I’ll use this opportunity to ask everyone lurking in this thread what you like most about NTR games when it comes to the gameplay and narrative aspects. I’m not talking about the type of NTR you want to see, but rather how you prefer these two elements to be incorporated into the game.
Should the gameplay be separate? Almost optional? Do you like it when the gameplay is directly involved in the NTR aspects and their development?
The same questions go for the narrative: do you like or care for the NTR to take place in a fleshed-out world, or is that just fluff you skip through to get to the adult content? Do you prefer the NTR storyline to be part of a greater story, or completely separate from it? For example, if the main story is about fighting the Demon Lord, do you prefer the NTR to be connected to that plot, or to happen alongside it as a separate thread? Or do you need such a framing in the first place?
I have my own thoughts on all of it but I would like to hear what others think.
I think even with or without NTR in general,
games need gameplay, otherwise its just a gallery viewer with extra steps, and I think a lot of games suffer from this aspect that just makes the user experience way too boring; they throw a few buttons in a VN or a quest to 'go to point A to point B' and then a scene appears, rinse and repeat. It's not fun to play and pushes the standard for the art to be exceptionally good to be considered a good game. If you want to use a game for a medium to narrate your NTR story, you definitely want to utilize the user interactivity to intensify the scenario given, as this is what is unique to a game compared to a doujin or a show.
And just a bit more on that, the gameplay and the grind aspect of it shouldn't be separate, it should be relevant to the game. There needs to be a balance of asking the user to collect something or go somewhere to flesh out the environment for lore/scenario versus asking players to grind for hours for a scene. That is a major blue ball and people will inevitable push for cheats, devaluing the importance of that need of that journey to collect/go to location.
Narrative I feel like is also a balance, but it really depends on the type of game you are designing and how your sex scenarios are presented; games like Karryn's Prison doesn't need LOTR lore as its scenarios is in its battle system and battlefuck scenes, whereas you also have games like SAO2 where scenarios require some build up to it to heighten/address the plot devices to lead to that scenario.
Specifically NTR, there has to be some narrative to set that foundation that the FMC/MC is to be corrupted, and there is a benefit in using text to introduce or convey thoughts, feelings, events or characters a visual cannot (and sometimes saves a lot of time in making less important characters be more inclusive to the story). However, too much unnecessary narrative and you end up boring the user and they will skip through, and too little confuses the user and dampens the sexiness of a scenario/situation.
TL;DR a good game should incorporate both relevant gameplay and a good volume of narration, and should be working with each other to improve the experience.
