People have asked me they want a "harem" game. What does a harem game involve?

[BeingADikDik]

The hardest part about developing a harem game is, IMO, figuring out what routes to offer the player. As discussed above, you really only have two options: conveyor belt (allow player to accept/reject anyone, but because of that flexibility you cannot account for all combinations, so all scenes are independent of one another) or all-in (everyone is involved, no exceptions).

My suggestion for future devs is to keep things manageable. If you want to allow the player to accept/reject any particular LI while providing all possible scene variants, then you need to code all or most permutations.

1 LI - 1 scene variant
2 LI - 3 variants (A, B, A+B)
3 LI - 7 variants (A, B, C, A+B, A+C, B+C, A+B+C)
4 LI - 15 variants (A, B, C, D, A+B, A+C, A+D, B+C, B+D, C+D, A+B+C, A+B+D, A+C+D, B+C+D, A+B+C+D)

You see how quickly things get out of hand. So, dev needs to set restrictions on allowable combinations AND would be well advised to keep the cast small (only 3 ... 4 with heavy restrictions or a madman's mindset to rendering alternate scenes).

 

[Deleted member 507366]

Harems usually rely on a good bit of fantasy. The most realistic harem game that I've played is 'Sorcerer'. It actually has a believable harem. Games like WVM rely on too much fantasy to be believable.

To me, a harem is only a real harem if all love interests know about each other and are OK with each other sharing the MC. Just having the MC bang every member of the opposite sex that they come across isn't one, it's just the MC being a player.

 

[hakarlman]

Harem

1. The women NPC in game should NEVER have sex with any male npc's in the game, unless the MC allows it. By sex, I mean anything, even men ogling and staring at the women.
2. If the women NPC need to get fucked by male npc's in the game, always give the MC a chance to stop it.
3. Never ever force anything NTR related on a Harem player.

The Harem minded player doesn't mind male competition, but HATES forced NTR content outside his control. Basically, always let the MC have a chance to stop NTR if it exists.

There are two types of Harem games I've seen:
1. Harem games with male competition.
2. Harem games without male competition. (Very popular, the idea of male competition scares these types of players).

I prefer #1, because it makes establishing a Harem more meaningful. Women choose mates based on comparing males against each other, so removing male competition removes the natural element of competition, thus making the MC a huge fucking cuck beta male sissy bitch who should start sucking dick ASAP.

IMO, 99% of Harem games are complete and total shit, and almost always bore me to tears. It's always too easy to get the girls, there's no challenge. The women almost always seduce the MC, as if the MC is the submissive and the women are the dominants ( actually love femdom, but for Harem the MC has to be the one who is dominant and seduces the women imo). I want a Harem game with male competition, and where the MC actually knows how to seduce and pickup women with various styles from good hearted to evil.