You want dark, but you don’t like depressing? To me, for the most part, a dark game that isn’t depressing isn’t doing it right, but oh well.
Give Bible Black a shot. It’s not really dark, but it should give you a taste, I suppose.
Try Divi Dead, that’s probably the best intro I can think of to the dark genre that sounds like what you’re looking for.
Virgin Roster :twisted:
Most games which are dark, that are also not depressing, cast you as a villain doing despicable things to your victims.
This is not my thing. SInce I avoid such things like the plague, I can’t really shed a lot of light on this other than to second the Divi Dead suggestion (which I actually should play sometime myself) and also suggest Chain (which tries, with a decent amount of success, to go the film noir route just with eroge tropes tossed in).
I would recommend Nocturnal Illusion right here, but it’s gone back OOP. PP is trying to get a downloadable version, but the physical disc version went OOP before this could happen, so right now you can’t get it.
Although Fate/stay night isn’t strictly an example of a dark-side game, in many places it is fairly grim. I guess that would be the best example in English that I’ve come across. (I haven’t played Bible Black or Divi-Dead so I can’t really comment on those).
Hopefully that’s not a serious suggestion :roll: - that’s exactly the sort of dark game the OP wouldn’t want to play.
It’s a bit of a difficult question to answer as there are several views on the forum as to what a dark game is. Three of the different categories might be (someone else can probably come up with a much better and more comprehensive list though):
Dark brutal eroges: Tentacles/guro/rape etc. - which subdivides into two categories, games where you play as an evil protagonist, and games where the protagonist isn’t the one responsible for the brutality (there is a large grey area in-between these extremes though). Usually the latter sort are more story-oriented.
Psychogically dark games/depressing dark games [generally, this is the category that I’d classify as ‘dark’]: Eroges that deal with dark and serious themes, often with less ero-content than games in the dark + brutal category. There aren’t really any good examples in English yet - Yume Miru Kusuri might fit, but it’s fairly light compared to some of the other examples out there.
Dark action based games: Fate/stay night is the most obvious example available in English.
If you can actually find a copy(or are willing to pay a hefty sum for it.) I’d suggest Tsukihime.
I’ll also have to agree that Divi-Dead is a good one to go for, and cheap.
OOPS I forgot the guy didnt want violence. My bad.
Hmmm dark is pretty difficult to differentate(frankly so is light), and a lot depends on ur mood and other psychological aspects.
I would say that there are multiple categories, with a large common area.
Why dont u try something Like Chain: The lost footprints, Hitomi(bit of violence there though, but its great to find if u really like Dark stuff or not).
I would really suggest ‘Hitomi - My Stepsister’.
Depending on the story path decides the way the ‘dark’ actions are preformed.
1 story path - You do the ‘dark’ actions to the girl
1 story path - A girl does the ‘dark’ actions to you ( somewhat )
1 story path - delves into the idea’s of ‘forbidden territory’
It has both happy and sad/bad endings.
The same difference you have between a dark and light piece of literature, or a movie. ‘Light’ and ‘dark’ aren’t new words created for the need of erogames…
It’s difficult to say really whether Kana is dark (although sad doesn’t imply that the game is dark) - in the ‘opinion on life and death’ genre (??? in Japanese), Kana has quite a light setting compared to some of the other examples. But yeah, light + dark is very much a question of personal taste + perception.
Light story-oriented game - Ever 17.
Second that, and probably one of the better ones in commercial English. Although now hard to find.(Or we can always hope PP releases a download version for it as well.)
Well, I had written up a bit of a long winded explanation last night of my view on the difference between light and dark games, but Ignosco has done a fairly good and more concise one. (Not to mention I was starting to fall asleep at my keyboard.) My take on the issue is that the difference primarily lies in whether things generally considered evil consistently occur in the story. As Ignosco already pointed out, dark games further break down in to ones where the dark elements happen around the protagonist, and the ones where the protagonist is doing the dark elements. Tsukihime, which Dalburnan mentioned, falls primarily in to the category where the dark elements happen around you. Hitomi, which Lipp mentioned, falls in to the category where the protagonist is performing the dark elements. (However, it has been pointed out to me that Hitomi is not the best example because the protagonist feels remorse for his actions for brief periods of time.)
The Sagara family…Guh
Lightning warrior raidy…HENTAI DUNGEON CRAWLER WITH TENTACLE RAPE!
If by the dark you mean depressing, then ignore mine. If you mean heavy sex, look at these.
The Sagara Family isn’t dark. It’s a sex-romp but not dark, excluding 1-2 routes. Actually, it’s a highly entertaining sex-romp with quite a bit of humor. In fact, I’ll go ahead and claim it’s the very best sex-romp available to the non-japanese speaking eroge fans. And it’s light.
That’s a bit of a shame, really. PP needs to acquire some Atelier Kaguya or something =P
I know it’s the opposite story to what most people seem to say, but the catalog as far as good story-based titles goes is already pretty respectable - getting some half-decent eroero games might be a good thing.
If it was an officially english localized game, then it was with no doubt “Nocturnal Illusion”.
Nocturnal Illusion is indeed a good example of what “dark” means if it doesn’t mean “the main character is a brutish rapist”. Perhaps the best English-translated example. It is also very old, having been originally released in 1995. Unfortunately, it is out of print, and the re-release is also out of print. PP is exploring ways to get them back in print via downloadables, but the last word on this was technical issues were holding it up.
“Dark” as applied to erogames has always meant violence, brutality, and/or mindless sex to me. If it doesn’t have rape, it’s not dark. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t played a “psychologically dark” game yet that’s made a strong impression on me. Fate/Stay Night and Kana have stories that can be dark at times, but they’re not dark games, IMO. Hitomi, however, is. Games with pseudo-rape (relationship starts with rape but becomes loving, usually nonsensically) fall in a grey area.
But really, I think this topic demonstrates that the term is ambiguous enough that there’s no generally agreed upon definition. Which means you shouldn’t use it without qualification unless you’re prepared to be misunderstood.
I’d sorta agree/disagree about fate stay. If you just use a walkthrough and avoid the bad ends, it can be a rather light experience, but the bad ends are pretty bloody at times. But even along the main storyline, there are quite a few places where it does feel like it’s a dark game(Admittedly not one of the dark dark ones). HF for example involvesSakura being raised through rape and torture, and shinjis rape attempt/murder. The scene where the woman is being eaten alive and asking to stop. The scene where sakura gets her body nearly totally destroyed by gilgamesh. and in UBW Illya getting her heart ripped out. Shinji after he becomes the holy grail was pretty nasty too.
If we had to classify it as either dark or light, theres no way it would be light it’s way too far from the clear distinct light games, and much closer to the dark games just being a bit milder. You can say “It’s not dark without rape”. Well there is rape in it, you just aren’t the one to do it. But it’s clearly obvious it’s there. Can there be non-ero dark games?