What's sorely missing from NSFW games that you should be much-MUCH more prominent

[CboyC95]

Here's a small list of game genres or tropes I want to see:

• female protagonist and is completely lesbian
• futa/trans protagonist where you seduce females and/or other trans
• femboy/trap protagonist (not sissification)
• flamboyant gay characters or protagonists

 

[Adabelitoo]

80% of the game here starts with the MC watching a character and making an entire description of that character while talking (or thinking) alone. The MC sees his mother/sister/daughter/friend every day but somehow, he needs to talk alone and made complete description of the character. Why? Why making him a weirdo by forcing him to say what he already knows? I understand that this is to introduce the characters to the players and I'm okay with him talking or thinking about that but don't make an entire description of that girls personality and relationship with you only with that. Create a situation where it actually makes sense for that to happen, like introducing that character to another character. It isn't super necessary to introduce the characters either tbh. If mom, sis and (girl) childhood friend are in the game, the player will eventually get that they are mom, sis and childhood friend if you develop things decently. It's the classic "Don't tell, show" thing.

This is something just for fun: Every game with a time system starts on Monday, the week has seven days but everyone start on Monday.

 

[Droid Productions]

This is something just for fun: Every game with a time system starts on Monday, the week has seven days but everyone starts on Monday.

I start on Sunday, actually. Just to be difficult

There are quite a few games where the MC is more thoughtful and/or powerful. Someone recommended Unwilling Archon, which I enjoyed. Like Love of Magic it's an Urban Fantasy with a character that starts powerful, and becomes increasingly so as the game continues.

 

[PeteHanson]

Consequences. Knocking up your girlfriend while still in high school or banging your sister should have consequences. Why are all the games always moronic happily ever afters? Where's my dark, gritty and realistic story?

And while we're at it: Realistic story lines. Why can't devs depict relationships realistically? This whole "New guy in town gets to bang 90% of the female population just for existing" is boring AF. Especially when those 90% also include every single female family member. Yeah, mom is totally gonna crave your dick because she saw you naked once, while lil sis empties your balls each night because she's "curious".

I know this is completly off topic but what the hell.
This hero or maybe we could call it "mc needs to be better than anyone else" trope is not just a problem in adult gaming, but gaming in general.
I recently tried the gothic "remake" thq cooked up a playable demo or teaser they call it for and its the same thing!
Devs these days just do seem utterly afraid to do anything that could be even a slight inconviniece to the player, its just so god damn sad. All needs to cater to the player character even if it doesn't make a lick of sense in universe or in the story, most open world games feel far more like a stage that is there for the player to look and sometimes interact with certain things on it than anything else.
Its just depressing..

Anyway back to the topic at hand.. i would also want to have more anti hero mcs, if we need to have an overpowered mc all the damn time make him at least an utter dispicable bastard that has fun with this and not a goody too shoes in the story but in gameplay you are very much the opposite of a good human being.

 

[freebirdfreebird]

More Japanese games translated to English! Wait...

The big one for me is animation. The huge amount of western renpy games and similar generally are animated, but I want animated stuff outside of VN games.

Id also like more sci-fi and cyberpunk settings. As many said, anything outside of the high school incest MC style.

 

[Droid Productions]

Id also like more sci-fi and cyberpunk settings. As many said, anything outside of the high school incest MC style.

Some games you might enjoy:

Scifi/cyberpunk : try City of Broken Dreamers and Starship Inannan
Fantasy : Sanguine Rose, Long Live the Princess
Urban Fantasy: Reluctant Archon and (ehm) Love of Magic

 

[javajav]

Actual gameplay, as in, it's just as much fun to play as it is to fap to.

So much this. I see far too many RPG Maker titles pop up that are just CG sets loosely thrown together in the engine with a couple generic maps with random encounters between as you walk between linear sequences of events. It defeats the purpose of it being a game if there's no care put into the game part of it. If I just wanted to see pictures that catered to my kinks I would have just grabbed a CG set. It's fun when there's a unique mechanic, or some sort of karma system where your decisions unlock different branching paths of events.

 

[anonnom]

The big one for me is animation.

agreed. pinup stills can be hot, but if there is sex... well, stills don't do it for me.

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[ChaosOpen]

1. Netori
2. MILFs that actually look age appropriate.
3. Married characters wearing wedding rings.

How about just attractive MILFs, they look like morbidly obese women someone has used the click-and-drag tool in photoshop to make look attractive? It seems like only NTR series has some bangin' women, that you can't have sex with. Atelier Sakura has some really nice art, problem is their games are absolute trash and the entire company really only caters to a single fetish.

 

[Fervid]

Actual gameplay, as in, it's just as much fun to play as it is to fap to.

The only ones I've played so far that stand out in this regard are the old Dragon Knight games made by Elf back in the '80s and '90s. (I really hope those games get translated someday, perferably, in the near future) That's not to say that all the modern games play COMPLETLY awfully, It's just that those games really raised the bar IMO and visual novels and generic fetch quests start to get a little bit old after a while.

Sadly, the name Dragon Knight seems to have been repurposed by another developer these days, to make games that have nothing to do with the originals.

Have you checked out the Lightning Warrior Raidy series? I played II and it was pretty basic as far as Dungeon Crawlers go, but it had gameplay. And it brought back Dragon Knight's shtick of attacking the enemy's clothing until you win via Wardrobe Malfunction.

If you're interested in a realtime take on the concept of strip-fighting, check out Akiba's Trip, Senran Kagura, and a few others, on Steam, of all places. (Note that you might have to mod in some or all of the lewdness, since these came out before Steam's "sell anything legal" policy went into effect.)

In the top-down shoot 'em up category, there's the sprawling, blurry Deep Space Waifu franchise. (Which I've heard are based on some ancient doujin fan game called Sentimental Shooting.)

 

[Fervid]

(Especially) Male MCs that are more fleshed out and also MCs that are more normal, that act nice or VNs that let you choose to act nice without damning you on the sissy route if you do.

snip

There must be more nice guys MCs that still kick ass without being a dickhead.

For a while now, I've been wondering if there's a market for this kind of story. It's no secret men get mixed messages from society in the 21st century. That leads to cognitive dissonance-- confusion over who you're supposed to believe? The pickup artists trying to sell you a book and a course on how to be exactly the right amount of a jerk to attract women? Or the actual women who insist PUA is bullshit? It's a dichotomy with no easy answer. Feels Bad, Man. It's not surprising that a lot of guys-- especially older guys-- would take refuge in a form of escapism that glamorizes traditional gender roles.

But is that theme a requirement for success in this marketplace? Or is it just one viable niche among many? Is it possible, in 2020, to create a game about a MC who's both manly and decent? What would that even look like? Which men could we draw from for inspiration? Which men should we avoid? Is it even possible to know the difference, in the general case? Or is the distinction something so personal, no two players would ever agree on it?

I don't know, man. But it keeps me up at night.

 

[BossFloof]

I'll also chime in on the "actual gameplay". I'm not really that much into VNs and also don't like games that tell story in extreme detail in your face, especially not when it is text. Games can do so much more through environmental and contextual storytelling, leaving room for you to immerse yourself into the action and tell your own story by experiencing a great game! I'm the player, I'm the protagonist. I want to feel like I'm in control and that there is something I can actually do in a game, apart from reading through walls of mundane text or building a character to then play back some animations.

Of course, that's really hard and it takes a shit ton of time and money to make something like that. But as developers I believe we should try more. It does not always have to be a huge open-world game *cough*. Even a "Papers, please"-esque mini-game could work to provide enough context to make a lewd game feel more like an actual game.

I totally get (and sometimes also enjoy) the simple and plain pleasure of a little interactive gonzo piece. But this shouldn't be the be-all, end-all ❤

 

[Fervid]

This is an interesting topic to me, because I've almost never seen sex "gamified" in a way that didn't just plain suck. I'm starting to think it might be one of those

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in game design. You can make the game sexy, or you can make the game have deep mechanics with extrinsic rewards, but the more you do one, the more it detracts from the other.

Don't believe me? Here's a list of some of the more popular sex game genres, with a breakdown of the trade-offs/sacrifices/concessions designers had to make to either sexuality or gameplay. If you think of any other genres I forgot to list here, reply to this thread mentioning them and I'll give them the same analysis.

Popular sex game style	Examples	How it lets the player down	Why it's popular anyway
Visual novel	Most of this website lol	More reading than gameplay	Easy to make and easy to sexualize
Point & Click Sex Sims	Feel The Flash by Sawtex	More of a simulation or a toy than a game.	Arguably the "purest" form of simulating an interactive sex act (until VR came out, of course; see below.)
"Strip 'em up" versions of various traditional game genres, where success in combat or other traditional core mechanics results in nudity	Dragon Knight, Senran Kagura, Deep Space Waifu, etc.	Everyone's favorite buzzword, ludo-narrative dissonance. The nudity is for the player, not for the characters. Sometimes gets incredibly abstract (EX when you're controlling a spaceship shooting clothes off a girl.)	Even when the gameplay is only decent, it's still better gameplay than most players have been trained to expect from a sex game.
Ryona / 'Reverse Ryona" genres-- basically, any game where the characters are in a combat situation, but the narrative cause of the conflict is they're deliberately trying to mollest each other.	Just search for it. If there's no Ryona tag, google Ryona to get titles then search by title.	If the enemies are topping, the player needs to "lose on purpose" in order to see the sex. If the player is topping, you're basically playing as a rapist. IRL, rape is about control, not about sex, so in theory, this shouldn't be possible to be erotic, even if the player is controlling the rapist.	The player's fantasy (if not their gameplay goals) basically map 1:1 to what the protagonist is going through. It's generally understood that people come to these games for the fantasy of experiencing powerlessness or impunity. (I.E. a fantasy about rape can be erotic, even if actual rape can't be, and the point of these games is to allow the player to indulge in a fantasy, not to "simulate rape.")
VR porn games that consist mainly of 3D video footage	Google it? Generally these come from specialty porn studios with a 3D camera, not from traditonal "game developers."	Can't get much less interactive than a video clip.	Can't get much more realistic, graphics-wise, than 3D video beamed directly into your eyeballs.
VR porn games that use 3D models and some form of interaction to simulate sex	Fallen Dol, VR Kanojo, Dominatrix Simulator	Has all the same problems as Point & Click Sex Sims. Arguably more potential for "uncanny valley effect" than the same content displayed on a screen, because your brain is hardwired to recognize when reality looks wrong.	Arguably more realistic than Point & Click Sex Sims and more immersive, if not more interactive. VR games in general tend to be heavily scripted affairs with only token interactivity, so the bar is generally pretty low to begin with. If players can get used to clipping through the wall in Doom, they can probably get used to anything.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

love the orginized respones, bookmarked
also seen the same video. I don't think it is cursed, considering I think I have solved it, I just need to get a worknig example working at this point.

 

[lemonfreak]

I would like to see more 'on male' (whether futa/trans, pegging or toying) where the man is an active participant rather than a sissy or BDSM sub. We men can enjoy anal play in a romantic setting and take a good hard fucking as a power bottom too.

 

[baloneysammich]

(Especially) Male MCs that are more fleshed out and also MCs that are more normal, that act nice or VNs that let you choose to act nice without damning you on the sissy route if you do.

Multiple choice should be more prominent as well.

Also fleshed out stories. It's visual novel for a reason, right. There is novel in the word. So more fleshed out and original stories, please.

More female MCs

More catgirls (but neither like standard furry where the catgirls look not humanoid enough anymore nor anime catgirls where it just look like human girls with attached tail and ears. i think of more like the style of Jay Naylor's Beth and non-clichee characters (unlike Anime catgirls))

More crime solving and sleuthing

This all boils down to economics, IMO. Developers have to choose between plot and "plot ". If you want focus on the former, you play bishōjo eroge games. If you want focus on the latter, you play porn games.

If you try to balance development between the two with many characters involved, the most cost-effective scenario is a fuck-em-all. And that's just not really plausible for a believable, fleshed out "nice guy" MC in a believable world. Much easier to just make him a "not so nice guy".

 

[Fervid]

This all boils down to economics, IMO. Developers have to choose between plot and "plot ". If you want focus on the former, you play bishōjo eroge games. If you want focus on the latter, you play porn games.

If you try to balance development between the two with many characters involved, the most cost-effective scenario is a fuck-em-all. And that's just not really plausible for a believable, fleshed out "nice guy" MC in a believable world. Much easier to just make him a "not so nice guy".

See, I'm torn on this one because it all depends what you mean by "fleshed out" or "nice guy."

If your solution to the problem is to just keep throwing more lines of dialogue at it, then yes, it's more or less doomed to failure. Economically and artistically. But a good writer makes every single sentence pull double or triple duty. Any sentence... no, any word that doesn't establish or reinforce character, set up or pay off an arc, or advance the overall plot is cut or combined.

When this philosophy is taken to the extreme, even the main action of a work... the car chases in a spy movie, the swordfights in a swashbuckler, or, yes, the sex in a hentai, can be leveraged to tell us something about the characters.

That's for a more or less linear Visual Novel. The more gameplay you layer on top of that, the more extra work it becomes. (Consider the case of the guy who set out to make a CYOA for his first game dev project. 10 choices, each with 2 options, no recombining paths after a choice is made, only a page of original text as the content exposed after each choice. 1024 endings. It nearly killed him.)

But if you treat MC Choices as alternate routes, rather than branches in the narrative, suddenly the "extra work" becomes less of a waste and more part of the appeal.

So. Is it possible to make a game with lots of sex and also lots of character development? I think the answer is yes. Most parodies of established IPs (at least, IMHO, the best ones,) already employ these tricks to make the character on the screen really feel the same as the character on the show. If you can imagine a Steven Universe Future parody (taking place, lets say, roughly two years in the future,) where the only difference in the characters' personalities is that they want to have sex with each other, then congratulations! You are already imagining a Nice Guy having loads of gratuitous sex!

Depending on your writing process, it might not even require extra time or resources. It certainly shouldn't require extra sentences. What it does require, unfortunately, is some damned fine writing chops, and the will to expend the mental energy to use them.

Whether or not the market would reward such effort is, of course, debatable. But I'd argue that the reason people are so into Overwatch characters is because they're so well-executed as characters.

 

[Kinderalpha]

This is an interesting topic to me, because I've almost never seen sex "gamified" in a way that didn't just plain suck. I'm starting to think it might be one of those

You must be registered to see the links

in game design. You can make the game sexy, or you can make the game have deep mechanics with extrinsic rewards, but the more you do one, the more it detracts from the other.

Don't believe me? Here's a list of some of the more popular sex game genres, with a breakdown of the trade-offs/sacrifices/concessions designers had to make to either sexuality or gameplay. If you think of any other genres I forgot to list here, reply to this thread mentioning them and I'll give them the same analysis.

Popular sex game style	Examples	How it lets the player down	Why it's popular anyway
Visual novel	Most of this website lol	More reading than gameplay	Easy to make and easy to sexualize
Point & Click Sex Sims	Feel The Flash by Sawtex	More of a simulation or a toy than a game.	Arguably the "purest" form of simulating an interactive sex act (until VR came out, of course; see below.)
"Strip 'em up" versions of various traditional game genres, where success in combat or other traditional core mechanics results in nudity	Dragon Knight, Senran Kagura, Deep Space Waifu, etc.	Everyone's favorite buzzword, ludo-narrative dissonance. The nudity is for the player, not for the characters. Sometimes gets incredibly abstract (EX when you're controlling a spaceship shooting clothes off a girl.)	Even when the gameplay is only decent, it's still better gameplay than most players have been trained to expect from a sex game.
Ryona / 'Reverse Ryona" genres-- basically, any game where the characters are in a combat situation, but the narrative cause of the conflict is they're deliberately trying to mollest each other.	Just search for it. If there's no Ryona tag, google Ryona to get titles then search by title.	If the enemies are topping, the player needs to "lose on purpose" in order to see the sex. If the player is topping, you're basically playing as a rapist. IRL, rape is about control, not about sex, so in theory, this shouldn't be possible to be erotic, even if the player is controlling the rapist.	The player's fantasy (if not their gameplay goals) basically map 1:1 to what the protagonist is going through. It's generally understood that people come to these games for the fantasy of experiencing powerlessness or impunity. (I.E. a fantasy about rape can be erotic, even if actual rape can't be, and the point of these games is to allow the player to indulge in a fantasy, not to "simulate rape.")
VR porn games that consist mainly of 3D video footage	Google it? Generally these come from specialty porn studios with a 3D camera, not from traditonal "game developers."	Can't get much less interactive than a video clip.	Can't get much more realistic, graphics-wise, than 3D video beamed directly into your eyeballs.
VR porn games that use 3D models and some form of interaction to simulate sex	Fallen Dol, VR Kanojo, Dominatrix Simulator	Has all the same problems as Point & Click Sex Sims. Arguably more potential for "uncanny valley effect" than the same content displayed on a screen, because your brain is hardwired to recognize when reality looks wrong.	Arguably more realistic than Point & Click Sex Sims and more immersive, if not more interactive. VR games in general tend to be heavily scripted affairs with only token interactivity, so the bar is generally pretty low to begin with. If players can get used to clipping through the wall in Doom, they can probably get used to anything.

This is all I've been thinking about since the release of that talk, and I've came to my own conclusion of adult games with rich gameplay mechanics is not a cursed problem. It's actually just an overlooked problem. Let me start my conclusion and how I drew this with an example.

Skyrim is home to a lot of adult mods. Although Skyrim is not an adult game itself, these mods are giving it an adult theme. Suddenly, you find yourself with a game that has rich gameplay mechanics paired with sexy and lewd content. Now is this the one all example of a game having deep mechanics? No, because the lewd content is not intrinsic to the core gameplay mechanics of the game by default. However! I do think it serves as a good example. For those who have played Skyrim with these mods will most relate when I say: It's possibly one of the best deliveries of adult content in a western game. (I'm not going to include, mention, or reference anything from Asian markets because fundamentally I believe they're very different.) My adoration for these mods is very subjective, but I think you can objectively agree on that these mods hold popularity and value based on the size of its community. There are many other examples that follow this approach I won't mention, but are games that intrinsically don't include adult content but is latter modified into the game.

So is this problem cursed? I don't think so. This example demonstrates an example of rich gameplay coexisting with adult content and it works. I think you have the question wrong, but you're close. It's not a matter of comparing adult content to deep mechanics or extrinsic rewards as a whole. It's about comparing specific types of delivery, or content itself to specific types of mechanics. Here are a few examples of actual cursed problems on this forum.

Question	Problem	Problem	Cursed	Solution
I want to make an original game, but I don't know how to make games.	I wan't to use something with an easy workflow, consistency, and small learning curve like RenPy	I want to create a game that stands out, is unique, and has key features mentioned in this post.	Yes	Teach yourself how to code, hire somebody, or collaborate with Rev share. You've chosen a Visual Novel engine to create something other than a Visual Novel.
I want to take a unique approach on an RPG game, while also telling a great narrative. I just don't have much experience	I chose to use RPG Maker because it perfectly fits the idea of my project and what I'm trying to accomplish	I'm going to make the game have features outside the scope of the engine of my choice, because I want it to be different.	Yes.	This is cursed because you narrowed your choice of engines based on your experience and not on the scope of your idea. Adjust your scope, or your experience then continue.
I want to create a game with a rich atmosphere and lewd content.	I'm going to use Unreal Engine to achieve my atmosphere and content.	I don't want the entire atmosphere to be lewd, and want to add exploration and navigation.	No.	Exploration and atmospheric games do coexist. You've also chose a sufficient engine to accomplish your goal.
I want to create a game with rich mechanics and difficulty inside a visual novel.	I'm creating a Visual Novel.	I want to create difficult and rich mechanics.	Yes.	A visual novel isn't suppose to have difficult and rich mechanics. It's a visual novel. Choose a different type of game loop or engine.

Although this has been fun to create thus far, I could go on forever. These are pretty weak compared to some that have crossed my brain but didn't stay throughout the days - I think I got my point across. It's not so much an issue of adult games and rich mechanics being cursed. It's how we're making these games and what tools we're using. No creative masterpieces with difficulty, rich game mechanics, or engaging atmospheres will be found using engines built for specific tasks (RenPy, RPGMaker, Twine, etc) because they're scope is too narrow. The reason you don't see a lot of the ideas in this thread implemented into games is because they're difficult, require experience outside most new developers here, and most people lack the knowledge to design and implement them (myself humbly included). The focus right now is on visual novels. They're successful and that's where the moneys at for new developers.

Rich gameplay mechanics don't belong in a Visual Novel. Rich gameplay mechanics won't be found in an RPG maker game. They will only exist in a game that's been written outside the boundaries of these engines. Unity, Unreal, or home brewed engines are what birth original gameplay mechanics. You can't create notable original mechanics when you're confined to the tools and mechanics of engines like RPGMaker. That's just my opinion. This thread hopefully inspires some new developers to pickup coding and maybe try something new. I just wanted to type this to exercise some of my thoughts on the subject. My laptop battery is about to die now.

I'm not going to take the bait or argue publicly with anybody that says you can create original mechanics in RenPy or RPGMaker. PM me if you really want to take that road. I believe mechanics birthed within the limits of those engines are just a result of workarounds and hacks that spawn somewhat original but basic shit that hardly can be described as a mechanic.

 

[baloneysammich]

See, I'm torn on this one because it all depends what you mean by "fleshed out" or "nice guy."

TBH I suppose my definition of a nice guy largely precludes him the option of having loads of gratuitous sex, at least in a world that's more or less identical to the one we live in.

In a fantasy universe with a lot of well developed female characters and comparatively few well developed male characters it could be different.

I'd argue that the reason people are so into Overwatch characters is because they're so well-executed as characters.

I've never played Overwatch and know next to nothing about the characters, but I still find porn parodies featuring them uncannily appealing. However, that could [at least in part] be because the creators were able to infuse something extra into their work based on their knowledge of them as characters.

OTOH, it could just be a Pavlovian response because the popularity results in lots of content.

 

[Fervid]

TBH I suppose my definition of a nice guy largely precludes him the option of having loads of gratuitous sex, at least in a world that's more or less identical to the one we live in.

Ah! Now we're getting into the meat of it. Why?

In a fantasy universe with a lot of well developed female characters and comparatively few well developed male characters it could be different.

I'm not sure I understand this part of what you said. Can you unpack some of the assumptions behind it?

I've never played Overwatch and know next to nothing about the characters' personalities, but I still find porn parodies featuring them uncannily appealing. However, that could be because the creators were able to infuse something extra into their work based on their knowledge of them as characters.

Aw, dude. You're in for a treat. Check out Blizzard's

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playlist. They're like little 5 minute Pixar movies about superheroes with guns!