There used to be something called the Erins that gave awards for best adult interactive fiction.
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Yup. I miss those days. Wouldn't, without qualification, call them 'better,' but they certainly had some features that most games these days lack, even if many would say they prefer what comes out these days.
Anyway, lemme see if I can think of some good stuff from this past year.
Sexbot, obviously. I was one of the first backers of that project, so it would be silly not to mention it, no matter how many times it's come up in this thread already.
Five of a Kind is legitimately a pretty great adventure game, and while it's had a fairly slow development cycle since its initial release, what's there at this point is excellent.
Sluttown USA is...well, it's fine. Honestly, it's kinda been a drought of legitimately
new titles this year (2020 is really when a bunch of people got started on new shit, for obviously pandemic-related reasons I'd assume). It's got mind control and hacking and a couple of silly minigames, so I qualify it as 'good enough.'
Secrets of Whispering Pines I actually quite like this one. It's very 'fuck the establishment, I'm making a horror-porn game that breaks boundaries,' and I respect the hell out of it for that. Mix Jason, Saw, and I'm sure a bunch of other horror movies I haven't seen, with an incest ren'py mystery game, and this is what you get. Not for everybody, but I really appreciate what they're trying to do.
A Petal Among Thorns Eh, it's fairly traditional stuff, but I think it's pretty great. Father and daughter locked in a cabin, trying to sort out their feelings, interesting sexual roleplay and teasing going on. Definitely looking forward to the next update.
Duality Great art and some reasonably well made time management systems, as well as some interesting writing and character interactions, prevent this game from being
too paint-by numbers.
I'm sure some other cool stuff started this year, but I don't really give a shit about Patreon games that don't have the incest tag at this point. If I'm really going to click through an endless set of ren'py slides, a game engine I'm already pretty on the fence about, there better be some taboos getting fucking broken. Otherwise, I feel like this year I saw more interesting game ideas get abandoned or finished in a rush than new games get started.