Recommending Story-first games
- Thread starter jufot
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- Sep 27, 2021
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- May 15, 2021
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This was fun! The English issues are a bit distracting, but it has everything VNs tend to avoid like the plague: deception, manipulation and betrayal, both sexual and otherwise. The story is a bit cliché, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. OP has been updated.Edit: just finished The Rest of Our Lives. It's a phenomenal read if anyone is interested
- May 15, 2021
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I gave this a go and shared some thoughts on the game thread. Using The Sims for renders is an interesting choice. I can see it bothering some, but I was fine with it. I like the characters and the prose, but have misgivings about the sexual stuff.
Just finished the update: _New Antioch_ is a fun, impressively produced game that does a number of things exceptionally well. I enjoyed playing and will look out for updates. But it is not a story-first game, certainly not according to jufot's criteria.
Highlights:
The fight scenes are satisfying. Devs have gradually figured out how to make action sequences feel compelling in Ren'Py, and Antioch builds on this tradition. It combines action stills, music and choices into a kinetic mix... not as well as _Race for Life_, for example, but still very effectively.
Strong world building. The game world is a pastiche of various sci-fi, fantasy and historical themes... but it's an interesting pastiche. Rocket is right: this is solid work.
It uses Roman motifs well -- mostly because it doesn't try to set the game in the real-world classical period. Instead, its version of Rome is like the Romulans in _Star Trek_: Roman-eque, rather than Roman. That's a wise move.
The LIs have agency, although they are mostly porn tropes. They're interesting, and have independent motives that are worth sussing out.
Lowlights:
The MC. Many, many young male players will love him, because he's a Gary Stu on mutated steriods. I'm sure that's the idea. But his fastastic prowess makes him quite boring to play, IMO.
The Plot. Features the oldest, dumbest porn cliche in the book: I've been created to save the world using my massive mutated superdong, super jizz and alpha male pheramones! Yay!
FFS.That said... it's a very well executed alpha male porn fantasy. I found myself laughing at some of the (quite intentionally) cornball stuff.
It's instructive, again, to compare _New Antioch_ to _Race for Life_. I think the consensus on this thread is that the latter is also a porn-first game... but, intriguingly, one of its eight or so routes is actually powerfully story-first. If you play through it in exactly the right way you get a rather moving, story-first easter egg in an otherwise porny game.
_New Antioch_ doesn't have a hidden non-porny route. But... the MC is not a douchebag, as in RFL -- you can play him as quite a honourable character, apart from his, ah, 'handicap.' If you like _Conan the Barbarian_ this game will appeal.
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- Apr 30, 2023
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Who doesn't? Wait, you are talking about the original with Arnold and James Earl Jones, right? Not the miserable attempt of a remake...when ever that came out and who ever with.
ps. Are you saying that Conan isn't a story first movie?
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What is best in life?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
- Sep 9, 2023
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This is coming from someone who is ignored by the thread creator because ... well whatever reasons not story-first worthy.
Why do many so called players of so called games - where there is only one protagonist - the one and only character that gamers get to embody by literally play-pretending like they were choosing for that exactly only character the decision to be made and giving the speciffic character the actual agency in the entire scripted plot, because everybody else is slave to the plot and the plot armored motifs of whatever agenda the writer wants to push through it - these types of self deprecating players many times appear to rarely appreciate the actual choice in the matter?
You seem to confuse good plot or game with drama - no, the drama is not in the game, the drama is always in the narrative, that said narrative you never get to see in a game of all places, unless they have CODEX or cutscenes plot narrating the story to toddler like gamers who want drama to stuirr in their game for it to be ”worthy” - absolutely false and bad way to look at the world - kind of like telling yourself over and over: ”If life does not shit on me big time and make me a dead horse for plot armored brain dead but deadly vilains, my life is worthless”. Maybe try and accept the virtue of goiong to a blockbuster movie with shallow plot that is wildly entertaining and does not do cringe fortuitous 180 turns for your drama needing self.
Why do many so called players of so called games - where there is only one protagonist - the one and only character that gamers get to embody by literally play-pretending like they were choosing for that exactly only character the decision to be made and giving the speciffic character the actual agency in the entire scripted plot, because everybody else is slave to the plot and the plot armored motifs of whatever agenda the writer wants to push through it - these types of self deprecating players many times appear to rarely appreciate the actual choice in the matter?
You seem to confuse good plot or game with drama - no, the drama is not in the game, the drama is always in the narrative, that said narrative you never get to see in a game of all places, unless they have CODEX or cutscenes plot narrating the story to toddler like gamers who want drama to stuirr in their game for it to be ”worthy” - absolutely false and bad way to look at the world - kind of like telling yourself over and over: ”If life does not shit on me big time and make me a dead horse for plot armored brain dead but deadly vilains, my life is worthless”. Maybe try and accept the virtue of goiong to a blockbuster movie with shallow plot that is wildly entertaining and does not do cringe fortuitous 180 turns for your drama needing self.
The many fabulous acclaimed movies always have heroes that strive to overcome and succceed in the most contrived ways, the many differences between vilains and heroes get blurred in a well crafted plot, but the plot armored vilains will have a hard time with a well written hero who actually gets the character development to win, as opposed to vilains getting stuff dropped on them from a great height with little to no buildup or reason - sure many gamers seem to adore the vialins that are very much plot armored brain dead the entire game until the hero painstakingly manages to toppel them - but sure, keep crying for your drama ridden game where you have no agency because .. reasons most of the people filling the movie theaters for blockbuster hero driven blockbuster action movies will have all the hard time accepting as any indication of a good game or a good story for that matter.
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Definitely! I wasn't even aware they tried to remake the film... which is just a stupid idea. The 1982 version was essentially the perfect form of what it was going for, in terms of its cheesiness and its creepiness (the witch sex scene, all those snakes).
But I might also be referring to the Howard stories. In fact, you can probably link my interest in choice-based games to those stories: I have a vague memory of reading an illustrated choose-your-own-adventure Conan book as a little kid, circa 1988.
BTW -- nice product placement, Rocket. You guys are going all Hollywood.
Bottom line: there's nothing at all wrong with creating a cheesy, porny, adventure story set in an interesting world/alternative universe. _New Antioch_ is absolutely worth playing. It's fun! But it doesn't fit on jufot's list. (To be clear: a straight-up Conan adaptation probably would qualify for the list.)
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I found there's a lot of potential with New Antioch for story.Definitely! I wasn't even aware they tried to remake the film... which is just a stupid idea. The 1982 version was essentially a perfect version of what it was going for, in terms of its cheesiness and its creepiness (the witch sex scene, all those snakes).
But I might also be referring to the Howard stories. In fact, you can probably link my interest in choice-based games to those stories: I have a vague memory of reading an illustrated choose-your-own-adventure Conan book as a little kid, circa 1988.
BTW -- nice product placement, Rocket. You guys are going all Hollywood.
Bottom line: there's nothing at all wrong with creating a cheesy, porny, adventure story set in an interesting world/alternative universe. _New Antioch_ is absolutely worth playing. It's fun! But it doesn't fit on jufot's list. (To be clear: a straight-up Conan adaptation probably would qualify for the list.)
And i think without the frankly cringy porn logic inserted because it will make obviously more money this way (most of the scientist woman appearance and dialogues or the whole "mutant penis and pheromones and sperm" plot especially) it would be even better as so far the story flow very nicely and despite a few absurd moment that feel really alien to the setting ( the dnd tabletop dialogues and game nearly put me out of the storytelling ) i got very interested in how the story is developing.
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- Feb 8, 2018
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Thanks for showing us how to search these forums. I was not at all aware that one could search in this way. Could you please explain how you were able to put the icons for VN, Renpy and Completed in the Prefix field of the filter? The part you have circled in your post. Thank you.
- Jul 12, 2021
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Because Sorcerer and Terminus Reach: Sentinel is in the list, maybe the new Tribulations of a Mage (also from Talothral) is worth a shot. It has just started but maybe keep an eye out.
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Edit: Additional I would throw in Sable's Grimoire and Sable's Grimoire: A Dragon's Treasure for the story of both ...
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Edit: Additional I would throw in Sable's Grimoire and Sable's Grimoire: A Dragon's Treasure for the story of both ...
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- Apr 30, 2023
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ThanksBTW -- nice product placement, Rocket. You guys are going all Hollywood.
I've reached out to a few of the devs for cross promotions who I think make a product that I can endorse. Most want to hitch their wagon to devs with more support, but TheRedMyst and I have great communication, and we try to make it fun.
- Sep 27, 2021
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Hmmmm....wasn´t so easy to find this again, not sure any more how I found this yesterday.
Anyway this works:
Change to Tab "FORUMS" (1) and open "Games" (2)
You will get the page from yesterdays screenshot.
Open "Filters" (3) and click into Prefix line (4)
A list will pop up with all prefixes - choose the first, click again into the line to open the list once more, choose next Prefix and so on.
About the Conan the Barbarian mentions, it's curious i haven't seen any adaptation of Howard's Conan stories in a renpy visual novel format with so many fans of the whole Hyborian Age around, though i guess it's more interesting for a VN writer to write his own stories instead of just adapting someone else work.
That said if you like the Hyborian Age it's good to know that many of Howard's stories (Conan and more) are either in public domain or have their copyright expired by now, and so can be found on the Project Gutenberg website :
That said if you like the Hyborian Age it's good to know that many of Howard's stories (Conan and more) are either in public domain or have their copyright expired by now, and so can be found on the Project Gutenberg website :
You must be registered to see the links
That's a good point: it's a bit baffling that devs haven't tried a Conan game, or at least a Conan homage... it seems rather perfect for this genre.
Howard was, famously, part of the 'Lovecraft circle' of writers and correspondents. There have been a great many Lovecraft inspired games... why not Conan?
- Apr 30, 2023
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I think you are exactly right. If Daz had a drive with a muscle bound man sitting on a stone throne resting himself on a giant sword...we'd see some Conan inspired games