Recommending Story-first games

[Raife]

Just got home from work and have to get prepared for something else, but I wanted to pop in with a short message. Raife, Jufot, I just say I'm generally unimpressed by the "male MC seduces a (previously) lesbian couple (and then the entire relationship comes to depend on the MC)" trope, even if it is explained as a realisation that they are bi. I can elaborate on this later, but I tolerate less inconsistency of character with NPCs than with MCs who are guided by player choices. Beside that its only purpose is to stroke the ego of a subset of male players.

Oh, I 100% agree. It was a _terrible_ narrative choice by the dev, and I agree that it fails for all of the reasons you mention.

I also could not agree more strongly that inconsistency of character -- characters who are _not_ true to themselves, particularly for porny reasons (e.g. to flatter the ego of male players) -- destroys the credibility of narratives. This is exactly why I generally hate 'harem' games, for example: creation of a harem generally forces the LIs to deviate from their personalities for reasons that are not credible.

As I said, I played through this scene and hated it so much that I stopped playing the game in disgust... and only picked it up again perhaps a year later. There are definitely some faceplants in BAD, and that scene was the worst of them.

I strongly suspect that jufot feels the same way, and that we both rather deliberately chose to reinterpret the scene (do a mental rewrite) in our own minds to avoid just dumping the game entirely.

 

[moskyx]

but a soap with a story
So same as the TV shows.....

I agree and I don't want to play any high school setting any more, except it has a believable story and really great renders.
But I can understand ever dev trying to do it, as it sells. Good. Really good.

I usually don't watch TV shows, unless they are short, max 4-6 chapters and done. Everything that goes longer than that inevitably falls in the soap opera area and, honestly, all those troubled love stories which are artificially kept alive just to stir the moneymaking are not that interesting to me. So in these games I need something else going on, and I must feel invested by that overarching story, otherwise I just quit. Which is what happened to me with BaDIK: the overarching story was absurd and full of nosenses and logically avoidable contrievances that, of course, weren't avoided at all. So I quitted.

 

[jufot]

It should be.
And since when do you care about what people think ...

I do care (hence the thread) but you're right, I'll put it back up

Raife, Jufot, I just say I'm generally unimpressed by the "male MC seduces a (previously) lesbian couple (and then the entire relationship comes to depend on the MC)" trope, even if it is explained as a realisation that they are bi. I can elaborate on this later, but I tolerate less inconsistency of character with NPCs than with MCs who are guided by player choices. Beside that its only purpose is to stroke the ego of a subset of male players.

I fully agree, especially with that last sentence. My explanation was meant to be fully tongue in cheek, apologies if that didn't come across right.

I strongly suspect that jufot feels the same way, and that we both rather deliberately chose to reinterpret the scene (do a mental rewrite) in our own minds to avoid just dumping the game entirely.

Yes, that.

 

[m0us3r]

any movies/shows in the last years.
There was nothing new, only remakes and copies adjusted to the actual .... lifestyle (I have other words for this, but .... let's keep it friendly).

There is only one movie I can think about worth watching and that's John Wick.

I'm sorry for the offtopic, but it puzzles me why some people like John Wick. To me, it's shallow, lacking substance and boring (even though it's action movie). I'd say Keanu with his talent and filmography should be ashamed for acting in it. And its story is not original, it's practically a remake (and nothing original there whatsoever).

Back to the topic: check the link in my signature.

Peace.

 

[TheimmortalP]

I'm interested in games where the story takes precedence over everything else. My personal criteria are:

• Well-designed, internally consistent, coherent story with a beginning and an end - i.e. no games where the devs make shit up as they go along.
• Characters that are actual human beings, with lives, personalities and interests outside the MC.
• Sex scenes should serve the plot, not vice versa. If there is no story-relevant reason for a scene, it shouldn't be there.
• No Engrish. Non-native speakers are fine (I am one), but the dev should at least use Grammarly or LanguageTool.
• No cheap tropes (e.g every female character lusts after the MC's magical dick).

Games I've already played that - IMHO - mostly fit the above criteria, in alphabetical order: (last updated December 2021)

• Acting Lessons
• A Summer's End
• Blackberry Honey
• City of Broken Dreamers
• Corporate Culture
• Defending Lydia Collier
• Deviancy
• Divergence: Beyond the Singularity
• Elsaverse games (Omnibus first, followed by Transitions, Nightmares and Chasing Beth)
• Hillside
• Intertwined
• Leap of Faith
• Life Changes for Keeley
• Mad World
• Mythos: Book One
• Nothing is Forever
• Oathbreaker
• One Day at a Time
• Our Red String
• Penny for Your Thoughts
• Price of Power
• Rebirth
• Reluctant Archon
• Sorcerer
• Summer's Gone
• Terminus Reach: Sentinel
• The DeLuca Family
• The Warrior's Heart
• Three Rules of Life

Any other suggestions in the same vein?

Sooo saving this list, thanks so much! This is the exact kind of games that I wanna play(when my brain is working anways.)

 

[Dragon59]

The closest I could possibly get to having rape be in one of my games would be a backstory for one of the characters being raped in the past and the MC needing to be thoughtful and caring to help her heal. Like you, jufot, I would be completely turned off by actual rape scenes in a game.

This brings up an age old debate, though. Does playing games where you do bad things make you more likely to do bad things in real life, or do they let you scratch those itches in a place where no one gets hurt and thus makes you less likely to do bad things? This debate goes way back. People used to claim that Loony Tunes cartoons (Bugs Bunny, etc) made children violent.

I play a lot of first person shooters, and I've always argued that they don't make me more violent. But what about rape games? If I'm going to be internally consistent, I guess I have to think that there's nothing wrong with people playing them, even if I personally find them repugnant, and even if I apparently find rape to be worse than killing terrorists, aliens, and zombies.

But then I get messages from people who tell me that my games helped them in their relationships--that they learned to be more caring and supporting from my games. As heartwarming as that is for me to hear, and recognizing that the effect was probably small, it's an argument against my theory about violent games.

If someone can learn to be good by playing a good game, then can't someone learn to be bad by playing a bad game? If someone plays a game where they support someone going through a bad time and that makes them feel good inside, so they try to be more supportive in real life, who's to say that playing a bad game couldn't have a negative effect?

It's troubling, because I really don't have any intent to stop killing zombies with a spiky bat.

Tlaero

Looking at some of the replies so far, I can see a difference. In 1st person shooters, players are engaging in a world unlike their daily life, a job they will likely never be exposed to. The anonymity of most shooters probably apply. Ultimately, it tends to be a way to increase adrenaline by having the risk of virtual death.

Rape, on the other hand, is very real to many of us. I know many women in my live who had been raped one or more times in their history, and if not clearly raped, felt that they were coerced/forced into a situation. I have seen the effect this has on women (and some men). Perhaps if we knew more people who'd been shot and left disabled because of it, more of us would avoid shooters as well.

As one said before, rape scenes are personal. I played Blackheart: The Beginning, and I couldn't take it. It left me feeling emotionally ill.

My favorite games are the ones wherein I can be the good guy, making ethical decisions and having them turn out well because of my decisions. I guess my fantasy isn't about getting away with heinous behavior, but instead, making a positive difference in the world. It's one thing to be fighting zombies, or being part of a military team fighting another military factions.

A first person game about being a high school shooter would be a very different situation.

Of course, without the option of curing or co-existing with the zombies, killing them with a spiky bat is the most ethical choice to ensure a better world for the uninfected.

 

[jufot]

I'm cautiously optimistic about Accidental Assignment. MC is a low-level spy working for an agency. He's assigned to go undercover at a marketing firm because the CEO's estranged father believes there is an assassination plot against his daughter. There is more to say, but I don't want to spoil anything.

The plot is promising, and characters seem well written and three-dimensional, including the men at the office. Definitely worth a look.

 

[Cokebaths]

I'm cautiously optimistic about Accidental Assignment. MC is a low-level spy working for an agency. He's assigned to go undercover at a marketing firm because the CEO's estranged father believes there is an assassination plot against his daughter. There is more to say, but I don't want to spoil anything.

The plot is promising, and characters seem well written and three-dimensional, including the men at the office. Definitely worth a look.

Ohhh thanks for this one. This looks very interesting, I'll have to be on the look out for future releases. About how much playtime does it have so far?

 

[jufot]

About how much playtime does it have so far?

I'm not sure. 0.1 was fairly short, and it's been a while since I played the original demo. I'd say ~1 hour, maybe?

 

[Jaike]

Oh, I 100% agree. It was a _terrible_ narrative choice by the dev, and I agree that it fails for all of the reasons you mention.

I also could not agree more strongly that inconsistency of character -- characters who are _not_ true to themselves, particularly for porny reasons (e.g. to flatter the ego of male players) -- destroys the credibility of narratives. This is exactly why I generally hate 'harem' games, for example: creation of a harem generally forces the LIs to deviate from their personalities for reasons that are not credible.

As I said, I played through this scene and hated it so much that I stopped playing the game in disgust... and only picked it up again perhaps a year later. There are definitely some faceplants in BAD, and that scene was the worst of them.

I strongly suspect that jufot feels the same way, and that we both rather deliberately chose to reinterpret the scene (do a mental rewrite) in our own minds to avoid just dumping the game entirely.

I fully agree, especially with that last sentence. My explanation was meant to be fully tongue in cheek, apologies if that didn't come across right.

I didn't catch the facetiousness (or actually, I thought it applied to "any good college girl"), but don't worry, your comments weren't offensive in any way.

So if I understood you well, the two women are first presented as lesbian and then revealed to be bisexual?

 

[jufot]

So if I understood you well, the two women are first presented as lesbian and then revealed to be bisexual?

It's not that they're presented as lesbian, it's that they are two girls who happen to be in their first relationships with each other. Their sexual orientation is never directly addressed as far as I remember. What makes it even more porny is that they both unknowingly cheat on the other with the MC, and the whole thing is revealed when all three coincidentally end up in one of the girl's rooms.

To the game's credit, though, they don't immediately fall into a throuple, they all go through some serious soul-searching first, questioning their attraction and what they want in a relationship. It's handled pretty decently by porn game standards.

 

[Raife]

So if I understood you well, the two women are first presented as lesbian and then revealed to be bisexual?

I can't remember... but no, I don't think it was presented nearly that clearly. One of them...

Spoiler

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So, yes... this plotline is a trainwreck, and it has all the flaws that you identified earlier. Were this the only (or even the primary) plot strand in the game, I would have abandoned it long ago.

 

[Raife]

It's not that they're presented as lesbian, it's that they are two girls who happen to be in their first relationships with each other. Their sexual orientation is never directly addressed as far as I remember.

I think that's right, if I remember correctly.

 

[moskyx]

Yeah, they never mention they are dating a girl: the first one says she's with someone, and the other say she has a boyfriend, and then confesses she just says that to make guys stop hitting on her, but she's not seeing anybody.

But the worst thing about that situation is that is entirely possible to get to that point of the game without being in a love relationship with any of them... yet the MC storms out of the room all the same because he feels betrayed by her "friends" (he knows one of them for 3 months, and the other for a week or so) as they didn't tell him they were a couple. It's hilarious, really (after your initial WTF reaction, of course)

 

[Raife]

Yeah, they never mention they are dating a girl: the first one says she's with someone, and the other say she has a boyfriend, and then confesses she just says that to make guys stop hitting on her, but she's not seeing anybody.

But the worst thing about that situation is that is entirely possible to get to that point of the game without being in a love relationship with any of them... yet the MC storms out of the room all the same because he feels betrayed by her "friends" (he knows one of them for 3 months, and the other for a week or so) as they didn't tell him they were a couple. It's hilarious, really (after your initial WTF reaction, of course)

There are actually _two_ alternative paths that fail at that moment, Moskyx: the (1)
'why is the MC storming out of the room when he doesn't have a relationship with either LI?' trainwreck that you mention, and (2) the 'MC is having a fit despite the fact that he cultivated parallel relationships with both LIs and got caught' absurdity. The scene only works if the MC has a relationship with just one of the LIs, not both or neither. It's a mess.

 

[Jaike]

Okay, thanks for correcting my misconceptions about the game. If the story doesn't cast them as lesbian first, it's not as much of a male power fantasy as I thought and perhaps will feel less "conversion-like". (Like, "I thought I was lesbian but after sex with you I now know I am bi" is almost as bad as "sex with the right man converts lesbian to bi/straight".)

It still sounds like the game may fall into another bad trope about bisexuals if the girls are cheating on each other, but I'll stop hijacking the topic with my complaints about the portrayal of bisexuality in porn games. I'll leave the floor to you to argue about other aspects of BaDik.

But I'm glad to read that the development is more gradual and mature than an instant truple.

 

[moskyx]

There are actually _two_ alternative paths that fail at that moment, Moskyx: the (1)
'why is the MC storming out of the room when he doesn't have a relationship with either LI?' trainwreck that you mention, and (2) the 'MC is having a fit despite the fact that he cultivated parallel relationships with both LIs and got caught' absurdity. The scene only works if the MC only has a relationship with one of the LIs, not both or neither. It's a mess.

And then your MC spends a week mopping around and being unable to talk to them while he process their treason until the infamous library scene, which again only cause an emotional impact in a certain path, while being so overly dramatic that is almost hilarious (or infuriating) in all the rest. It's AL all over again. Every single big shocking scene only works if you're playing the game the intended way, but you're offered so many choices that the narrative is being dismantled by its own author

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

This kind of reminds me of Daniels K level writing where the MC comes off as an unaware hypocrite. Which is one of my triggers to immediately abandon a game. I'm fine with games that let you choose to be an asshole, even a hypocritical asshole, as long as that is actually acknowledged in the narrative. But if actions like that are forced on you and even worse not even pointed out for what they are it's just too retarded for me.

 

[moskyx]

Okay, thanks for correcting my misconceptions about the game. If the story doesn't cast them as lesbian first, it's not as much of a male power fantasy as I thought and perhaps will feel less "conversion-like". (Like, "I thought I was lesbian but after sex with you I now know I am bi" is almost as bad as "sex with the right man converts lesbian to bi/straight".)

It still sounds like the game may fall into another bad trope about bisexuals if the girls are cheating on each other, but I'll stop hijacking the topic with my complaints about the portrayal of bisexuality in porn games. I'll leave the floor to you to argue about other aspects of BaDik.

But I'm glad to read that the development is more gradual and mature than an instant truple.

They even have a reason to be appart and doubting about their relationship (family bigotry). The whole premise is not that surreal, actually, I can honestly believe two confused young girls acting like that. But the MC realization is handled in such a contrieved way that it just works in one of the several paths players are able to take.

 

[Raife]

It's AL all over again. Every single big shocking scene only works if you're playing the game the intended way, but you're offered so many choices that the narrative is being dismantled by its own author

Yes, AL had exactly the flaw you describe, in spades; worse, the problem was most serious during the final Act. BAD is much better than that, though, despite this disaster of a scene: the dev's management of alternative paths generally improves in later chapters.