Storytelling without Words

[Bonestar]

Do you think creating a popular game for this market requires storytelling through words, spoken or written, or would you play a game, with a good soundtrack and environmental/ambient effects, with no dialog or narration. I've seen plenty of indie short films and indie games that were without dialog, but, will that work with a game that needs a flirty build up before a rewarding romance scene.

Thanks

 

[DarthSeduction]

Do you think creating a popular game for this market requires storytelling through words, spoken or written, or would you play a game, with a good soundtrack and environmental/ambient effects, with no dialog or narration. I've seen plenty of indie short films and indie games that were without dialog, but, will that work with a game that needs a flirty build up before a rewarding romance scene.

Thanks

You could probably make a short rape game or something, but without dialogue you're missing a lot. Don't get me wrong, the artist on Seraphim Academy really gets frustrated with some of my art direction because I'm of the opinion that the art is just as much a part of the story as the words, so I get how important the visuals can be to telling the story. What comes into play here, though, is how much words play into arousal. See, the major reason I migrate towards comics and games for my porn is that I don't find myself engaged in mainstream pornography. Most of them, if they have any dialogue at all, are really cheesy, and many get away with almost no dialogue, making use of the scene to tell the story, maybe dropping a single line here or there. The problem is there's no investment in whats going on. It starts and ends with little to no character development.

Now, there are dialogue free films out there which have been able to tell a breathtaking story that brings out emotion and passions, but you're gonna need to be an exceptional artist to make that come to life. When you have no words you have to tell the story through expressions, knowing glances, body language. Very few artists are able to recreate that much nuance. It could be done, but you're looking at a lot of hours painstakingly adjusting faceparts to get the expression just right. Many of the poses that exist are pretty standard, meaning many designers already have to create their own when things don't exist, but you'd be taking it to a whole new level, as body language would be your dialogue. So, while it could be possibe, you would be talking about an incredibly bloated development schedule. The art is the part that will take the longest no matter what. The script takes time to get right, but the time you're actively writing is probably a day or so each release, but the art... you're looking at 1-2 hours per frame usually and that isn't accounting for posing, assuming you've got a mid range PC.

 

[NandabaCanti]

I pretty much agree with DarthSeduction on this. You'd probably have to be a seasoned animator to pull this sort of thing off, and even then, you'd be better off creating actual animated shorts than trying to shoehorn it into a game format. Though one possible option here, where you can probably get by without text is something like a platformer game. Where the characters just run and jump around levels and interact with or fight or run away from the things they encounter, with some of those encounters leading to some sort of kinky animations or cut scenes. Though in that case not only is the art important, but your ability to create compelling and enjoyable game play mechanics is as well.

You could also possibly pull off something of an RPG (2d or 3d) where your interactions are simplified to something like emotional response emoji appearing over a characters head along with some nonsensical murmuring type sound effects that could have some appropriate/matching emotional flavor to them in reaction to things you do, like giving them things, making advances, etc. You'd basically rely on a very simplified text free response system to gauge NPC feelings to progress your relationship with them. Then you can fall back to the typical cg cutscenes once you've progressed to some sort of sexual event with one of them.

I can't say either of those will work out though, at least not without a fair bit of effort on your part to make sure game play and art are strong enough to keep people interested without dialog.