Category: Adult Analysis Anthology

This is ninth of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Stanley Baxton

When you hear “adult games”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? You might think of Steam, with dozens of hyper-specific fetish VNs released seemingly every minute. You might think of itch.io, with the top games feed flooded with asset flips and uncensored genitalia in thumbnails. To be brief, your first thought is probably not a harrowing deconstruction of sexual trauma, and instead Elf MILF Simulator 5000.

This isn’t to insult the elf MILFs, or the devs hard at work bringing them into the world, but is a demonstration of the current existence of a specific sub-genre of adult games. Games that take adult themes and topics, sometimes including on-screen sex, and use them as tools of artistic expression. A tighter description, that these are games that happen to contain explicit content, rather than sexual gratification being the main draw for players, and are often presented as serious experiences.

These games, however, often find themselves side-by-side with the thumbnails mentioned earlier. And often, someone looking for something to jerk off to is not also looking for a game that makes them contemplate their life choices. It begs the question: why are these games put next to ones that are apparently their antithesis, and is there a potential solution? Then, the next question from this arises: does that solution have consequences?

Continue reading “The Tension Between “Artistic” Adult Games & Pornography, And How A Distinction Cannot Exist Under Capitalism” →

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This is eighth of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Liz Alfos

Introduction

A beautiful woman is sitting alone at a bar. You want to approach her. What would you say as your opening line?

  • “What does it feel like to be the most beautiful girl in this room?”
  • “Good evening miss. What’s such a pretty lady doing here?”
  • “Hey chick. How’s it going?”

This is the introduction of Meet and Fuck Leila, an adult Flash game released in 2008. It’s five minutes long and not very original. And according to its stats on Newgrounds, it has been played more than sixteen million times.

Back in the 2000s, there was Flash, the most popular platform for games and animations online. First developed by a small independent studio, bought by Macromedia and later acquired by Adobe, it changed the course of online entertainment during its two decades of lifetime. So, of course plenty of porn was made with it. It was not a niche genre; many Flash portals such as Newgrounds or Funny Games featured an adult section. And among those, the Meet ‘N’ Fuck (or MnF for short) games stand above the rest. In terms of view, Meet N’ Fuck: Ocean Cruise has more than twenty million views on Newgrounds alone. Meet N’ Fuck Detective RPG? Twenty-five million.

This alone indicates the popularity of the franchise, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. During the late 2000s and early 2010s, these games had an undeniable impact on the Flash pornography landscape, popularizing tropes we are still finding in adult games today. This is why I wanted to explore this series in the first place. I talked to adult game creators, researched Flash games of the era, and I’m ready to discuss what is exactly a Meet ‘n’ Fuck game. And it starts, as always, when a man meets a woman.

Continue reading “The Meet ‘N’ Fuck Saga” →

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This is sixth of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Faye

One Mouse In A Bondage Club

Late at night on a crudely coded chat-based website, I was a girl.

Everyone was – Bondage Club was designed by a cis, straight man, and adding male characters was side-tabled for years citing player interest. So cis men, sissy, cis women, and trans women players abounded on the site. We sought to put our sexed-up femme paper doll avatars into bondage scenes and have everyday conversations on the side.

We would chat in small rooms of up to 10 people, some public and private. In them, we’d dress up and tie up our 2-D characters with clothes, bindings, and accessories made by contributors. Using clickable emotes, we’d pet heads, spank asses, and cuddle against each other. Some were happy to just chat and have eye candy to go with it. For others, we’d play a character and role-play scenarios that used chat, the dress-up mechanics, and the emotes to write our own erotica.

Over time, I experienced more and more of what I called “RP Bleed” – that I myself was being inhabited by that character rather than the other way. I liked being that woman, especially once she tried a potion in a scene and was permanently turned into a mousegirl. Then even later one night, I bought an outfit for $7 that matched one my character wore.

As my character might say: “Ah, squeak.”

Continue reading ““Clicking Away While Imagining How Things Would Feel” – A Survey Of Gender Feelings In Porn Games” →

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This is fifth of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: BáiYù

There is a good chance that if you are reading this essay, you have interacted with erotic games in the past, and perhaps have even willingly sought them out before. It’s a novel idea to be sure! But stay with me on this one: imagine that, after a good 10 or so minutes of sifting through dozens and dozens of games with off-putting titles and uncensored box art which clearly goes against itch.io TOS, you find something that you’re willing to click on so you can learn more about what it has to offer. Your eyes scan the list of features — fetishes, rather — and determine that yes, you’re still willing to take it for a spin. You then either download a build or load up the browser demo, double check that your door is locked while loosening your pants, and click to begin playing, only to be hit with an early cutscene where the protagonist is very clearly protesting the concept of having sex.

Oh, you think to yourself, these fictitious sexual acts I wanted to indulge in are being framed as assault and rape. Again.

Continue reading “Please Let Me Say “Yes”: A Study Of Consent & Agency In Eroge” →

This is fourth of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Eithi

Sex is a very difficult thing to balance in games. There’s an art to portraying sexual scenes in porn games in a way that doesn’t disrupt the pacing and also feels like it “fits” within the context of the narrative. While it’s easy to add a sex scene during an intimate moment between two characters and make that flow from the previous scene to the next one, one must be able to approach these moments with a particular level of finesse in order for the work to feel cohesive. In HRPGs (or hentai RPGs, “hentai” being the Japanese word for “pervert”), sex scenes have a unique relationship with the overall structure of the game, especially as it pertains to them as content.

Continue reading “Demons Roots And Sex Scenes As “Content”” →

This is third of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: MorganH

I started playing pornographic games shortly before I realized I was some kind of asexual, in that chaotic summer of 2020. There was an unmitigated global pandemic, the United States was rioting, I recently moved across the entire continent, from Connecticut to Los Angeles for grad school in the hopes that classes would be in-person by the fall (a laughable idea, in hindsight). And to occupy myself in my empty rented room during those empty weeks, I partitioned my time between two primary activities: playing porn games and moping.

I’ve always enjoyed erotica and pornography — I have a distinct memory of stumbling across those early chapters Alexis Flowers’ fantasy-porn masterpiece I Roved Out in Search of Truth and Love in 2015 and being stunned that smut could also be so skillful. Since then, I’d developed a taste for what I liked and what I didn’t, and discovery of those adult games opened up a new dimension, an entire medium to explore. My first forays, like so many others who discover adult games for themselves, were with some of the most recognizable, the games that had substantial online audiences that would recommend them, or the ones that appeared at the top of the itch.io store in the “Adult” or “Erotic” categories: Third Crisis, Treasure of Nadia, Harem Hotel, and Summertime Saga and its ilk, the endless procession of games seemingly built around a core memory of finding a VHS copy of Taboo II, in which the performance of Kay Parker is a load-bearing structure of pornographic videogames. But the taboo whose violation first enthralled me was itself the intrusion of porn games into my previously un-sexualized digital space.

Continue reading “Playing With Myself: Asexuality At Play In Course Of Temptation” →

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This is second of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Amenyx

Madeby Infinity Alpha and published by SGArts, NU:Carnival is a Josei BL visual novel,. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Eiden, a (respectful) horndog of a sex toy maker leading a very corporate life before gettng isekai-ed into the world of Klein. Here, he meets his ‘clan members’: people tasked with maintaining one of the 6 altars across Klein through ‘regulating essence’ (getting their freak on). As the story progresses, we explore each of the 12 clan members, their pasts and their presents, what drives them and Eiden’s own connection with the land of Klein in this kinky-yet-wholesome game.

Continue reading “Carnal Tactics: A Nu: Carnival Review” →

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This is first of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Zoquete

After the release of Deathblossom, my most recent NSFW game project, I paid close attention to the discussion surrounding the game’s presentation and themes. One exchange stood out to me in particular:

“Gameplay wise and game design wise the game is amazing. I felt it is a waste to make it into a hentai game because the hentai part is most di[s]appointing part”

“Honestly hard agree. The writing is easily the best part of this game, no contest, and the visual design i love just as much, but the porn is mediocre, and if it didn’t have porn it likely would be able to be mainstream, and get omega popular. So sad honestly, thinking how many people could’ve seen this game, and seen its story.”

“People are getting so prudish lately that I feel lonely in thinking that it’s fun to have some ero content in ‘normal’ games.”

They’re entitled to their opinion about the quality of my smut, but there’s something more interesting to unpack here. Why was it “a waste to make it into a hentai game”? Does adult content really prevent a game from being good or finding an audience? Is it merely a question of fitting erotica into an otherwise ‘normal’ game? These questions point to a broader underlying principle about the way we think of adult games that’s worth taking the time to dissect.

Continue reading “Yes, It Was Worth It: An Argument For Quality Porn Games” →

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PICTURED: Sasha finds herself on the wrong side of the law! Art by Pacha!

Right up at the top: you can now support BP Games on Patreon! More on that below!

Happy June, everyone! We’ve had a little bit of hot weather here so far, but otherwise summer is starting out a little bit cool. It’s also art market season here; I picked up some lovely pieces from the newly-minted Rain City Comic Con and Art Conbini! I love art! Let’s get into the update!

Continue reading “June 2025 Update: AAA3 Now Available!” →

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PICTURED: Logo for the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, designed by Pillowkisser.

That’s right, fans of long-form high-quality writing about adult games and adult game culture! The time has finally come! I’m really excited to bring this issue to you, it’s a real doozy – we’ve got some fantastic new contributors, like game devs Zoquete and Lindsay Ishihiro, as well as some wonderful returning contributors like Leo G. and MorganH! We’ve got TWELVE essays planned, on a terrific array of subjects ranging from a Meet ‘N’ Fuck retrospective, a series of interview with Bondage Club players, a look at the tension between “serious, artistic” depictions of sexuality in games versus explicitly pornographic depictions thereof, and many more!

I’ve got the full text of the campaign below the cut, but if you’d like to jump straight there to contribute or share, here’s the link!

Continue reading “AAA3 Fundraiser LIVE!” →