Genres with casual or challanging gameplay?

[Girm Ork]

Which one do you prefer?

I think it is obvious that most adult games are in casual genres. If we are talking about visual novels, then you only need to make dialogue choices, nothing more.
If we take a look at the most successful adult games on Steam, almost all of them are puzzles or match-3 games.

Is there a place for normal games but with the adult content? I mean genres with complex gameplay, when a game has a value itself, even without sex/nudity. Do you play them?

 

[Staimh]

I would suggest all porn games can fall between to extremes
1) A sequence of porn images and animations directly connected in an unflexible sequence where clicking simply moves things along (this isn't that different from a video with a pause option)
2) A devastatingly complex open world where every quest and task must be complete before the prize of a porn image

I am not sure how many takers there would be for either of the extremes

As to which I prefer for porn gamesit depends on mood, sometimes a casual meander, sometimes a bit of thought (even involving notes in spredasheets)
For non-porn games I expect a challenge and do not go for the linear style but far prefer rpg/sandbox/open world affairs.

 

[Omae wa shinda]

The most challenging game is Google Dinosaur

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Sure, here are some with a bit more meat on the bones.

Corrupted Saviors
Overwhored
News Desk
The Last Sovereign
Star Knightess Aura
On Edge
Venus Blood: Frontier

And here's one that's interesting in terms of characters and story even if you go full purity:

Naked Ambition

 

[Carrera]

I'll generally play anything if it looks good and sounds like it might be fun, but I stay away from anything that requires fast reflexes, math skills, or wack-a-verb games.

 

[woody554]

as long as it has some mechanism stopping me from getting everything without any risk. the first thing I always do is try the filthiest options given, and if the game lets me get away with it it's b-bye and never come back.

 

[mgtoons]

I'm not a fan of platformers/action/fps games in regular context. I sure as hell wouldn't enjoy it when it is interrupting my 'adult' time.

 

[God3333]

For me I like visual novels, I'm not the biggest fan of games that don't incorporate that element. However, I think if you have a game with a good story that flows then It doesn't really matter. Played a few games with combat and it's interesting, but you need to do it well.

I'd argue if you're going for mainly story then a visual novel is probably the best medium to do that. If you want more interactive elements like combat then it's probably best to mix the two genres. At the end of the day I think there's a healthy middle where you can have a mix of both VN and more interactive content like combat etc.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Is there a place for normal games but with the adult content? I mean genres with complex gameplay, when a game has a value itself, even without sex/nudity. Do you play them?

The most liked of the Winged Cloud's games is the one that effectively look like a game, Sakura Dungeon. But it being the only game they made outside as their usual Visual Novels, it's easy to guess that it didn't sold well. Therefore, the answer to your question is that there's a place for those games, but there isn't a public for them outside of the adult gaming community itself.

But who care if there's a place or not ?

I guess that, if asked how many players you expect for your game, while wanting to answer "millions", you more reasonably think "few thousands". For something made by an amateur, on his free time, with just the intent to "do it", it's already not bad, "few thousands".
Well, there's actually more than 3.5 millions members on this forum. 35 000 persons is more on the side of "few dozen of thousands", and it's just 1% of the public you can find here...

So, unless you're seeking for big money (what will probably not happen anyway), just make your game the way you want. Unless it's total shit, it will find its public, and without effectively knowing it, you'll have more players than you expected to have.

 

[Droid Productions]

Actually, Sakura Dungeon was their second most successful paid game, according to Steam Spy (beaten by Sakura Swimclub)


I expect the problem is rather that it was a whole lot more work, for a marginally higher reward. Sakura Angels and Sakura Spirits did about the same, and didn't come with having to beat Renpy into pretending it's a first person dungeon crawler. The VNs are a lot easier to parallelize; one programmer and writer can support several teams of artists making different games (keep in mind Winged Cloud is a company, and has employees and freelancers working for them, so this isn't normal patreon development). I suspect Sakura Dungeon took a lot more design/code time than they expected, and that stopped them from being able to mass-produce like they did later.

Anyway, either can work. Casual games like Huniepop can do well. Pure VNs like BaDIK and CoBD can do well. Hardcore games like Wild Life and Subverse can do well. In general, good games with an active community and a reactive and communicating dev largely do at least okay, if not "retire to a private island bought by my ill-gotten gains" levels of amazing.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I expect the problem is rather that it was a whole lot more work, for a marginally higher reward. Sakura Angels and Sakura Spirits did about the same, and didn't come with having to beat Renpy into pretending it's a first person dungeon crawler.

But they did it, therefore the hardest part of the works was done and they could have reused the code without real problems :/

[...] keep in mind Winged Cloud is a company, and has employees and freelancers working for them, so this isn't normal patreon development

Reason why it make no sense for them to haven't produced more games like this one. A Patreon dev could have felt overwhelmed ; "Ok, I finally did it, but never ever again I'll start such difficult project". But they have professional coders, people who at the opposite should be triggered by the idea to do it again and, why not, even see if they can go further.
The dev(s) working on this title couldn't support many games, but they could easily works on a second one will doing this one ; especially since, like I said, they now already have the core of the game mechanisms.

Anyway, either can work. Casual games like Huniepop can do well. Pure VNs like BaDIK and CoBD can do well. Hardcore games like Wild Life and Subverse can do well. In general, good games with an active community and a reactive and communicating dev largely do at least okay, if not "retire to a private island bought by my ill-gotten gains" levels of amazing.

Agree on this. As I implied, the community is large enough for any kind of story, and any kind of game, to find its public.

 

[Tinklehoi]

Both is good

 

[rk-47]

Depends on how challenging the challenging ones are, and what rewards you get

 

[Monkeydragon69]

I like both. If the challenging stuff isn't unfair and there's a option to skip, plus a reward at the end it's fine.

Really whatever fits the game. Like a VN probably shouldn't make you pull your hair out, and an RPG should have some challenge, just make it an optional boss or something.

And for the question if there's a place for normal games but with adult content. oh yeah, It's just harder to nail that down then something more simple. Even triple A devs can struggle to make a fun game