So many "Sandbox" Games are really bad

[Achelexus]

The idea of a sandbox is to just have a more-or-less open world where players can progress in any way they want, and are given a multitude of options to do so.

Many "sandbox" erotic games are really just glorified Visual Novels, where there really isn't any sort of interaction, exploration, etc. You just need to interact with a character to progress in their "route". More often than not, it's not even exactly clear HOW to progress, and players need some sort of walkthrough just to find out at which time of the day and which area you need to interact with the character to progress. At least in a VN, the player doesn't need to bother with any of this.

Am I the only one who noticed this?

 

[Adabelitoo]

I agree with everything you said, but I don't think that makes sandboxes bad.

Yes, the "open world" is just a linear route in disguise, in the same way that 80% of the choices in these games are a linear route in disguise because most of them don't change or affect the story at all. The good thing about sandboxes' "disguise" is that it gives the player the illusion of freedom, the illusion that the player is the one going to X place to talk to X character because he wants to go there and talk to him/her and not because the game forced the player to go there and do that. No one here is really having sex with any of the hot girls we see on screen, it's all just an illusion, that applies to "open worlds" as well.

A good sandbox games need more work and knowledge than a good VN, and most devs here never codded anything before their first game. It's like people complaining about bad stories, pretty much no one here have any experience as a writter.

Edit: The only reason why I could think that sandboxes are "bad" is for those who are only here to see sex scenes so they press Ctrl to skip everything so fast that you can't tell if they are playing a porn game or speedrunning 16 stars in Super Mario 64. All the extra clicks are a problem for them, but if people just want porn they should go to xvideos/pornhub instead of downloading these games.

 

[Jofur]

I don't necessarily think it's an issue with the gameplay style. A lot of people, me included, enjoy them. It's more of an issue with the name "sandbox" being incredibly misleading. They should be called "adventure games" or "open world visual novels" or something similar.

 

[kristijanEX]

I disliked them from the start and I only recently gave them another shot, played like 10 sandbox games in the last 2 months and the most common issue they have is grinding.

It takes so long to grind personal stats or affection points with the characters you're seducing, you will literally spend a whole afternoon without getting as much as a boner and I'm not about that.

The only sandbox games I enjoyed I can think of are all top tier games though like Summertime Saga, Some Modeling Agency, Being a DiK (partly), What a Legend and a couple of others, but even some of the top rated sandbox games have glaring flaws with the way the game is structured. I don't understand why some people like to grind for hours just for them to open another game and then grind in it for another couple hours without anything happening.

 

[Jofur]

I don't understand why some people like to grind for hours just for them to open another game and then grind in it for another couple hours without anything happening.

I can't speak for everyone, but personally a big charm of porn games is having to work for it a bit. Slowly building up the excitement and all that. If I want a quick fap I'll just pop open a video, or if I want a good emotional story I pop open a book. That's not to say some games don't go overboard with the grinding of course. There's a bit of art to drip feeding content I suppose. That said I've never played any games where it takes literal hours to get any porn content.

 

[kristijanEX]

I can't speak for everyone, but personally a big charm of porn games is having to work for it a bit. Slowly building up the excitement and all that. If I want a quick fap I'll just pop open a video, or if I want a good emotional story I pop open a book. That's not to say some games don't go overboard with the grinding of course. There's a bit of art to drip feeding content I suppose. That said I've never played any games where it takes literal hours to get any porn content.

I understand what you mean, but I'm talking literally 5-6 hours, I'm not exaggerating, that's how long it takes some games to get to a sex scene. But when I mean sex scene, I mean the full deal, not just a handjob or blowjob.

Honestly why would anyone masturbate to a handjob ? Looking at a handjob/blowjob is not arousing at all, it's great when it's happening to you irl, but not when you're watching it, I skip those scenes when I watch porn as well.

 

[konabwo]

The idea ... more-or-less open world

that idea doesnot work in this segment . nobody pulled or can pull that off as it would require alot of resources to saturate all the timeslots for all npcs and locations and with some chain events / quests on top. adding significant variations (basically extra sets of chain events) also doesnot seem possible

so it is what it is. an environment with somewhat controlled narrative & questchains u need to complete.

-------
in RP segment GL is a known game and we may argue that it is the closest to that idea. yet, at the same time it is still far from those sandbox ideals you have in mind.
and afaik
it has been in dev-t comparatively long enough
it was based on some other game's 'bones' (maybe even couple?)
it involved 2+ ppl working on it.

so waiting for an ideal sandbox from some single dev making something from scratch would be akward.


------
what makes sbxes bad
-lack of qol / bad ui (skip text is a must [problem on unity,etc] as well as skip time; also skip for minigames and routines)
-walls of text (narative must emerge out of quests,visuals,tips. text is just an obstacle for sbx players. dev must know that it is a waste of time to focus on it)
-no build up / short progression with throwing tons of porn on you (and in sandboxes scene should be a reward upon completing some steps)
-unimaginative quests and some datesim-like stat grind (repeatable actions to gain stats as a mere prereq for actual quest steps)
-no good guidance / tips issues
-it has alt routes. (it just makes a game de-facto shorter and-or require me to hunt for "leftovers" afterwards to avoid negging sensations.)

 

[Jofur]

Honestly why would anyone masturbate to a handjob ? Looking at a handjob/blowjob is not arousing at all, it's great when it's happening to you irl, but not when you're watching it, I skip those scenes when I watch porn as well.

Firstly, a lot of people simply just get off on watching handjobs and blowjobs. Secondly, It's not only about the visuals. I skip some of that stuff in a lot of regular porn as well. For me it's the situation and context that matters to most. Actively doing something to reach a goal gets me so much more immersed. Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but on some levels it starts to a bit feel like she's actually giving you a handjob, not just the 3D model on the screen. I'm struggling to find the words to describe it.
It's the same with any video game really. Sure in the context of the story it might be Duke Nukem killing a giant alien boss and saving Earth or whatever, but since I was the one controlling him and putting in the effort. I still feel a certain sense of achievement of having overcome something tough.

If visuals was all that mattered to me, I would just watch porn(can't get better visuals than real life after all). No offence to porn game creators, but isolated, I find most visuals in porn games are pretty lackluster. Be it the uncanny valley alien looking Daz3D characters, simple cartoon drawings, or fairly low quality Illusion models. I probably wouldn't fap to any of it if there wasn't a game to back it up. Or at least something to give the sex scene some context.

 

[kristijanEX]

Firstly, a lot of people simply just get off on watching handjobs and blowjobs. Secondly, It's not only about the visuals. I skip some of that stuff in a lot of regular porn as well. For me it's the situation and context that matters to most. Actively doing something to reach a goal gets me so much more immersed. Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but on some levels it starts to a bit feel like she's actually giving you a handjob, not just the 3D model on the screen. I'm struggling to find the words to describe it.
It's the same with any video game really. Sure in the context of the story it might be Duke Nukem killing a giant alien boss and saving Earth or whatever, but since I was the one controlling him and putting in the effort. I still feel a certain sense of achievement of having overcome something tough.

If visuals was all that mattered to me, I would just watch porn(can't get better visuals than real life after all). No offence to porn game creators, but isolated, I find most visuals in porn games are pretty lackluster. Be it the uncanny valley alien looking Daz3D characters, simple cartoon drawings, or fairly low quality Illusion models. I probably wouldn't fap to any of it if there wasn't a game to back it up. Or at least something to give the sex scene some context.

But do you actually bust to just watching a handjob/blowjob happen, not enough for me. In fact I can only arrive to penetration most of the time unless the art style is very good, then a boob job scene might be enough, but I agree the situation can make something hotter, still not gonna bust to a handjob, a blowjob perhaps, but I can't remember a single instance where I ended the deed on a blowie.

 

[Jofur]

But do you actually bust to just watching a handjob/blowjob happen

Yes. More so blowjobs though.
I can easily fap to text based games, badly animated Skyrim characters, low poly Sims characters, you name it. As long as I have the proper context and immersion.

 

[Adabelitoo]

Honestly why would anyone masturbate to a handjob ? Looking at a handjob/blowjob is not arousing at all, it's great when it's happening to you irl, but not when you're watching it, I skip those scenes when I watch porn as well.

Without context, you won't enjoy anything in this life.

A handjob can be a sluty girlfriend giving you a hand under the table while talking with your/her friends or relatives, a handjob can be a mother's first step in her path of exploring that new awaked feeling of arousal while watching his son's pleasure face, a handjob can be a nurse who needs a sample of your sperm but can't stop thinking about you after that for how big your dick is and how long has been since the last time she had a man fucking her senseless.

Or it can be just a hand going up and down on a dick. Without context anything really matters.

 

[RiffRaff0682]

But do you actually bust to just watching a handjob/blowjob happen,

With Jofur. I actually prefer mutual masturbation, and find pen sex boring to watch. I find hand jobs, blowjobs, eating out etc more intimate and stimulating than just ramming a cock in a hole.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

The idea of a sandbox is to just have a more-or-less open world where players can progress in any way they want, and are given a multitude of options to do so.

Many "sandbox" erotic games are really just glorified Visual Novels, where there really isn't any sort of interaction, exploration, etc. You just need to interact with a character to progress in their "route". More often than not, it's not even exactly clear HOW to progress, and players need some sort of walkthrough just to find out at which time of the day and which area you need to interact with the character to progress. At least in a VN, the player doesn't need to bother with any of this.

Am I the only one who noticed this?

The first iteration of my game was a sandbox because i liked the mechanics. I think this is probably the case with a lot of developers, trying to jam a story idea into a format that doesn't support it purely because they like sandboxes.

 

[ggregger33]

I will not play sandbox games. I like store driven VNs and sandbox just interrupts the flow or is way to much "what do I need to do next click click click.... what do I do next?" kind of thing for me.

 

[Meaning Less]

"what do I need to do next click click click.... what do I do next?"

 

[Artemissu]

Truly sandbox games are games like LifePlay, Degrees of Lewdity and Koikatsu (though Artifical Academy 2 would've been a better example). These games actually gives you complete freedom in making your own story, also allowing you to make your own character on top.

IMO, any game that's not like that shouldn't be called "sandbox". At the very least you could call it "semi-sandbox" or just "open-world/open-eded", but calling these Visual Novels that shoehorn you into a certain direction, only giving you the illusion of freedom really shouldn't be called sandboxes at all.

 

[Modok969]

I certainly prefer what can be discribed as sandbox as they often will permit me to work on one girl i'm intrested it. I do get annoyed when VNs with multiple women clearly have one that is the favorite of the creator and so you spend most of the time with her and ignoring everyone else and I'm just "oh god I'm so sick of the mom, when is there sister content?" or something like that.

Though many sandboxes are just that, you are just given another button to click to go to another scene, and not actually given any real choice of what to do.

I do like it when sandbox games have hidden stuff to find either just bonus images or even hidden scenes. I think though, why so many of them are crummy is that it is hard to do this stuff and unless you really know what you're doing, you're not going to be able to pull it off.

 

[Kravnos]

Future erotica would be a mix of customizable characters that Illusion games allow for the visual perspective on top of player interaction with some form of AI.

1) Create your waifus in an Illusion game like Honey Select 2. Customize their sexual trait and personality? (Is she shy? is she flirty etc).

2) Use the services of an unbridled chat bot like Claude, ChatGPT or run a large language model locally.

3) Use Text to Speech AI such as whisper.cpp or ElevenLabs.

There is a pretty big demand for AI generated erotic role play out there already, and even projects such as SillyTavern that let you interact with your waifu(s) and generate a picture of her. The next text is to mix it with a game like HS2 or Real Kanojo for VR) and you have a pretty convincing erotic game or simulation.

Too bad Illusion just closed shop, but I could see their next game using such technologies within the next 2-3 years if they were still afloat.

Truly sandbox games are games like LifePlay, Degrees of Lewdity and Koikatsu (though Artifical Academy 2 would've been a better example). These games actually gives you complete freedom in making your own story, also allowing you to make your own character on top.

IMO, any game that's not like that shouldn't be called "sandbox". At the very least you could call it "semi-sandbox" or just "open-world/open-eded", but calling these Visual Novels that shoehorn you into a certain direction, only giving you the illusion of freedom really shouldn't be called sandboxes at all.

 

[baka]

this is a necro-thread. 2 years old. dont think the OP cares anymore.
I think the definition of sandbox is of course the kind of we can find here and not mix it with aaa-games.

the problem with sandbox is that they should be "finished" before u play.
its a mess to have updates and players need to start over, if not, its a linear-sandbox and that will just make it pointless.
and we have those. just a few games are well make to be able to enjoy update by update, but the options are of course limited. its not really, do what u want, its more choose a few option and thats it.

my own game is sandbox, but because we need to "create it" it will mess with the fun. things will get added by update.
and people need to replay or go back to get all the content sometimes.
we created "by area" so u are locked in an area while its worked on, and that makes it linear instead of open. its impossible to do with a small team doing it in their spare time. it takes years.

a vn is usually chapters. u create 1 chapter and release. and people waits for chapter 2.
sure u can do that in sandbox but like I wrote, it will be kind of a vn, where the choices are very limited.