Would anyone be interested in an adult VN themed around motor racing? [Pitch]

[IamUnderman]

So, I am super bored during lockdown and thought that trying to develop a game would be a fun way to pass the time. I am a big fan of motorsport (specifically rallying, but would be open to being a bit broader with the theme if desired) so I figured that an adult VN which utilises motor racing as a theme could be a fun and unique idea.

The basic premise would be this;

The player plays as a rookie racing driver starting his first season whilst dealing with the relationships in his life,. Every chapter he would have to participate in a race, the result of which would be influenced by the choices made during the other parts of the game. There would be typical moral choices in the game, like does your character want to cheat or take a paid dive. However there would also be subtler choices that would effect the races. For example if your character is aggressive in his relationships (threatening other men and being domineering with the women in his life) he will drive aggressively in the races. This could cause him to form rivalries or possibly get into a accident. Whilst a more diplomatic character would race more patiently, reducing the odds of getting into a bad crash but possibly causing them to place lower in the races. The game would end at the end of the season, with multiple endings based on decisions made in the game, allowing for multiple 'routes' over several playthroughs.

There would be a fairly simple economy to the game, placing better in the races would win you more money which could be spent on dates to increase your chances with the ladies and so on. This idea is in early stages but if there is a strong interest in it I would very much be interested in giving it a go. My background is in writing and English studies, furthermore I have experience coming up with complicated choices based stories as I have run DnD campaigns for years. The big learning curve would be on the technical side, programming and modelling characters. If I was able to get skilled in this area however I feel I could produce a fun and well written little game.

I would ideally like to make the game in Ren'py or possibly Unity, with my own custom models and environments. If this turns out to be too technically challenging I would consider
HTML, possibly using photo's but this would not be my first instinct to do. RPGM is off the table because I don't really like Adult RPGM games very much and wouldn't want to develop a game I wouldn't like playing. This game will not feature grinding of any nature as that annoys me greatly in games on this site.

Let me know how the idea sits with you or ideas you have to expand the concept. Thanks for your time.

 

[fenelia]

Sounds like a good concept. Marrying the sports and the story game is a good idea. I think it's been tried to varying degrees of success in mainstream sports sims (including FIFA).

IMO, fantasy is overdone. Sci Fi like Mass Effect... also a lot of that around. Sports would be less usual, and probably a very good choice to stand out.

 

[Ayhsel]

Ok so I read your proposal and these are my comments. But first, a disclaimer

Disclaimer: Everything that I write is with the best intentions. Sometimes I sound like a douchebag, but is not born from bad intentions.

So, I am super bored during lockdown and thought that trying to develop a game would be a fun way to pass the time. I am a big fan of motorsport (specifically rallying, but would be open to being a bit broader with the theme if desired) so I figured that an adult VN which utilises motor racing as a theme could be a fun and unique idea.

I don't remember seeing a lot of VN in that setting, so that is totally a plus. I am of the mindset that anything can be interesting if well done, but is nice to see something different from "young adult/teen returned home and will try to fuck mom and sister".

However I am worried about the "super bored during lockdown and thought that trying to develop a game would be a fun way to pass the time". I would be surprised you even managed to do a first release by the time lockdown is over. Do note that most games are not a success economically and if you are just trying to pass a few months you are most likely wasting them. As the potential consumer I welcome everyone to develop their VN, but I think you better make up your mind with a strong reason/desire than just "pass lockdown" if you are gonna try it at all.

The basic premise would be this;

The player plays as a rookie racing driver starting his first season whilst dealing with the relationships in his life,. Every chapter he would have to participate in a race, the result of which would be influenced by the choices made during the other parts of the game. There would be typical moral choices in the game, like does your character want to cheat or take a paid dive. However there would also be subtler choices that would effect the races. For example if your character is aggressive in his relationships (threatening other men and being domineering with the women in his life) he will drive aggressively in the races. This could cause him to form rivalries or possibly get into a accident. Whilst a more diplomatic character would race more patiently, reducing the odds of getting into a bad crash but possibly causing them to place lower in the races. The game would end at the end of the season, with multiple endings based on decisions made in the game, allowing for multiple 'routes' over several playthroughs.

As I mentioned above, any premise can work. And you seem to have an idea of the main structure of each chapter. However, pretty much anything can fix that structure. It can be amazing, with plot twist, great characters and more or a total disaster. I would try to grasp a more defined picture. Who are the characters, their backgrounds, their goals. How do they relate. And most importantly, what is the essence of the story.

But as a premise sounds totally fine.

There would be a fairly simple economy to the game, placing better in the races would win you more money which could be spent on dates to increase your chances with the ladies and so on. This idea is in early stages but if there is a strong interest in it I would very much be interested in giving it a go. My background is in writing and English studies, furthermore I have experience coming up with complicated choices based stories as I have run DnD campaigns for years. The big learning curve would be on the technical side, programming and modelling characters. If I was able to get skilled in this area however I feel I could produce a fun and well written little game.

I tend to dislike economy and free roaming. My focus is always in the story, so those aspects end up being more annoying. You can get similar results but way better. If you won the race, you could have the money but without showing the variable for some chapter. Just a variable that says win=1 so character has money and can invite the girl. For another chapter it could be independent of the result. For another chapter it could be because of heroine's personality. The more VN and the less sandbox, the better.

I would ideally like to make the game in Ren'py or possibly Unity, with my own custom models and environments. If this turns out to be too technically challenging I would consider
HTML, possibly using photo's but this would not be my first instinct to do. RPGM is off the table because I don't really like Adult RPGM games very much and wouldn't want to develop a game I wouldn't like playing. This game will not feature grinding of any nature as that annoys me greatly in games on this site.

Let me know how the idea sits with you or ideas you have to expand the concept. Thanks for your time.

I know very little about programming. But from what I have seen, Ren'py is considered quite user friendly. Code can get really complicated, yes, but for many things is all about defining some elements and then just calling them. But like I say, I know very little.
A topic you did not mention was rendering. From what I have read, it can be a real bottleneck in the development, once you know how to code and your story is written. I cannot help much here, most players prefer daz3d/blender style (I do too) but I get the feeling those are way harder than looking into Honey Select style, for example. Whatever you do, this is another thing to look into.

Hope that helps and hopefully we will see you VN and it will become a success.

 

[IamUnderman]

Ok so I read your proposal and these are my comments. But first, a disclaimer

Disclaimer: Everything that I write is with the best intentions. Sometimes I sound like a douchebag, but is not born from bad intentions.

First can I say that this is EXACTLY the kind of comment I was hoping I would see. Thank you very, very much for taking the time to give such a comprehensive write up on your opinions of the game and I hope to take some time to respond to some of your points and elaborate a little bit on some of my ideas and intentions for this project.

Firstly;

However I am worried about the "super bored during lockdown and thought that trying to develop a game would be a fun way to pass the time". I would be surprised you even managed to do a first release by the time lockdown is over. Do note that most games are not a success economically and if you are just trying to pass a few months you are most likely wasting them. As the potential consumer I welcome everyone to develop their VN, but I think you better make up your mind with a strong reason/desire than just "pass lockdown" if you are gonna try it at all.

This is an super fair concern to have and I wish to make it clear that I had 0 delusions that this game, even a first release would be done over the remains of lockdown. This would probably take a while to be in any kind of form fit to see a public release. I merely wished to convey that part of the motivation for this project is that I do not have much to do right now during lockdown and saw the opportunity to begin a new creative project. You may call that a bit of a shallow motivator, but it is the truth.

I tend to dislike economy and free roaming. My focus is always in the story, so those aspects end up being more annoying. You can get similar results but way better. If you won the race, you could have the money but without showing the variable for some chapter. Just a variable that says win=1 so character has money and can invite the girl. For another chapter it could be independent of the result. For another chapter it could be because of heroine's personality. The more VN and the less sandbox, the better.

I probably should have made this clearer, because once again I entirely agree with you. I do not envision this game as being one with a map screen (for example, Milfy City), rather as a continuous narrative experience (such as Where the Heart is for example). So for example the way I imagine money working is as a gatekeeper to some choices or a driving force behind decisions. For example; say for narrative reasons the highest you can place in a race in chapter 2 is 6th (you will play as a full on rookie in this game so winning races is not something that will even be possible until later in the story, I want to give the game a bit of a rags to riches theme). If you get 6th you will get 3 'money points', if you come 7th-9th you'll get 2 and if you get 10th-12th you'll get 1. This can limit choices you can make on dates or in other parts of the story (say you have taken a girl out for a meal, the expensive wine she wants will cost 1 money and give you a bunch of relationship points). So that's roughly how I intend money to be used.

A topic you did not mention was rendering. From what I have read, it can be a real bottleneck in the development, once you know how to code and your story is written. I cannot help much here, most players prefer daz3d/blender style (I do too) but I get the feeling those are way harder than looking into Honey Select style, for example. Whatever you do, this is another thing to look into.

The main reason I didn't mention rendering is simply because I know fairly little about it and will need to explore my options before embarking on this project, your tips here are handy and I appreciate them greatly. One thing I have going for me though is storage space, another reason I have decided to start toying with this idea. I own a 4 TB SSD that is currently empty. So hopefully, time, work and skill will be the only things limiting the graphics I can create.

Once again, thank you so much for this comment. It is dearly appreciated and I am glad you find the concept interesting.

 

[Ayhsel]

First can I say that this is EXACTLY the kind of comment I was hoping I would see. Thank you very, very much for taking the time to give such a comprehensive write up on your opinions of the game and I hope to take some time to respond to some of your points and elaborate a little bit on some of my ideas and intentions for this project.

Great that I could help.

This is an super fair concern to have and I wish to make it clear that I had 0 delusions that this game, even a first release would be done over the remains of lockdown. This would probably take a while to be in any kind of form fit to see a public release. I merely wished to convey that part of the motivation for this project is that I do not have much to do right now during lockdown and saw the opportunity to begin a new creative project. You may call that a bit of a shallow motivator, but it is the truth.

Great, just needed to mention it.

I probably should have made this clearer, because once again I entirely agree with you. I do not envision this game as being one with a map screen (for example, Milfy City), rather as a continuous narrative experience (such as Where the Heart is for example). So for example the way I imagine money working is as a gatekeeper to some choices or a driving force behind decisions. For example; say for narrative reasons the highest you can place in a race in chapter 2 is 6th (you will play as a full on rookie in this game so winning races is not something that will even be possible until later in the story, I want to give the game a bit of a rags to riches theme). If you get 6th you will get 3 'money points', if you come 7th-9th you'll get 2 and if you get 10th-12th you'll get 1. This can limit choices you can make on dates or in other parts of the story (say you have taken a girl out for a meal, the expensive wine she wants will cost 1 money and give you a bunch of relationship points). So that's roughly how I intend money to be used.

That works. Any logic that you have in mind can make sense. At some point your story will also mold your gameplay elements. So you can deviate from all extremes too.

The main reason I didn't mention rendering is simply because I know fairly little about it and will need to explore my options before embarking on this project, your tips here are handy and I appreciate them greatly. One thing I have going for me though is storage space, another reason I have decided to start toying with this idea. I own a 4 TB SSD that is currently empty. So hopefully, time, work and skill will be the only things limiting the graphics I can create.

Pretty sure the main driving factor on rendering is GPU power. But again, I am totally useless on that. Try to reach to other devs, some are super friendly. I am confident they will help you.

Once again, thank you so much for this comment. It is dearly appreciated and I am glad you find the concept interesting.

Best of lucks!

 

[IamUnderman]

One other thing I want to define are some boundaries, as far as sexual content is concerned.

1.
This project will not contain any forms of incest, I am not condemning games with incest in them however I do not wish for a project that I work on to contain that kind of content. There will be plenty of girls, just none of them will be related to you

2.
No NTR/Swinging content. This is simply not content that appeals to me, again no kinkshaming if this is your jam but it isn't mine. Furthermore NTR usually leads to some nastiness in the comments of any games that have it and I would like to avoid that.

3.
No extreme content (Rape, Bestiality, Scat etc). Just no, sorry. There will be plenty of fetish content, just nothing on the extremer end.

4.
Probably no gay content. I am a straight guy and two men having sex simply isn't something that I find hot. No judging, I love gay people and as a result I'm not 100% ruling the possibility of a small amount of gay content out. But if it was featured it would probably be very limited, like 1 scene or AT MOST 1 minor character and again, only if there is a massive surprise demand for it.

Everything else as far as I can tell is fair game, won't act like every other kink will appear in the game, in fact it probably won't, but this roughly outlines my no go zones. If these categories contain your primary interest, sorry. But I felt it was important to be upfront with what this project isn't.

Content that will certainly appear in some form includes.

Maledom, Femdom, BDSM, Exhibitionism, Pregnancy/Impregnation and most of what could be considered 'vanilla'. Hope this clears some things up.

 

[polywog]

Since its peak in 2005, NASCAR has seen a gradual decline, with its TV viewership reaching record lows in 2018 and race day attendance suffering to record lows as well.

Former race driver Roger Penske recently poured a lot of money into Indy racing, trying to save the sport, but it's days are numbered.

Younger generations just aren't interested in racing, hell most teens and 20 somethings aren't even interested in cars period.
A stark contrast to the 1950s and 60s when having a car meant "freedom" to practically every teenager.... today, 30% of 25 year olds, don't even have drivers licenses.

Going round and round in circles never appealed to me, but some people were into that sort of thing.

 

[IamUnderman]

Since its peak in 2005, NASCAR has seen a gradual decline, with its TV viewership reaching record lows in 2018 and race day attendance suffering to record lows as well.

Former race driver Roger Penske recently poured a lot of money into Indy racing, trying to save the sport, but it's days are numbered.

Younger generations just aren't interested in racing, hell most teens and 20 somethings aren't even interested in cars period.
A stark contrast to the 1950s and 60s when having a car meant "freedom" to practically every teenager.... today, 30% of 25 year olds, don't even have drivers licenses.

Going round and round in circles never appealed to me, but some people were into that sort of thing.
View attachment 693029

Ironically, NASCAR is more or less the only form of motorsport i have 0 interest in (Not American). The main sports I was interested in adapting were rallying, rallycross, F1, touring car racing (i think that is like indy racing but not sure, again I'm not american) and maybe endurance racing. I agree that motosport has defo declined in popularity over the years, but F1 still draws a big crowd and will probably remain huge until the car itself becomes extinct.

The question for me isn't how huge the interest is on like a global scale, rather are there people who find the idea interesting and would want to try a VN that uses motorsport as it's theme (in the same way that say City of Broken Dreamers is a noir, or Dik is set in frat culture).

Thanks for the feedback though.

 

[polywog]

real car racing being less and less popular, doesn't mean that virtual racing is dead.

 

[IamUnderman]

real car racing being less and less popular, doesn't mean that virtual racing is dead.

Very True. A big inspiration for this idea is me being stuck at home and deciding to try and 100% complete gran turismo 6 (and the reveal of GT7 on the PS5).

 

[Ayhsel]

One other thing I want to define are some boundaries, as far as sexual content is concerned.

1.
This project will not contain any forms of incest, I am not condemning games with incest in them however I do not wish for a project that I work on to contain that kind of content. There will be plenty of girls, just none of them will be related to you

2.
No NTR/Swinging content. This is simply not content that appeals to me, again no kinkshaming if this is your jam but it isn't mine. Furthermore NTR usually leads to some nastiness in the comments of any games that have it and I would like to avoid that.

3.
No extreme content (Rape, Bestiality, Scat etc). Just no, sorry. There will be plenty of fetish content, just nothing on the extremer end.

4.
Probably no gay content. I am a straight guy and two men having sex simply isn't something that I find hot. No judging, I love gay people and as a result I'm not 100% ruling the possibility of a small amount of gay content out. But if it was featured it would probably be very limited, like 1 scene or AT MOST 1 minor character and again, only if there is a massive surprise demand for it.

Everything else as far as I can tell is fair game, won't act like every other kink will appear in the game, in fact it probably won't, but this roughly outlines my no go zones. If these categories contain your primary interest, sorry. But I felt it was important to be upfront with what this project isn't.

Content that will certainly appear in some form includes.

Maledom, Femdom, BDSM, Exhibitionism, Pregnancy/Impregnation and most of what could be considered 'vanilla'. Hope this clears some things up.

I might not be the most helpful guy for this. As for me pretty much everything is based on story. I do enjoy pretty kinky stuff, but whether for me something is actually good or not is pretty much never sex related. Look at my fansign. The two games I support have currently almost no sex at all. Sex for me is the strawberry on top of the ice cream, but it is the ice cream that decides whether I eat the dessert, not the strawberry.

Provided it is of great quality, you don't need any fetish to keep an audience happy. Just look at some of the game that do best purely by numbers (dont want to start an argument about whether those numbers are justified), City of Broken Dreamers, Being a Dik, Become a Rockstar among others. None have strong fetishes.

My only recommendation here is that you explicit the kind of content and stick to that. There will always be the guy that says that just a main heroine talking to some guy is NTR and you should die from lying, but must people are reasonable, so that if you just stick to your said content, all will be fine.

 

[IamUnderman]

One other thing, I'm somewhat new to this site and am not super confident as to what content belongs where. Is there a place I should repost this thread that's more appropriate (like is there a game concept section?) and would that even be allowed?

 

[polywog]

 

[IamUnderman]

I might not be the most helpful guy for this. As for me pretty much everything is based on story. I do enjoy pretty kinky stuff, but whether for me something is actually good or not is pretty much never sex related. Look at my fansign. The two games I support have currently almost no sex at all. Sex for me is the strawberry on top of the ice cream, but it is the ice cream that decides whether I eat the dessert, not the strawberry.

Provided it is of great quality, you don't need any fetish to keep an audience happy. Just look at some of the game that do best purely by numbers (dont want to start an argument about whether those numbers are justified), City of Broken Dreamers, Being a Dik, Become a Rockstar among others. None have strong fetishes.

My only recommendation here is that you explicit the kind of content and stick to that. There will always be the guy that says that just a main heroine talking to some guy is NTR and you should die from lying, but must people are reasonable, so that if you just stick to your said content, all will be fine.

Love the ice cream analogy, perfect to sum up the role sex should have in a good Adult VN. Obviously I am extremely doubtful I will create something of the quality of the games you cited, at least at the start, but the point stands. Quality writing is what counts more than appealing to fetish gimmicks.

 

[polywog]

 

[IamUnderman]

Another thing I would like to hear some feedback for is names. These names are not final at all, more that they represent different flavours that may work well. The ones i have so far are;

1. Love in the Fast Lane

Clever and classy, fits in well alongside the titles of other VN's and implies that cars are a core part of the game. Also the title is inspired by a classic Simpsons episode . One issue however is that although it sorta implies the car thing, it doesn't convey the motorsport theme well (there aren't lanes on a racetrack).

2. The Grand Prix/The Grand Prick

A bit of a juvenile play on words that pushes the racing theme harder. Kinda funny though. Issue is it doesn't really convey that it's an adult VN and it's a bit of a ripoff of Being a Dik.

3. Race to Your Heart

Well balanced between the AVN and motorsport elements, but a bit oldschool. Sounds a bit like a crappy erotic novel your aunt might have bought in the 90's.

Any other suggestions are welcome but these are some starting ideas. I think I like the first one the most myself, it conveys the tone I want the best (less stuffy than 3, but less juvenile than 2) but I don't like that it hides the racing theme a bit.