Month: December 2024

PICTURED: A stock photo of a king penning some manner of proclamation on a scroll.

Three days ago, I posted an image to my Bluesky account. This image stated that for the meagre price of a single “Like” given to the post to which the picture was attached, I would provide my followers with One Thing I Would Change If I Was The Undisputed And Tyrannical King Of Porn. I scarcely expected the Like counter to reach double digits, but apparently the masses cry out for strong, confident, and above all REGAL guidance, because the Likes poured in so quickly that I gave up all hope of keeping up with them. I wound up topping out at fifty-three pieces of monarchical wisdom, which feels reasonably auspicious to me. That’s enough for one per week, plus one extra as a bonus. As heartening as it is to realize that I apparently have a large pool of potential subjects eager to submit themselves to my rule, social media is nothing if not ephemeral, and I decided it would be best if I collected said wisdom here for posterity. Thus, here is said wisdom (lightly edited and reorganized for greater digestibility).

Continue reading “Fifty-Three Changes To Come When I Am The King Of Porn” →

PICTURED: Pieces of concept art for Opportunity’s main character Jacqueline, showcasing some facial expressions and a few early takes on her baker’s uniform.

Jacqueline (Jackie For Short)

Jacqueline is a character borne from a confluence of many intersecting anxieties I was experiencing when first setting out to work on Opportunity: anxiety about the ever-increasing cost of living, anxiety about rising Puritan fascism, anxiety about social isolation, anxiety about aging, anxiety about my own sexual desirability, and anxiety about how uncertain and unfriendly the future looked amid an ongoing pandemic. I suppose it follows that she wound up being a pretty anxious person herself.

A lot of what I think people find true or relatable about Jackie was really just me trying my best to represent the real-world struggles of my friends who were mothers. Going back to the previous entry in this series, the real-world setting again does a lot of the conceptual heavy lifting here: everyone knows that, in our society, mothers have it rough. A mother is an amalgam of several highly-skilled jobs, none of them paid. A mother is a teacher and a counsellor, a mother is a cook and a maid, a mother is an accountant and an event planner. And that’s all before getting into the increased challenge of being a single parent with a full-time job to boot! Put all of that together and you’ve got a character who is tired, stressed, tired, experiencing guilt from a half-dozen different directions at any given time, tired, more than a little sexually-frustrated, and unimaginably tired. A character, in other words, who is desperate to make a change.

(I’ll just put a reminder here before the break: this series contains spoilers about the plot of Opportunity: A Sugar Baby Story! You’ve been warned!)

Continue reading “Opportunity Retrospective Part 3: Jacqueline & Her Family” →

5

This is fourth of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but 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

CONTENT WARNING: THIS ESSAY CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF NON-CONSENSUAL SEX ACTS.

What Is The Rance Series?

The Rance series is a long-running series of erotic Japanese role-playing games developed by Alicesoft from 1989 to 2018 spanning 13-ish games. They star its titular character, the brutish hero Rance and his faithful slave Sill Plain as they venture out in the Continent. While the earlier games feature more small-scale misadventures in a single town or village, they quickly escalate into large-scale conflicts involving the larger powers that control entire kingdoms and wars between the human powers and the monsters who rule the other side of the Continent. Throughout the games, Rance and Sill meet the people who inhabit the world from all sorts of social classes and kingdoms, learn about their situations, and usually get involved in the conflicts that arise-be it by Rance’s own actions or the actions of others.

However, what Rance wants isn’t really to help others or to fight for justice; he’s simply in it for the women. Throughout the games, Rance has many sexual encounters with the various women he meets, often in extremely non-consensual contexts, and forms friendly relationships with some of them as they become recurring characters. Yet Rance’s main interaction with sex (usually) involves rape, and it’s an aspect of his character that’s remarked upon throughout the games as he meets new people.

This element is understandably something that will turn people off from the series. It’s the main barrier for people who’re uncomfortable with rape being depicted in media even if the setting, gameplay, and designs are appealing on the outside. I am not trying to convert people who don’t like those elements wholesale into the series. Rather, I think the Rance series has a lot of interesting elements that it explores through this framework and I personally find those elements interesting, especially as it relates to how the characters form relationships where consent is dubious or non-existent.

To do this, I want to first establish some basic ideas relating to how the series operates, as I believe it’s very important to get some elements clear for people who haven’t heard of the series or only know about it through its reputation on the internet.

Continue reading “The Dynamics Of Sex In The Rance Series” →

PICTURED: Some saucy seasonal art of Jacqueline, circa 2021.

Happy December, everyone! Last month of the year, huh? Hope it’s a good one! Let’s get to the update.

Monstrous Liberation Work

Some fucking excellent news right from the jump: Monstrous Liberation has passed Steam’s build review process and thus has an official launch date! That’s right, you will be able to purchase and play the early-access version of Monstrous Liberation on Steam and Itch on FEBRUARY 24TH, 2025! If you haven’t already, now would be an EXCELLENT time to wishlist the game on Steam!

My work for this month is pure polish for the launch version, which I anticipate being fully launch-ready by the end of December. Arden got their edit pass feedback back to me a couple of days ago, and I have begun the process of adding in the mountain of em dashes they demand (along with various minor rewrites, grammar fixes, and the like). I’ll also be making other minor fixes here and there (the city map buttons, for example, have literally never worked the way I want them to and it’s time to finally address that). After all the polish has been completed, I’ll take a little break and then get to planning the content for the first update!

On Pacha’s end, she was unfortunately working through some more health stuff, but has been working hard to finish up all the remaining art (which, at this point, only consists of a few fixes to some sprite art and a handful of splash panels) by the end of the year.

Continue reading “December 2024 Update: Finally, Some Good Fucking News” →

2

This is third of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but 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: Lynn “wintermute” Robinson

I enjoy playing Tales of Androgyny. It is a well illustrated porn game with Visual-Novel-style dialogue and a surprisingly deep combat system that leads into evocative sex scenes. The majority of fuckable NPCs within the game are large, voluptuous women sporting equally large penises. The outcomes of the dialogue and combat systems determine whether they end up fucking your player character (“PC”) or being fucked by them, as well as who is “leading the action”. As a trans woman who is sexually interested in other women, these characters are unsurprisingly appealing to me. I enjoy the sex scenes, although what keeps me coming back to the game as it continues development are the engaging systems and the fantasy of inhabiting the world. The game allows some level of character customization, and so I tend to play Tales of Androgyny the same way I do Corruption of Champions (“CoC”), or games like Fallout or Skyrim: I make my character into a facsimile of myself, and role-play as if I were inhabiting that world.Though not particularly fine-grained, the character customization does facilitate this style of play through renaming the PC, picking their facial characteristics, skin tone, hair color, and the sizes of body parts. You cannot pick your gender, notably, nor can you pick your genitals like you can in CoC. Though I am unbothered by the mandatory penis and solitary hole, the lack of gender selection is where I begin to experience friction in my desired role-play.

Continue reading “Femboys, Futanari, And Finding Myself In The Space Between Their Bodies” →

5
PICTURED: An piece of splash art from Opportunity’s first chapter.

THE INITIAL CONCEPT

There are two things you should know before I explain where the idea for Opportunity came from. The first of them is this: at the start of 2020, Pacha and I were still working on our previous project – an erotic sci-fi vehicle about a school for mech pilots called As Above/So Below. As fond as we were of the concept and the characters, we’d also been grinding away at it for over three years without much more than a demo to show for it and we were both getting pretty burnt-out. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit at the start of 2020, that was pretty much the final nail in the coffin, as it left me thoroughly brainbroken for several months and the thought of continuing to struggle with AA/SB while I was trying to keep it together in the middle of a global pandemic was unthinkable.

The second thing you should know is that for several years up to this point, I had been nursing an absolutely TERMINAL crush on a good friend. She was, unfortunately for me, happily married to a frankly excellent dude, and also had two small children.

The more observant among you may start to see where this is heading.

Continue reading “Opportunity Retrospective Part 2: Concept & Themes” →

1

This is second of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but 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: raginghadron

Time and time again while browsing adult games, I see store page after store page with bad marketing copy; bad enough that it actually obstructs the process of deciding whether or not to buy or try a game. This sucks from the perspective of a consumer, and it’s also gotta suck from the perspective of a developer.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve seen indie developers talk about struggling with marketing, and I can totally understand how it can seem difficult from the outside, but it isn’t something that’s out of reach, even for an indie developer with no budget.

I used to work as an editor for marketing copy; I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a marketing expert, but pointing out flaws in marketing copy (and suggesting ways to fix them) was part of my job.

In this article, I want to use that experience to help you market your adult game. This isn’t about advertising or social media campaigns, but about the fundamental way you describe your game to potential buyers. Specifically, I’m going to focus on what goes on a game’s store page, but this information should generalize well to any other forms of marketing you choose to do.

Continue reading “Don’t Play Coy: Marketing Advice For Adult Game Devs” →

1