Sorry for the overly long post, I guess I just really like debating H-game design today.
I search for H games when I want to fap, I always find it weird when people expect an actually deep and entertaining gameplay on top of good H from H games. Aren't you people asking far too much from H devs? They're making a super niche genre, 90% of the people that want such things would never look at a H-game to start with. Making a good game with gameplay that feels fun is difficult even for veterans in the industry working with several other people, while most H games are indies, and then they still have to obviously do a good work with the H since otherwise it shouldn't even be categorized as such, and then they still have to mix the H within the gameplay, which can be very hard to do without either the H ruining the gameplay or the gameplay ruining the H. I honestly think that games like this are just perfect H game design, it plays well enough and offers some difficulty in the hardest setting, and doesn't get in the way of the H if you don't want it hard either.
I disagree wholeheartedly. I think if a game is designed well, integrating porn into gameplay seamlessly, it links the two without either one getting in the way of the other. You as a player wouldn't notice it really. Of course I don't know what you played so far or what your preferences are, so I can't point out how a game you like does that, but I think there are examples of games out there where this is more or less achieved, I'll post some below. I also think the prequel to this was one example of it actually being done decently well.
Ah, the eternal struggle between gameplay and porn. I hear you loud and clear.
Game design-wise, it's hard to think of a gameplay loop that incorporates porn in it. If there is porn currently onscreen, there is usually no gameplay. Vice versa. Although, games should try and interject porn into gameplay, even if it's hard. That's progress, and progress leads to more satisfying experiences.
On the topic of why gameplay matters, while we come for the porn, we also come for the interactivity. If the interactivity(gameplay) is not satisfying, then the experience as a whole suffers. The player becomes more frustrated than aroused. Some mechanics may not have been used more effectively, such as what A lost Cat said that
And other mechanics that were not satisfying / frustrating.
Gameplay matters because the entire experience depends on it. If the hentai is good but the game isn't, then people would just go to the gallery and not play at all. At which point, why make a game?
(Which is also why people ask for 100% save files all the time. They don't want to play the game. >.>)
I agree with most of what MoxieTouch said, but I disagree with the part where they say a core gameplay loop that integrates porn is hard to come up with conceptually. In a general sense I could maybe agree, but since we are on ULMF, we're just talking about the subset of games that is shared here, right? And of those the majority has a focus on non-con fantasy / BDSM if I'm not mistaken (in this specific case mostly with involuntary hypnosis). And since almost all RPGs/action games already feature combat -> voilà! We combine that to get in-combat H.
So how do we use that to integrate porn and gameplay? We display varying stages of undress/restraint/hypnosis, and make a gameplay system of fighting off these states. The enemy wants to put them on and then attempts molestation/rape. Again, generally, looked at from outside, this is a large amount of work. You have to create the different assets for every one of those states, potentially even for combinations. Sure. But a lot of games already have most of that. Hell, the prequel to this had it. So it's more about
how you use the assets, the relative work difference between one implementation and another is not that much (relatively).
I think it's better shown with some examples. Again, I don't really know if these suggestions are games that you will be into personally, but I feel they all have at least an aspect of good game design that can be appreciated generally:
- Enokifu's games, especially Girl in the Red Slave Collar ["Akakubi Arena"]. It has a totally unique dice-based combat system takes most of the tactical decisions and moves them pre-battle, which frees the player somewhat during the action itself. The player is then only really tasked to react to QTE struggle mechanics (but it's reaction based, not just straight up mashing), or special attacks. Subliminally this all plays into the "damsel in distress" theme in that game, the MC is young and barely trained so you can't always choose the perfect move for the situation. The constant reactions needed to enemy moves makes it feel like you're constantly fighting them off. That's design working with the porn theme imo.
- Ahriman's The Moral Sword of Asagi is pretty legendary, at least partly because of the way it handled this whole dilemma. You can always see your three (or four) party members and they are almost constantly getting stripped, tied up and absolutely railed. The setting is pretty ridiculous and doesn't take itself all that seriously, but the gameplay loop of trying to keep every one of the party members in the fight while having animations of them getting dominated by the enemy is pretty cool. The game also kind of solved the whole issue of "losing to see scenes" by not having a permanent failure state. After a loss scene the MC just eventually frees herself and has to seek out all her party members one by one on the map to free them from their predicament and then you continue as if nothing happened. Creative problemsolving/design imo.
- Unko morimori maru's games basically have the same formula as Asagi, but instead with just one party member. This wouldn't work as a one-to-one translation of course, one party member gets locked into bondage like in Asagi - you're done. No one to save you. So there are some differences in the design that make it possible: Instead of party members being locked into bondage to get fucked as an "out of the fight" state, the MC gets various status effects that don't mean the end by themself, they just impair her in a certain way (slow her down / dissolve her clothes / lock out her spells etc) and then she gets slowly whittled down by the sex (and normal) attacks while weakened. This has a lot of similarities to the first Hasumi game.
Now let's come back to this game a little. In an action game, being restrained inevitably halts your progress and makes you unable to fight. This makes in-combat H exponentially harder. Status effects like in the games above, so bondage or hypnosis devices, would probably require entirely custom animations for every single one, or an extremely elaborate modular equip system, which both increase the required workload by a ton. In general I just really disagree with the choice to change the genre to action platformer for this game. While I do think you could potentially make a good h-game where the h is limited to scenes/animations separate from gameplay, I think the more you do mix the two, the easier it becomes to make a good h-game that doesn't devolve into a gallery hunt. And the action genre makes it so much harder to achieve that game-to-h union.
