Cool thread, I always meant to do a thread like this, and never got around to it.
I'm going to just come out and say it. The pacing in most of these games sucks. it's sucks hard. Not just because there isn't sex, sometimes you get an early scene or two. But because the stories in these games do nothing but tread water. DmD handles the snails pace progression the best, but I would never go so far as to say it handles it well. At best DmD at least varies what happens from day to day in a fairly interesting way. Other games show a complete disregard for the players time and intelligence.
In my tropes thread I called out the
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trope as one of my personal pet peeves. mainly because doling out the sex in bite sized chunks over an extended period of time doesn't feel natural. In life-sim style games it can get downright frustrating because the player is repeating the same actions over, and over with minor variation in order to get a sex scene that lasts, and I'm being generous here 2-3 minutes. I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that no BB style game has a good story.
As people in this thread have mentioned, the slow pace is often a way to make the incest kink more believable. I can't speak too much to that as to be honest the straight incest kink is usually something I live with as so many games use it rather than something I actively seek out. So I suppose a slower burn might make sense there. Or in a game with an uber-shy virgin.
The problem is that the drawing out of scenes can often happen to characters who do not fit that archetype. Adults often hook up on the first date, and nowadays if you are out on a second or third date and not banging it's considered a bit odd, especially in the age of tinder, and especially in urban areas (I can't speak to rural areas). Even high school kids having one night stands at parties is not uncommon, and hasn't been for decades. And even if you are doing a slow burn in a story that NEEDS a slow burn, if your writing sucks, you'd be better served getting to the sex soon anyway because I don't through awful characters and dialogue in the vain hope of a CG titty anymore.
I'll be frank, had I started BB or DmD early on, even within the first 4-5 updates I wouldn't have kept going. DmD very late in the game added sex with other girls who weren't D, and the bulk of that only happened in last month's release, and even that was limited by the designer (you could only use the condom once). Many games give us several updates with a story and characters that at best are carbon copies of each other, and at worst are unreadable garbage. Most of the time the best you can hope for is a simple story that has characters that seem like the author has met actual people, and knows how they interact in the wild (My Sister, My Roomate has some flaws, but it does at least stoke a memory of college for example). But those games are few and far between.
If you are going to go for a slow burn though, consider ways to simulate the feel of time passing without the player having to live every excruciating second of it. I don't need to see my character jacking off, I don't need to know every time they take a piss, I don't need to see every meal, or every time they go to bed. These scenes generally add nothing to the game outside of padding the story until whatever magical number of gameplay hours has been reached to make incest 'realistic'. Time can pass simply by saying something akin to "we did the same dance for a couple of weeks, until something changed..." and then show what changed.
I'm rambling pretty hard here so let me end on this note. The best written games in this genre do not overly draw out the sex part of a sex game. A few examples:
Dreaming with Elsa can have a virgin hook up, feel like its taking its time, and still tell a decent to good story. The other games in the series are also great too. They build sexual tension, without taking an eternity to get to the erotic part of the game (which is the reason the bulk of people are playing).
Pandora is a game all about the awkward first times of a couple of characters against a story of magic and archaeology, but it is downright speedy compared to the bulk of games on here.
The Pervert Action Series by BBBen has a slow-ish build, but the rewards you get in the scenes are head and shoulders above games like BB.
Coceter Chronicles has a fun story, and sexy stuff right from the beginning.
Wicked Choices: Has incest early on that doesn't feel forced because we get into the head of the main character, and the situation he's in FAST. We start at the late end of the flirtation stage, and the sex that ensues is the START of the drama, not the end of it. It also uses its prose well.
Dreaming of Dana: Dreaming of Dana has probably the slowest start out of any of the games I've mentioned, but even it doesn't take nearly as long as its competition. You get sex very quickly, too keep a player occupied, but you also have a plot that doesn't take a century to get where its going. The progression in the game makes sense. Adults don't fumble around acting like children (well, MOST don't. Andrea's a special case) and once the main plot gets moving, it MOVES. The game would be stronger without the life sim beginning, but it's still one of the best.
Some of these have the advantage of not being released on Patreon monthly, so they came out relatively fully formed. I get that it isn't entirely fair, but the problem is that if a game feels slow paced even when it's completed (DmD Chapter1 as an example) it will feel all the worse when it's being doled out in monthly, bite sized chunks. Sometimes your your saves won't even carry over. Then you have to replay a slow ass game for what might be 10 minutes of new content. No one wants to do that. Well, most people don't want to do that.
