life, this one hasn't because as you said, she has a slut for a best friend.

 

[Deleted member 229118]

Not really.
I tent to forget bad games quickly.
There are games that have been surpassed but that doesnt mean there bad games.
Just that there are better games.

Games like slavemaker.
It was a good game but it has been surpassed by strive to power, hentai highschool+ and lillith throne.
Likewise rapelay has been surpass by stuff like milf next door, sleeping sister and urge to molest.

The games arent bad and well worth it if you havent played them before.
But they dont have as good gameplay as the other games.

 

[Adabelitoo]

The only time that I felt something like that was when I played an RPGM game for the first time, at the beggining I was like "Hey! This is a good way to make a game" and two hours later I was "Fuck no. Long Live Ren'Py"

 

[Volta]

BB never blew me away except for the renders, DMD i picked up for about 30 mins a it got it's ass in the recycle bin pretty quickly after that, mostly i'm not super into a game in the first few minutes, generally it takes an hour or two for me to really decide that a game isn't just good but great and once it's hit that level for me it's very uncommon for me to flip and decide i don't like it, in fact there is only one that did that, Evil Inc. a game that was hosted on the Hypnopics game board, it was in RAGS, which tells you something about the age of the thing right away. Now you need to take into account what there was to play at the time, this was before the Ren'Py boom, before the incest boom, hell before i even knew about this site, quite literally 6/7 years ago and what we had at the time was flash, RAGS and AIF, flash was great if you liked janky pixel sex, AIF was great if you didn't like images and Rags filled the gap at least for me.

Now Evil inc. was a game where you played as a supervillian in training/on probation at the company Evil inc., run by doctor evil, yes that doctor evil. The game used image manips as it's main source of porn, quality varied but it was good mostly(at least so i thought at the time). It had combat, a little janky but better than most at the time and easily one of the best battle systems in RAGS at the time, combat felt pretty good, easy to lose or win depending on level gap but still decent. The story was basic but it was only a vehicle for the sex to be honest, though some parts where written quite well. Now i was willing to forgive the failings, the sex was decent, the game felt far more complete than most of the competition and because the mind control aspect wasn't too deep, no degrading slaves stuff which never worked for me, i really enjoyed the game, it was a solid 4.5/5 star for me, however eventually it stopped getting updates and faded in my memory mostly.

However after a recent hardware update i've been through the back end of my games folder getting rid of old stuff and fired it up again and man alive that game was junk, image manips where passable at best, there were more bugs than a dive diner, writing was far less than i remembered, though I've been spoiled in recent years, jokes that i found funny at the time are stale beyond belief and worst of all the sex feels like a checkbox affair, really what was i thinking?

 

[prrt]

pong .

 

[prrt]

but seriously I found this site and stuf only recently and still wonder about what people can think of and create.

 

[hameleona]

DmD was also less amazing when I returned to it. The daughter seemed more stupid than innocently naive, and her constant ignorance to things, which NO 18 year old girl should be unaware of, was getting very annoying. Just HOW can you be so amazingly naive and sexually uninformed, when your best friend is a horny little slut, who seems to never be able to keep her mouth shut about her sexual adventures?

Your mistake is believing the girls are 18 years old. Judging by the writing (and the other small ones look) they are more like 13-15, 16 at best. That makes the dynamic way more plausible, tho I know how triggered a bunch of people would be.
It is obsolescent, tho - there are games, scratching similar vibes that kind of make it - ok, why am I playing this now?
Don't get me wrong, I like the game. But I'd rather play something like the Babysitter.

As for me - it was Dreams of Desire. On second playtrough it just fails. The story wasn't developed enough, there are plot holes the size of aircraft carriers and the ending makes 80s-90s B movies look like inspired pieces of writing. I still think it's one of the better games story wise... but that just shows how shit the story in most games is.

 

[vudar95]

For me it was anything built on a corpse of Legend of Krystal (like Peach's Untold Tale or SimBro - don't know if any of these games were available here) - it was years ago now, and these games were the first community created adult games I played, and I thought they are awesome. But since I found this site and realized how much better than Flash animations Honey Select and Daz can be, the LoK games aren't that appealing anymore.

Also M'n'F games, but everyone knows what a shitshow they are.

 

[Agent HK47]

Your mistake is believing the girls are 18 years old. Judging by the writing (and the other small ones look) they are more like 13-15, 16 at best. That makes the dynamic way more plausible, tho I know how triggered a bunch of people would be.
It is obsolescent, tho - there are games, scratching similar vibes that kind of make it - ok, why am I playing this now?
Don't get me wrong, I like the game. But I'd rather play something like the Babysitter.

As for me - it was Dreams of Desire. On second playtrough it just fails. The story wasn't developed enough, there are plot holes the size of aircraft carriers and the ending makes 80s-90s B movies look like inspired pieces of writing. I still think it's one of the better games story wise... but that just shows how shit the story in most games is.

I know that the age doesn't match up, which a problem affecting more than half the games on this site. No 18 year old is still in high school, unless they are legally retarded (in case of the daughter from DmD, she might actually have a case here). However, the game still has to make us believe that the character is 18+, which DmD fails hard at. And like I said, even if she was a young teenager, she should not be anywhere close to this naive. Hell, my 8 year old nephew already has a pretty good idea of how sex works (no, not like that, you sick fucks )

 

[hameleona]

No 18 year old is still in high school, unless they are legally retarded

Well, not really. In my country we start school at 6 or 7 and finish high school at 18 or 19. IDK how is it in the USA, but many devs are not from there, so that part in some games actually makes sense to me (ok, last year of schooling before going to collage, they can be 18). Than again, there are some games where it's "oh, she is 18, but has a few years of school left" where your point stands strong. I get it, I know patreon and a lot of other places would nuke them if they admit the actual intended age.
I can get past the naivety. The game is over the top in many ways and I get the intent. And I've seen such dynamics between the slut and the "good girl" going trough high school. Is it over the top? Yes. How much? I honestly don't remember, I just remember that it didn't bother me much. It's hard to explain why, but I can get why she is written that way and I can go - yeah, I get it. It's one of those things that are there for the story sake (along with the crazy amount of other creeps besides the father). It's not my style of storytelling but I can get it.

 

[yihman1]

Elena's Life has lost it's magic for sure. The game has been dragging on and on and on and never ends... It used to be a fun game. However, there is practically no branching. The walk around got old as well... Wake up, shower, elevator, school, home, then visit some place else...

DMD is still pretty decent, but updates take so damn long.

A wife and mother started out very promising... Two years later it's still just very promising... Assuming we are in the real life timeline where that game eventually gets completed in maybe 10 more years, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a spectacular game. The only two sex scenes are currently with the husband. (blowjob / shower sex) and both are on the "good wife" path and it's a corruption game... Eventually, it may become great again. Also, updates take forever.

Big Brother... If that creator never went and made that stupid "Glamour" game, but instead conveted BB into a renpy game and kept on building it would be a great game.

Superpowered: I still like this game. However, It's frustrating as fuck that Maggie doesn't get enough updates focused on her. There is that "working mom" option that is still unavailable after forever. The grind is painful even with cheats, and the fact you must play with cheats for it to be playable makes it less playable. Sophie, Danni, Dr Ivy, Courtney, & Anne are all not interactive enough. Especially Dr Ivy... Still not even the tiniest bit of content for her, but at the same time they add a college & some random Asian chick right when I was hoping for an Ivy update or maybe working mom... The fact that you can fail when trying to find fetishes is annoying as well especially if you are not cheating. That's not balanced right, then you always gotta worry about energy and grades and stuff.

Lots of abandoned games go on the list too...

Acting Lessons: Was good, but pissed me off there was no be with the stalker nurse ending... Then she goes all overly attached girlfriend... Maybe a route where the othe 2 girls live?

 

[Agent HK47]

Well, not really. In my country we start school at 6 or 7 and finish high school at 18 or 19. IDK how is it in the USA, but many devs are not from there, so that part in some games actually makes sense to me (ok, last year of schooling before going to collage, they can be 18). Than again, there are some games where it's "oh, she is 18, but has a few years of school left" where your point stands strong. I get it, I know patreon and a lot of other places would nuke them if they admit the actual intended age.
I can get past the naivety. The game is over the top in many ways and I get the intent. And I've seen such dynamics between the slut and the "good girl" going trough high school. Is it over the top? Yes. How much? I honestly don't remember, I just remember that it didn't bother me much. It's hard to explain why, but I can get why she is written that way and I can go - yeah, I get it. It's one of those things that are there for the story sake (along with the crazy amount of other creeps besides the father). It's not my style of storytelling but I can get it.

I think we will just have to accept that adult games will NEVER be able to make perfect sense.

 

[DawnCry]

I don't think that the problem is that they "outgrew", rather a lack of management, bad mechanics, bad developments...

Most of the time the people that start to develop a game don't truly have any idea about what they are doing, at first because it's very simple it isn't so noticed, but then later on when it starts to get big you kind of find all the things that the game lacks, the bad mechanics it added...

If you want to start making a game you should do the most basic thing, take a paper and write your ideas, write your initial characters, write your mechanics and everything else that you have in your head, then after you have that huge mess, clean it, take away bad ideas, add the connections between each idea and form a game concept.

Having a game concept with clearly defined mechanics, main characters, stats and how everything works usually means a better game and a higher chance of success at later stages. Doing things right can make a big difference. In fact most failures are originated because they didn't do such a simple thing, then they try to solve it, most of the times fail and break the game and we end up with a project that will never be finished.

This can apply to early-mid stages of a project, if you survive to late then one of the two, you did a good game concept or you did manage to solve your initial mess.

 

[Agent HK47]

I don't think that the problem is that they "outgrew", rather a lack of management, bad mechanics, bad developments...

Most of the time the people that start to develop a game don't truly have any idea about what they are doing, at first because it's very simple it isn't so noticed, but then later on when it starts to get big you kind of find all the things that the game lacks, the bad mechanics it added...

If you want to start making a game you should do the most basic thing, take a paper and write your ideas, write your initial characters, write your mechanics and everything else that you have in your head, then after you have that huge mess, clean it, take away bad ideas, add the connections between each idea and form a game concept.

Having a game concept with clearly defined mechanics, main characters, stats and how everything works usually means a better game and a higher chance of success at later stages. Doing things right can make a big difference. In fact most failures are originated because they didn't do such a simple thing, then they try to solve it, most of the times fail and break the game and we end up with a project that will never be finished.

This can apply to early-mid stages of a project, if you survive to late then one of the two, you did a good game concept or you did manage to solve your initial mess.

I like your answer and agree with a lot of your points, but I think you misunderstood me. I was asking if you ever played a game and thought "Wauw, this is really great" and then when you return to try it later, after the "honeymoon period" is over, you realize that the game is nowhere near as good as you originally thought.

Other than that, it was an interesting read ^^

 

[DawnCry]

I like your answer and agree with a lot of your points, but I think you misunderstood me. I was asking if you ever played a game and thought "Wauw, this is really great" and then when you return to try it later, after the "honeymoon period" is over, you realize that the game is nowhere near as good as you originally thought.

Other than that, it was an interesting read ^^

In my case... not truly, what I see first when I find a game is how everything is coded, if the menu is worked and things like that.

I have found good games since the start and bad ones that I expected them to fail. But personally because I'm quite critic I don't usually have a honeymoon.

Let's take Big brother for example, in this game there were 3 things that I truly focused on before thinking it would be a good game or a bad one:

-Stats and their applications
-Player's limitations
-Game plot

First of all let's talk about the stats and how they were used, we had the MC stats and the girl stats, if I remember right they were things like stealth, massage, kissing... first of all here I started to find contradictions, while actions such as kissing were a skill or stat of the MC, others like sex weren't, this is because they did the fundamental mistake I said in my post, a lack of previous design, basically we have skills that have very limited use because it wasn't planned from the start, it is easily noticed when actions as simple as massage or kissing are skills to increase, but others that would make more sense don't exist, in this case sex for example.

Another thing that I noticed was that your skills even if you have it maxed, it just determined a chance of success (I'm talking about you stealth!), it is annoying that even if you are a ninja master you can fail at the easiest thing.

Then I evaluated how hard it was to increase skills/stats, it was a grindfest.

On the part of player's limitations what I saw was:

1º The MC can't leave his house (very strong limitation)
2º The MC needs money and only can work within the house (another big limitation)
3º The MC is pushed to use cameras to earn money (this one told me the MC was a piece of shit)

Seeing the limitations it means that the game needs to give a plot within those big limitations. In itself I kind of critic a lot the way the MC gets money, even more only being able to move around the house could be very repetitive.

Finally the game plot and how it was being developed:

-On this point I can understand the need of Eric, the plot would have been completely static if it wasn't for him, even so he was very underdeveloped and with little use.
-The dialogues needed a lot more work and thought, it would have been much more interesting.

Overall if you analyze the game, it was a big mess, we have a rival that had no development, stats that were there for the sake of making the player grind them, very limited locations, days feeling like just a repetition.

If you compare the starting part with the mid part of the game we find the following:

-At the start there were events that happened with time, you could feel that the game moves to "somewhere" and it gives the player a bit of pressure.
-Then after Eric arrives and you see his actions... the game loses that factor, it becomes static.

The problem here is that the game lost the reason to move forward, Eric is very passive and in the end he becomes just an annoying mechanic, to do something you have to kick him out. The game had interesting ideas but they were all interrupted.

My question would be, following what I saw, could I at some point find myself in the "honeymoon period"?. I would guess that 90% of the time if you take the time to see how the game is working you can talk about it's future.

There are very few games that I can truly admire, those are:

-The company
-XXXivilization
-Lilith Throne
-Seeds of chaos

The games that impressed me the most at the start were seeds of chaos and lilith throne, I saw such a hard work behind the scenes... those are games that I played before and even when I play them today I find them becoming better. I value a lot the innovation and the well worked mechanics, I guide myself upon that.

Sorry for the long post.

 

[Agent HK47]

In my case... not truly, what I see first when I find a game is how everything is coded, if the menu is worked and things like that.

I have found good games since the start and bad ones that I expected them to fail. But personally because I'm quite critic I don't usually have a honeymoon.

Let's take Big brother for example, in this game there were 3 things that I truly focused on before thinking it would be a good game or a bad one:

-Stats and their applications
-Player's limitations
-Game plot

First of all let's talk about the stats and how they were used, we had the MC stats and the girl stats, if I remember right they were things like stealth, massage, kissing... first of all here I started to find contradictions, while actions such as kissing were a skill or stat of the MC, others like sex weren't, this is because they did the fundamental mistake I said in my post, a lack of previous design, basically we have skills that have very limited use because it wasn't planned from the start, it is easily noticed when actions as simple as massage or kissing are skills to increase, but others that would make more sense don't exist, in this case sex for example.

Another thing that I noticed was that your skills even if you have it maxed, it just determined a chance of success (I'm talking about you stealth!), it is annoying that even if you are a ninja master you can fail at the easiest thing.

Then I evaluated how hard it was to increase skills/stats, it was a grindfest.

On the part of player's limitations what I saw was:

1º The MC can't leave his house (very strong limitation)
2º The MC needs money and only can work within the house (another big limitation)
3º The MC is pushed to use cameras to earn money (this one told me the MC was a piece of shit)

Seeing the limitations it means that the game needs to give a plot within those big limitations. In itself I kind of critic a lot the way the MC gets money, even more only being able to move around the house could be very repetitive.

Finally the game plot and how it was being developed:

-On this point I can understand the need of Eric, the plot would have been completely static if it wasn't for him, even so he was very underdeveloped and with little use.
-The dialogues needed a lot more work and thought, it would have been much more interesting.

Overall if you analyze the game, it was a big mess, we have a rival that had no development, stats that were there for the sake of making the player grind them, very limited locations, days feeling like just a repetition.

If you compare the starting part with the mid part of the game we find the following:

-At the start there were events that happened with time, you could feel that the game moves to "somewhere" and it gives the player a bit of pressure.
-Then after Eric arrives and you see his actions... the game loses that factor, it becomes static.

The problem here is that the game lost the reason to move forward, Eric is very passive and in the end he becomes just an annoying mechanic, to do something you have to kick him out. The game had interesting ideas but they were all interrupted.

My question would be, following what I saw, could I at some point find myself in the "honeymoon period"?. I would guess that 90% of the time if you take the time to see how the game is working you can talk about it's future.

There are very few games that I can truly admire, those are:

-The company
-XXXivilization
-Lilith Throne
-Seeds of chaos

The games that impressed me the most at the start were seeds of chaos and lilith throne, I saw such a hard work behind the scenes... those are games that I played before and even when I play them today I find them becoming better. I value a lot the innovation and the well worked mechanics, I guide myself upon that.

Sorry for the long post.

Sweet mother of holy things! I thought I had a tendency for walls of text, but I think I will have to bow down to my new king.

Again, I agree with pretty much everything you point out here, and I have a similar tendency to dissect everything myself these days. My experience with BB and DmD I described above, was when I first found these kinds of adult games, as all I had tried until then was LOP games, so I was pretty amazed by the sudden revelation of new, shiny toys. I am much harder to impress these days, but still, I doubt I am the only one to be blinded to a game's faults at first glance, before you shake your head, wake up completely and realize you are playing a shitpile of a game.

On a side note, I tried playing DmD again a few months ago. Daughter does not seem to have gotten any more intelligent and her friend has not gotten any less horny or shameless. You can finally fuck her in the pussy though, so that's something... I guess. Only took 2 or 3 years and 20'ish updates for that to happen. Jeez

 

[Deleted member 167032]

This may seem like a jab at the dev but it's not, only the sad truth... Any Slonique game now for me are spoiled. He started getting into a nice groove and then "started the new game whilst not finishing a previous game" thing. It's ruined all games now made by him for me which is a pity.

 

[alt_advancement]

I think most of us have been there at some point. You play a game and think "Omg, this is the fucking shit!" and then sometime later you go back and realize "oh, it's more like a pile of fucking shit..."
For me, it was Big brother and DmD, back when I first found this site, around 2 years ago. I was amazed by the amount of playtime on BB and the amazing renders, and I really enjoyed the sweet little daughter in DmD. After a couple of months, and after having played a lot of other games, I went back and tried both games again and was.... less enthusiastic.

BB has lots of content, yes, but almost all of it is pure grind and would be quite short if it was a more liniar novel. Speaking of which, the game is presented like a sandbox, but acts more like a VN, with a couple of branching paths. Most events needs to be triggered in specific orders, and often requires other events with other characters to be completed first, so you can't simply "ignore" characters which you have no interest in dating/fucking.
I was always a sucker for Kira and Alice, and the other characters I couldn't care less about. However, I couldn't just ignore them, cause the game wouldn't let me. Also, how the fuck does Kira know every goddamn thing going on around her? Was she dating John Kramer at some point in her life? Did she hack into the cameras Max set up?

DmD was also less amazing when I returned to it. The daughter seemed more stupid than innocently naive, and her constant ignorance to things, which NO 18 year old girl should be unaware of, was getting very annoying. Just HOW can you be so amazingly naive and sexually uninformed, when your best friend is a horny little slut, who seems to never be able to keep her mouth shut about her sexual adventures?
Also, the father is obviously a manipulative bastard. He tries to convince himself and his daughter, that he loves her, but to me, it is very obvious that he is only in love with her sexual appeal and her innocent nature. Also, I have never seen a game blue-ball its players this much before. You must pour countless hours of work into the game, before you get a blowjob, let alone any form of actual sex with the girl.

I agree with this part 100%! I'll never forget playing that game from the beginning 1 night. All the anticipation of "will she touch it" while they would lie naked together drove me crazy! I probably lost 5lbs after she gave him that first handjob with a cumshot ! Same thing with the blowjob, shit had me on edge! After she gave him the first complete blowjob with cum swallow on the train (another epic moment for me!) I began to lose interest. Honestly haven't gone back to this day. I will say as far as anticipation and buildup to that first handjob was the "horniest" a game has ever gotten me!

 

[Agent HK47]

I agree with this part 100%! I'll never forget playing that game from the beginning 1 night. All the anticipation of "will she touch it" while they would lie naked together drove me crazy! I probably lost 5lbs after she gave him that first handjob with a cumshot ! Same thing with the blowjob, shit had me on edge! After she gave him the first complete blowjob with cum swallow on the train (another epic moment for me!) I began to lose interest. Honestly haven't gone back to this day. I will say as far as anticipation and buildup to that first handjob was the "horniest" a game has ever gotten me!

Well, at least you can actually fuck her now. Longest blue-balling ever