Gamification Vs Story

[Sensyt]

Hi All,

Just curious about how the community feels about gamification vs pick your own adventure style games for visual novels.

Do you find game elements in VNs tedious, or does it improve your immersion?

I personally enjoy VNs with game elements, like Seeds of Chaos' adventure map, as it makes choices and outcomes feel more real. I'm not a fan of games which rely on grinding to slow the pace down though.

I do enjoy games which have solely choice based player interaction too, but I find myself constantly backtracking and making a million saves to make sure I get to see every option - which breaks my immersion a fair bit.

Keen to hear your opinions on this!

 

[Terrandis]

In my experience, It really depends on how well integrated the game elements are to the progression of the narrative.

Optimally, a player's performance in the gameplay segments of a VN should feed into the options available at decision segments or otherwise how the story directly unfolds. Additionally, it should be thematically tied to the narrative in some way and, most crucially, actually be engaging to play.

Of course meeting all of these goals is extremely difficult while also balancing the demands of composing a VN, and so we frequently see one or the other element dominate at the other's expense. In a worst-case scenario, the neglected element can even become an active detriment to enjoying the game as a whole.

Consequently, I tend to be wary going into VNs with gameplay tags and only try them out when Im in a particularly accepting mood; sometimes im pleasantly surprised, but more often I feel justified in not picking them up earlier.

 

[jormungandrswe]

The optimal blend for me is gamified sandbox mechanics (hopefully not grindy) as a way to immerse the player in the situation/"life" of the MC, and as a way to gatekeep and pace tightly authored plot/sexy content.

The basic "go to work, get money, level up stats" progression is a good starting point, although far from enough. It needs to feel meaningful, and you make it meaningful by providing lots of content and context. So for example, if you have a "work" location, don't just give the player "You work for 4 hours, +20 money". Write content for the work location, random events, characters, side mechanics etc. Spice it up.

I really dislike FULLY systemic games, where even the sex is mechanical (orgasm bars and shit). The content often ends up feeling anticlimactic. At the same time fully linear VNs make me impatient as they totally tie you to the author's will, you can't interrupt the flow to explore side content or toy with the game world.

 

[DuniX]

I prefer actual Gameplay like Management, Strategy and Combat.

But I prefer Sandbox games that let you have your own pacing and exploration compared to linear novels.
I find events that drag too long annoying mostly because I don't like the stories as much anyway, so prefer a more bite sized chunks approach that I might skip if I don't find interesting.

If there was a novel that was actually complete and found the premise, setting, plot and characters interesting that might have been different but that is rarely the case outside of translated Japanese VNs.
This "Adult VNs" projects you find here I find their premise and settings completely uninteresting, with "brother" sister fucker this, motherfucker that.

 

[Hadley]

If I want Gameplay I play a real Game. AVNs should stick to what they are good at, Story!

 

[DuniX]

AVNs should stick to what they are good at, Story!

They suck at stories so they should stick with what they are good at, Games!

 

[Hardstyle Gaming]

The less tedious the better for me.

 

[nulnil]

If I was forced at gunpoint to play a VN, or anything on Ren'py, I'd rather have no game elements. If the game is VN-like, your gameplay is gonna suck guaranteed.

 

[tanstaafl]

They suck at stories so they should stick with what they are good at, Games!

Here's the conundrum, the majority sandbox games are too grindy and poorly made by devs who are not knowledgeable enough to make a good experience and the majority of AVNs that are story based are poorly written tripe by devs who are too amateur or too lazy to build a good story. So it boils down to this: Would you rather dig through a pile of bad sandbox games to find a good one or a pile of bad AVNs to find a good one?

For myself, I'd rather dig through AVNs than sandboxes.

Reason being that even a poorly written story can still be interesting and even compelling at times. A poorly made sandbox has no redeeming qualities at all.

 

[DuniX]

So it boils down to this: Would you rather dig through a pile of bad sandbox games to find a good one or a pile of bad AVNs to find a good one?

False Dichotomy as Games with actual Gameplay like Combat, Strategy, Management, Puzzles are always an option.
"Sandbox" by itself never represented much of "Gameplay" in the first place.

Reason being that even a poorly written story can still be interesting and even compelling at times.

No it doesn't, a waste of time is a waste of time with no enjoyment. Some people like me have the visceral reaction to vomit when reading cringe.

A poorly made sandbox has no redeeming qualities at all.

At least you can skip to the sex scenes.

Which brings me my point, it's up to the individual player what they happen to accept.
Just because you accept them does not make that "The Truth".

 

[tanstaafl]

False Dichotomy as Games with actual Gameplay like Combat, Strategy, Management, Puzzles are always an option.
"Sandbox" by itself never represented much of "Gameplay" in the first place.

And games like that are maybe 1% of adult games (slight hyperbole, obviously), so you have fun with your search.

No it doesn't, a waste of time is a waste of time with no enjoyment. Some people like me have the visceral reaction to vomit when reading cringe.

Get over yourself, seriously. This is your problem, not ours.

At least you can skip to the sex scenes.

Same with every type of adult game...unless the poorly made sandbox keeps you from skipping to the sex scenes with horrid grinds. At least with AVNs you can just click through.

Which brings me my point, it's up to the individual player what they happen to accept.
Just because you accept them does not make that "The Truth".

Odd, your first sentence here is literally my point, pick what you want to accept, following which I gave my opinion of what I can accept and why. The big indicator you ignored in my post was the words "for myself." Not sure what the point of the second sentence was, since I presented a question then gave my opinion on the answer.

 

[DuniX]

And games like that are maybe 1% of adult games (slight hyperbole, obviously), so you have fun with your search.

Well yes that's the problem.
You present being only two choices when the third option which is in my opinion the right answer does not get much love as it should.

Get over yourself, seriously. This is your problem, not ours.

Who made you King? Who is this royal "we"?

Odd, your first sentence here is literally my point, pick what you want to accept, following which I gave my opinion of what I can accept and why.

You presented your reasons and I countered your reasons with mine.
That way a third person can make their own judgement on it.
Just like you opinion is valid so is my opinion valid.

And no your opinion is not more valid than mine that you can just dismiss. You do not speak on anyone's behalf except for yourself. Nobody made you King.

 

[tanstaafl]

Well yes that's the problem.
You present being only two choices when the third option which is in my opinion the right answer does not get much love as it should.

I agree, it's a problem for you if your preferred game type is so much in the minority. It's a problem I'm glad I don't have because I don't really see a solution.

Who made you King? Who is this royal "we"?

You have a serious inferiority complext. I replied to your comments in the same tone as your posts. If you see that as self important you may need to try some self reflection.

Let me rephrase my statement so that it means the exact same as before. "Get over yourself. It's nobody's problem but your own if you vomit while reading anything but Tolstoy."

You presented your reasons and I countered your reasons with mine.
That way a third person can make their own judgement on it.
Just like you opinion is valid so is my opinion valid.

And no your opinion is not more valid than mine that you can just dismiss. You do not speak on anyone's behalf except for yourself. Nobody made you King.

See above.

 

[gunderson]

Let's start by exposing some assumptions: Ren'py is not the only engine you can make a visual novel on, nor necessarily the best (or worst) one. Common engines include Ren'py, Unity, one of the Twine variants, and Qsp for people who really miss RAGS and speak enough Russian to get by.

Ren'py is a tight engine, certainly. It has the benefit of being free and fairly easy to make a barebones VN on. It is also singlehandedly responsible for the bulk of the dumpster-tier games on f95, as you really don't have to have any skills whatsoever to make shovelware-quality porn games with it and Honey Select. It is indeed possible to add some amount of gameplay to a Ren'py VN, but that mostly looks like 'click the thing with a timer' or resource management. Personally, I think that a Ren'py porn VN with a decently implemented and moderately deep resource management system can make a game more fun and even possibly more sexy (you earn it, y'know?), but a lot of that might just come down to me enjoying strategy games anyway.

Unity is pretty much a jack of all trades when it comes to games, and in my opinion a much better fit for VNs with gameplay. Steeper learning curve than Ren'py, sure, but a Unity VN game can incorporate basically any other kind of gameplay you can think of. Here, it's a matter of your skill as a programmer or what packs you buy/can afford. Many available examples here: Loser is a weird sandbox/ccg, Mystwood Manor is a hotel management sim, World after War is a large-scale strategy RPG...lots of options. This is, in a way, an engine for dreamers and programmers alike.

Twine is generally best suited for sprawling adventure game-style VNs, with a heavy emphasis on text and usually IRL porn star images. Go on a quest to save the world and/or live in a house building skills and cash so you can seduce Ava Addams (Ava Addams is probably in the game either way). Here, I'd argue adventure is already most of the gameplay, and that it's about as hard to implement a different kind of gameplay than that in Twine as in Ren'py, with similar results.

Qsp is almost RAGS, if the manual was in Russian, the UI was worse, but compatibility and stability were broadly better. It's...fine. Few people make games in this engine, and that's probably for the best. Don't expect complicated minigames.

Long story short: I generally do prefer some gameplay over none in my porn games, but only as is appropriate to the engine. Aside from Unity, none of the engines I listed above do very well when forced to do anything but what they were designed to do. Oh, and if you're a new dev just starting out? Probably try Ren'py, probably don't get too ambitious with gameplay, and try to accept that we're being honest rather than mean when we give your game a bad review. Improve your skills and try again, or just get a better-paying McJob! Both are good options!