Re: Akabur Games
I think it's more of a ravenous hunger for more English H-games more than anything, especially those with great art and a good story to boot, not to mention a good corruption system, so many games have the girl or guy go from an wide-eyed innocent to cum dump in like 4 or 5 scenes.
This. All of this. H-games basically consist of these "genres" of suckage:
1. Moon runes (and their inevitable companion, blurred out naughty bits). I could theoretically handle the moon runes (I live with a fluent Japanese speaker) but she doesn't share my porn tastes so she's unlikely to be willing to help me figure out what all the buttons in some untranslated J game do, or read the dialogue to me.
So translated is a must. And the hilariously prissy Japanese insistence on blurs / bars across genitals is astonishingly consistent. It's very rare to find anything that escapes their censors, which is really an amazing (if annoying) accomplishment for such a large nation in the digital age. It must be the weirdest job in the world, being the guy who has to check all exported smut to make sure every cock and cunt is blurred or barred in every scene. Makes it a bit rough for those of us from countries that don't loathe sex quite as much though. And finding uncensored versions of some games is like going on a fucking quest for Excalibur. So a game with English text (albeit Aka's unintentionally funny Russlish), good quality art, and lovingly drawn and perfectly visible funbits, is a treat.
2. Someone else's bizarre fetish. Whether it's futa, furry, loli, the idiosyncratic Japanese obsession with vibrators and fluids, etc., etc., there's plenty of H-games out there with at least something for everyone to be grossed / squicked out by. Finding something, like PT, which just sticks to more or less the basic human sex acts (oral, vaginal, anal) being engaged in by basic human bodies, is also quite a relief.
3. Too much story / grindfest. I'm all for some building of suspense and desire, but some games and visual novels are a miserable experience for anyone who just wants to have a fap. Unskippable opening scenes, H scenes doled out only very slowly, etc., etc. Endless grinding to get anywhere (ok, to an extent PT fails this test, and WT fails it miserably).
4. No animation. Maybe this is a personal preference but stills-only games, even ones with great art, leave me a bit bored. Obviously PT only partially passes this test since its only real animations are its chibis, but at least it's a gesture in the right direction. And no, voiceover work, however good, doesn't make up for lack of animation.
Basically, being an H-game fan is like searching for the rare diamond in a huge ocean of disappointing chaff. Short simple loops masquerading as games, boring visual novels with one or two still H scenes, and censored games mislabeled as uncensored by assholes who want to up their page hits abound. Compared to that mess, Akabur's stuff is really a cut above the average and the fact that it's freeware and you don't have to struggle to obtain it is even nicer.
so many games have the girl or guy go from an wide-eyed innocent to cum dump in like 4 or 5 scenes.
To focus on this a bit: I guess my key grievance is that many trainer games seem to dither as to how this corruption / training takes place. There are basically three sensible story options in terms of explaining it: force, magic, and trickery. The force method basically means the victim is broken through torture, abuse, etc., etc. until they comply. The magic method involves machines or magic spells that alter personality, like the "mind control machine" in the abortive Injustice Unlimited game. Trickery is the most complex method and involves leading the victim down the garden path and manipulating them into compliance. This is the most difficult method to pull off, and the chief strength of WT is the fact that it pulls this off quite well.
The problem with PT is it can't seem to decide whether it's using the force or magic options. There are times when Jasmine's response is the sort of "Grr, you brute, I hate you" type attitude one would expect of a character being forced. But then you send her to Tits McGee's Slut Academy and the chibi doesn't show her being restrained in any way, and magically the next day she's happy to do something she refused before, which makes it look more like the "magic" method. I think Akabur never could really pick one and sort of dithered. Maybe he just couldn't bear to draw lovely Jasmine in chains? Really, the better solution would have just been to have the story involve the Genie himself using his magic to corrupt her mind. You have a magical protagonist, it seems to naturally call for the magic method. Or if the force method is preferred, he should have gone for it all-out. Instead we get a somewhat unsatisfying middle approach.
At least what Akabur does well is draw out the corruption process into 8-10 stages, which shows willingness to put a lot of work on his own plate rather than half-assing it. A lot of game designers seem to start from the position of, "what's the least amount of work I can get away with doing in order to make the overall product function", and if he had been thinking that way he'd have gone with maybe 5 stages of corruption/sluttiness. Instead giving Jasmine two different scales (obedience and corruption) and giving each ten levels with changes to her in-game dialogue and behaviors at each stage, was quite an undertaking and I admire it because he really could have gotten away with doing much less.
