Recommending Story-first games

[scrumbles]

Earlier today, I released the opening act of my visual novel, "Mayura Express".

Soothing, relaxing atmosphere. Felt like I was travelling with them. Loved the options when they took the selfie, reminded me of Serendipity. Wish more demos were as polished as yours.

Spoiler: Critiques?

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[Arisushi]

First of all, thank you (both) for taking the time to play the game and share your thoughts. I realllly appreciate it.

(Don't want to spam the thread, so I'm leaving a combined a reply.)

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It's a good start! India is an interesting choice for setting, and the first scene reminded me of the beginning of

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which is a great film to be compared to

Yeah, the Indian setting was definitely a choice I had to think about a few times before finalizing. Hopefully, I'll be able to do justice to it.

(As someone who considers Linklater as his favorite director of all time) That statement just made my day. Thank you

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Soothing, relaxing atmosphere. Felt like I was travelling with them. Loved the options when they took the selfie, reminded me of Serendipity. Wish more demos were as polished as yours.

Spoiler: Critiques?

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I was very keen on creating a "cosy game" like atmosphere for the opening act. So, I'm super happy you liked that element of the intro

Yeah, I honestly do not know how to handle the music transitions at all. So much that, I've pretty much given up on that.

My go-to approach for music has now become:

1. Choose the music I feel is right for the scene.
2. And then, fix any transition issues AFTER I complete the full project.

But I'll do my best to sort it out

 

[jufot]

(As someone who considers Linklater as his favorite director of all time)

 

[thanks for the demos]

To those who tried and liked Out of Touch:

Just played past the intro and so far I have the strong feeling it's either not for me at all or I've just missed the window in which I would have enjoyed it (by about half a lifetime). At which point would you say they've found their groove? When has one given it a fair shot / got a good idea whether we'll like it or not. Based solely on the intro chapter I'd drop it.

My issue with it is its overuse of anime and general tropes (Chad Thundercock and all that followed). In the subsequent transformation and fight scene I had that strange feeling it was meant to be over-the-top awesome action, instead of a knowingly cringeworthy shounen anime parody. Wrong impression? Does the parody (if it is) get more surefooted later? Or do you just need a healthy dose of camp-appreciaton to fully enjoy it?

Thanks

Edit: for reference, I did greatly enjoy

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, but would say it represents my hard cap for camp and 80s nostalgia.

Edit 2: stuck with it for a bit, still pretty tropey, little deviation from what you'd expect given the setup, but the changing POVs helped flesh out some of the characters and I can kinda see why people like it now. Hope the trend continues.

 

[camube]

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Fog of War new update is out

Also Race of Life new update is out too (but that one is $100 tier)

 

[raynarnab]

After playing Bride of a Dead God, I'm in the mood for more CYOA and I'm seeking recommendations.

Does anyone know of a CYOA with similar themes? That is, a hero's journey adventure, without any unpleasantries like rape, slavery, mind control or anything non-consensual whatsoever. Non-sexual is fine, good writing is a must.

Not sure if you are still seeking more recommendations, but I really enjoyed

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. There is also a follow up on this game and this series is supposed to be part of a trilogy.

 

[jufot]

Occultus: Daughter of Darkness chapter 6 is out

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! This was a great episode with some important character development for Malady and has some solid worldbuilding about the politics of the vampire world.

 

[turbojoe]

Occultus: Daughter of Darkness chapter 6 is out

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! This was a great episode with some important character development for Malady and has some solid worldbuilding about the politics of the vampire world.

Thanks - you gave me a hint to another AVN of interest.
I´ll try this immediately

 

[K_Nakamura]

Inner Empire is a good one.

P.S. How am I supposed to keep up with the previous 200 pages in this thread?

 

[jufot]

P.S. How am I supposed to keep up with the previous 200 pages in this thread?

It's easy. Go to Preferences -> Posts per page and set it to 100. Now you only have 38 pages to catch up on

 

[Raife]

Also Race of Life new update is out too (but that one is $100 tier)

So... I'm still not quite sure yet if _Race of Life_ qualifies as story first. But, having played the update, I can say that it's an excellent game.

First, the things it does right,...even uniquely well for an AVN:

• The racing sequence in the new update... is fucking awesome. It feels kinetic and high stakes. There's a minigame, but it's easy to manage for a non-twitch gamer and still feels like an accomplishment when done well. But the best thing about it is the binary choice section, where visual cues and pre-race tips allow you to reason through the right outcomes.
• The LIs react to each other in broadly realistic ways. This is definitely not a harem game.
• It uses visuals, in a cinematic way, to add depth to the story. It reminded me of the best aspects of the latest _Leaving DNA_ update by Impious, in this respect.
• The sex scenes are great. They are erotic and, crucially, the LIs are active participants. There are still too many acrobatic porn poses, in some cases, for my taste... but they are far better than most.
• There are very distinctive non-LI NPCs, both male and female. Although the game has a very large cast, most of the the NPCs felt 'alive' to me.

There are a few problems, though:

1. Too much 'damsel in distress'. Most of the LIs in the game are in need of help, or extremely keen on an emotional attachment with the MC. This is related to the fact that...
2. The MC is a Gary Stu. Yes, he has emotional issues, mostly caused by his poor life choices. But his actual and latent strengths are OTT. I mean, the dude is a scientist with the body of a young Tom Selleck! His one achilles heel is his dog-humping-lamppost promiscuousness.
3. The 'best girl' is blindingly obvious after episode 2. She's the ex-wife. Hands down. She's the one LI who understands the MC's true nature... including all the warts. If the player makes exactly the right choices, the MC starts to actually see the ex- differently in a way that game represents visually... she slowly becomes beautiful to him, again. This is one of those games where the best girl and her story are so superior to the others that playing through alternative paths has little appeal.

I think the 'best girl' path in this game is hands down 'story first'. It's emotionally mature (painful, frankly) and resonant in a manner you rarely see represented in AVNs... as well as highly, highly romantic.

 

[camube]

So... I'm still not quite sure yet if _Race of Life_ qualifies as story first. But, having played the update, I can say that it's an excellent game.

First, the things it does right,...even uniquely well for an AVN:

• The racing sequence in the new update... is fucking awesome. It feels kinetic and high stakes. There's a minigame, but it's easy to manage for a non-twitch gamer and still feels like an accomplishment when done well. But the best thing about it is the binary choice section, where visual cues and pre-race tips allow you to reason through the right outcomes.
• The LIs react to each other in broadly realistic ways. This is definitely not a harem game.
• It uses visuals, in a cinematic way, to add depth to the story. It reminded me of the best aspects of the latest _Leaving DNA_ update by Impious, in this respect.
• The sex scenes are great. They are erotic and, crucially, the LIs are active participants. There are still too many acrobatic porn poses, in some cases, for my taste... but they are far better than most.
• There are very distinctive non-LI NPCs, both male and female. Although the game has a very large cast, most of the the NPCs felt 'alive' to me.

There are a few problems, though:

1. Too much 'damsel in distress'. Most of the LIs in the game are in need of help, or extremely keen on an emotional attachment with the MC. This is related to the fact that...
2. The MC is a Gary Stu. Yes, he has emotional issues, mostly caused by his poor life choices. But his actual and latent strengths are OTT. I mean, the dude is a scientist with the body of a young Tom Selleck! His one achilles heel is his dog-humping-lamppost promiscuousness.
3. The 'best girl' is blindingly obvious after episode 2. She's the ex-wife. Hands down. She's the one LI who understands the MC's true nature... including all the warts. If the player makes exactly the right choices, the MC starts to actually see the ex- differently in a way that game represents visually... she slowly becomes beautiful to him, again. This is one of those games where the best girl and her story are so superior to the others that playing through alternative paths has little appeal.

I think the 'best girl' path in this game is hands down 'story first'. It's emotionally mature and resonant in a manner you rarely see represented in AVNs... as well as highly, highly romantic.

i like the storyline with the daughter the most on Race of Life, she's really funny. i did not realized going in that the daughter would be the mcguffin of the story.
it took the wind out of my sail more than a bit.
I want to play it less afterward.
I still play it cuz there's no games left that i want to play (on renpy) but yeah i'm not that eager to "drop everything" to play it

This is the complete opposite of The Bite Revenant where the MC partner / mentor is an interesting character, and i like that kind of archetype too so, I want more updates of The Bite Revenant.

Now if only Deluca can have quicker updates, my gaming life would be perfect. Those are the games i want to play that i wish have short turnaround between updates.

Pale Carnation and Projekt Passion is a machine cuz those two updates pretty regularly in a 4 month basis, which is the perfect length.

Going back to Race of Life, I think Veronica is realistic tbh with you.
The dynamic between Allison and MC is great too but idk, it's funny to watch but they are too toxic for each other (depending on how we play them).
In "the real world", those two doesn't make a good pairing

Some of Race of Life characters are realistic, but some others are too out there. The Asian student whose name escaped me at the moment is too out there personality-wise.

 

[Raife]

It took the wind out of my sail more than a bit.
I want to play it less afterward.
I still play it cuz there's no games left that i want to play (on renpy) but yeah i'm not that eager to "drop everything" to play it

Give it another shot. During the racing sequence, the MC tapes her picture to the dashboard of his car, underlining the stakes and his desperation to win. As someone with a daughter of his own of about the same age... let's just say that I got a little something in my eye.

 

[Raife]

I have a love/hate relationship with Intertwined these days, and I want to end this on a high note, so let's start with the negatives:

Yeah... I think we've been over this territory before. I admire Nyx and her dedication to this game... but less (in terms of LIs and subplots) would have been much much more.

The best part of _Intertwined_ -- as you say -- is the relationship-rivalry between two pairs of female LIs. They may be some of the most resonant in AVNs I've played. If she had just focussed on those, the game would have been great.

I hope Nyx's next project is smaller, more tightly focussed, and explores the emotional bonds between her characters in ways that are both painful and true.

 

[Hildegardt]

So... I'm still not quite sure yet if _Race of Life_ qualifies as story first. But, having played the update, I can say that it's an excellent game.

I pretty much agree with everything you said.
Imo the game's biggest flaws are the PC's confusing characterization and that it's extremely padded. It seems like the length of the individual episodes is supposed to be a selling point, but it's just so unnecessary.

I think the 'best girl' path in this game is hands down 'story first'. It's emotionally mature and resonant in a manner you rarely see represented in AVNs... as well as highly, highly romantic.

On the flip side, if you're on her bad path, you get some major porny bullshit of the Gary Stu variety you mentioned: Apparently Allison is very very horny, because she hasn't been intimate with anyone since the divorce. She just wasn't ready, you know . But now she is just one last time.
There's a little of this or similar bullshit sprinkled throughout the game. It's very frustrating on the Veronica path. I almost like Veronica more than Allison, if only because reconciling with Allison would be some borderline humiliation fetish with how the PC is acting outside or despite my choices. But it seems like whenever the game gives me a choice to treat Veronica right, the PC's personality does a 180 in the next scene, where I don't get any choices.
And when we finally get to commit to Veronica, we get a silly retcon, like "Oh, I'm such a manly man and didn't want you to see me cry...", which is simply not true. Why did we get the choice to open up to Maggie the first time we ever met her and in literally the same scene the PC automatically blows Veronica off without player input?

I think the game is trying to portray the "bad guy" image that women are supposedly into so much, but it at the same time centers the game mechanics around the PC's redemption. It can be a little grating sometimes.

 

[Raife]

On the flip side, if you're on her bad path, you get some major porny bullshit of the Gary Stu variety you mentioned:

I think the game is trying to portray the "bad guy" image that women are supposedly into so much, but it at the same time centers the game mechanics around the PC's redemption. It can be a little grating sometimes.

Yeah, I think you've put your finger on the issue. The game _wants_ a big porn game audience, so the dev has created a Gary Stu surrounded by a large number of fawning LIs.

But... the dev's heart is with the redemption story... which transformed the 'true path' with the 'best girl' a story-first gem, surrounded by a somewhat porny carapace.

And, oh man -- I went back and played Allie's bad path as you suggested... and it's godawful. But, I think it makes sense. The MC's Gary Stu-ism is actually his fatal flaw... Allison wants to hate him but doesn't really hate him until the player's choices make it clear that the MC just sees her as an attractive, annoying fucktoy who happens to be the mother of his daughter. The way that scene concludes, with Alison smashing their picture... is just awful and terribly sad.

The good path is so on the money, though. There's something so compelling and true about making the terrible path sexual, and the good path non-sexual... but filled with repressed longing, resentment, and fear... and just a little, tiny spark of hope. That felt like intimacy, to me. Also: true hatred is often a sort of curdled love... which, again, makes both Allie's good and bad paths resonant.

As we've discussed before, intimacy tends to make players uncomfortable, because it involves exposing raw, real feeling. But that's the real story first stuff: that's why the ex's path, anyway, is story first. (Not sure about the rest of the game, though!)

 

[camube]

Give it another shot. During the racing sequence, the MC tapes her picture to the dashboard of his car, underlining the stakes and his desperation to win. As someone with a daughter of his own of about the same age... let's just say that I got a little something in my eye.

i'm pretty shocked it got leaked at $50 tier
that's pretty crazy

 

[jufot]

So... I'm still not quite sure yet if _Race of Life_ qualifies as story first. But, having played the update, I can say that it's an excellent game.

I mostly agree with your points, but not with the conclusion. It's primarily because I dislike nearly every character in the game.

Jake is an overall douchebag. He's an asshole, a bad husband, an even worse teacher, and a barely passable father. Despite all his bravado about doing "whatever it takes" for Lily, he still finds all the time in the world to fornicate with his students and basically fuck anything that isn't bolted to the ground. As a brilliant actress once said, "[Jake], that trollop, he'd shag an open wound." I really despise him, and being forced to play as him really saps the joy out of my experience.

Allison told him not to do anything stupid that could get him in jail, but he's already using grant money to pay for the institute and stealing materials from the lab to improve his car, which he uses for illegal street racing. Any of those alone would be enough to put him behind bars, but of course, he has plot armour.

Non-Allison LIs are largely uninteresting to me. The students lusting after an older teacher, the doctor who shamelessly flirts with a patient's father, and the colleague who is way too desperate and clingy are just... boring. Maggie seems to be the only normal character, but then her story is also just some telenovela cliché with a cartoon villain.

That leaves Cooper and Cammie. I don't like Cooper, the overgrown manchild, and I don't like Cammie since she clearly chose Jake over Allison during the fallout of his lechery.

This brings me to the two characters I actually like. The first is Allison, of course. She's strong, resilient, career-oriented and absolutely refuses to take shit from her douchebag ex. It doesn't hurt that she is very easy on the eyes Unfortunately, I'm stuck playing as Jake, who doesn't deserve her back. Like Hildegart said, it's total bullshit that she somehow didn't sleep with anyone else since the divorce, while Jake gets to be a manwhore It's lazy and cowardly writing, like BaDIK pulled with the blue-haired girl.

Now, this might be a bit controversial. The other character I like is Doctor Katzei. I like him because I can feel his frustration in my soul. There is nothing worse at a hospital than scared family acting belligerent and entitled. Abusing medical staff like that, especially for something they have no control over, would get you kicked out of any hospital here. It shows a certain disdain for overworked and underpaid healthcare workers, and no matter what Jake and Allison might think, their precious little baby is not the most important person in the building. Add to that the scenes with the nurse and later on with Dr. Mahamaya, it's obvious the dev has an axe to grind.

Anyway, plot-wise my only interest is Allison and I'm not sure if that's enough for me to continue with the next update. Time will tell...

 

[Raife]

I mostly agree with your points, but not with the conclusion. It's primarily because I dislike nearly every character in the game.

Jake is an overall douchebag. He's an asshole, a bad husband, an even worse teacher, and a barely passable father. Despite all his bravado about doing "whatever it takes" for Lily, he still finds all the time in the world to fornicate with his students and basically fuck anything that isn't bolted to the ground. As a brilliant actress once said, "[Jake], that trollop, he'd shag an open wound." I really despise him, and being forced to play as him really saps the joy out of my experience.

I don't think we actually disagree much at all, really. The MC is, as you say, an asshole trollop. He's sophomoric and otherwise despicable... not even an antihero. Just a cad.

But... if you're going to do a proper redemption arc, I submit that you need to start from rock bottom. He needs to begin as a full time asshole.

I started playing _Race for Life_ thinking, heh this is another version of _Where the Heart Is_, where the annoying, entitled Gary Stu cuts a swathe, in the finest porno style, through various LIs. And that's what most of the game is.

The thing is though... with Allison the MC starts to see for himself what was right in front of his face the whole time. The flashbacks, his renewed appreciation for how clever she is, her fierce determination... essentially, she's the real deal. Once the MC discovers this, following the shock to the system created by the accident, the game allows you to play a better version of the MC. Ignore all the other LIs and focus on the real deal and redemption. And that, I think, is a story worth playing.

I have priors. One of my favourite games, as you know, is PS:T... which is, essentially, about whether a character can change his essential nature. And one of my favourite novels is _The Caine Mutiny_... where the protagonist spends two-thirds of the book as a spoiled, entitled brat who reminds me too much of myself (especially the younger version... ugh). In both cases, though, the journey of self-realization, of becoming a decent sort of person, is all the more satisfying because it begins in such a dark place.

So... I don't know where RfL is going... but if the dev lets the MC learn how to be a better version of himself from Allison... well, _that's a story worth playing_ even if most of the game is not. And oh yeah... you're on the money about Katzel as well... the dev has an issue, there.

 

[jufot]

The thing is though... with Allison the MC starts to see for himself what was right in front of his face the whole time. The flashbacks, his renewed appreciation for how clever she is, her fierce determination... essentially, she's the real deal. Once the MC discovers this, following the shock to the system created by the accident, the game allows you to play a better version of the MC. Ignore all the other LIs and focus on the real deal and redemption. And that, I think, is a story worth playing.

See, if Jake was sincere about reconciliation, he would stop fucking everyone else. He'd especially tell his horny students to cut that shit. He says the right words to Allison, but words are cheap - it's action that matters. As it stands, it just looks like he wants in on everyone's panties, including Allison's.

[...] the protagonist spends two-thirds of the book as a spoiled, entitled brat who reminds me too much of myself (especially the younger version... ugh). In both cases, though, the journey of self-realization, of becoming a decent sort of person, is all the more satisfying because it begins in such a dark place.

That would be great, but Jake is nowhere near being a good person yet, so why is Allison all but ready to jump back in? Her righteous fury from the first episode is nearly gone, and with that dinner scene, she's been effectively reduced to fluttering her eyelashes at him like a school girl.

So... I don't know where RfL is going... but if the dev lets the MC learn how to be a better version of himself from Allison... well, _that's a story worth playing_ even if most of the game is not.

Agreed. There is a good story somewhere in there, being suffocated underneath all that porny nonsense.