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Recommending Story-first games

5.00 star(s) 8 Votes

Slick Bean

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Sep 9, 2023
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That is such a true statement. The art notebooks of some boys or girls from way back in school were amazing.
Most of them I never knew about then, but seeing them later, they looked like wonderful workouts for the beginning.
Not to be combative or boast, but I could have drawn that when I was in 9th grade. Not the art that is the selling point in Camp Klondike, but it does work for it.
We got some drawn artwork games around here. Our Red String is a big hand drawn game where dev usess modern
technology for the artwork and looks most amazing outta everything of the sort on this site.

On the goofy draw like you painted in art college, there is this horror game - Vacation comes with a cost,
where they went straight to development hell switching art direction and redrawing models outta the blue.

For Comic book heroes style drawings, we got Heroes rise- Prison break with different art styles throughout
different stages of production, you might enjoy, whenever the babes in Pecker Pi give you a break.
 
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kotte

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Feb 11, 2018
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Yes, the art is an acquired taste, but once you do, it is tasty :)

Klondike is one of a handful of games on this site that gets eroticism. It's worth a look for that alone.
Cool! I have been skipping it, on the basis of the preview images alone...
Perhaps I should give it a try!

I wouldn't mind a text-only game, that would _really_ put the story first. But not one where they sprinkle images of real porn here and there. One where I create all the imagery in my head.

Think "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door"...
 
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Slick Bean

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What is wrong with the two games with sci fi elements from your sigs?
Think "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door"...
1701425792229.png is a live in space station where you exercise your dating game.
1701425847749.png is a stargate spinoff about outworlders experiencing life on Earth.

They look like two pretty neat and interesting renditions of arts used the right way to illustrate their plot and characters?
 

kotte

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Feb 11, 2018
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What is wrong with the two games with sci fi elements from your sigs?
Nothing wrong at all! I am sponsoring both and translating one of them.
Both have (in my opinion) very engaging stories, which is what had me hooked. The fact that the renders are great are definitely a nice icing on the cake, and lifts the experience to a higher level.

But what I was arguing in the previous post was that it could be fun to see someone go in the opposite direction and create a completely image-less game. If done well, with the story, the worldbuilding, and the branching, it could be pretty awesome.

I am old enough to remember the chills running down my spine when I first encountered a Poison Giant in the corridors of Wizardry. It was just a cluster of green and purple pixels, but in my mind, it was sooo scary.
Transferred to our context, if a game says that the LI is "the most beautiful woman you have ever seen", it might be difficult to match in your illustrations . But in a text-only game, her beauty will be without competition.

Since it is I who design her, in my mind.
 

Slick Bean

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Cool! What a wonderful way to deal with reading and comprehesion of all things - coin them in your mind.
Since it is I who design her, in my mind.
If it is not too much of a bother, could you adress some of the concirns about the plot of
A Long Journey 1701429150783.png ??
One player believed that:
This game is very hit or miss. We are playing an MC who is smart but he doesn't do a lot of smart things other than hacking. For example, I dont uderstand why when they where in the container and bald dude told them to leave MC didnt just close the container on him while he was inside. One baddy down and one much easier baddy to deal with. I get space opera but come on anyone in that situation with half a brain would of been like this is my chance.

Another player expressed frustration about some other story elements:
My biggest complaint about this story so far is that the antagonists are almost too capable and too in control.
It seems to me that they are too smart to be fooled by the MC's plan to tamper
with the SDs and there would still be no major change in the status quo...

Frankly I feel like by now it's past time to tie a bow on the whole blackmail plot
and move on to a new problem or crisis... preferably one that isn't centered around
saboteurs sitting on ass while playing Selene and the MC like fucking marionettes.

I, for one, was stuck in the very beginning in between all the rotation lobby and what door to open at what time,
so I seriously lost interest alltogether in actually playing the game, but the story remains intriguing.

Could you spoiler some of the interesting moments of your gaming experience and a couple a words about how you got there?
 

kotte

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When I started playing A Long Journey, I had recently seen the movie "Passengers". And "Passengers" was a story that stayed in my head for a long time afterwards. I kept thinking about changes to the story, removing parts I didn't like, elaborating parts I did like etc.

So when I encountered A Long Journey, it was more stories in the same universe, so to speak. It was a story that I could continue working on in my head in just the same way. And it was also about the way the characters felt real, I mean, how would one feel if I ended up in a spaceship with a complete stranger, an attractive girl, as the only company? And what if I found out that she had deceived me, just when we had taken our guards down towards each other?

That is to me the essence of the game, and petty details such as Would I have been able to take down one of the bad guys, or Are the bad guys too capable (I mean, look at the Die Hard movies!)...is not something I focus on.
There are way to few AVN's where the story resonate so much with me, I am not going to get upset over stuff that isn't even plot holes.

But do I agree that the roaming in between episodes was a bit eventless, and sometimes you didn't even know that you had reached the end of all content. I think the dev wanted to showcase the spacecraft and just built a way for us to walk around it and look at all the nice graphics.
 

jufot

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May 15, 2021
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And it was also about the way the characters felt real, I mean, how would one feel if I ended up in a spaceship with a complete stranger, an attractive girl, as the only company? And what if I found out that she had deceived me, just when we had taken our guards down towards each other?
The film's greatest mistake and weakness was making it a love story. By simply reordering the scenes, it becomes a dark and horrifying character study. Nerdwriter has about it.
 

Slick Bean

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What the reviewer in that video missed and jufot exploits, yet you are willing to forgive, kotte ,
is the external circumstances of the two actors that star in the forefront of that movie:

Chris Pratt was coming off blockbuster plot armored main good guy hero hype,
they would never have made him a ruthless psicho antihero, he would never have taken the role.

Then, Jennifer Lawrence was also, well, coming off her younger mistakes movies,
especially the one where her character gets raped rather gratuitously for rather little plot relevance,
but with absolute huge viewer impact, so I believe that she would not have taken the role if
she was again supposed to be the rape victim.

In the end, they both, actor and actress, needed some neutral ground where they would build characters
that were not going to ruin their rise towards more roles in blockbuster movies.

In the end, Jen is a victim of deceit but she recovers and matures her relationship.
In the end, Chris is a victim of circumstance with a rather acute lack of any skill whatsoever,
he gets to decide not to die alone, seemingly dooming another person to the same fate,
and yet, he gets a redemtion arc through self sacrifice,
finally doing something that his lack of skills was not stopping.

As always, having these talks really opens up avenues of seeing things with different perspectives.
 

kotte

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Feb 11, 2018
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The film's greatest mistake and weakness was making it a love story. By simply reordering the scenes, it becomes a dark and horrifying character study. Nerdwriter has about it.
I am a sucker for love stories, but yeah, I've seen that clip and liked what he is suggesting.
There's also a fan edit called "Passengers - Aurora", which is not exactly implementing it in that way (for example, Nerdwriter manages to edit his beginning in a way more Aurora-centric way, which is necessary if we want to add the creepiness as he suggests), but on the other hand, "Passengers - Aurora" is th the full movie, 1h 22mins.
 
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kotte

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But back to the idea of a text-only AVN.
In a previous career, I was working with missiles and fighter jets, and I was super happy when they sent me on a two week simulator course at an air force base to learn everything about the instruments in the cockpit and get an accurate feel for the cognitive load a pilot has to deal with. Arriving at the simulator facility, I saw that the big hydrolic pistons didn't seem to be attached and asked the instructor about it.

- Naw, he said, they might be fun for someone who has never flown, but for a real pilot, the slight discrepancy between the simulator's movements and how the real thing feels, is just distracting. But when we run it like this, the pilot feels the g-force just as they would in reality, beacause it's all in their head.

That really stuck in my head, that sometimes it's better not trying to fake it, if the illusion is better when you not fake it at all.

(The other key takeaway was a love for interfaces with tactile feedback, and as such, a deep hate for car designers that put important stuff on touch screens.)
 

Slick Bean

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YEah .. I have to disagree ... because the ”Solaris” parallel is exactly what drives the original plot of Passengers:
Pratt is alone and is skill-less - he is no investigator, he makes no journal of ”crime scenes” he just reacts.
Bringing ”Solaris” into this discussion turns PAssengers into a 1 to 1 copycat.
I am a sucker for love stories, but yeah, I've seen that clip and liked what he is suggesting.
There's also a fan edit called "Passengers - Aurora", which is not exactly implementing it in that way (for example, Nerdwriter manages to edit his beginning in a way more Aurora-centric way, which is necessary if we want to add the creepiness as he suggests), but on the other hand, "Passengers - Aurora" is th the full movie, 1h 22mins.
Unfortunately, these editors in them tubes seem to really hate Pratt - a male lead.
While ”Solaris” doing the exact same thing with the male lead alone strolling the ”crime scenes”,
they now want to turn Pratt into a creep just because he is a male,
so these two counter representations are misrepresenting #METOO and turning mysoginy to 110000.

Just think about it: Chriss and Jen are both alone and have no memories and no skills,
the movies has made this aboundantly clear all throughout, but those misrepresentations
you two seem to praise turn the male into a creep all of a sudden, when Jen is as much in awe as he is.

There is no sense or wonder if you bring two characters to bounce ideas off eachother,
not like the sence of discovery you get while following one character alone with his or her thoughts.

Not to mention that the path those youtubers both propose is that of foregoing all character creation:
just have the cube/saw deus ex makina mcguffin plot contrivancies hit them smack in the head all of a sudden,
put two characters to gibberish together, because they are not skilled detectives,
not investigators and neither engineers,
they find no clues and discuss no clues to get them forward or anything.

Anyway, for this story-first discussion, one would think that a story told through the mind
of one character is better than no story with just dialogues of unskilled individuals talking gibbrish.

To each their own, I guess - whatever rocks your boats, gamers.
 
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Slick Bean

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Well now, you know those jets inside and out, you do not need a simulator to mind fly your jet,
but a novel is best served at first glance, because you can build your mind world and have it forever there.
Just like the cockpit of the F15 or a Raptor - they are compex machinery that on the outside just
fly like a hawk or like a dragonfly - more visually appealing things to immagine than some hunk a metal.
I was working with missiles and fighter jets, and I was super happy when they sent me on a two week simulator course at an air force base to learn everything about the instruments in the cockpit and get an accurate feel for the cognitive load a pilot has to deal with.
Sometimes you have to let go your ego and accept the visual stimulus of a Visual Novel or that of a Game,
you do need to get outta your head and explore, engage with others,
become their hero, go far and beyond simply recreating you body double in their story.
 
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Raife

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May 16, 2018
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The film's greatest mistake and weakness was making it a love story. By simply reordering the scenes, it becomes a dark and horrifying character study. Nerdwriter has about it.
I love that video... which gets to a preference that I've banged on about before: the best LIs always have highly ambiguous, opaque or even malign motivations vs-a-vis the MC.

IRL, building trust is a key aspect in developing relationships, particularly at the beginning. When two characters begin in a state of active distrust or suspicion, it can leaven attraction with a sense of threat... which heightens dramatic tension. That's precisely the point that nerdwriter makes in his video. Predictable, safe relationship arcs are boring AND unrealistic.

To his credit, Lunatic has not made that blunder in _A Long Journey_... I still don't trust the main LI at all, and exploring that relationship is my primary motivation for playing at this point. (Kotte is right about all the pointless freeroam, though -- and I'm still afraid that the dev's excessive ambition means that the game will never be finished.)
 
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Raife

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I dread the day I'll no longer be able to buy a non-"smart", non-touch screen car. They'll have to pry my current car out of my cold, dead hands!
You're such an old man. But... I'm even more of an old geezer, as I'll soon be the last human who insists that if you aren't driving a car with a manual transmission, you aren't actually driving.
 
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Slick Bean

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However intriguing total dark horses are to tame and ride in the end of a full fledged gaming experience,
we have to remember the double strandard - PLayers always get more ideas/info into their heads
before any character ever gets to figure stuff out in any game.
That stands to reason that even tho the player might know stuff and throw a fit
about how predictable this or that is, the actual MC has to have a game plan,
has to have innate and built in triggers and preconceptions to use and show us
all the way as they get put into action and through those methods of going through each scene,
give us the sence of wonder we desire.
 

jufot

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May 15, 2021
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To his credit, Lunatic has not made that blunder in _A Long Journey_... I still don't trust the main LI at all, and exploring that relationship is my primary motivation for playing at this point.
Agreed. I hope she'll have a Sophie's choice moment where she'll have to risk either her sister or the MC.

(Kotte is right about all the pointless freeroam, though -- and I'm still afraid that the dev's excessive ambition means that the game will never be finished.)
I intend to abandon it when the incest stuff inevitably comes up, so I'm not too bothered by its long-term prospects.

I'll soon be the last human who insists that if you aren't driving a car with a manual transmission, you aren't actually driving.
Awfully presumptuous of you to think you'll live longer than me :p
 
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EndlessNights

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Jun 18, 2022
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I recently did a new Dog Days of Summer playthrough and I'm curious what people here think of it. As was the case in previous playthroughs, I find myself having very mixed feelings about it because there are about as many things I dislike about the game as I like.

For the uninitiated, the MC of the game is Vivian, a college student who at the start of the game is reassessing who she is and what she wants out of life. Most significantly, she is becoming increasingly aware of her attraction to women. Hijinks are sure to ensue!

The most unique aspect of the game is definitely the branching which is so extensive that almost every playthrough feels unique. Good Girl Gone Bad was obviously a huge inspiration for the game...to the point that you'll likely find certain characters uncannily familiar if you've already played GGGB. Our very own bacienvu laboriously created a walkthrough for the game that you should definitely take a look at if you have any doubt about the game's complexity (or just need help).

In addition to the impressive branching, I appreciate how several of the characters are written and the believable college setting. Viv is a very relatable main character who is easy to root for particularly during those times when she is facing down her own fears and overcoming self-doubt and inertia. Characters like Desiree and Evaline in their best moments feel like real people I could have met on campus back in the day. The game does a pretty decent job of depicting university life compared to so many AVNs where colleges seem more like high schools.

I've decided I would've liked Dog Days a lot better if it were more grounded. The moments in the game I enjoy the most are just Vivian being Vivian: hanging out with friends, soberly and sometimes melancholily contemplating her life and worrying about the future, and wandering around campus doing college student stuff. The slice of life material tends to be quite well-written and enjoyable when it appears. On the other hand, the GGGB style over the top scenarios often feel forced and uncomfortable here when they occur. For instance, Vivian can help another student write a paper for a class she's struggling with. Depending on your choices, the teacher for the class notices the student's improvement, suspects Vivian's involvement, and then decides Viv needs some mentoring so she can become a domme with a harem of her own. WTF?! That said, like GGGB it can be entertaining to see the surprising turns the story can take and the unexpected significance of some of our choices in the game.

DDS also loves putting intrusive sexual thoughts into Vivian's head whether it fits the moment or not. For example, at one point in the game Viv's best friend Desiree, genuinely distraught over breaking up with her boyfriend, sleeps over for a night seeking support and comfort. Viv pretty much constantly pervs out over Des during the sleepover which considering the circumstances basically makes it seem like she doesn't really give a shit about Des as a person. It would've been so much better if Viv had had a stray sexual thought and dismissed it so she could worry about and care for her friend in her time of need. Somehow, though, the Des route still ended up becoming my favorite.

On that note, the game could IMO also use more characters who aren't love interests or fuckable who could contribute to the story in other ways. DDS like a lot of other lesbian games creates a world where most characters are lesbian or bi women and all tend to be very interested in the MC given the right choices. There's certainly nothing wrong with fantasy in AVNs, but I think the story would've been improved if Vivian had a few friends and family members who weren't romantic options. It would have been interesting to see her navigate through and interact with heteronormative society while at the same time also connecting with the queer community to find love, solidarity, and/or hookups. Alas, there probably wouldn't be any sapphic sororities in that version of the game...

Even with all the branching, I found myself sometimes wishing for choices that weren't there. I would've liked to avoid the supercilious, supernatural Tara altogether instead of having to watch her order Viv around. Also, it would've been nice if we could indicate the MC doesn't see her mom as a potential LI instead of having intrusive thoughts about her regardless of choices (the route isn't forced, just the thoughts). There are also a lot of routes I had no interest in playing because I disliked the characters involved, they conflicted with my idea of who Viv was a person, or I didn't like how they were set up.

My friend Kali wrote an interesting review of the game that's well worth reading. I'm not quite on board with her critique of the MC's appearance (though I did rather like Viv's pre-makeover look better and her new wardrobe is definitely a bit out there in typical AVN fashion), but she's absolutely right on about the lack of proofreading in the game and makes a number of other really good points. The typos and misspellings, a few of which are so extreme that you might not even understand what word was actually meant, are ever-present and glaring. It's quite surprising to see given the loving care that's shown in other aspects of the game design such as the branching and the rendering (because Viv's appearance can be modified at certain points, many scenes actually have multiple versions).
 
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5.00 star(s) 8 Votes