Recommending Story-first games

[JesseBelmond]

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 May 2022)

• Acting Lessons
• A Summer's End
• Blackberry Honey
• Callisto
• City of Broken Dreamers
• Corporate Culture
• Defending Lydia Collier
• Deviancy
• Divergence: Beyond the Singularity
• Elsaverse games (Omnibus first, followed by Nightmares, Transitions and Chasing Beth)
• Halfway House
• 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 Bite: Revenant
• The DeLuca Family
• The Seven Realms
• The Warrior's Heart
• Three Rules of Life

Any other suggestions in the same vein?

Eternum
UFO

 

[jufot]

Have you tried Reunion? It has a very simple, character-driven story... but there are a number of anti-porn trope elements that stand out:

Fucking hell, what's with all these outstanding recommendations lately? I just finished chapter 2, and I absolutely loved it! Random spoiler-y thoughts below.

- I actually laughed out loud when Lewis made Valerie call Melissa auntie It's very rare a game has that effect on me.
- I like MC's mom. She's lovely and pushy in a very gentle, motherly way. Likewise, his relationship with Lewis is the sort I aspire to have with my brother.
- There is a scene where MC says 24 is too young to get married, and I couldn't agree more. I think that's wisdom that only comes with age, so I imagine the dev is also in his 30s to 40s, like MC.
- I like MC's take on infidelity. He doesn't minimize Joanna's actions, but he knows his actions contributed to the state of their marriage. He doesn't hold grudges, wishes her well, and is even thankful for the good times they've had together. In my - admittedly second hand - experience, affairs are seldom the fault of just one party, and it's important to examine one's own culpability if you intend to heal and move on properly.
- Relatedly, I'm very happy not to see a single a mention of the three dreaded letters on the game's thread, despite a graphic scene of Joanna's affair.
- The most hilarious bit was Lewis asking MC whether he and Annie played hide the cannoli together

The English is less than perfect, but it doesn't really detract from the experience. If I had to criticize something, it would be the dream sex sequences. I absolutely, completely loathe them, so I hope chapter 1 was the last time we have them.

Anyway, I hope no one would object to me adding Reunion to the OP

---
P.S: Try as I might, I can't see Emily as a love interest at all. She reminds me of

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and that's just not romantic

 

[Raife]

Fucking hell, what's with all these outstanding recommendations lately? I just finished chapter 2, and I absolutely loved it! Random spoiler-y thoughts below.

Anyway, I hope no one would object to me adding Reunion to the OP

I am just astounded that a game this good has such poor support... I mean, before I sponsored the dev's patreon he had exactly _one_ other patron pledging £1 a month.

If nothing else, jufot, your thread has spotlighted a few of these very worthy, overlooked gems; a few of them have even developed a following. This dev certainly deserves it.

 

[Raife]

I don't really see a problem with insta-sex. I know I do it myself(in my game that is), and I definitely don't see it as "porny nonsense". I know when I was in my 20s... (I won't date myself any more than that. But yea...) I know I was fucking everything that moved. Sex on a 1st or 2nd date was not uncommon. Some of those people I formed relationships with.... some I didn't. I don't see why a game should be any different. I totally get some people want something a bit more emotional, or drawn out, or other stuff like that, but I definitely wouldn't classify it as "porny nonsense", cause I did it, and let me tell you, a porn star I am not.

Let me clarify, noping -- there's nothing wrong or porny, or 'insta-sex dumb' about two characters that meet and immediately have sex. As you say, there's nothing unusual about that... particularly for young characters in their 20s... most of us have been there.

What _is_ porny and 'insta-sexy' is when you have a character who would _not_ normally have sex with someone who they just met... just bend over and take it from Mr. Magic Penis. That's the equivalent of the 'hot nurse' who walks into the doctor's office, says 'doctor, is it hot in here?' -- before stripping off and jumping on the good doctor's dick. That's what I mean by insta sex... and that is dumb and boring.

Your game doesn't have anything inauthentic to your characters along those lines. It's all down to what fits the characters you've created, and is logically consistent.

 

[Raife]

Except that in real life, the one you chose might not work out so well and then you lose your chance with everyone anyway. In dating sims, your chosen one always seem to work out in the end. And in real life timing matters a whole lot since it is pretty rare that you suddenly get many potential partners vying for your attention at the exact same time as is usually done in porn games.

Ohhhh, yes. So much of what's involved in finding a life partner is dumb luck and timing... and then staying together requires hard work and compromises. But it's soooooooo worth it in the end (even though there is no end... that person just becomes your family).

I'd love to see someone do a realistic depiction of relationships along those lines... although most people on this site would hate on it constantly.

 

[jufot]

OK, first of all, I write this as someone who enjoys your game, and has said so on this thread.

First, and the reason I'm less comfortable with - some people just want characters as young as possible. Second, it puts you in an enviroment where it's easy to bring the characters together - you don't have to rely on contrived circumstance, coincidence, or other nonsense. Yea, there's other ways to bring them together, but it's definitely easier in a setting that actually forces them together.

My low tolerance for high school / college settings is well known on this thread. Part of it is just the genre's complete saturation with "porniness." Most games in such settings have nonsensical stories and can be called sleazy at best. No game exists in isolation, so any developer choosing that setting should be cognizant of the genre's baggage. For example, your game might be god's gift to the world of pornographic storytelling, but if I see those dreaded high school setting and harem tags, there is very little chance I'll give it a shot. It's just the way of the world

The other part is probably an age thing. My teenage years are long behind me, and I just don't have the same appetite for cartoon teenagers having unrealistic sex with their 14-inch dicks anymore.

I don't really see a problem with insta-sex. I know I do it myself(in my game that is), and I definitely don't see it as "porny nonsense". I know when I was in my 20s... (I won't date myself any more than that. But yea...) I know I was fucking everything that moved. Sex on a 1st or 2nd date was not uncommon. Some of those people I formed relationships with.... some I didn't. I don't see why a game should be any different.

Well, as the lovely Ms. Vesper says,

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. The latter is fine, and for it to work, it needs to fit the setting and the characters' personalities. AVNs tend to go for the former, where attractive women randomly beg Adonis-inspired male MCs for sex two minutes after meeting them.

As far as Intertwined goes.... man do I have a hate boner for that game. It's not warranted - it's a solid game for sure, but playing it made me feel like I was going through the porn version of dawson's creek. There was just WAY too much coincidental drama for my tastes.

Hahaha, it totally is the porn version of Dawson's Creek! You might have actually ruined Intertwined for me

 

[realjitter]

Gotta check out Reunion i guess....
...
Initially i wanted to start reading Intertwined, but i decided to go with another AVN first that was also mentioned in this thread somewhere which is "A man for all".
Doesn't sound all that promising at first glance since, besides the name, it also has the harem tag..
Turns out the name of the game refers more to the character you want to represend (Honest, funny, flirty, brawler, diplomat). Also a full on harem ending seems completly implausible to me in a game like this. The women are portrait as way too indepened for such a thing, so i don't see a plausible way to make this happen outside of the typical 3 way cop out scenarios...

Ok, i don't wanna go too much into details here since i'm only at the beginning of C.5, but generally speaking it's pretty fun. It tends to flip flop a little between trying to be "ultra realistic" (Riley path) and ,well, being a little odd (Erika and Jordan path). Like the whole Erika fighting club stuff for example wasn't for me because i just didn't care..i even ended up skipping those parts...

But what i really wanted to bring up is Vanessa!!!!.
Who's without a doubt the strangest female character out of all AVN's i've encountered so far...
She's like this snobby, cold, narcissistic, ultra wannabe confident, high society model type of charakter that bosses you around all the time for no reason and also often times just straight up insults you.
And the funny thing is that she never changes, no matter how you approach her, she seemingly doesn't have any personality traits at all other than being confident about herself. There is just nothing..., niente, nada..

She's not funny or sarcastic or benevolent or mean or impulsive or shy or whaterver..
She's like indifferent about everything but her (like a robot). If you flirt with her she responds with "I don't take you seriously you goof" or even "Don't you dare touch me" (even when there was no touching intention whatsoever) ... same goes for the other approaches...

There was this one glorious scene at the end of C4 where you sit in a car right next to her and the game offers you the option to touch her shoulder to calm her or to reassure her or whatever (oh yeah, parents hide your chidren, it's touching time.).
Well, i honestly was scared about how shed respond to that because i was certain she'd straight up punsh me or something similar..
But no..., she just said "what exactly are you doing? stop that"...

So ok, let me get this straight...after me being as nice as humanly possible the whole, fucking time, keeping up with all her shit, never being unfriendly nor aggresive nor anything for that matter, trying to stay open minded and neutral and she can't even endure a simple pad on her shoulder????.
Right.. well, and there are also no signs of a tragic backstory either.... there's just....nothing.

So i don't know if she's supposed to be like a social comment of somekind by the Dev or....
I mean, at the end of the day she's supposed to be a LI so you gotta humanize her at some point, right?, no?.
But maybe she's just meant as your cold hearted fuck buddy for her social media purposes..who knows.

The only thing i can think of is that this is somehow suppsoed to be the slowest slowburn of all slowburns combined where the MC and her get closer to each other by pretending to be a couple for her social media/rise to the top storyline and then over time they break the ice or whatever....
If that's truly the case (which i doubt) then alright, you got me Mr. Dev, kudos to you i guess, you're a genius...

So yeah, does anybody has a opnion about Vanessa? i'm really curious because she's really something else....

 

[mr.AwesomeGameTaste]

I think it has been said here before,but new The Bite:Revenant dropped,and I cannot recommend this enough. It is obviously inspired by VTM,but it's world building is amazing and it has many different traits you can upgrade,I simply love everything about it,It's shaping up to be better than Rebirth imo,i dig The Bite's darker setting much more. Give it a try if you haven't already.

As for Intertwined I have to agree that it is just a rom-com turned into avn with so much drama for the sake of drama I just had to dropped this game. Certainly the dialogues are good and everything happening from female perspective are better and more believable than usual,but yeah,in my opinion it's a bad adaptation of Dawson's Creek which sucks on it's own lol.
Although I have to keep it real and admit I dislike romance in general,so I guess I'm just not it's target,so you shouldn't take my criticism too seriously.
Also Emilia best girl in "The Bite" and I'm ready to fight about it

 

[jufot]

I think it has been said here before,but new The Bite:Revenant dropped,and I cannot recommend this enough. It is obviously inspired by VTM,but it's world building is amazing and it has many different traits you can upgrade,I simply love everything about it,It's shaping up to be better than Rebirth imo,i dig The Bite's darker setting much more. Give it a try if you haven't already.

Agreed. I love it as well.

Also Emilia best girl in "The Bite" and I'm ready to fight about it

That's a weird way of spelling Zoey

 

[mr.AwesomeGameTaste]

Agreed. I love it as well.


That's a weird way of spelling Zoey

I think Emilia is more attractive,but to be fair,I'd say it depends what kind of mc you play as. Zoey is certainly better for a good mc,but the game gives you an option to be evil,or "inhuman" and I think such mc could join forces with Emilia,

Spoiler

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Overall,I enjoy the politics of the clans the most in this game.

 

[bacienvu88]

I don't know about that. The game I'm working on right now isn't in a school setting - but the one I *really* want to do after, is. It definitely wasn't some sort of "default" sort of thing. I chose the setting in that story for two reasons. #1 - let's be honest, it ticks a LOT of boxes for people. My current game ticks almost none, so I'm not just all about that "gotta get that money!" lifestyle, but still. #2 - The setting is central to the story. I actually built a tiny little game (no images, text only- I hadn't learned daz yet) and had it on this site for a bit, that served as a sort of prologue, but it seems to have been lost to the annals of time. Suffice to say, it being in a school setting was actually relevant. I suspect most people who go for it, do it for two reasons. First, and the reason I'm less comfortable with - some people just want characters as young as possible. Second, it puts you in an enviroment where it's easy to bring the characters together - you don't have to rely on contrived circumstance, coincidence, or other nonsense. Yea, there's other ways to bring them together, but it's definitely easier in a setting that actually forces them together.

My intention with the post about school setting wasn't to say that school setting automatically suck. In fact, they can be great!
But there are also a lot of lazily written school games. So it is going to take more to pique my interest.

 

[bacienvu88]

Gotta check out Reunion i guess....
...
Initially i wanted to start reading Intertwined, but i decided to go with another AVN first that was also mentioned in this thread somewhere which is "A man for all".
Doesn't sound all that promising at first glance since, besides the name, it also has the harem tag..
Turns out the name of the game refers more to the character you want to represend (Honest, funny, flirty, brawler, diplomat). Also a full on harem ending seems completly implausible to me in a game like this. The women are portrait as way too indepened for such a thing, so i don't see a plausible way to make this happen outside of the typical 3 way cop out scenarios...

Ok, i don't wanna go too much into details here since i'm only at the beginning of C.5, but generally speaking it's pretty fun. It tends to flip flop a little between trying to be "ultra realistic" (Riley path) and ,well, being a little odd (Erika and Jordan path). Like the whole Erika fighting club stuff for example wasn't for me because i just didn't care..i even ended up skipping those parts...

But what i really wanted to bring up is Vanessa!!!!.
Who's without a doubt the strangest female character out of all AVN's i've encountered so far...
She's like this snobby, cold, narcissistic, ultra wannabe confident, high society model type of charakter that bosses you around all the time for no reason and also often times just straight up insults you.
And the funny thing is that she never changes, no matter how you approach her, she seemingly doesn't have any personality traits at all other than being confident about herself. There is just nothing..., niente, nada..

She's not funny or sarcastic or benevolent or mean or impulsive or shy or whaterver..
She's like indifferent about everything but her (like a robot). If you flirt with her she responds with "I don't take you seriously you goof" or even "Don't you dare touch me" (even when there was no touching intention whatsoever) ... same goes for the other approaches...

There was this one glorious scene at the end of C4 where you sit in a car right next to her and the game offers you the option to touch her shoulder to calm her or to reassure her or whatever (oh yeah, parents hide your chidren, it's touching time.).
Well, i honestly was scared about how shed respond to that because i was certain she'd straight up punsh me or something similar..
But no..., she just said "what exactly are you doing? stop that"...

So ok, let me get this straight...after me being as nice as humanly possible the whole, fucking time, keeping up with all her shit, never being unfriendly nor aggresive nor anything for that matter, trying to stay open minded and neutral and she can't even endure a simple pad on her shoulder????.
Right.. well, and there are also no signs of a tragic backstory either.... there's just....nothing.

So i don't know if she's supposed to be like a social comment of somekind by the Dev or....
I mean, at the end of the day she's supposed to be a LI so you gotta humanize her at some point, right?, no?.
But maybe she's just meant as your cold hearted fuck buddy for her social media purposes..who knows.

The only thing i can think of is that this is somehow suppsoed to be the slowest slowburn of all slowburns combined where the MC and her get closer to each other by pretending to be a couple for her social media/rise to the top storyline and then over time they break the ice or whatever....
If that's truly the case (which i doubt) then alright, you got me Mr. Dev, kudos to you i guess, you're a genius...

So yeah, does anybody has a opnion about Vanessa? i'm really curious because she's really something else....

I have rather mixed opinion on A man for all. The LI:s are all pretty good and interesting. But in the end I really have to see all the paths as more or less independent stories, because as you say there is no way there is going to be a harem. Also the MC is kind of ridiculous with being more or less a shut-in for several years studying psychology and becoming a super athlete all in his tiny basement.

 

[jufot]

the game gives you an option to be evil,or "inhuman" and I think such mc could join forces with Emilia

Yeah, but that would require being mean and evil with Claire, who is just the sweetest thing. Can't see that happening

 

[Raife]

I think Emilia is more attractive,but to be fair,I'd say it depends what kind of mc you play as. Zoey is certainly better for a good mc,but the game gives you an option to be evil,or "inhuman" and I think such mc could join forces with Emilia,

Spoiler

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Overall,I enjoy the politics of the clans the most in this game.

There is absolutely no way that my MC can betray Zoey... so I've been forced to accept that I'll miss some of the juiciest bits of _The Bite_. Fortunately, I'm still enjoying the game a great deal... it's getting better all the time -- much better than _Rebirth, and _Rebirth_ is a good game!

My only worry is that the dev has bitten off more than he can chew (pun intended) since his skill system is very complex.

 

[Raife]

I have rather mixed opinion on A man for all. The LI:s are all pretty good and interesting. But in the end I really have to see all the paths as more or less independent stories, because as you say there is no way there is going to be a harem. Also the MC is kind of ridiculous with being more or less a shut-in for several years studying psychology and becoming a super athlete all in his tiny basement.

I have similar concerns: AMFA is an extreme example of parallel LI narratives. The LIs never encounter each other until a party about five chapters in... and then sort of shrug off their mutual attraction to the MC... before cannonballing off on new parallel tracks.

Also... I haven't the slightest clue what the dev's points/personalities system does... and I don't think he does, either.

As for the shut-in who becomes a martial arts badass: how about Splinter? I mean, he learned how to be a ninja master whilst trapped inside a tiny rat cage... so it must be realistic for the MC to become a hikikomori warrior-monk in his basement bedsit, right?

 

[mr.AwesomeGameTaste]

There is absolutely no way that my MC can betray Zoey... so I've been forced to accept that I'll miss some of the juiciest bits of _The Bite_. Fortunately, I'm still enjoying the game a great deal... it's getting better all the time -- much better than _Rebirth, and _Rebirth_ is a good game!

My only worry is that the dev has bitten off more than he can chew (pun intended) since his skill system is very complex.

yeah,I have the same worries,it is a very ambitious project. I enjoy playing as evil characters in games,so I kinda like the idea of joining forces with Emilia,however I am aware that she won't really be a Li,she'll just try to use mc for her own gain. Zoey is an amazing character too so I basically have 2 saves for this game,and given the different skills and such I think the replayability value is very high.

 

[bacienvu88]

I have similar concerns: AMFA is an extreme example of parallel LI narratives. The LIs never encounter each other until a party about five chapters in... and then sort of shrug off their mutual attraction to the MC... before cannonballing off on new parallel tracks.

Also... I haven't the slightest clue what the dev's points/personalities system does... and I don't think he does, either.

As for the shut-in who becomes a martial arts badass: how about Splinter? I mean, he learned how to be a ninja master whilst trapped inside a tiny rat cage... so it must be realistic for the MC to become a hikikomori warrior-monk in his basement bedsit, right?

It has been a few months since I last played it, but I only saw the points system as flavor. Although I mostly used the same type of response for the same girl, since I thought it could be important in the future.

Shut-in to badass isn't bad per se. It just feels that the MC is always able to pull out skills needed for the situation and can't do anything wrong.

 

[Tlaero]

Excuse my rambling here, I'm an overtired insomniac at the moment. (Surprisingly not a joke. Insomnia fucking sucks. I wish it on no one.)

I'm sorry to hear about your insomnia, noping. I hope the cause of it gets resolved soon.

As for game settings, I think we can all agree that a good story is a good story, regardless of the setting. The reverse is also true. A bad story told in the most creative setting ever is still a bad story.

Tlaero

 

[realjitter]

I'm sorry to hear about your insomnia, noping. I hope the cause of it gets resolved soon.

As for game settings, I think we can all agree that a good story is a good story, regardless of the setting. The reverse is also true. A bad story told in the most creative setting ever is still a bad story.

Tlaero

There is only the question left about who defines what exactly a good story is...the majority of people?, genre fans?, ratings?, critics?, literature specialists?. I mean you're generally speaking right of course with your statement, but at the same time it's not that easy. Writing itself is easier to determine in that regard imo than a story

 

[noping123]

I'm sorry to hear about your insomnia, noping. I hope the cause of it gets resolved soon.

As for game settings, I think we can all agree that a good story is a good story, regardless of the setting. The reverse is also true. A bad story told in the most creative setting ever is still a bad story.

Tlaero

Oh man. I did mention it was a bunch of insomnia fueled random nonsense, right? I don't actually disagree with anything I said, but man did I go off the rails! Unfortunately no, it won't be resolved... likely ever. I've dealt with it long enough now... you'd be surprised how well the human body can function on no sleep. The mind on the other hand.....


Anyway, Yes, I completely agree with that. Good is good, and bad is bad, and the setting can be largely irrelevant to that. That was actually sort of my point however poorly worded it may have been.

There is only the question left about who defines what exactly a good story is...the majority of people?, genre fans?, ratings?, critics?, literature specialists?. I mean you're generally speaking right of course with your statement, but at the same time it's not that easy. Writing itself is easier to determine in that regard imo than a story

I think what makes a "good" story, is largely objective. I also think there's a difference (although considerable overlap) between a good story, and an enjoyable or engaging one. I guess if I had to pick a category from what you listed, "literature specialists" would be the closest to being able to define a "good" story. But that's not really what's relevant. I think what's relevant, is whether or not a story is engaging, or enjoyable, to the reader or viewer, or whatever. Many times these will be "good" - but not always.

Take TV for example. A show I loved, and thoroughly enjoyed, was "Chuck". Absolutely awful show - I'll never ever accuse it of being good. But damn did I love that show. Then on the flip side, you have, say, "Breaking Bad". That show gets more praise for being one of the best shows ever made - and honestly, I think it's warranted. Personally though? I did not enjoy it much at all.

I think it ultimately comes down to the observer alone, which makes sense since if you ask 50 people their opinion on a story, you'll get at least a dozen totally differing opinions (and hell, maybe even 50.)

I think a lot of people tend to use the terms "good" and "enjoyable" interchangeably, when they really shouldn't. In my opinion they're two totally different metrics, one is pretty objective, and the other is entirely opinionated, and will differ person to person.