Buy games that you see here. Play them. Read reviews. I realize this is kind of a non-answer, but this will be the single most valuable piece of advice you walk away with.
But if you DO want ideas, I’ll drag out my sentai catgirls versus bunnygirls sports contest idea. Game focused on yuri content, a contest between multiple teams – one of which is an all-catgirl team, and another of which is an all-bunnygirl team. Depending on who fights who, stuff happens.
gah. looking at the crap on that site, my first request would be for any sort of game that was about girls actually having fun having sex, instead of “rape that fucking bitch slut!!!”
It’s not like it would be difficult to make one of those ‘use a million toys on a girl’ games in a lighter tone… like adjusting any dialog just a bit so that you’re PLAYING the girl and searching for the Elusive O with the use of all the toys in your closet… 
Or for those who are uncomfortable putting themselves in a woman’s shoes, you could be playing some sort of therapist / sex advice columnist, with an innocent blushing virgin begging for your help. You give her directions which she carries out on herself in order to explore her sexuality. And therefore it would make perfect sense that you’d have to get her to work her way up the ladder of perviness slowly… if you suggested she try something too pervy right away, she’d panic! It could be quite cute to be building this trusting relationship with the innocent girl (“Well, if you’re sure I should… I trust you…”) while getting to enjoy watching, and making her happier in the end.
Why make a game if you don’t know what it is you want to do with it? Or are you asking for people to write for you, rather then come up with the whole idea?
This probably sounds hostile, but it’s not intended as such. I always ask this of anyone who’s making a game and says they have no idea of the direction they themselves wish to go with it.
Just my two cents… I wouldn’t want to play any of the games on the website you linked to, as it looks like the ‘stories’ are truly atrocious. Although I’m probably not the target audience for these sorts of games, for what it’s worth, if a game is going to be under an hour in length, then I’d prefer that there was no sex at all. Otherwise, there’s not really a chance to place it in the context of a story and include character development etc. on top of that.
It might be worth posting on the Lemmasoft boards, as they are a community focused around game creation (and several people are working on/have made adult games there, although they are all quite different from the games on your link).
I don’t really like NC content either. This is why I suggested a sports competition or some such, where it’s friendly competition (i.e. they all actually like each other anyway) versus something where they’re more actual opponents.
It’s littke more than a ridiculous excuse for a catgirls versus bunnygirls. More games should feature this theme
(Oh, and a further remark: not ALL the games are nonsense excuses for sex. I’d recommend looking into Crescendo, or Nocturnal Illusion, for good examples otherwise.)
There is a lot also about incest (real or percieved), childhood romances which often ties in with new strange/exotic girl, school romances (they are delibratly vague what age), wandering loner who opens up, etc. Then there are (tatical) RPGs where the sexable characters very often are your own comrades (especially with the tactical ones).
You want ideas for setting up why characters are having sex that don’t make sense in reality? That’s what you say porn and most hentai is. I’d agree with that assessment for many— although a lot of the “romantic” hentai games revolves around slice of life romances, where the user interacts with a few potential love interests until they are in love, generally have some small problem/crisis, and then overcome it and complete their romance (sex scene). Many extend that sexing period so you end up with a small arc of their active romance, and then you get a jump ahead epilogue, showing how they got along over time, or that they are still doing so. The longer you extend the sexing period, the more problems you can set up and then overcome for a final climatic get together.
And your game doesn’t need to target Japanese market. You can use more Western themes.
Anyways— you are missing the easiest reason for sex. Magic. A character finds an old book or tries out their grandmother’s love spell. Things don’t QUITE go how they want, and now they have to undo what they did. Easy set up: Player and his best friends are up in the attic, looking around for old junk to sell in a yard sale one of the friends family is having. They open up an old chest (toy, hope, map, whatever) and find a bunch of crystals, different kind of card decks, weird and stylized dominoes, and a few diaries. Glittery stuff (small crystals) and old card decks = $$$ they think. Looking in the diaries, they get teenage slice of life (full of dreams, hopes, and of course, angsts and name calling). Its a grandmother’s diary, from back in her young days. The tales of love won and lost and creditting the love spells her gran taught her get one (or more) of the friends interested in trying it out (friend is desperate). So, a week afterward, the desperate drags in all the friends to try out a love spell— but everyone has to do it (meaning, they all “glamour” a target). Afterward, strange things start happening— like a couple of the targets acting weird and very interested. Problems? Most of the targets aren’t chasing the person that tried to glamour them, but are very badly crushing on one of the other friends. Other problems? Some of the casting group are now jealous— of the glamours targets in some cases, and in the fact that someone is paying attention to their friend that they are crushing on, but haven’t spoken up for fear of rejection and screwing up what they have. And of course, you can have one or two who got EXACTLY who they targetted— but the problem is they’ve gone completely stalker. That can end well or badly, depending on the tone you want the story to carry. This suggestion would be a pure VN.
It’s really trivial to come up ideas for the set up. Want to do a sex romp? Do a local band story or do a living in college dorm story. Parties, alcohol (and perhaps other casual pharmasutecals), young adults having fun and hooking up— sometimes casually, sometimes not.
Want to do a game with some sort of gameplay? Then you need to know what kind of game you want first.
It’s really just a matter of how much work do you want to put into it. Do you want something that plays or reads through in just a few hours? Figure out what you want to work on and then start doing it.
Brave Soul is a 2D action-RPG.
As for fan translated, Castle Fantasia 2, Utawarerumono, Men at Work 2.
There are also some non-h offically and fan translated ones.
There are a few easy ways to decide if the characters actions leading to the sex scenes are incongrous and just there for the sake of being there (which also happens in eroge sex romps too, so it’s not just exclusive to western ones).
The first is, can your story survive as a narrative from point a to point b without it, and if so, does adding the scene disrupt that progression. Then, if not, how does this help to progress the plot? Secondly, how early in the series is most of it? Many, though not all, of the higher quality eroge have sex scenes later in the narrative rather than early. They might have some teaser early though. Thirdly, what is the focus of the content. While, to some extent, these games will always be about sex (see the problems Hirameki had when editing them out or producing non-eroge versions) gameplay or storyline is also an equal, or sometimes, greater value when playing the game for those who enjoy coming back to playing certain types of titles.
The soap opera comparison works for some of them, more of the slice-of-life ones, but fails for some of the more complex ones that deal with more subtle ideas or fantasy/sci-fi elements, though looking at narrative driven games like Chrono Trigger, .hack or Ys might give good idea for dealing with different races and non-realistically-based elements. Sadly, there are not many real-life based games to point you to with good narrative structure that deal with character interactive and romance in particular.
The problem with relying to heavily on soap opera structure, beyond what you pointed out, is that h-games tend to focus on 1 main character–not a group, there is a definite beginning, middle and end–soap operas do not have them as even their climaxes are leads to new arcs and they all to some extent, melodramatic.
Bad Idea, you can freely use that idea. It has plenty of prior art. It’s a basic setup in many teen “misadventure” or “in search of a sexcapade” movies, as well as other media. There wasn’t one IP protectable level of originality in it.
It sounds like to me, you don’t understand why people play “echi” or hentai games, or you just find them pointless. Of course, sometimes pointless silliness and erotic images are the only reason people play such games. Especially the games without any significant story elements.
For your purposes, as described, it seems to me you need a “one night” or “one long weekend” stand, or a short tournament (win and get a sex scene). From what you have described, it sounds like you’d prefer the short tournament framework. I’d suggest you use a set up along these lines: some young men hold a “Pokeman” style tourney event, winner gets the other guy’s “batlte pet”. Make the battle pets either animal girls (so you can do bunny girls, cat girls, dog girls, etc), or sexbots (which you can crazily costume, to keep yourself amused or to make the silliest justification for “combat styles” or “techniques” or “special moves” in the tourney mini-game). With the tourney set up, at round 1 they battle a random pull of their opponents (and when they win, they get their pick of their own or the loser’s “pet” to play with as the player’s “reward” for winning. They are his toys, after all). Then let the game randomly pick a winner between the remaining pairs, and repeat until player wins the final. If you want to get fancy, let the player pick between all the pets he owns (so after the first battle, the player will have 2 to pick from to use in his next battle), so the game play has more variety. Easy. You can have some instant replayability, because it will take a couple of times playing to get all the opponents, and people that enjoy the gameplay or setting can explore the variety. If you want to make a “make the girls feel good” mini-game in the tourney game framework, you can have it that the BETTER the character pleases the “battle pet”, the better/stronger she is in the NEXT battle she is in (and picking her means that she’s the one that goes into the next battle automatically)— thus, you START with the player doing the mini-game on his starting “battle pet” to get her juiced up well to kick butt in her first battle. This way, you jump STRAIGHT into the hentai, and you have reasons to want to make the female scream and be happy. Of course, playing with the girl first means you need to give the player something for winning the final battle, but it could be as simple as a picture of him with his “pets” leashed and posed or something similar and you can even include a small narative tag line talking about how he can’t wait until the big tourney next month or forming his pets into a battle team and fighting them in All-Star Team Battle League Regional Championship. (This is also a prior art thing, so if you want to do it, go for it— there is nothing that would be IP protectable in it, as there are no real orginal details in basic concept, and if you hunted through the hentai and echi related markets, you’d find this set up with relative ease, if not in a video game form, at least in manga and anime. But just in case someone actually likes it, but thinks it is still a protected idea/concept/IP, I grant full and irrevocable license to anyone that wants to use the concepts as presented in this post for free, to use as they choose, forever. Happy? ).
Again, figure out what sort of game sounds like fun to work on to you (making a simple battle game that uses “domino-like tiles” or “cards”, for instance), and use that as the core of what you do. If you just want to code for money, there are sites that do that, and don’t require everything to include pr0n as a major requirement.
After thinking it about it overnight, I think, Bad Idea, that you might not be able to craft a GOOD game with the requirements you’ve listed. The problem is game length.
VERY short “sex featuring” games don’t have time to do anything but show you the naked and do whatever it is they might do with the sex. For a short 10 to 20 minute puzzler, look at the various “sextris” titles out there. It’s Tetris, but using people as the pieces. Occasionally, when you put the right posed girl with the right posed boy, there’s a vey small animation of them doing it, then BAM! The pieces are gone. Various combinations of poses create such sex matches, and it can be as varied as the creators want to allow (so you can end up having a huge orgy of many pieces at once— if the developer decided that was worth coding in). Several of these that I’ve seen will have “levels”, where after getting enough matches, the screen clears, you see a model from a strip pictorial series and you move on to the next level. The “reward” of the game is that the further you progress in levels, the more naked the model gets until you get a final very naked and very posed shot showing off of the gal. (Although games where they’ve allowed for creative matches in pieces can also be a reward to the player for finding them— adding another challenge and reward in the game.)
In fact, most casual play puzzlers will use that “a girl gets more naked” as the reward for progressing. Whether it’s a breakout style game (with the bricks covering the picture), or a reversed Qix (where the areas you cover/capture REVEAL the masked picture), those all use that same reward mechanism.
In other short sex games, all you end up with is a sex doll doing what you tell her or responding to being used/manipulated (the make the girl feel good). Since the girl is ALREADY the reward for the player, there isn’t any real game play in those. Sometimes, you will find one where there’s a mechanism where you have levels, such that by making a gal experience a certain amount of stimulus, you get to the next level, and she’s posed more openly/vulnerability, and you have more options on how to use/command/manipulate her. That can be a “training a sex slave” or “seducing the gal” styled game— and in this case, the reward for playing more is you get more ways to play with the gal. Those are slightly more fun to PLAY, as there is the growing or continuing “rewards” for playing and achieving the goal.
And that is what MOST such games are missing. Games are fun for their experience, their challenge, and their rewards. Most of the bishojo games sold by Peach Princess fall into the high experience (graphics, music, and narrative), low challenge (make a few choices/clicks), and low to moderate reward (low- erotic graphics, moderate- emotional satisfaction from formed connections from experiences). You’ll notice it is the narratives, allowing players to form some mental connection (emotonal mainly), that are the primary mechanism that creates the heigher rewards for playing the game (normally you’d call it winning, but often a BAD END (Lose game) can give the player an excellent experience, and therefore an excellent emotional reward, as may even heighten their sense of reward as their understand what happens when they fail to achieve their goal).
Very short sex based games just don’t have the time to allow that player to form significant connections to the game, which is why they are basically “flat”. Either you enjoy shoving various objects into a person’s orifices, or you don’t. Either you enjoy a game where you beat a person’s ass with various implements, or you don’t. For the darker tastes, Either you enjoy a game where you pour hot metal into various orifices (natural and those you make) of the torture viction, or you don’t. But the game is “flat”, because there’s no reward cycle, theres no extending that experience (with new ones) in that world construct, and there is no emotional connection or growing emotional investment.
So you project, whatever it is, will be highly limited by the game length you are going to provide. Anything under 2 hours play length is going to be extremly challenging. Anything under 30 minutes will just be a “slap that ass, poke that hole” or some puzzle that’s been “sexified”, I think, and those are usually only interesting for a shorter time than the available game play. Otherwise, you’d be able to do 1 extended sex scene (a narrative or a direct the sex doll(s)), and you seem to be out to not do a narrative.
So, what have I missed and what have I gotten completely wrong for what you are doing?
Remember, sex is a fairly empty experience without emotional content and context. Your own complaints about eroge games you’ve tried (and your own complaints with the “bad” games on that site you are wanting to get money from), show that you understand that. What you complain about not understanding is a complaint about not having any handles for you to mentally latch onto, so you can get the full reward experience for getting the preacher’s daughter to stand on her hands and wrap her ankles around your neck. You just don’t connect to that character, so the “progress” of the relationship or that “reward” for pursuing her just has no meaning or value to you. As someone that’s played several eroge games, that happens to all of us. If you want a good game to play, go over to the main forum and ask about suggestions for games to play— and tell people what you like. That’s why many of us come here and talk with each other. To help get turned on to games we can connect with, and therefore maximize our enjoyment.
The best way to get the audience to do that is show the character as semi-likeable, with faults, and some trouble. Then pile on more trouble. Then pile on more trouble. Make certain it is all plausible and don’t overwhelm them, but kinda like they’re just hang a really bad day.
Well i’d have to disagree with some of that statement, but the overall premise is correct.
Time wasted does not have the same kind of motivational effect for single-player games. In an MMO you are competing either directly or at least though the aspect that everyone else in the world is playing the game and can easily directly compare themselves to you. Thus time wasted mean that those players can get, in theory, a little further ahead of you. For single-player games, time-wasted as a result of failure without any other consequence often does little to enhance motivation, though it is more likely to make someone quit if they can’t get past a section.
This is called the “Spiderman Syndrome”, where the character just gets more and more trouble, never really getting a break. It’s why I stopped being a fan, BACK WHEN I WAS A KID. It’s just stupid. And I’ve been through a few bad years where everything went wrong! And Spidey STILL had more trouble than me.
I don’t like Charlie Brown characters. They only exist to make readers feel better. Sure, their young wife just trapped their whole family in the house and burnt them all alive while you were out— but the CHARACTER’S day was still worse than yours! Cheer up! See how bad it COULD really get?
With many MMOs, you subscribe by the month. In those cases, and penalty in time is actually lost money. Otherwise, it’s just a time out penalty or a loss of play time penalty and while irritating, since you play the game to HAVE FUN and sitting something out is NOT FUN, well— from a playing = fun principle, it’s a stupid thing to do to your players if you actually want them playing the game, you can get away with it if not over-done. Over do it, and they’ll go play elsewhere— somewhere that lets them play when they want to.
There are definatly better ways, if you have time. Given the size of the games for the site in question and if reading=time, then there isn’t enough time.
You are entitled to your own opinions, but the comic strip is considered one of the most well-written in history.
Sorry— that’s CHARACTER. CB exists for the universe to crap on. That’s from Schultz personal interviews. That way, no matter how bad your day is, Charlie’s is worse. Of course, CB doesn’t really touch on the truly nasty stuff that can happen to kids (and its for kids to see life could be worse for them), but it was a strip published in newspapers, so Schultz was limited to just how poor a life CB could be. If he was a young man, doing it all again, he’d be doing CB in a serious abused and guru form.
The strip itself lasted so long that it has parts that are good, and parts that suck. There was more suckage then good or great lengths, but that’s true with most long running series. CB is not considered among the great newspaper comics because of its general high level of content— because there isn’t a general high level of content. It’s considered great for its nostalagia factor (it was ALWAYS in your paper), for its general run time length (most comic writers get tired of doing the same strip and move on to other projects, and that causes most artists to appreciate the sheer stubborness it took to do it, day in and day out, for so long), and because others wanted to as successful as Schultz.
But hey, don’t let it bother you. If you think it is the greatest comic out there, enjoy. Daily and even weekly comics generally suck compared to non-newspaper comics, because newspaper strips have to conform to certain standards and be mostly neutered and innoffensive to the majority of POSSIBLE future readers, not just existing readers. Go check out the comic makers and their forums and blogs if you don’t believe me.
From an American Literature position, its good stuff. Iconic, cliche, been around so long it can reference itself and its readers don’t get it because the reference is from 30 years ago, etc.
It is all a matter of taste. For me, I like funny comics to do more then make me chuckle more then once a month. But for a newspaper comic, that’s really all you can expect these days from them— the occasional chuckle. Anything funnier could be offensive to someone.
i don’t read newspaper comics anymore. in fact it’s been a while since I’ve read any US comics beyond Knights of the Dinner Table…
I’m not surprised that you are familiar with Knights of the Dinner Table, given what bits about you I have learned from various threads. As for myself, I only got to read a small amount of the series. However, in my RP group, there are constant references amongst the most veteran members to the incident with the gazebo…