Recommending Story-first games

[365 others]

First, credit to Moskys for the extreme amount of work that he did on this wiki:

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Depending on how you count them, Gemini is either the 7th or the 10th game in the Elsaverse.

The first five games are in the Omnibus Vol1, along with 5 visual short stories, 4 text short stories, and a text novella. The games are:
Dreaming with Elsa
Redemption for Jessika
Finding Miranda
Saving Chloe
Darkness Falls

After that, it goes:
Elsa's Nightmares
Elsaverse: Transitions
Chasing Beth
Elsaverse: Past, Present, and Future
Gemini

Links to all of them are here:

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Gemini will be released to the public on Tuesday, and I'll add it to the above about page.

Tlaero

edit: If you don't want to play all of those games, a good place to start is Chasing Beth.

I'd like to ask if after Saving Chloe they go after the witch (a girl with crow feathers? She was with Chloe's dad) in any of the following games. It let me hooked, but without knowing if they went after her.
I also wonder if they managed to lift Miranda's curse.

 

[camube]

Fair enough. it's his thread. As I said, it went a little deeper than I initially intended beyond the Discord comment. Well, that and the whole 'I don't like X genre/game = you're seriously disturbed' thing, which just isn't cool on website like this.

I guess it just roots in the concept that if you're going to leave a platform open for debate (such as this one), then it should be open for anything and everything (within the constructs of the said platforms rules, obviously). If not, then what's the point? This is aimed less at the loli/shota stuff and more at the rape, to be clear. But the point still kind of stands for both regardless.

i don't know who said "seriously disturbed", I didn't see that but to me it's all just discussions.
If a thread owner (any thread owner) doesn't want the people in it to discuss some things, I'll do what they ask to be respectful.

If someone someday makes another thread, I'll read that too.
I don't have an interest to make a thread, so complying to a thread owner's wish and personal disposition is okay.

What's important to me is narrowing the list of games to play next. And secondary to that, maybe the devs would get more support off of the discussions.
It really doesn't matter to me all that much whether we can talk or not talk about some games or some subject matters as long as I get to read recommendations of games.

Most of the time I gloss over appearances. To me a game can have only background images and texts only without character images in it and I'd be perfectly fine with it. The background images alone saves so much time compared to reading a book. And AVN in general is brief compared to other mediums.

If Capella ever write a PDF of the entire Mad World script to completion, I would pay for that even if the game itself is abandoned. I would pay for that right now actually, cuz I want to read about Paeonia and Vincent in particular and the story in general.

What I want to read is the author's writing.
A good story is a good story. I'll read good stories.
Even moreso if the characters in the stories are written with nuances.

 

[moskyx]

I'd like to ask if after Saving Chloe they go after the witch (a girl with crow feathers? She was with Chloe's dad) in any of the following games. It let me hooked, but without knowing if they went after her.
I also wonder if they managed to lift Miranda's curse.

She was arrested along Morland in Saving Chloe. But she still can be seen in other titles

 

[camube]

EndlessNights, can i ask why Superhuman has it's own separate thread discussion?
What happen with just talking on the main thread?

For context i ask because Our Red String for a short while moved to a separate thread too because someone posted far too many fan pictures and f95 Team locked the main thread because of it for some period of time.
Or at least I think that was the reason, I wasn't actually there when the thread initially got locked. I learned about it after the fact.
I don't think people posting fan pics to be disruptive, and even if I ever find them disruptive, I can just skim over the posts.

What's funnier though is that when the thread got locked there was a notice of redirection to an AI art ORS thread or something like that. So it actually became disruptive because people that wants to have discussion got redirected to that specific-purpose art thread, and actually disrupt the people that were already there to begin with, lol.

Did something similar happen to Superhuman thread?

Also, from your view, has Superhuman reach at least 50% completion?
I'm running out of renpy game to play and it's about time to dive into backlog

 

[Beduin123]

Fair enough. it's his thread. As I said, it went a little deeper than I initially intended beyond the Discord comment. Well, that and the whole 'I don't like X genre/game = you're seriously disturbed' thing, which just isn't cool on website like this.

I guess it just roots in the concept that if you're going to leave a platform open for debate (such as this one), then it should be open for anything and everything (within the constructs of the said platforms rules, obviously). If not, then what's the point? This is aimed less at the loli/shota stuff and more at the rape, to be clear. But the point still kind of stands for both regardless.

Personally for me the story is always at the first place in a game. I used to be a total bookworm in my youth and still read a lot of books. But as some other user put it, some threads have their own "culture" or rather a bunch of regulars that frequent these threads who share certain views and prejudices.
Unfortunately, I feel uncomfortable about the self-censoring "culture" in this thread, so probably the best solution for club members like me is just unwatch it and forget about it. There are other threads where folks can discuss story-first games that the regulars in this one find to be too sensitive. It's much easier than trying to persuade people who are dead set on something. It's like trying to persuade NTR-haters that sex between LIs in your harem isn't an NTR

 

[camube]

There are other threads where folks can discuss story-first games that the regulars in this one

Where?
Is that literal? If it is, can you link it here? I want to subscribe maybe.

Or are you saying that as a hypothetical? In the sense that it theoretically should exist somewhere and if not, hypothetically it would exist in the future.

The biggest direct advantage of this thread's discoverability to me, is the name. The name is so succinct, "story-first games". If I ever search for a thread title from f95 search bar, or straight from google, something along the line of this thread's title would be the keywords I use.
So I never try searching on google or on the search bar for an alternative place for this thread ever.

The biggest direct advantage of reading this thread to me is that game developers post here regularly. One of my big interest is reading the perspective of these game devs. Off the top of my head, i can name at least 6 devs and I don't read all the pages from 2022, I skip around a lot, so there has to be more than these 6 devs that I remember.

More place as a reference where people can discuss stories is great for me cuz then I can get more recommendations.
So if you find other places, let me know

That way I can check devs posts from here, and I can check recommendations from both places

 

[365 others]

She was arrested along Morland in Saving Chloe. But she still can be seen in other titles

I'll have to replay it. I remember a very different ending, with the witch fleeing away.

 

[Canto Forte]

Oh .. yes, honey ... this is where we talk about your dirty laundry:
Babe: (Giggling) You are funny, sweetie. These are from the sleep over. I wore them only last night, on my head, I might add, they still smell of conditioner.

Q:Will this Gemini game be a gender bender ”choose your orientation” social experiment?

A:There will be the story portion of the Michael path and story scenes for the Trisha path.

 

[Tlaero]

I'll have to replay it. I remember a very different ending, with the witch fleeing away.

There were around 10 different endings in Saving Chloe. In the Canon one, though, everyone worked together to defeat Morland and Crow, and Xara took them through the portal to their original universe. One of the text short stories in the Ominbus shows what happens after that.

There are a couple of places in the main games where we see Crow again in flashback.

Tlaero

 

[365 others]

There were around 10 different endings in Saving Chloe. In the Canon one, though, everyone worked together to defeat Morland and Crow, and Xara took them through the portal to their original universe. One of the text short stories in the Ominbus shows what happens after that.

There are a couple of places in the main games where we see Crow again in flashback.

Tlaero

Is there any guide or walkthrough for it? I remember playing by ear and it wasn't easy to get to an ending. Too many times I got one of the dead ends (bad ending, I guess?) because I had screwed with a previous choice.

 

[Beduin123]

Where?
Is that literal? If it is, can you link it here? I want to subscribe maybe.

Or are you saying that as a hypothetical? In the sense that it theoretically should exist somewhere and if not, hypothetically it would exist in the future.

The biggest direct advantage of this thread's discoverability to me, is the name. The name is so succinct, "story-first games". If I ever search for a thread title from f95 search bar, or straight from google, something along the line of this thread's title would be the keywords I use.
So I never try searching on google or on the search bar for an alternative place for this thread ever.

The biggest direct advantage of reading this thread to me is that game developers post here regularly. One of my big interest is reading the perspective of these game devs. Off the top of my head, i can name at least 6 devs and I don't read all the pages from 2022, I skip around a lot, so there has to be more than these 6 devs that I remember.

More place as a reference where people can discuss stories is great for me cuz then I can get more recommendations.
So if you find other places, let me know

That way I can check devs posts from here, and I can check recommendations from both places

Well, at least I know a similar thread exists on the other site. Also, lots of good recommendations can be found in Reddit forums. What for the game Devs, they can be even more often found in the threads dedicated to their respective games. All my favorite story-driven games I found elsewhere, not from this particular thread. Anyway, I'm going to unwatch this thread now, I don't like hypocrisy, self-righteousness and censorship

 

[moskyx]

Is there any guide or walkthrough for it? I remember playing by ear and it wasn't easy to get to an ending. Too many times I got one of the dead ends (bad ending, I guess?) because I had screwed with a previous choice.

There's a section in the wiki for walkthroughs

You must be registered to see the links

 

[EndlessNights]

EndlessNights, can i ask why Superhuman has it's own separate thread discussion?
What happen with just talking on the main thread?

Yeah, something similar to what happened with Our Red String happened to Superhuman too. There was a massive purge of posts in the main thread which many posters, including me, felt was unjustifiable. At the very least, a good number of on-topic and high quality posts definitely got swept up in it. A mod created Superhuman Off-Topic and some of the best posters largely migrated there. As a result, you'll find that a lot of the discussion there is actually about the game despite the "off-topic" part of the title though all kinds of other subjects are also discussed. In fact, it's a good place to discuss games in general whether they are adult or not. In particular, DrakoGhoul, ItzSyther, Gtdead, and Emmitudo all write some really good game analysis from time to time.

If you're looking for recs that might or might not be story-first, you could certainly find some there or on the Lesbian Protagonist Games List or on the Summer's Gone Off-Topic thread. All are good threads in my view.

Also, from your view, has Superhuman reach at least 50% completion?
I'm running out of renpy game to play and it's about time to dive into backlog

Yes, the game is actually not that far from being done according to the dev so it's well past the 50% mark. However, this announcement has been a source of some consternation to the fan base as we mostly feel there's much more story and lore left to explore. That said, it's already quite a long game by VN standards and there will likely be a few more updates before the end. WeirdWorld intends to do a sequel to the game eventually, but hopefully we'll get a satisfying conclusion to Superhuman with no cliffhangers or any glaring hanging threads.

 

[365 others]

There's a section in the wiki for walkthroughs

You must be registered to see the links

Very nice Wiki! I'll give it a run every game again now with the walkthrough to see what I missed from the other options and possible endings.

 

[jufot]

Gemini is out on

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now! It should show up here in a few days.

 

[FatGiant]

I just finished playing ep.04 of New Antioch and wanted to read your views of it.

I liked the mix of cultures. The Codex is a great help. The story is quite good. Great characters all around. And even if it has a scene that I would truly prefer it wasn't there, I can see it's value and reason (that doesn't make me like it, but allows me to tolerate it).

Peace

 

[vneotpolemus]

Against my better judgment, I decided to check out Summer's Gone for the first time in years.

Never has an AVN left me with such mixed emotions.

SG is the very definition of a hot mess. The hottest, messiest mess you can imagine. Ocean is planning 30+ chapters and averaging one a year. He's simultaneously developing an entire other game that serves as a prequel. Every update introduces new characters and new sub plots. The list of 'planned' love interests is in constant flux. The models are in constant flux. The first two chapters have been entirely redone. The MC lives with a "landlady" and "roommate". Roughly 15% of the game is a pointless D&D sequence!

Then you get moments like

You must be registered to see the links

that are light years ahead of anything else in the AVN world. And it's not just the visuals. There's build up to those parts. There's emotion. There's characterization. Worse it's getting better despite the developmental chaos. The redone chapters actually make the game less porny, not more. Shit, the mere fact that it somehow manages to have an MC with erectile dysfunction without making the whole thing a bad joke is a sign that something unusual is going on.

If Ocean could just tame his ambition a little he could make something brilliant. But if he was the kind of person to do that he wouldn't be working on a crazy passion project like this.

 

[365 others]

I just finished playing ep.04 of New Antioch and wanted to read your views of it.

I liked the mix of cultures. The Codex is a great help. The story is quite good. Great characters all around. And even if it has a scene that I would truly prefer it wasn't there, I can see it's value and reason (that doesn't make me like it, but allows me to tolerate it).

Peace

I've been on the edge of playing it or not. On one side, I see it has only 4 versions and barely 1 year since its first release (at least here), but on the other side, I see many good opinions and reviews of it.

How much content would you say it has, in read/game play time?

 

[FatGiant]

I've been on the edge of playing it or not. On one side, I see it has only 4 versions and barely 1 year since its first release (at least here), but on the other side, I see many good opinions and reviews of it.

How much content would you say it has, in read/game play time?

I played it quite slowly, but it took several hours. If you read the Codex thoroughly, think about the options (as you should) it is long enough to be satisfying, not long enough to be tiring. IMO.

Peace

 

[FatGiant]

Against my better judgment, I decided to check out Summer's Gone for the first time in years.

Never has an AVN left me with such mixed emotions.

SG is the very definition of a hot mess. The hottest, messiest mess you can imagine. Ocean is planning 30+ chapters and averaging one a year. He's simultaneously developing an entire other game that serves as a prequel. Every update introduces new characters and new sub plots. The list of 'planned' love interests is in constant flux. The models are in constant flux. The first two chapters have been entirely redone. The MC lives with a "landlady" and "roommate". Roughly 15% of the game is a pointless D&D sequence!

Then you get moments like

You must be registered to see the links

that are light years ahead of anything else in the AVN world. And it's not just the visuals. There's build up to those parts. There's emotion. There's characterization. Worse it's getting better despite the developmental chaos. The redone chapters actually make the game less porny, not more. Shit, the mere fact that it somehow manages to have an MC with erectile dysfunction without making the whole thing a bad joke is a sign that something unusual is going on.

If Ocean could just tame his ambition a little he could make something brilliant. But if he was the kind of person to do that he wouldn't be working on a crazy passion project like this.

I've played and replayed SG so many times that sometimes I doubt reality. While I prefer straight up Harem games. Something in SG pulls me in, and in, and in... I'm a 60 year old retired man, but, when I play SG, I go back to my teens, I remember feeling things like that. I remember loving like that. It resonates inside me.

I've had to remove SG from my PC. Because I was bordering on obsessing about it. It is, along with LoF, one of the few games that made me cry real tears.

Yeah, I get you.

Peace