SomeGuyNamedKi There's been a few good ones that have been ambitious (I dislike CG only games so that means usually RPGmaker ones too, same as visual novels since those you just hold CTRL to finish and unlock the gallery to see that there was 9 CGs for 9 hours of dialog) for example Mission Mermadien, this game, Explorer of Golden Planet in my mind are some of the top games released (Close but not quite there are Alien Quest Eve, Eris Dysnomia and Eroico) are what I think are great personally.
Only Eroico has made it onto Steam and been well known outside of normal H game channels I believe while Alien Quest Eve has been very popular and well known but not breaking though that barrier. However no adertising has ever been done for any of these games and sold mostly on DLsite which has gotten stricter with it's censorship rules although it's cut is better than Steam I believe and less hassle of getting rejected since most would struggle to get a publisher. It's why I think that once established those game developers could get more known and branch out so on but don't as their quality of what they put out changes based on their money reserves. (Maker of Explorer of Golden Planet is biggest example of this I feel with how their games are although experimental)
That all said a bunch of RPG maker/puzzle/dating sim games do get onto Steam though I believe that to be due to them getting through the filters easier by their limitations and such rather than unambitious. Since their 'dangerous' content is rather tame in comparision to some side-scroller action games where gore is the main theme or has one or two odd bits in it like this game and Setalia.
PS I do agree a lot of devs appear to be unambitious or put out stuff that just seems like copy and paste stuff from other old good games (in their time of when the year was less than 2007) though devs have to start somewhere and in addition I don't see quite how this applies to the top games I listed before or those similar to them quality wise. Witch of the Space Station, Succubus Adventure and Estella's Nightmare (mainly due to CG still slightly moving) I found to be too low quality but a bit better than a normal copy and paste job (not under ambitious if instead over ambitious so time wasn't spent on raising the quality). Meanwhile The Shadow of Yidhra that is on Steam is a 5/10 of what I would want all games to at least aim for since while I finished it (as with the others shortly after their release which I see now had updated with some content maybe after such so may replay it) I enjoyed it vastly more and got a lot more fap out of it though it was a stretch at more than a few points....haven't looked into the dev though I feel like the game just needed more time to refine/polish itself rather than more ambition or extra things added on. (which I feel is due to not able to hold off releasing it rather than something else)
