So, I've played a couple dozen of these games, many incomplete, some complete. I've played a few Japanese VN style games, some games with 2D style artwork and animation, and several with 3d art and animation. My play experience has been all over the map! So I thought I'd post my thoughts about that, as a player and as someone who's played all manner of games over the years.
1. Story--have a good story to tell and tell it well. Having a solid, well thought out plot, with good description, characterization and dialogue choices is essential to maximizing the player's investment and immersion in the game.
2. Characters--the characters, including the MC, should be appealing(attractive outside and inside), distinguishable from each other(try not to use the exact same face and body for everyone!), and have distinct personalities which are perhaps not too clichéd?
3. C3--content, content, content! Hours of gameplay is vastly preferable to minutes. If the game is in dev, and most of them are, at least try to provide regular content updates, particularly if you're getting money off of Patreon or elsewhere for it.
4. Make the game challenging but not too challenging. If it's too easy, it's hardly distinguishable from a million cheap fap games on porn sites. If it's too hard, a lot of players will just give up in frustration.
5. Make sure to finish the game, no matter what. Having a rep for making completed games will enhance your rep greatly among those who play them.
6. Don't frustrate your players too much--having to play difficult minigames for marginal rewards, offering dialogue/action choices which are hard to distinguish, and having a nemesis/NTR who appears to have overwhelming advantages are all potentially frustrating for players. As a general rule, the greater the difficulty I encounter, the greater reward I expect to receive for overcoming the difficulty.
7. Don't lecture your players on morality--you are the game designer, making an "adult" game which contains, typically, lots of stuff that would get the MC in prison, sent to foster care or institutionalized. The player, being over 18, is well aware that this stuff is not ok IRL(or at least I hope so!) A little light discussion of "this is so wrong/why am I doing this/I don't want to hurt them" is probably fine, but "you are a horrible perv and are going to h*ll" or variations thereof likely are going to rub a lot of players the wrong way. If you want the theme to be about moral choices, at least make that very clear at the outset.
8. Don't leave players hanging--if you haven't finished the content for a "quest", subplot or storyline, strongly consider leaving it out entirely until the content is finished. At least give some interim reward for partial progression.
9. Chekhov's Gun--Don't display to the players any "food"(attractive characters) they cannot eat(have intimate relations with). If you went to the trouble of designing the model, applying morphs, clothing, hair, posing, post-work in photoshop, naming the character and creating some reason for them to be there, you might as well go all the way and make them fuckable! This only applies to characters the MC would conceivably be attracted to.
10. Don't include features not yet implemented. I'm not sure what value it is to the player to click on something only to read "this feature will be available in a future version". You can put that in a log or notes somewhere. It takes the player out of the game, which as a game designer you do not want to do.
11. Who is the Main Character? What is their background? What is their current situation? Is there a compelling reason, for example, whey they appear to want to fuck every orifice on the game map? Do they have a hormonal imbalance, a genetic mutation, etc? What's their ethnicity? What's their culture? Do they have skills, knowledge, etc?
12. What or who are their goals? General sexual conquest? Losing their virginity? Conquering the world? Taboo-busting? Training an army of sex slaves? Getting a prom date? Taking mom and sis to the prom? If the MC has clear goals, so does the player.
13. What is your game engine? What is your art software? What play style do you want to emulate--RPG(fetch quests, level grinding), dating sim, visual novel, or some combination thereof?
14. Think about what themes and/or fetishes you want to delve into/explore in game. Consider whether these are only available with some characters, or with all of them.
15. This is largely a visual medium, and the physical design/look of the characters is very important--their figure, their skin, their face, facial expressions, poses, etc all create an allure. Skin texture, facial expressions and body language in particular can make a game succeed or fail.
16. Railroading the player--visual novels in particular have this problem. I don't know how many times I've clicked through 50 dialogue boxes before being given a branching choice which might have only a minor impact going forward.
17. Artwork--good is better than bad. What's "bad"? Plastic skin textures, bad figure models, 2d art that's inconsistent and verges on cartoonish(when it's not supposed to be), background scenery that's scant or incomplete. Etc. Bad art takes me out of the game as a player. Good art pulls me in.
18. Bugs--I know they exist. Try not to release a dev that has crippling or game-ending bugs in them. I don't want to save a game and then realize I just screwed myself because it's impossible for me to advance because of the bug.
19. No honey, no money--if you are getting money from patreon, or you want money, you need to provide actual game content and update it on a regular basis. The "payoff" for these game is sexual content, so be sure every major update--and the initial content--has sexual content. There should be some "honey" even in small time increments--say, every 5-20 minutes--with new content unlocked for every hour or two of gameplay.
20. Different models of gameplay--by this I mean two things. I appreciate games that let me choose different approaches to seduction/romance/corruption. I also appreciate games that experiment with different models of gameplay--character switching, "honest" seduction/courtship, getting to know a character rather than just trying to do things to manipulate them into fucking the MC. I recommend looking at other devs games and seeing how they do things.
That's it for now. I appreciate the hard work of all the people who make these games. Keep up the good work!
1. Story--have a good story to tell and tell it well. Having a solid, well thought out plot, with good description, characterization and dialogue choices is essential to maximizing the player's investment and immersion in the game.
2. Characters--the characters, including the MC, should be appealing(attractive outside and inside), distinguishable from each other(try not to use the exact same face and body for everyone!), and have distinct personalities which are perhaps not too clichéd?
3. C3--content, content, content! Hours of gameplay is vastly preferable to minutes. If the game is in dev, and most of them are, at least try to provide regular content updates, particularly if you're getting money off of Patreon or elsewhere for it.
4. Make the game challenging but not too challenging. If it's too easy, it's hardly distinguishable from a million cheap fap games on porn sites. If it's too hard, a lot of players will just give up in frustration.
5. Make sure to finish the game, no matter what. Having a rep for making completed games will enhance your rep greatly among those who play them.
6. Don't frustrate your players too much--having to play difficult minigames for marginal rewards, offering dialogue/action choices which are hard to distinguish, and having a nemesis/NTR who appears to have overwhelming advantages are all potentially frustrating for players. As a general rule, the greater the difficulty I encounter, the greater reward I expect to receive for overcoming the difficulty.
7. Don't lecture your players on morality--you are the game designer, making an "adult" game which contains, typically, lots of stuff that would get the MC in prison, sent to foster care or institutionalized. The player, being over 18, is well aware that this stuff is not ok IRL(or at least I hope so!) A little light discussion of "this is so wrong/why am I doing this/I don't want to hurt them" is probably fine, but "you are a horrible perv and are going to h*ll" or variations thereof likely are going to rub a lot of players the wrong way. If you want the theme to be about moral choices, at least make that very clear at the outset.
8. Don't leave players hanging--if you haven't finished the content for a "quest", subplot or storyline, strongly consider leaving it out entirely until the content is finished. At least give some interim reward for partial progression.
9. Chekhov's Gun--Don't display to the players any "food"(attractive characters) they cannot eat(have intimate relations with). If you went to the trouble of designing the model, applying morphs, clothing, hair, posing, post-work in photoshop, naming the character and creating some reason for them to be there, you might as well go all the way and make them fuckable! This only applies to characters the MC would conceivably be attracted to.
10. Don't include features not yet implemented. I'm not sure what value it is to the player to click on something only to read "this feature will be available in a future version". You can put that in a log or notes somewhere. It takes the player out of the game, which as a game designer you do not want to do.
11. Who is the Main Character? What is their background? What is their current situation? Is there a compelling reason, for example, whey they appear to want to fuck every orifice on the game map? Do they have a hormonal imbalance, a genetic mutation, etc? What's their ethnicity? What's their culture? Do they have skills, knowledge, etc?
12. What or who are their goals? General sexual conquest? Losing their virginity? Conquering the world? Taboo-busting? Training an army of sex slaves? Getting a prom date? Taking mom and sis to the prom? If the MC has clear goals, so does the player.
13. What is your game engine? What is your art software? What play style do you want to emulate--RPG(fetch quests, level grinding), dating sim, visual novel, or some combination thereof?
14. Think about what themes and/or fetishes you want to delve into/explore in game. Consider whether these are only available with some characters, or with all of them.
15. This is largely a visual medium, and the physical design/look of the characters is very important--their figure, their skin, their face, facial expressions, poses, etc all create an allure. Skin texture, facial expressions and body language in particular can make a game succeed or fail.
16. Railroading the player--visual novels in particular have this problem. I don't know how many times I've clicked through 50 dialogue boxes before being given a branching choice which might have only a minor impact going forward.
17. Artwork--good is better than bad. What's "bad"? Plastic skin textures, bad figure models, 2d art that's inconsistent and verges on cartoonish(when it's not supposed to be), background scenery that's scant or incomplete. Etc. Bad art takes me out of the game as a player. Good art pulls me in.
18. Bugs--I know they exist. Try not to release a dev that has crippling or game-ending bugs in them. I don't want to save a game and then realize I just screwed myself because it's impossible for me to advance because of the bug.
19. No honey, no money--if you are getting money from patreon, or you want money, you need to provide actual game content and update it on a regular basis. The "payoff" for these game is sexual content, so be sure every major update--and the initial content--has sexual content. There should be some "honey" even in small time increments--say, every 5-20 minutes--with new content unlocked for every hour or two of gameplay.
20. Different models of gameplay--by this I mean two things. I appreciate games that let me choose different approaches to seduction/romance/corruption. I also appreciate games that experiment with different models of gameplay--character switching, "honest" seduction/courtship, getting to know a character rather than just trying to do things to manipulate them into fucking the MC. I recommend looking at other devs games and seeing how they do things.
That's it for now. I appreciate the hard work of all the people who make these games. Keep up the good work!
