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”