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.