Tropes, Characters and Circumstances in Incest games: Suggestions ad Favourites

[hameleona]

I can't speak for coding a full game but the python required for Ren'py is not all that daunting, you could probably get up to speed in a couple of months and be ready for basic stuff, especially if you have any prior experience/knowledge of coding, Unity and other software will take more time though. As someone who plays around with Daz on and off and have done for a year or so i can entirely agree, a good 3D artist (Or 2d if that's your bag) would be required to keep updates at a decent pace, but if you were interested there are some excellent Daz tutorials out there, sickleyield and dreamlight are both good places to start and would cut the learning curve down to size in a lot of ways, oh and you'll need mid range hardware or up for Daz.

Strictly speaking, basic stuff with Ren'Py requires a few hours, from what I've learned by playing with it. If you want a simple VN style of game. It's like 10 commands. It gets progressively harder the more complex the game is, tho. In theory if i understand it right the potential is unlimited, but you need to know (and know it well) Python to reach it.

Thanks for your response. It's not so much about having the wrong attitude as not being a young man, and having bills to pay, puts a crimp in the amount of free time I have to do something all by myself. I know how to write, and I know something about multimedia, but learning to code would take weeks, learning to make something half decent in daz would likely take months, and putting it all together would take years just to create a single game(hell, maybe a year just to create a demo). Based on what you've told me, though, if I focused on the writing and overall design, and worked with a veteran coder and a good 3d artist, it sounds like I could make one, albeit still a bit on the slow side. Hmm.

Most games take years to create, period. Look at most games here - some are years in development and those that aren't are ether bare bones or very far away from being completed. Even outside of adult games it takes a lot of time to create a game. And that is considering most games work with tiny cast (meaning they spend less time on the graphical part of the game) compared to what should be there.


A little bit on topic:

I don't really get why devs have such a problem with writing decent characters. I also laughed on the DmD example - the characters there are such blatant plot devices, that it's not even funny. We spend a bunch of time in the heads of a lot of the cast and everything is about sex. Oh, excuse me, we learn the name of a made up singer D and her friends like. Nope, that was also so that we can have some fun on the nude beach.
Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with the game (I should play the new update), but while there were some potentially interesting characters there... they never get any characterization beyond "me horny, me wanna fuck". Like, ok, it's a sex game, we know. But it would literally take 10 minutes to move them beyond that. I don't actually get it, since it really takes that much to move a character from "plot device" to "character". Even games I think have cool story do it and I just don't get it.
@DarthSeduction pointed it - it's the mundane things that help with that.
What music do they listen to?
What entertainment they like?
What do they wanna do with their life?
Are they night owls?
And for the love of Dionysus, don't turn that in to a quiz! I have never in my entire life seen a woman quiz a guy like that. It's boring.

Another thing, that bugs me is "She likes X, so you must know about X"
She likes art, so you better know some classics!
She likes coding, so you better know about it!
She likes fashion, so you better know stuff about it!
She likes cars, so you better know about cars!
People don't work that way. Yes, some are like that, but most aren't. Most people are actually quite eager to just talk about their hobbies and teach you shit about them. If it's there to be a quiz that opens a fap scene... it's not characterization. It's a gameplay mechanic and one, that I personally consider to be really hard to pull off.

 

[thecardinal]

These were some of the reasons I started making my shitty game. Main family is Hispanic, realistic bodies (hate the overinflation), no 'stairway to heaven' bull, and the blackmailing bossy one is the last person you'd expect.

It has potential, but has a ways to go before it's good.

 

[Ataios]

Some more ideas and early sketches to expand on my concept mentioned earlier in this thread:

Son of the Wasteland

The year is 2090, just 5 years after the 3rd World War. After a nuclear missile hit the Yellowstone super volcano, most of North America is a wasteland. The government of old no longer exists, but rivaling city states compete for domination. Our hero Jack Carter was one of the last to be drafted into the war thereby receiving some cybernetic improvements and hormone treatments that helped improve his already impressive physique and combat skills. He quickly earned a reputation as a both ruthless and fearless warrior and got promoted soon. When the war was over, he returned with his packs full of plunder and plans to rebuild his home.

However, he soon found out, that he had more urgent business to deal with. His father had died in the early stages of the war and his mother, lacking an income of her own, had married corporate executive turned warlord Theodore Riley. The crime lord was known for his decadence and pomp and he liked to show off his trophies, including the gorgeous milf. Jack was not quite happy to see his mother as a trophy wife in skimpy outfits on Rileys decadent parties. Therefore he jumped on his armed trike, grabbed his rocket hammer and smashed some of Riley's thugs to peaces, taking his mother back home afterwards (he did not ask, whether she was voluntarily submissive to Riley).

The only problem was: There was no more home to return to. Jack always found his mother hot and the additional testoserone in his body added to that impression. With no place to live and Rileys thugs behind him, Jack took his mother to the newfound City State of Dominia, ruled by former World War 3 general Erica Larsen. The general ruled her city with an iron fist but Jack also knew that she was hostile towards Riley. So the enemy of an enemy is friend, right? Jack and his mom were allowed into the city, but the general also found Jack's mom quite attractive. Meanwhile, Jack met the young hacker Jane and now plans to rid the world of Riley and his thugs for good.

Characters:

Jack Carter

Most of all, Jack Carter is a warrior. He spent most of his adult life at war and fighting is the one thing, he excels at. A big, strong man, he mostly relies on heavy weapons and brute force. His favorite is his rocket hammer. He has healthy level of self confidence and sometimes thinks, he knows what's best for others, most often his mom. He has variety of cybernetic implants, including a testosterone pump, that increased both his muscle growth and his sex drive. He speaks a rather bawdy language, much to the dismay of his mother.

"Bad genetics? There's no bad genetics in your hot ass, mom!"

Linda Carter-Riley

Linda was a decent housewife and a caring mother. She grieved when her husband died, but she knew she had to earn a living somehow, so Theodore Riley's proposal was war than tempting. After all, it meant and safety and wealth, even though some of the tasks she had to perform were humiliating. Even though she has a strong submissive streak, she is reluctant, as a lot of kinks go, including of course incest and also having sex with another woman.

"Just do it. But please tell no one."

Erica Larsen

She sees herself is both the army's most capable commander and most powerful weapon. And she may be right about both. The best cybernetic implants, that were made before the war make her force of destruction and strategic skills are unrivaled. In her mind, ruling a city is not so different from commanding an army, which every citizens in Dominia is well aware of. Larsen is a lesbian and not willing to share her girls. Even women who were straight before are said to have fallen for her unique charisma.

"Erica First!"

Jane Nash

The young hacker is willing to sell information at a fair price and mostly sympathetic to Jack. She is a few years younger than Jack and willing to listen to his rants. She may be a romance option for Jack, though she will not be happy to find out, that her boyfriend was fucking his mother all the time.

"If you were proportioned like normal human, I'd call you cute."

Theodore Riley

Once the CEO of Riley Arms he quickly turned his corporation into an army, when the government fell apart, thus becoming one of the more powerful north American warlords. He loves to show his wealth and status including women, he treats like trophies. Polite on the first encounter, he soons shows his sadistic streak, once a woman enters a relationship. He travels the wasteland in his personal vehicle Desert Master, which is a combination of a tank, a stretch limousine and a mobile first class hotel.

"You are of truly exceptional beauty, lady. Would you please follow me. You wont regret it, I assure you."

 

[hameleona]

Some more ideas and early sketches to expand on my concept mentioned earlier in this thread:

Son of the Wasteland

The year is 2090, just 5 years after the 3rd World War. After a nuclear missile hit the Yellowstone super volcano, most of North America is a wasteland. The government of old no longer exists, but rivaling city states compete for domination. Our hero Jack Carter was one of the last to be drafted into the war thereby receiving some cybernetic improvements and hormone treatments that helped improve his already impressive physique and combat skills. He quickly earned a reputation as a both ruthless and fearless warrior and got promoted soon. When the war was over, he returned with his packs full of plunder and plans to rebuild his home.

I would probably play the game, but i think you should work on the setting a bit more.

Spoiler: I think I have spent way too much of my life learning about that shit

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tl;dr - dude, have you ever heard of the word overkill?

 

[Volta]

I hadn't really considered post apocalyptic very seriously till now, you two really are into this stuff, talk about expand my horizons, i'd always limited myself to contemporary, sci-fi or fantasy until now.

Mass depopulation is an interesting idea, "one cock to rule them all" is easy if there really is only one working cock around and the fact that that is your cousin/brother/son's cock would matter a little less in those circumstances, which eases that whole strict incest taboo somewhat, though you'll probably need more reason than that to justify it, though it is a good start.

The problem with the nuclear apocalypse is that while the initial damage would be huge it's the radiation sickness that would break the game, the whole planet would be covered in radioactive debris and dust, this would be held in the atmosphere for a long enough time that it would cover the entire globe, everywhere on the surface would be irradiated, even if you survived the initial damage there simply wouldn't be a way to ovoid death by radiation in any scenario that doesn't involve "storing" humans for a significant amount of time (hundreds of years, possibly more) so that the radioactive materiel can settle out of the atmosphere.

I know this is me being picky but it is something to consider, perhaps a non-nuclear apocalypse, or a "humanity waking up" scenario could work too.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

I hadn't really considered post apocalyptic very seriously till now, you two really are into this stuff, talk about expand my horizons, i'd always limited myself to contemporary, sci-fi or fantasy until now.

Mass depopulation is an interesting idea, "one cock to rule them all" is easy if there really is only one working cock around and the fact that that is your cousin/brother/son's cock would matter a little less in those circumstances, which eases that whole strict incest taboo somewhat, though you'll probably need more reason than that to justify it, though it is a good start.

The problem with the nuclear apocalypse is that while the initial damage would be huge it's the radiation sickness that would break the game, the whole planet would be covered in radioactive debris and dust, this would be held in the atmosphere for a long enough time that it would cover the entire globe, everywhere on the surface would be irradiated, even if you survived the initial damage there simply wouldn't be a way to ovoid death by radiation in any scenario that doesn't involve "storing" humans for a significant amount of time (hundreds of years, possibly more) so that the radioactive materiel can settle out of the atmosphere.

I know this is me being picky but it is something to consider, perhaps a non-nuclear apocalypse, or a "humanity waking up" scenario could work too.

I believe there's a game out there using Renpy/Honey Select which has a premise of a disease wiping out the majority of men, and the MC being a male teacher with several daughters out to effect all manner of perversion...

 

[Volta]

I believe there's a game out there using Renpy/Honey Select which has a premise of a disease wiping out the majority of men, and the MC being a male teacher with several daughters out to effect all manner of perversion...

Interesting, not the conventional apocalypse for sure but a neat idea, i may go looking for that one, even though i have an aversion to honey select, nice mention.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Interesting, not the conventional apocalypse for sure but a neat idea, i may go looking for that one, even though i have an aversion to honey select, nice mention.

It was looking good but got abandoned, it was called Family Values.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

It was looking good but got abandoned, it was called Family Values.

Yes, that's the one. Probably still available for d/l here. Now that I think of it, it might be more of a moral apocalypse than a physical one.

 

[gamersglory]

@Volta Have to second the aversion to honey select myself. the models of everything are too shiny and blocky. But not an RPGM fan either. I would say the tropes you hit on are not just exclusively for incest games but Erotic games in general. The reason we use Japanese terms is that they made the foundation of modern Animated Porn and meticulously categorized many different Character Tropes and Types of porn. The dere classifications alone are highly used in Anime but also in Erotic games as well. good reference here

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No other culture ever relly took as deep of a dive into erotic fiction as Japan.

 

[gunderson]

To be honest, I don't think it's really all that hard to design a good incest game compared to any other kind of game. Making the game is another story, but I don't see any serious issue with designing a decent incest game. The tropes? They work. Milfy, kinda chubby but very busty overprotective mom; busty cheerleader-type *sigh* 'tsundere' older sister; smaller but non-flat younger sister; scrawny/chubby main character son/brother? Perfectly fine!

Need to set 'em entirely in a house because that's what level your skills are at? Set 'em in a house! Or send them on a sci-fi adventure like in 'Spaced Out' or on an RPG adventure like in 'Milftoon Adventure' or have the main character join a chemistry company to mind control them like in 'The Company.' Those are all perfectly fine choices and all of them can make great games. Nothing is guaranteed to make a great game, mind, but that depends on execution rather than just on your initial plan. The neat thing about incest is that, as long as your game can handle having a relatively stable set of ladies that your main character spends a lot of time with, they can be his relatives and he can try to bang them in pretty much any setting.

As far as level of consent goes, I'd say that goes to your taste and how you want to write. Personally, I like things to work like a teen sex comedy except based around incest. So tropes like peeping on people showering, coercing people to flash the main character or others, trading homework for a blowjob, or eventually winning a lady over with the protagonist's loveable (but definitely rapey in real life) antics? Awesome! Great porn! My favorite. In deference to the genre, I'll certainly accept some inconsistency in tone, but there are points where it gets too rapey for me. For example: I'm pretty happy, in terms of feelings about levels of consent, with the scenes in Summertime Saga, but SuperPowered can go too far for me. Again, these are my preferences and not intended to speak for others' preferences or tolerances or feelings about such content.

Do they reeeeally have to be blood relatives, or can you fudge it in order comply with Patreon's rules and trust that your players can 'read between the lines?' They must be blood relatives. You can release alternate versions where people are blood relatives or there can anonymously appear a patch that fixes the relationships to make the characters blood relatives, but don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. If I want to play an incest game, I want there to be some fucking incest. I'm happy to play different genres of games too, but I won't tolerate fake incest in games I play. Assuming that porn is itself supposed to be a fantasy, I don't want to have to pretend that my porn said 'mother' instead of 'landlady.'

Gameplay? I recommend it. If you've got a talented artist (or you are personally a talented artist), maybe your game can make it just as a visual novel alone. But if all you've got is standard Daz3D models or Honey Select, then I recommend you take some time to familiarize yourself with your engine and add at least some actual gameplay to your game. Personally, I'm sick of clicking through visual novels. They're boring. Even the best-written ones are dull to wade through. So make your game a clicker game, or a match-3, or a platformer, or an RPG, or a resource management game, or...well, anything really. But make it something more than the visual novel everybody else is making.

If you don't have the time or dedication to learn how to put gameplay in your game beyond visual novel choices, though? Well, then you're probably not going to make a good game anyway. Not trying to be mean here, it's just really easy to make a bad game and really hard to make a good one, and a lack of interest in working hard enough to make your game fun or special does not bode well for its overall future quality.

 

[Volta]

To be honest, I don't think it's really all that hard to design a good incest game compared to any other kind of game. Making the game is another story, but I don't see any serious issue with designing a decent incest game. The tropes? They work. Milfy, kinda chubby but very busty overprotective mom; busty cheerleader-type *sigh* 'tsundere' older sister; smaller but non-flat younger sister; scrawny/chubby main character son/brother? Perfectly fine!

Need to set 'em entirely in a house because that's what level your skills are at? Set 'em in a house! Or send them on a sci-fi adventure like in 'Spaced Out' or on an RPG adventure like in 'Milftoon Adventure' or have the main character join a chemistry company to mind control them like in 'The Company.' Those are all perfectly fine choices and all of them can make great games. Nothing is guaranteed to make a great game, mind, but that depends on execution rather than just on your initial plan. The neat thing about incest is that, as long as your game can handle having a relatively stable set of ladies that your main character spends a lot of time with, they can be his relatives and he can try to bang them in pretty much any setting.

As far as level of consent goes, I'd say that goes to your taste and how you want to write. Personally, I like things to work like a teen sex comedy except based around incest. So tropes like peeping on people showering, coercing people to flash the main character or others, trading homework for a blowjob, or eventually winning a lady over with the protagonist's loveable (but definitely rapey in real life) antics? Awesome! Great porn! My favorite. In deference to the genre, I'll certainly accept some inconsistency in tone, but there are points where it gets too rapey for me. For example: I'm pretty happy, in terms of feelings about levels of consent, with the scenes in Summertime Saga, but SuperPowered can go too far for me. Again, these are my preferences and not intended to speak for others' preferences or tolerances or feelings about such content.

Do they reeeeally have to be blood relatives, or can you fudge it in order comply with Patreon's rules and trust that your players can 'read between the lines?' They must be blood relatives. You can release alternate versions where people are blood relatives or there can anonymously appear a patch that fixes the relationships to make the characters blood relatives, but don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. If I want to play an incest game, I want there to be some fucking incest. I'm happy to play different genres of games too, but I won't tolerate fake incest in games I play. Assuming that porn is itself supposed to be a fantasy, I don't want to have to pretend that my porn said 'mother' instead of 'landlady.'

Gameplay? I recommend it. If you've got a talented artist (or you are personally a talented artist), maybe your game can make it just as a visual novel alone. But if all you've got is standard Daz3D models or Honey Select, then I recommend you take some time to familiarize yourself with your engine and add at least some actual gameplay to your game. Personally, I'm sick of clicking through visual novels. They're boring. Even the best-written ones are dull to wade through. So make your game a clicker game, or a match-3, or a platformer, or an RPG, or a resource management game, or...well, anything really. But make it something more than the visual novel everybody else is making.

If you don't have the time or dedication to learn how to put gameplay in your game beyond visual novel choices, though? Well, then you're probably not going to make a good game anyway. Not trying to be mean here, it's just really easy to make a bad game and really hard to make a good one, and a lack of interest in working hard enough to make your game fun or special does not bode well for its overall future quality.

I agree with everything except the last few points about game-play. Visuals novels are not games, games are not visual novels at least they shouldn't be. Superpowered isn't a visual novel, it's a sandbox style game and it's good at being that, whereas Depraved Awakening is a visual novel and is good at being a VN. When you say add at least some game-play i agree, every sandbox needs some form of game-play otherwise it will be adisjointed mess like BB(OK that had gameplay i guess but it was exceptionally sub-par) , as for a VN there doesn't need to be game-play, whats needed is good visuals (the V in VN) and there needs to be a story (the N in VN). I wouldn't buy a total war RTS and criticise it's story, it's not what it's for, but if i bought a puzzle oriented game like portal and it had minimal puzzles i'd be pissed.

What i'm getting at here is that i think you prefer games to VN's and to be fair i agree, i'd play a mediocre game over a mediocre VN any day, however you can't really compare the two, it's like comparing a book to a movie, or a movie to a game, they both entertain or should but they don't work in the same way.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

I think I prefer for a VN to have at least some meaningful player choices and maybe some branching paths. Otherwise you might as well be watching hentai/anime.

 

[Volta]

I think I prefer for a VN to have at least some meaningful player choices and maybe some branching paths. Otherwise you might as well be watching hentai/anime.

I agree, it certainly seems odd without choices but i guess it would be possible, sort of as a continuous string graphic novel, just without pages.

 

[gunderson]

I agree with everything except the last few points about game-play. Visuals novels are not games, games are not visual novels at least they shouldn't be. Superpowered isn't a visual novel, it's a sandbox style game and it's good at being that, whereas Depraved Awakening is a visual novel and is good at being a VN. When you say add at least some game-play i agree, every sandbox needs some form of game-play otherwise it will be adisjointed mess like BB(OK that had gameplay i guess but it was exceptionally sub-par) , as for a VN there doesn't need to be game-play, whats needed is good visuals (the V in VN) and there needs to be a story (the N in VN). I wouldn't buy a total war RTS and criticise it's story, it's not what it's for, but if i bought a puzzle oriented game like portal and it had minimal puzzles i'd be pissed.

What i'm getting at here is that i think you prefer games to VN's and to be fair i agree, i'd play a mediocre game over a mediocre VN any day, however you can't really compare the two, it's like comparing a book to a movie, or a movie to a game, they both entertain or should but they don't work in the same way.

Gameplay? I recommend it. If you've got a talented artist (or you are personally a talented artist), maybe your game can make it just as a visual novel alone. But if all you've got is standard Daz3D models or Honey Select, then I recommend you take some time to familiarize yourself with your engine and add at least some actual gameplay to your game.

As I said, it's not a matter of all visual novels being bad (though yes, I am broadly speaking bored of them). It's rather that it all depends on how good your art is and not on the quality of your writing as to whether or not you need to add deeper gameplay than that of a standard VN for your game to be worth playing. People argue that they can make it work with 'great' writing (said people often overestimate the quality of their writing), but let's be real about the ren'py engine: four lines of writing at a time, and you have to click through every 4-line page with the chance of accidentally skipping something or choosing something you didn't intend to. If people picked another engine (like Twine or Rags or Adrift/any other interactive fiction engine), I'd give them a lot more leeway on writing. But four lines visible at a time is a terrible way to read a novel.

On the other hand, visual novels depend on most of the screen real estate being images. If you have an artist like Akabur (hey look, there's a new SC34 release today!), then I'll happily accept some imperfect (not to say bad, but no Pulitzers needed here) writing because of the fabulous tiddies.

So. If you're a talented artist or have one on staff, great! Make a pure VN with my blessing. But if you're using Honey Select and make a visual novel with no other gameplay, I will literally never play your game, no matter what the story is. I'm obviously not the only player out there and other people have different preferences than mine, but I like to think that at least some of my opinions (such as my position on Honey Select or the more off-the-shelf Daz3D models in VNs) apply to a broader selection of players than just me.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Milfy, kinda chubby but very busty overprotective mom;

I'm incredibly tired of this character. The only time I slightly, and only slightly, liked this character is in Summertime Saga. The thing that made her interesting here, I think, being how quickly she turned from the Mom type to the experienced milf type, and even then, as I said, I only like her a little bit. I can't even play what seems to otherwise be an interesting and fun story with Timestamps because of the attention being focused on this trope so heavily that I am just constantly trying to get past these boring formulaic and to me, not sexy scenes. And it's not age or the fact that she's not a sister, it's the way this character treats the MC as her baby boy that she needs to protect.

busty cheerleader-type *sigh* 'tsundere' older sister; smaller but non-flat younger sister;

I wouldn't mind these being flipped, changed, make both tsundere, make one kudere, make them both deredere, lets get some dandere, yandere, hell seriously, give us variety. (Note: I'm using dere words simply because they're one word descriptors)

Spoiler: Short list of character types and descriptions for Dere characters.

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That's not even a full list, and there are way more archetypes you could choose from even aside from the dere types. Like the Onee-san types (older sister)

Spoiler: Onee-san

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I agree with everything except the last few points about game-play. Visuals novels are not games, games are not visual novels at least they shouldn't be.

I don't know what criteria you're using to define game, but considering a VN usually has both "winning" and "losing" states, it's definitely a type of game. More importantly, regardless of whether there are losing states, apparently all you need is an activity engaged in for diversion or amusement.

 

[DarthSeduction]

As I said, it's not a matter of all visual novels being bad (though yes, I am broadly speaking bored of them). It's rather that it all depends on how good your art is and not on the quality of your writing as to whether or not you need to add deeper gameplay than that of a standard VN for your game to be worth playing. People argue that they can make it work with 'great' writing (said people often overestimate the quality of their writing), but let's be real about the ren'py engine: four lines of writing at a time, and you have to click through every 4-line page with the chance of accidentally skipping something or choosing something you didn't intend to. If people picked another engine (like Twine or Rags or Adrift/any other interactive fiction engine), I'd give them a lot more leeway on writing. But four lines visible at a time is a terrible way to read a novel.

A VN isn't supposed to be reminiscent of a book. It's a lot more like a comic, or graphic novel. So if you don't like Comics as well, well then, now we know your issue.

As to all the Honey Select hate, does that include the newer models like in Mythic Manor and Harem Hotel, or are we just talking about the plastic doll same facey ones from previous gens, like in Corruption and Solvalley School?

For instance, Wafu Academy is one of the better written pure VN out there, and the art is fine to me, but its using a more recent version of HS with better models.

 

[gunderson]

A VN isn't supposed to be reminiscent of a book. It's a lot more like a comic, or graphic novel. So if you don't like Comics as well, well then, now we know your issue.

As to all the Honey Select hate, does that include the newer models like in Mythic Manor and Harem Hotel, or are we just talking about the plastic doll same facey ones from previous gens, like in Corruption and Solvalley School?

For instance, Wafu Academy is one of the better written pure VN out there, and the art is fine to me, but its using a more recent version of HS with better models.

For me, a comic book or even a comic strip would be an improvement as far as writing is concerned over VNs. All the art and all the writing is available on one page at the same time, it's easy to flip or click back and forth, and the artist can change the formatting of the page for storydumps at a whim. Even your basic 3-panel webcomic webpage has more room for story than your average screen of a VN. The vast majority of VNs are kinda stuck with the 4-line format, and that only really works for certain writing circumstances.

My lack of interest in Honey Select games stems from the same place as my lack of interest in off-the-shelf Daz3D games: the same models used over and over and over. It's not that I have a fundamental problem even with the older 'plastic'-looking models. It's that it makes the game feel cheap and samey when people use identical models for different games with maybe a different pose or item of clothing (if that). But again, that's only if there's no interesting gameplay to go along with it.

For example, Grrrl Power (1/2) is fun in spite of its generic ladies because there's a game to play too. There's dungeon crawling, stat building, space adventures (in some builds), etc. Lab Rats 1 was perfectly fine, because even though the images left something to be desired, the game was interactive enough that I could look past the dull models to see the characters behind them. But give me a sea of 4-line paragraphs and a few stock-looking images, and I start to focus on the models again. That's when the lack of unique art starts to matter, whereas a few more normal-sized pages of easily readable paragraphs wouldn't have that problem. The same thing happens in any pure VN with stock assets, no matter the source. Honey Select is just the most egregious example, in that there's very little room for author customization of models, whereas the use of Daz3D stock models comes from an author's lack of imagination or experience.

To reiterate: these are my preferences and opinions. You're welcome to your own and I have no interest in changing yours, but I'm not going to pretend to like something that I don't either.

 

[DarthSeduction]

To reiterate: these are my preferences and opinions. You're welcome to your own and I have no interest in changing yours, but I'm not going to pretend to like something that I don't either.

I get that, but you should know, you are complaining about the most superficial bullshit I've ever heard, particularly with your "Only 4 lines of dialogue" complaint. Not gonna ague with you, because there's no point, but that really isn't a reason that something "can't be good".

 

[HopesGaming]

Most ren'py games have rollback. So can't see the accident click can be an issue. Just mouse scroll up.
In my opinion, I do not agree that VNs can't have good stories. Look at the Asian market. Many of their vns have gotten immense praise for their story and even gotten some movie/anime adaptations.

Now I think one of the issues with the story writing with adult vns is that they tend to do it like it's a book. They describe the image and use a narrative style of dialogue. Which kind of goes against a visual novel. Don't tell me that the towel is being picked up. Show me. Don't tell me that the mc feels sad. Show me.

Another thing I feel is an issue with writings is the 4 lines. People who do writings tends to like... Writing. And they end up writing a ton because they have a story they want to tell. But that ends up with a boring wall of text.
In gundersons opinion, he does not feel like 4 lines are enough. In my opinion, 4 lines should be used very rarely. It's too much. Make it compact. Make it interesting with as few words as possible.

That's the reasoning for why I did my whole game with dialogue only. No narration no long as text. Simply talk. And short sentence talk. Especially with adult vns where there is a tendency to press the skip button like it was a money button.
Make it short and compact enough that they give it a chance. Make it interesting so they keep being interested.

I do heavily agree on the overused models, the same popular characters etc. That's just laziness and give ammunition for 2d anime lovers (The ones that hate 3d games)
Literally, all you hear from 2d lovers (The ones that hate 3d games) is how all daz is the same, plastic and stiff looking.