I think you've provided an interesting outline for a story or VN centered around the organic development of a polyamorous relationship. There's plenty of room for drama over each of the phases you've described so it certainly shouldn't be boring and all the pieces fit together nicely at the end.
Ah, that's gratifying to hear. That's basically all I was trying to do.
It landed. 
In general I think I'd tend to find a polyamorous relationship in which everyone loves everyone else more believable than a harem because it's more equal and better tailored to fit the needs of every member of the relationship. In a traditional harem, everything is centered around one member who gets all the attention and love, but this central figure's time and affection has to be divided among all the members of the harem. If you're not the central figure, you're getting less of everything compared to what you'd get in a monogamous relationship with only the potential addition of camaraderie with the other members to make up for it.
You know... I've been treating "harem" and "polyamory" almost as synonyms, all this time, at least in the context of a harem porn game with a partial or full orgy as the "endgame" sex scene. Now I'm starting to wonder if maybe they're totally different things.
Can anyone think of an example (real or hypothetical) of a game that has all female LIs, a male MC, and ends with an orgy, but which did not merit the harem tag?
A VN following this formula might still end up not being so fun to play depending on how the player approaches it. The matchmaking phase is one likely stumbling block for me because I can easily get invested in relationships that don't involve the MC and want to see them succeed in their own right. I suspect that feeling would only be magnified if part of the gameplay involves the MC actively connecting other characters together. Once I put on my grey eminence hat, I want to see all my little schemes succeed. Indeed, it will likely feel like failure when the relationships don't work out and the MC has to put on his or her counselor and ethical slut recruiter hats.
I don't know what a grey eminence is or does but my thinking was that the LIs decide which other LIs they're attracted to. The MC's dayjob might be professional Matchmaker on Love Finders With Two Rs And A Z Dot Com, but the player doesn't actually make matches in-game. Rather, something happens like A meets MC at the grocery store, they strike up a conversation because waiting in line is boring and MC is spotaneous. Then A finds out MC is a Matchmaker, so they ask if they can explain what B's ambiguous text means. Something like that.
I actually haven't thought through the gameplay, but if I were to design a game using this model, mechanically speaking, I think the choiches would probably boil down to:
- Logistics (Deciding which LIs you want to engage with first)
- Telling the game what type of content you want to see
- Player self-expression through the use of the MC as an avatar
- Trying to make good decisions to help the team "win" at the A-Plot
The player can not tell the LIs who to date, because in-universe, that's not their call to make, and they know it. Likewise, the player would not get the option to treat the LIs like shit, because the MC already has their own goals and a personality, and that's not what the MC would
do. There's no evil route, and there's no "you fucked up" route, at least not when it comes to relationships. I suppose that's potentially a form of Ludonarrative Dissonance, but I feel it's justified here. Not least of which because this iteration of the design is meant to be the simplest possible form of it, and this keeps it reasonably self-correcting.
Using New Coral City as an example, I had playthroughs where I supported David and Melissa getting together at every opportunity. Finding out he doesn't really care about her actually feels bad when you play that way even though it opens up new narrative opportunities, including the chance for the MC deepen his own relationship with Melissa. Similarly, I always tend to want Becca's relationship to work out even though I know it won't since she is, to me, one of the best best friends in the history of VNs and I want to see her be happy.
I believe I made it pretty clear that each of the LIs (at least when I tested it with a max of 7) care, in one way or another, about each of the rest of the LIs, by the end of it. What, specifically, they each see in each other LI is an exercise for the writer, but since they already have compatible skills and are working together to resolve the A-Plot, that's one easy way to show the audience that they have things in common and maybe chemistry. Maybe you could do the Legolas/Gimley thing where they hate each other, but then they keep one-upping each other trying to solve the A-Plot, until the audience is rooting for a Rivals To Lovers.
Another good technique is give them strengths and weaknesses that compliment each other. Maybe one of them can't cook but gives great massages. Maybe the other one is a great cook with a bad back. Stuff like that. So they're obviously stronger together than seperately. Make neighbors on the loop (forwards and backwards) have these complimentary traits, and let the A-Plot provide common ground for everybody else.
Also, don't underestimate banter. A good scene of sitting around chatting over dinner can work wonders for revealing chemistry if you're good at banter.
If the couples created in the matchmaking phase are compelling enough, a potential monogamous pairing between characters C and D might for example seem more romantic than the big poly relationship that's coming in the end that everything is supposed to be leading up to. It would also be easy to make the connections between the MC and the other characters too weak. One problem I notice sometimes with throuples in VNs is that the usually preexisting relationship between two women can seem more real and meaningful than the triangle that emerges after the MC gets involved. It has to be a lonely feeling to be in a relationship with people who love each other more than they love you.
Worst case scenario, the player shipping C and D who absolutely does not give a shit about B or E still gets to pull the trigger on one of three superficially different ways of encouraging C to pursue D. The worst we can say about these shippers is they have a favorite part of your game and you left 'em wanting more. I'd argue it's no worse than when somebody says their favorite character "needs a longer route" in a regular harem game.
It's a good problem to have. And it's not the problem this design was intended to solve. If you can think of a way around it other than just "make all the routes long enough to be the main course," let me know.
When this happens, the dev usually didn't intend it. It just hit different for some reason. Something about that LI (or in your hypothetical, that pairing of LIs,) that specific reader
felt deeply. There's no way I can think of to write around that, because the dev
didn't write it. The player did.
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, amirite?
(Of course, if a large chunk of your userbase is all saying the same thing, you should
absolutely make a spinoff game starring that specific power couple living their best lives as they romp their way through a fantabulous sexventure.)
I imagine it's safe to say that anyone who strongly hates seeing any character hook up with someone who is not the MC could very well also take a hostile view towards poly games. There are harem games with a lot of lesbian scenes, but usually the male MC is at least watching. Are we prepared as a community for the inevitable "MC goes off to work and full scale orgy breaks out at home while he's gone" scene? If TranscendentThots' formula does end up becoming popular, I imagine there'll be a lot of "Is poly avoidable?" posts in the future.
In the specific case of a male MC and all female LIs, the chances of this are minimized, especially since they knoe they're working towards that endgame orgy scene.
You
might be able to write around it, by making the LIs turn up (not drunk or otherwise compromised) and wanting a rebound fling with the MC (which they'd gladly oblige)
before they tell the MC about their love woes. Of course, this could make the MC seem supernaturally attractive if the game keeps doing it with all the characters, which is one of the "Badly Written Harem Game" red flags.
At some point, you're just going to have to pick your battles and hope that you can execute so well on the rest of the content that these players hold their noses and keep playing anyway and enjoy the experience despite their hangups.
(And if your goal is to get them to hold their
tongues rather than their noses, I'm afraid that the only way to do that is to
not make a game at all.)
Actually, now that I think about it, this whole mess is starting to sound a lot like one of those
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, so it might be a good idea to review the sort of tools game devs have for addressing those.
In our specific case, we're trying to deliver on the following (admittedly sexist but only because of demographic research) design goals:
- I want men to get the Peak Experience of seducing all the hotties in town, and the Catharsis of being able to feel proud about doing it (Requires that the game have hotties and a way to sleep with them and no judgement or player-facing hard decisions about sex.)
- I want women to find the female characters well-written (Requires LIs to have obvious and relatable agency, goals, motivations)
I'd argue that this problem is
not cursed. It's just very hard. (Which is probably why everybody else uses cheat codes like a femmepocalypse or a eugenics plot.) But if you think the phrase "well-written harem game" means something else, you might have different design goals in mind.
What do you think?
