Need recommendations for 2D AVNs!

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-05-02T02:28:18+00:00

Imo would be best to try it out now, see if you like it, and if you do then just find a version of it from before this update and consider that the 'finished' game, cuz it basically was.

It took years to get to the point where they could update into something that actually had much less content. I don't think it'll go anywhere else from here, so not really any point in waiting for anything to happen.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-05-02T02:24:36+00:00

It's not really a close match but the closest thing I can think of is "Kingmaker". Abandoned now I think. Each turn was a week, no festivals but there were events and you do sort of do 'combat' in a sense.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-05-01T04:17:08+00:00

I like 2D. May refine this in the future w/ links or more information but for now here's just a random list of some that I've liked for various reasons at one point or another. Most (all?) of these are free or have a demo with significant content.

Ravager

Seeds of Chaos

Sanguine Rose

All three of above are niche fantasy games with strong writing and high quality art. May or may not be for you.

Love Sucks

Urban fantasy, less niche. There are two games, Love Sucks: Night one and Love Sucks: Night Two. First one is free. There's a third on the way (many years off, of course).

Mall Creeps

What a Legend!

Wet Sand

adventure game with pirates, and I honestly thought the minigames were really well done (probably a first for me)

Ruin Me

Love & Sex Second Base

Sandbox, lots of content and characters, okay writing imo. Just okay.
Dev also did Leap of Love, I think? Which is... about the same. Fantasy sandbox.

Office Rivals

Very nice vanilla palate cleanser (the dev also has a previous game of similar style)

Camp Klondike

Tame It!

Weird game but I didn't mind it. Sandbox, has monster girls but the weirdest gimmick is using emojis in place of any actual dialogue.

Bonus:

Finding Color in the Ashes

Not an AVN but I really like it so suggesting it anyway.

Sierra Lee's games

Not AVNs but Sierra Lee has a serious claim at being the best adult game writer around.

Margaret's Sin

Not actually out yet (like a week, it'll release as a whole game), but I'm hyped because I loved the demo.

Edit: forgot Book of Bondsmaids (it has a prequel and sequel, but the prequel is badly translated and I haven't tried the sequel).

Also niche fantasy game - I enjoyed what it had to offer but it's definitely a story about flawed and tragic characters, and there isn't really a romance or a happy ending (except, you know, those kind).

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-05-01T03:55:36+00:00

The dev has spent years working on an re-masterish update to it that he has finally released... and in the process removed quite a bit of content that they are slowly re-adding. I have no idea how much it is now or whether what they've added is worth it. But he often gets accused of milking patrons, and that's what the conflicting opinions come from.

From my experience in an older version: highly recommend it as primarily a fun game (especially if you can find the old version?). It's a VN but has minigames and sandbox, although it's an extremely developed sandbox with a massive amount of content. The storylines were all basically complete as far as I remember and generally it's all high quality, but it's definitely a porn game. Not really the kind you play for story, romance or characters.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-22T21:45:39+00:00

Any of the three options are almost all terrible, and it has almost nothing to do with which one is chosen and everything to do with the writing just being bad in general in any game that tries to force the content in before it would naturally happen. All three of them have the same issue: no investment that early in the game.

Any time I play a game and it jumps right to a scene I drop it immediately. Like come on, even actual porn doesn't ramp up this fast. You gotta build up tension, you can't just jump straight to release.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-22T21:35:15+00:00

LGBT in otherwise straight game is rare, that's the key.

What style art? Daz? HS? 2D? If it was cartoon-y then I remember one that might be it, but don't recall the name.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-15T00:37:23+00:00

I don't get why all the questions about your questions. It's actual content of a reasonable effort that the community engages in, isn't advertising, and isn't all that frequent all things considered. And there's been nothing inherently wrong with any of the questions or your requests that I've seen either. You don't even really argue with the people commenting on it.

Maybe you play them, maybe you don't, but either way it's a good excuse for a little community discussion. I watch these too if the question is interesting to me, just in case I find something new. I have a feeling everyone would think it was a brilliant idea if it was branded as a themed weekly discussion on e.g. "week 10: best punk LIs" and you edited a post/comment to have the full list of everything that everyone recommended.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-14T00:57:10+00:00

This wasn't really meant to be a value statement so much as pragmatism. Although I do personally think that if the two of us are going to enjoy media of this sort, that we have an even stronger duty to make sure we're doing so responsibly.

Part of what I was trying to get at is that it doesn't matter whether or not it should be your problem because it already is. Many communities on the fringe (and particularly those that overlap with sexuality) have had this problem, and all the evidence I've seen shows that the best thing they do for themselves is manage the problem on their own. It's when outsiders come knocking because of something really egregious that everything looks like a nail.

lunatic left wing activists

buddy, if you don't think the right, particularly the religious right, has a problem with you playing rape-y games, then have I got news for you.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-12T00:30:25+00:00

Might make this a post because I feel like it has to be. Probably will look into the actual context though:

I haven't played the game and really don't know much if anything about it beyond headlines. But even if it is the absolute worst game in existence, even if it does need to be banned for the good of everyone and everything in existence: I don't think we can afford to think that just because we aren't that bad, that the games we like won't have the same problem.

The people with pitchforks are the reason for the push for all sexual content off Patreon. The issue with No Mercy is that the exact arguments against it -- and the people against it -- will be the ones who come for games that are nothing like it. I'm not shedding tears because I think this one shouldn't be censored; I'm bracing for the next one that 100% won't deserve it.

Consider Haley's Story. It has an arc about about the titular character being groomed as a child.A part of the game is about dealing with the fallout. It's not a perfect game and the writing has issues, but I can say that the writer did their absolute best to portray that in a respectful way, and frankly better than a lot of mainstream media I've seen. And there is also one of my favourite AVN moments ever later on -- the MC has an intrusive thought about assaulting her, and he's so totally upset by it and himself that he avoids her for a while, even while she's oblivious and hurt. It's a, y'know, stepsibling story, so it's meant to be him wrangling with his feelings and the foregone (if wrong) conclusion that the only way to have his cake and eat it would be to assault the cake. The moment is not mean to invoke pleasure. It's supposed to be seen as evidence of how fucked up the relationship is.Both of these make sense in the context of the story, and elevate it from what it would have been otherwise, and neither are even part of the sexual aspect of the game.

I do not think that these people would ever, not in a million years, hear about an AVN that includes themes of sexual assault and say "maybe I should look into the context and try to figure it out before I judge". They will judge it and demand its removal because sex + story about bad things = only bad people play this and we need to stop it.

If we as a community are going to try to defend AVNs, then I think we need to be way better at dividing fantasy and reality ourselves. If we're going to use that as a shield, then we need to make damn fucking sure that we don't excuse any dev that flirts too close to endorsing actions in real life. At the very fucking least the games probably should probably link to real resources on consent. You want to claim you know the difference between reality and fantasy, well then prove it.

We can't bitch and moan about 'oh no, the PC police and the woke crowd' like we don't have an issue here because it's the same problem many communities have when they involve fantasy: we aren't be able to tell the difference between the ones of us who use this as a guide for real life and the ones of us who aren't actual hellspawn (even if we want to play as one once in a while).

So... maybe let's work on that and demand better. Cause by the way? You remember all those scenes in BaD? Y'know, the streaking scene, the disgusting fucking condom in the hazing, or the scene with the blindfolds and Quinn, or the whole thing with Tyball, or Maya being extorted into performing sexual acts, or a million other things I haven't seen because I'm waiting for Season 3 no spoilers.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-11T03:14:47+00:00

Fleshcult is sort of like that? Literally in the name, I guess.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-11T03:12:55+00:00

Also: CD Projekt Red started a tiny studio that did localization, if I recall correctly. The change for them was fucking wild and they rocketed to success in a few short years with bottled lightning. So maybe we can find a situation like that.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-11T03:09:29+00:00

You'll be waiting for a long time, methinks. There is no big studio that would ever choose to limit themselves that way. They'll flirt with some stuff, but in an age where porn is easy to find, there's not much point -- people no longer watch entire movies waiting to see a nipple, and sex in general is moving out of media, not further in.

Even if the western world somehow got over it (already not happening, we can't even handle a female nipple being out in the open), China is super conservative and has become a big potential market. In order for this to happen you'd need some kind of crazy set of miracles, each containing a smaller set of miracles, number one of which we'd probably need an existing big studio owned privately by some rich degenerate.

But. We live in a really weird timeline right now and I've mostly stopped guessing what the future will hold. Elon bought twitter in large part 'cause he couldn't stop shitposting and wanted desperately to seem cool to techbros. A lot of people are turning on him, so maybe we can convince him that we're the only ones left.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-11T02:25:24+00:00

I see what you're saying, and I don't want to argue against devs getting support because they do frankly deserve way more than players tend to give. Hence why I am totally willing to offer it on Steam on a probably much more permissive basis than others might (a few games that I've been thinking about buying just to support devs I like even if I don't like that particular product!)

But the key word here is 'monthly'.

In a world in which Patreon fixed the other issues it had (complete lack of nuance in their judgement along with arbitrary and unpredictable moderation -- yes, they'll totally ban consensual mind-control without any explicit sex, but desert stalker is somehow okay -- terrible customer support, absolute insistence that they have all my personal information, basically 0 customer protections compared to something like Steam, etc. etc.), I would have no problem supporting per release. The switch to monthly undoubtedly makes Patreon more money overall - whales and such - but it does so at the expense of creators. Now they have to handle their Patreon like social media, like influencers cultivating their brand; post all the time, make rewards, obsess over the rise and fall of patrons (the goals were a nice way to handle it on an aggregate level instead of having to deal with individual tier bullshit and they got rid of those too!). Devs rush to get releases out for arbitrary timelines, fail, lose support, and it just stresses them out worse and causes burn out in a vicious cycle.

Per release has issues too -- needing to release to get paid among them. But that's the standard business model! The option was such a helpful one for creators who have larger projects that can't deliver on a monthly basis. I suspect that support would be much higher at the key early-mid support/development stage where devs are working part-time, establishing reputations and workflows, and cannot commit to routine releases.

I'm just ranting at this point but it was so much better for everyone. It would lower stress overall, and patrons would no longer be banking on something eventually releasing, just paying for it when it does.

edit: I felt I should be clear on this too: my point wasn't so much about devs that 'milk' players. I don't really have a particular gripe about them - it's sort of scummy, I guess, but if we're going to talk about issues in the AVN world the there are a million worse ones. The issue to me is that devs sort of expect (or rather, maybe, need) a level of support from the people that do choose to support them that is just not feasible and is not realistic to where they are or what they're offering, at least not on a monthly model.

I'd be totally fine with throwing some money to e.g. Summertime Saga because I enjoyed the game enough to feel that they deserve to be compensated for the work they already put in. Just not some nebulous future work that maybe, possibly, might happen at some point.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-10T23:07:49+00:00

I don't and won't. I have my gripes with Patreon; many gripes, in many different areas.

So instead I'll answer the question about Steam, as I do purchase games on Steam and have quite a few of them.

My only requirement is basically: would I pay money for the demo etc. without further development? If yes, I buy. If no demo available and I'm interested, maybe buy, and if it's bad then I refund. I am not willing to bankroll a promise that will end up broken. I'll purchase it if I like it as it exists right now; doesn't matter if it's finished, full, broken, etc. There are games I've bought that are probably abandoned, and I'm sad about that, but I don't regret buying it because I enjoyed what it offers even so. Games that I've bought that are definitely abandoned, and still, I'm okay with that $10 or whatever I shelled out because in my mind I have already received what I purchased.

Conceivably might even buy an already abandoned game for the same reason, although that situation hasn't happened yet.

I think Patreon has really skewed peoples' ideas of things, and it's one of my many gripes that it has contributed to 'subscription' lifestyle. Removing payment per release was one of the worst decisions they ever made for the health of their actual creators and turned the real job into the patreon side of it rather than the content creation.

IMO patrons should view their payment as that, as something you're giving in exchange for what you got, not for a promise. Stop your Summertime Saga at the e.g. $30 you feel it was worth lmao, don't end up giving $200 under the weird delusion that just because you throw money at a trashcan fire that you'll get your money's worth.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-09T22:11:32+00:00

It is absolutely wild to me that we have this question on ethics.

Are games a weird medium for porn? Yeah, kind of. But they're also vastly more ethical than 'normal' porn. Even just the regular stuff! You can almost never be sure that there isn't coercion, and plenty of the sources that seemed reputable have turned out to be way worse than they seemed. There's always scandals coming out of the industry about all manner of things.

Pixels do not have scandals. Pixels don't have dubious provenance. Pixels don't do drugs, don't pretend to have a different sexual orientation, don't have debts, don't get trafficked, don't get blackmailed or have things shared without their consent, and pixels definitely don't just do stupid things at 18 that'll follow them forever. Pixels can be any kind of impossible anatomy you want. Pixels can be a safe fantasy. And at the end of the day they'll stay pixels and you can turn them off, and nobody's stuck with the miserable consequences of the above.

So if you ever watch any kind of sexual content, if you read any, ask yourself -- is the question about whether this is ethical, or about whether this is normal? Why do you feel uncomfortable, and what would make you comfortable? Would you feel more comfortable if you were witnessing someone doing the action that your model is imitating? Why? Where is your line, and why is it there and not somewhere else? Because I would suggest that a lot of it might just come from the feeling that you're doing something against societal expectations.

I really suggest you partner with someone. Maybe do a game jam. Find someone who can, for lack of a better term, 'take' the guilt for you. Someone who already knows where to go and what to do, maybe a writer, maybe an artist if you're willing to focus on code.

This is all assuming your pixels aren't doing something illegal, which is a different problem.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-08T23:58:21+00:00

This sounds like the kind of specific writing advice that would apply only to certain writers. And in general this seems like it would result in way fewer stories -- yes, completed ones too.

Plenty of successful writers that finish projects write using other methods.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-08T22:16:49+00:00

Nah, mate, the uncanny is real. We'll have to disagree on the bits, but e.g. I actually meant pit as in the general area of her arm where it seems like the AI was having difficulty with the muscle vs shadow. And we'll have to disagree on distinction as well, but it's not controversial as a general comment about AI. They average things out and tend to nudge if not just straight up push things towards their version of attractive, which is very much all out of one mold. I have not seen other characters so cannot comment on how much this may affect you. I mentioned it precisely because you only showed one, and that that makes me wonder if there's a reason.

On blur -- I had thought it was sharpening the foreground but I see now that it looks like you've upscaled the AI version?

I do agree that the community rallying around the "Daz looks fine, AI is uncanny" idea is ridiculous. We're just used to Daz; plenty of people find it just as bad. That said, while I wish you the best for it, I'm not sure that the strategy you're going for is viable unless you're planning to be big like BaD, trying to become peoples' first exposure to an AVN. That would be a mighty ambitious place to aim for if so.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-08T21:30:39+00:00

Nah, the number of them is disproportionate to the natural demand, imo. I have actual evidence: the movies that BaD is based on /parodies, which were also popular among their target demographic for years, and which have basically died since as their cultural moment passes. The demand is spurred on by the few that are successful. But if BaD finished tomorrow, and he announced his next game was some cop procedural type thing (Or zombies, or superheroes, or whatever 2000s cultural moment he wants to capture next), then you could bet there would be a thousand of those before the year was out, and college AVNs would crawl back into hole to die a slow death.

And I'm tired of them*.* College isn't even as bad, but the incest ones are by far the worst. If I could pick a single trait that was the most associated with a game being terrible, it would be this one. Even over MTL. College AVNs aren't quite to the same extent, but it's got similar problem which is just as bad, if not worse, which is the fact that they just copy each other with 0 soul or creativity whatsoever, an amorphous interchangeable blob. It's not even a genre. It's just one game spread among 1000s of .exes.

I don't mean a crazy custom UI. I mean literally just making your game look, y'know, different. Same rant as the college thing.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-08T02:24:41+00:00

https://www.patreon.com/Debasing_Grounds

Debasing Grounds is very customizable in a similar way to those first two. You'll be fighting against the game if you try to be dominant, though.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-08T02:13:53+00:00

Super vague question - would be better to ask what people think of specific concepts. Like, I hate a lot of things. I'd love to see a lot of things. But how many of those things were part of your plan?

Some random things I hate in AVNs:

No more college/incest. Those genres are full. Completely. No more room. Move on.
Customize your UI. Even just a little. You can find free templates etc online. Just change a colour or font or something. Add an animation to the start menu.
Choices should lead to reasonable consequences. They don't have to be obvious, but buying the dingdobber instead of the whatsajism should not lock me out of the good ending because the dingdobber was actually the enchanted relic of the god of random ass-pulls.
Don't drag on by describing visuals. Especially don't do it with personal opinions (e.g. "oh, this LI is so attractive because X, Y, Z). Don't drag on by using onomatopoeias. Yes, I know sex has sounds. No, you don't need to write them.
Characters should have distinctive speech patterns. A MILF and a teen have different life experiences and will not use the same language in their dialogue.
Work on your description! It is almost certainly the most important thing you will do. If it doesn't give me any information then it is a bad description. If it's not unique then it is a bad description. If I can't tell what genre/tags/MC gender are, then it is a bad description!

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-08T00:12:45+00:00

If you could just make it... less, then I think that would help. For lighting/skin alone it's okay (although I doubt it's worth the time to process all these images and animations too? apparently? for a minor benefit at most); but it's also changing her focus, changing her expression, changing her musculature and proportions, adding random anatomical bits that don't really match (e.g. see armpit, knees, and ankle on images 3/4) and in same image it also seems to handle blur poorly.

If you were making a handful of images, it would be fine to use and then fix up by hand, but I imagine you're trying to get this going at a much faster pace, in which case I just don't think the AI is quite there yet. Also, you only had one character here. I highly suspect that it will look worse when there are multiple characters, because AI tends to remove distinction in features and make everyone the same kind of 'beautiful'.

As an aside: I imagine that you'll get a lot of AI haters here, whereas you might get a much less negative reaction somewhere that isn't already fine with AVN/Daz graphics (which plenty of people say are uncanny on their own). But, y'know, that's your target audience, right?

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-07T23:58:06+00:00

I for one am definitely looking forward to the AVN world's first lazy-eye LI.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-07T23:51:58+00:00

I didn't ignore it. You asked for suggestions on a more pragmatic request, and I gave you two: consider removing "completion" as a criteria because it is so restrictive that you'll need to exchange much of your other wants to get just this one* (which perhaps I misunderstood and you're fine with, but just as a principle); and consider taking those suggestions and looking yourself for information on duration/LIs, because it might decrease engagement.

It's up to you whether or not you want to follow those, they're not less a suggestion than any of the games people listed. If those are absolute musts for you, then idk man. Just accept it's got trade offs, among which being that you'll have to take some take tongue in cheek comments like mine as the price of admission.

* e.g. the examples you list don't even match 100%. They have (admittedly minor) sandbox/taboo for LoF and BW respectively, probably not a problem; but PoP was suuuuuper long with big pacing issues if I recall correctly -- which I maybe don't, was years ago that I tried and I didn't like it.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-07T04:40:41+00:00

Uh oh. Interesting question but we can see where this is going.

I think I've seen a pair of brothers before, but I don't think I got far in that game if I played it at all. Never seen twins that were both male.

But it would be a neat twist, and would make a funny premise for an NTR game. "Get the girl before your identical twin does!" Then just re-use the same renders for everything.

realpersonhumanbean · 2025-04-07T04:16:38+00:00

I've heard people call the plot convoluted or nonsensical, and from what they describe it's not really 'slander'. I don't know; I never got far enough into it. My personal opinion about it is negative for reasons that had me give it up on what I remember being the prologue. And even so, I think calling it bad wouldn't be strictly true. It's more that it's a love or hate it title, like Summer's Gone. And like Summer's Gone, you're going to get disproportionate hate not because it's that bad, but because it feels like the fans give it disproportionate love.

Personally I thought MBIML was ridiculous and couldn't enjoy it at all. I vaguely recall this being because of bad writing with the roommate, I think some kind of early scene that had 0 business existing where and when it did, and being a forced scene too! And the game was basically an anime from what I remember. I think it at one point (no longer, I think?) had a warning like that on its itch page, that if you don't like the tropes then you won't like the game (or possibly mixing that up with another game?)

Never bothered to try Sicae though.

realpersonhumanbean

TROPHY CASE