Question: What do you look for in a Adult Visual novel ?

[Sribandit]

The Story and why a character is interest with other

I really like when you can see the thoughts of another character and not just the MC and you can see how she feel with another character, how she is fell for another

 

[Nichiren]

So to the people that replied to this thread saying characters and story are super important (like pretty much everyone ..) I would love to hear what is your favorite game that has given you the best story / characters. I probably played a lot of them already but maybe there are some that i missed.

 

[Virulenz]

At work i prefer an easy to follow story, lots of humor, less grind and no or avoidable negative shit (like rape, blackmail, ntr, prostitution or other downers) to kill free time and get my head off from the negative shit i have to deal with from work.

In private i prefer deep or complex storys and characters, harem (choosing is losing), pure lesbian routes for female MC (i dont want to seduce guys or control a disgusting sub slut), low or optional fetish content, no or avoidable negative shit (games should be games, no traumatic triggers) and start as single, worst thing a dev can do is a fix partner you cant kick out.

Overall i dont care much about the source of graphics, be it HS, DAZ, hentai, porn, 2d, 3d, animated or anything else, it should just fit the atmosphere and the characters should look like you want to seduce them and not puke in their faces. And i absolutely dont care about music, sound or voices because i never play adult games with sound ^^

The golden rule is: Optional content is the best content because nothing is good or bad for all, but if everyone can choose the things they like and avoid the things they hate, everyone is happy...ok, aside from the dev who has double work.

Oh, before i forget, i really hate logic errors in the story and bugs ^^

 

[Nichiren]

ahah yea errors are the bane of my existence

 

[gunderson]

Not that there aren't some great ones out there, but...please, for the love of porno Jesus, don't make a visual novel. Make any other kind of porn game than a visual novel. RPG, schmup, platformer, text adventure, adventure game, trivia contest, FPS, anything else! Anything other than a visual novel! We're full. The visual novel genre is FULL. NO MORE NEEDED.

 

[mrmcfappen]

So to the people that replied to this thread saying characters and story are super important (like pretty much everyone ..) I would love to hear what is your favorite game that has given you the best story / characters. I probably played a lot of them already but maybe there are some that i missed.

Love of Magic has a very good story.
WTHI - Being a DIK - DeLuca Family - Alexandra - Ataegina - Rebirth - Bad Memories have all got good stories.
Also, it's a bit early but I'm hopeful about Summer's Gone
I'm sure there are more but these ones come to mind at the moment.

All of the above games have at least two things in common, one is that they all have some mystery in the story and the other one is that they are all well written.

 

[joecoe]

Not that there aren't some great ones out there, but...please, for the love of porno Jesus, don't make a visual novel. Make any other kind of porn game than a visual novel. RPG, schmup, platformer, text adventure, adventure game, trivia contest, FPS, anything else! Anything other than a visual novel! We're full. The visual novel genre is FULL. NO MORE NEEDED.

In 99% of cases, adult games games only offer grind as extra content compared to adult visual novels.
Visual novels are usually much better. There are a few exceptions.

 

[Nichiren]

For those that are interested we just posted details of our current project in the general thread more to come as we get closer to a demo for people to play.

https://f95zone.to/threads/shards-of-her-memory-in-production-discussion-thread.51052/

enjoy

 

[Canade]

For RPGM
- Immersive story and at least readable, Turn-based combat, well done animated H-scenes, a nice amount of content. Must be optional >> optional incest roles if there's incest, avoidable ntr if there's ntr, optional mini-games if there are mini-games.

For Ren'PY and VN
- Immersive story and at least readable, well done animated H-scenes, a nice amount of content, turn-based combat if combat is featured. Must be optional >> optional incest roles if there's incest, avoidable ntr if there's ntr, optional mini-games if there are mini-games.

Edit to include H-scenes
- Ass angles, variety. Optional, but preferred >> assjobs, doggystyle, cowgirl, laying doggystyle, anal.

Graphics are not a big deal for me. The graphics can be a 2 star and I'll still like the game if the above things are done. Music is also optional, but preferred.

 

[khumak]

For me mostly just well developed characters. Everything else is secondary. If there wasn't much thought put into the characters then the game is going to be mediocre at best and that's probably being generous.

 

[ChaosOpen]

Generally I avoid 3D CG games like the plague, they tend to fall into the uncanny valley at some point and I end up more creeped out than turned on.

 

[Deleted member 229118]

I rarely play visual novals.
The choices useally dont effect the story beyond two different lines.
The dialog is inssufferble.

The pits falls i advise to avoid are:
Narrator.
It pulls me out of a story if a narrator is in the game.

Talking about huge tits.
I get it.
The dev loves huge tits.
I dont.
I dont need my character to talk about her tit size.
Aka dont have your main characters have opinions or thought outside what is needed to continue the story.
Thinking: I shoud talk to suasen is fine.
Thinking: I did a bad thing, Suasen will hate.
I shoud talk to her.
Is bad.
You dont tell me how my character feels about something.
That is up to me to decided.

Choices shoud have a clear effect on the story.
Few things are worse in visual novels then an instant game over for picking the wrong choice or discovering your choices dont effect the story beyond 1 or 2 scence's.
Because visual novals often lack gameplay they need to make up for it with tons of choices that effect the story.

Trigger hunting.
This is true for all games.
I shoud never have to look for triggers.
There shoud always be some hint or suggestion on where the trigger is.
Wasting my time looking for whatever alian logic was used to place the trigger pisses me off to no end.

What i look for in a story:
I am a sucker for rise to power stories.
I like the idea of gaining power, Exploiting people and at the end ruling over all of them.
Mind games, Incest, Corruption, illigal slavery*, etc, etc.

*Legal remove the risk of getting caught whichs makes it less fun.

The key thing is that a good story makes you invested.
Makes you feel interested in the story.
At bad games makes you go.
Skip until the nudity parts.
In order to achieve that characters need to be likeable, hateable, sad, etc.
Doesnt matter aslong we feel something about them that isnt boredom.
Veriation of tit sizes.
I like veration in my harems.
Small, medium, big.
A diverse harem is the best kind of harem.

Gameplay.
As visual novels are story the gameplay shoud be simply but influencecal.
For example:
Give the player a few skill options to train that will unluck new options to exploit.
These options arent needed to "win" the game but they make it easier.

For example:
You can find blackmail via searching her room.
You can also earn it via spycams if you study programming.
Or sneak around and make pictures yourself.

The idea is that you offer players several ways to solve a problem and make all of them equaly vailid.
One shoud not be prevent for getting laid because they picked a wrong answer.
Instead one shoud get to choice to how they want to get laid.
Blackmail?
Threat?
Rape?
Secudution?

In one word:
Control.
The player much feel like he is in control of the outcome or he will lose interest.

 

[Nichiren]

Malaficus we agree with a lot of the points you bring up. Our main objective for our game is that it should be about the players choice, and that all the choices he makes should have impact on the overall story. now we know that this will mean more content to make, longer time between releases but in the end we think its worth it.

Vitalsigns unfortunatly at this time we dont have a good 2d artist on hand so we are limited in style choices and 3DCG is our best option to get content out quickly. hopefully you stick around for the story.


hopefully you will like the work we are doing.

 

[ChaosOpen]

Vitalsigns unfortunatly at this time we dont have a good 2d artist on hand so we are limited in style choices and 3DCG is our best option to get content out quickly. hopefully you stick around for the story.

Well, it's not so much the story that I am worried about but the protagonist or POV character, if I don't care about the protagonist then I could care less what he is doing or what happens to him, so regardless of how good the story is, it doesn't really interest me.
I don't understand why games put so much effort into trying to make him into a blank slate you can project yourself onto, it maybe works in porn games where there is so much sex so often that the story simply exists to connect one sex scene to another. However, for games that focus on story then they certainly need an MC with a defined personality. Even if it isn't the same as mine, a defined personality allows the viewer to at least follow along with why he made the choices he did.

Kind of like with Clannad, I decided to check out the VN since I liked the anime so much but found myself unable to even care. Unlike in the anime, the MC has no personality in the VN, so I found myself bored out of my mind. If you think it was because I had seen the story before Katawa Shoujo has the same problem. They have a really deep narrative, but since the MC was a piece of styrofoam who simply got caught up in the flow rather than ever adding to the story and seemed to make choices arbitrarily based on what was needed for the story, I never finished it.

Compare that to Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth which not only kept me enraptured for almost 100 hours but I even suffered through the terrible combat simply because I was so invested in hearing what will happen next to the MC.

Of course, story focused and little or no sex isn't the same thing the X-change series has plenty of sex, and while I wouldn't make the same choices he(she?) does, since the personality is so well defined and it makes sense why he would make those choices.

I'd imagine I would sit through a 3D CG game, but I think the creators are in desperate need of a class on creative writing. A story starts with an interesting and sympathetic protagonist which is the anchor to secure the reader's attention as you explore all of the plots, subplots, and other characters. (another reason I avoid 3DCG is because it 99% are made by first-timers who lack knowledge in basic storytelling, and the result is often of a good premise executed poorly.)

 

[Nichiren]

Vitalsigns I get your point and maybe in a future project the [player as MC] might be a focus for us but on this project we wanted to push the boundries a little and concentrate on player choice since the entire game is based around you reliving someone else memories and controlling any character, it felt to limiting to force a personality on the player.

the whole point of this is to see how far we can push branching and player choice without hurting the story. to many games i have played force you into a character and punish you for choices that dont fit.

as for first timers i can understand all to well. I posted this somewhere else here but this is our first try at a VN but both me and my wife have worked in AAA games for 20 years, we know storytelling and game design pretty well. We hope people will enjoy this experiment and support us so we can continue to make more after we complete this project.

 

[Stalker Seducer]

So pretty much what is in the title, what do you look for? what makes it interesting to you? what do you feel is missing rightnow?

We would love to hear from you and your answers might help guide the direction of our upcoming project.

Thanks!

Nichiren Games Team

Mostly i look for good art and dating sims, i think the market has a rather large lack of Yandere dating sims but that is my own very specific niche. what i find very disappointing is the lack of femdom options in dating sims, when you have 5 girls maybe even more and not a single one is Dominant that is a huge missed opportunity. the dom guys playing the game will just ignore her and go for the other girls but the sub guys will greatly enjoy her route. having 1 dom character in a multi character dating sim really has no downsides.

 

[Loganfin]

Choice, and/or some feeling that I'm controlling the pace, more than anything.

If a VN is just one long story, with no real player interaction, then no matter how good it might be written or rendered, I tend to find myself losing interest. It really has to be absolutely spectacular to keep me if that's the case.

That doesn't mean that it needs to have 20 different branching stories, because obviously that's a huge amount of work (although welcome). It can just be that the player gets to choose which of four things to do in which order in a chapter, for example. And that as a player, the choices that I make with the other characters actually have some effect. Whether that's continuing a relationship, or gaining/losing points with a character, or opening new scenes, ect.

Its also HUGE for me if a game adds character cards for each person as the player meets them as well. Something that the player can click on to see who that character is, what the relationship with them is so far, love/lust points, ect. That is massive in keeping me invested and pushing to do more.

 

[Godeaterprince]

Sexy Milfs!, Good Story, Lots of Boobs! LOL!

 

[coffeeaddicted]

I am looking for a good story, believable characters and real consequences. A game where for example the female shows emotions to this and maybe forced into a situation she does not want to be in.

Most games i had played have tags like blackmail or corruption but seem to be not very serious about them.

I want to see blackmail in a way that even if the female MC rejects she has to pay a price.

I want to see emotions. Good and bad. I like to see the struggle.

I like to see real people instead of models.

Real proportions. Not some fantasy.

For abusive relations i like to see male telling female what to wear. Heels, nylons etc...

Tags that have a meaning and are not just teasers. Like if i play a game for a certain tag but falls short on delivering on that.

I am not a harem fan. A male that always can come turns me off.

Of course, a game like that will probably never be made because that is not what most people want to see.

Its just what i would like to see.

 

[Deleted member 3134271]

I prefer emphasis on the visual side of things. Ideally I prefer hand painted 2D art, with portraits of the characters appearing during dialouge with a wide variety of expressions that change to match every emotional beat of a conversation. That way the dialouge can just be dialouge, its emotional context explained by the portrait, and not exposition on what the scene is supposed to convey. It flows better this way. Many creators don't let the visual part of their visual novel do any heavy lifting, and it becomes a slog I end up skipping through.

Most VN feature clumsy posing, stilted expressions on their 3d models, unappealingly gross models, boring composition, 1 second animation loops that don't apply any of the 12 principles of animation, and flat lighting, with bog standard interfaces/text colors.

The writing should be okay, but honestly it needs to married to the visuals. They should work in tandem. Mediocre writing can be saved by interesting visuals, but if it's ugly/boring visually, it can be Shakespeare and I won't stick around. I can just go read actual erotic literature if I want well written stuff with no concern for visuals.