Recommending Story-first games

[Raife]

I thought the ex-wife hit the perfect spot for an interesting and grounded relationship.

My route was an asshole route. Basically, the MC is gonna be perving. I've read some of the good guy route with the wife, and it was quite good. It just didn't seem to fit the MC I was envisioning.

The surprising thing was how consistent and realistic the interactions with the wife was on the asshole path.

Ha! I think the ex's reactions might have been more appropriate for your playthrough... my MC was consistently trying to be responsible (and only partially succeeding). But I agree that some of her later dialogues with the MC were very, very good and nuanced.

What baffled me is that both the ex- and Veronica seem to want the MC to fit into the box of a committed, responsible partner -- and there is abundant evidence that he (might) not be prepared for that... at least not yet. Maggie's observation to herself that the MC appeared to be a hot mess that she should avoid struck me as appropriate!

 

[EndlessNights]

Hehehe, yeah, what the fuck? Why would someone recommend an abandoned game to someone that's specifically interested in the story first and foremost?

Well, most of the games talked about here aren't finished yet, and I would imagine (sadly) that not all of them will reach the finish line. Story-first isn't the same thing as ending-first, right? You could think of abandoned VNs as simply having ambiguous and shitty endings which isn't that unusual a "feature" to find even in completed VNs. They can still be worth playing if the journey is worthwhile enough to forgive the lack of a satisfying final destination.

There are even some abandoned VNs I occasionally revisit because even in fragmentary form I still find them intriguing enough to replay. Fallen Roads and Elysion are two examples of those. I was also thinking about replaying Connected recently though I had more mixed feelings about that one.

 

[noping123]

Well, most of the games talked about here aren't finished yet, and I would imagine (sadly) that not all of them will reach the finish line. Story-first isn't the same thing as ending-first, right? You could think of abandoned VNs as simply having ambiguous and shitty endings which isn't that unusual a "feature" to find even in completed VNs. They can still be worth playing if the journey is worthwhile enough to forgive the lack of a satisfying final destination.

There are even some abandoned VNs I occasionally revisit because even in fragmentary form I still find them intriguing enough to replay. Fallen Roads and Elysion are two examples of those. I was also thinking about replaying Connected recently though I had more mixed feelings about that one.

That's definitely a personal preference thing, because personally I'd rather play a mediocre game with a mediocre story that is seen all the way through than amazing but abandoned one that I know will never get finished. Pretty much every game I personally play, are ones that are either already completed, or I have complete faith that they will be.

I feel like most people are like this - my own game seems to be evidence of it. There are a handful of people I *know* have supported (at least vocally, not financially) the project since the beginning, but only very recently signed up on my patreon. While I can't say for sure, I largely suspect it's because they were sitting back and waiting to see if it would join the evergrowing heap of abandoned projects, or if I would actually see it through. After 5 updates and about a year working on it, it seems I've instilled enough goodwill that they're willing to support it now.

I had one person tell me outright, he was going to wait to see if I put out more updates because he was tired of supporting projects that end up dying off.

I'm all for people finding the silver lining in things, and the fact that you can enjoy those abandoned projects is great (no sarcasm, honestly), but I greatly suspect you're in the heavy minority in that regard.

 

[EndlessNights]

I feel like most people are like this - my own game seems to be evidence of it. There are a handful of people I *know* have supported (at least vocally, not financially) the project since the beginning, but only very recently signed up on my patreon. While I can't say for sure, I largely suspect it's because they were sitting back and waiting to see if it would join the evergrowing heap of abandoned projects, or if I would actually see it through. After 5 updates and about a year working on it, it seems I've instilled enough goodwill that they're willing to support it now.

I had one person tell me outright, he was going to wait to see if I put out more updates because he was tired of supporting projects that end up dying off.

I think there's conflict inherent to the patron-artist relationship on Patreon. Patrons constantly fear they're being taken advantage of and milked. They worry devs are merely dangling a carrot in front of them and have no intention of actually completing their projects. Personally, I don't think most games abandoned after the first couple of releases are actually scams. Certainly, there are the likes of SilkandMilk who've become strangely forthright professional carrot danglers (the clue was in their name all along), but I think most devs just can't keep up with the pressure and balance game development with everything else in their lives that demands their time. It's not like most of them are making huge amounts of money on Patreon.

I tend to view supporting a project on Patreon as akin to simply sending a gift. It's not particularly different from getting a friend something for their birthday or donating to a charity. The point isn't the perks (wow, I can get the release 30 minutes before it's on F95zone!). The only positive ROI possible is emotional -- the feeling that you're helping someone out and supporting something worthwhile. You're definitely not buying a game.

 

[camube]

I recently play Noemi Toscana Rebirth. Finished the main story but not the individual character paths.

I think it fits with the factors of

- Well-designed, internally consistent, coherent story
- Characters that are actual human beings

Story is prioritized over intercourse so much that there are very few actual intercourse scenes so far despite the length.
It really does feel like one of the longest game I've played so far ever since I found f95zone.
Though one con to the game is that the length of the game is because it's padded by how verbose the game is with description texts.

Also, I'm not sure the game fits everyone's preference, but I like games like Noemi Toscana and Our Red String.

I wouldn't say the game is "slow burn" because there are actions happening even if it isn't intercourse, but the progression of the actions makes sense with the story. It's a "story"-first from my view.

 

[jufot]

I recently play Noemi Toscana Rebirth.

Well, what is it about? What did you like about it?

 

[ARB582]

Noemi Toscana Rebirth

I remember playing that game a while ago.
I loved the individual character origin stories and thought i would love the main game because of it, but was disappointed because i found the main game a bit too grindy and monotonous. The story bits were quite good, but it took so long to get to them that i lost my interest in the game.

Well, what is it about?

The MC is trying to run a restaurant but her dad dies and has debts, which she now has to pay. To make it worse another restaurant opens up next to hers, run by a complete douche and he makes her life hell.
The other characters are also quite interesting but i dont remember the details that well, there was her fiancé and his best friend, her staff which included an influencer, a housewife who got out of an abusive relationship and a punk with some family issues.
Overall the game had good writing and characters but the gameplay was a huge turn off for me.
If one can bear the gameplay its definitely worth trying.

 

[camube]

Well, what is it about? What did you like about it?

It's about a Female MC that owns a restaurant, with a debt, and a rival restaurant-chain owner antagonist. The main story (excluding the individual love interest paths) is about how the Female MC is trying to keep the restaurant going.

Both the Female MC and the antagonist is competitive, and the Main Story of their competition is presented well.

I like the strong female MC. She's not meek, she doesn't go down without a fight, she has drive and motivation outside of "libido" and "experimentations". The story makes sense in that way. That's the Main Story.

The individual love interest paths follows "adult game logic" but it's separate enough from the Main Story.

The game is a "slow burn" in the sense that the intercourse happens very rarely, but it's also not a "slow burn" like how it's usually used for description of other games because for every encounters, it does have some sexy times involved. There's always a progression there, it's just the progression is slow.

Of the games I've played so far, Noemi Toscana hasn't been mentioned in this thread, and while it probably is not appealing to everyone, it is a "story-first" game off of how very few intercourse scenes there are within the game despite the play time so far.

 

[desmosome]

Lineage or Legacy might interest some people here. It's one of those character driven stories, but the writing is actually quite good. People behave and talk like actual people. There are some one night stands with certain girls, but that's part of life too. If you meet someone at a bar and go home with them, well you gonna bang.

Although it doesn't deviate too much from the typical college situation in these games, the characters are quite grounded and varied. There is a lot of screen time given to the male supporting characters. And they are not the token clown, cliche bully, or some contrived competition for pussy.

Dev is considering incest due to demand, but isn't set on it yet. As for harem, they didn't respond to it. I feel like dev just wants to tell a grounded story about love, friendship, college life (including some light debauchery), and finding oneself in the world or something like that, but might be pressured into incest + "harem" lol. I don't really mind those tags personally if the writing is good enough. The harem harems where girls devote their entire existence in MC's orbit are pretty much antithetical to good writing, but I don't think this game would go that direction even if they do some partial harems and what not.

Too early to tell though.

 

[jufot]

By the way, Reunion's third chapter

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and it's quite good.

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[desmosome]

By the way, Reunion's third chapter

You must be registered to see the links

and it's quite good.

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Lol, I thought you were playing that other Reunion about getting revenge on step mom which is def not story first.

 

[jufot]

Lol, I thought you were playing that other Reunion about getting revenge on step mom which is def not story first.

I wasn't aware that existed! I just read the synopsis and yeah, it's definitely not my thing

 

[noping123]

Lol, I thought you were playing that other Reunion about getting revenge on step mom which is def not story first.

lol. I'll tell you, that was a big deal for me - I went through like 4 different names for my game before I settled on the one I used, because the first 3 were either already used or something very similar existed, and I wanted to avoid that sort of confusion.......

of course immediately after, like 3 came out with similar names, lucky for me they were abandoned.

I've already scrapped 2 names for my next planned project for the same reason.

Turns out coming up with stuff people haven't used, unless you're doing some sort of fantasy/scifi type thing, is hard

 

[Hildegardt]

Lol, I thought you were playing that other Reunion about getting revenge on step mom which is def not story first.

Is that the one that has at least one female character in tears in every scene and a PC that's always whispering in people's ears, because he'd get beat up, if he'd spew his creepy shit out loud?

 

[desmosome]

Is that the one that has at least one female character in tears in every scene and a PC that's always whispering in people's ears, because he'd get beat up, if he'd spew his creepy shit out loud?

I'm not sure lol. I only played an early version a long time ago. I thought it was pretty dumb but can't remember exactly why. Probably just typical harem writing with an MC that thought he was super cool but comes off as cringe incarnate.

 

[Tlaero]

I have a friend who just asked if I knew the name of a particular game he played once. It doesn't sound familiar to me.

He said:
In this game, the MC has these moments of internal thought where he/she questions the existence of God and how we as people are expected to act or be in relation to religion. These moments occur several times throughout the course of the story and the story isn't yet completed I do not think but I just cant find or remember it.

Does this ring any bells for you folks?

Tlaero

 

[jufot]

Does this ring any bells for you folks?

Doesn't ring a bell. This is an AVN, right?

 

[boobsrcool]

I have a friend who just asked if I knew the name of a particular game he played once. It doesn't sound familiar to me.

He said:
In this game, the MC has these moments of internal thought where he/she questions the existence of God and how we as people are expected to act or be in relation to religion. These moments occur several times throughout the course of the story and the story isn't yet completed I do not think but I just cant find or remember it.

Does this ring any bells for you folks?

Tlaero

Milfy city?

 

[Tlaero]

He seems to have found what he was looking for. He said it was called, "We Were Just Kids." I've never heard of that, though.

Tlaero

 

[Mravac Kid]

I may be a sucker for Japanese games with story twists, but I really liked Katawa Shoujo and of course Clannad is the best VN ever. (No x-rated content in Clannad, at least that I'm aware of. Still the best. ) I'd also add Ever 17 ~The out of infinity~ as it has a great story but it does suffer from some Engrish (as visible from the title) and is a bit of a slog to read through.
Sadly(?) all the modern 3D games with good stories I'm aware of are already on your list. Speaking of which, could you mark which of the games on the list are completed? I kinda like those so would appreciate it.