Adult video games...of the other sort

Back in early 2019, Subverse became one of the top, most fast funded projects on Kickstarter, and blasted through its goals. Subverse went on to garner more than 2 million dollars of consumer-to-developer cash.

This meant a lot of things, of course.

It signalled to many studios and creators that no, turns out you don't necessarily need the pockets of a big publisher to make the game you want to make in the scale and scope you want to make it. If your proof of concept and quality of work are up to par, gamers will maybe - just maybe- be able to help you take it off the ground yourself, without a publisher breathing down your neck to meet deadlines and alter things to their wishes.

It signalled that gamers had finally started realising en masse that publishers are the issue in most cases of botched, buggy releases, rushed content, microtransactions galore, and overall bad quality. The place of these colossi in the face of a future of digital storefronts and no-middlemen possibilities, suddenly did not seem so immutable.

Subverse, 2019/ongoing

It also signalled that there was an eager and sizable market for games that not only included sex, but revolved around it. Smut money is still money, after all. Just ask the porn industry.

Subverse is not the first video game with sex in it, of course. Subverse isn't even the first game where the focus is on sex. Faaaaar from it.

Based on the above, Subverse was the last -and strongest- smut signal in a market that, in the western world, was considered niche.

Gals Panic, 1990

(Japan was...well...Japan. This genre had been going strong over there for quite some time, and had long been exploring not only explicitly sexual content in videogame form, but niche fetishes as well)

Real Kanojo, 2009

Koikatsu!, 2019

But before we go any further, let's do one my favorite things - a deep dive into video game history.

Ever since someone saw 80085 on a calculator, squinted and chuckled, we have been attempting to simulate sex and sexual content in an interactive digital format - sometimes with a "serious" approach, and sometimes with tongue in cheek.

What game was first is most likely lost to history at this point. Of course, the limitations of technology of the time did not allow for much in the way of innovation - mostly what came in the late 70es and early 80es was a softporn variation or own take on:

a) a (what would eventually become known as a) visual novel with digitised pictures of models

b) an arcade game with digitised adult-themed pictures to gradually reveal

c) strip "something" (usually poker in the western world, mahjong in Japan)

The sheer volume of these identical clones of similar concepts (often with little to identify and timestamp them) makes any sort of accurate backtracking a very difficult task. The general concensus is that the first main release in this theme was Softporn - a text adventure that was basically an interactive erotic novel.

There were some exceptions to the above, of course, but not much worth talking about (there are some hilariously simple and rudimentary -albeit explicit- "sex simulators" of the era) save for some that live in infamy due to their tone-deafness (even for that era), such as Custer's Revenge - in which the player assumes the role of General Custer (ostensibly after the events of the Little Bighorn), serial raping native american women while doging arrows. Yes, it's exactly as bad as it sounds.

There is also a myriad of strip poker games as early as CGA graphics up until now, the earliest examples of which were
at the time tittilating, nowadays tame when compared to an average pop music video.

"Strip poker", 1985. Please note that games with the exact same name are uncountable - even its contemporary ones.

There's no use beating around the bush (and I swear using that expression was not an intentional joke): the theme and tone has remained largely the same to this day. Most adult-themed games coming out today belong in the same broad categories, with the change that the exceptions to this are more abundant and vary in quality.

Leisure suit Larry In the Land of the Lounge Lizards, 1987

Now, I'd love to be able to tell you this is a subject I only recently dived into in order to write this, but it would not be truthful. This started decades ago, when a floppy disk with Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards fell into my hands (complete with age-determining questions on american pop culture and history which 10-year old me brute-forced, memorising correct answers each time).

Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!, 1996

At the time I enjoyed the Larry games (one of my earliest forays into adventure games), culminating in the peak of the series with Larry 7: Love for Sail and never truly recovering after attempting to go 3D with Larry: Magna Cum Laude .

Lula: The Sexy Empire, 1998

It continued with Lula: The Sexy Empire, skipped the sequel and became a problem with Lula 3D.

Lula 3D, 2005

There were others I tried from time to time, mostly out of curiosity, but never really delved back into the subject after Lula 3D.

Yeah, it was that bad.

Until Subverse, that is. Its mere existence made me want to explore what exactly was going on with this. The concept of a crowdfunded project of this size intruiged me, and the kickstarter entry point was low enough that I went ahead in a "sure, why the heck not" moment.

This kicked me down a rabbit hole of trying several examples of what this niche sub-genre had to offer. From the polished ones to the cash grabs, from the multi-person team AA projects with smooth graphics and animation, to the 1-person indie puzzle games with hentai pictures.

And now finally I emerge with my findings.

It's bad, people. It's really bad.

Most of these suffer greatly both in terms of gameplay as well as polish, and the crushing majority of these has no story or actual meat-and-potatoes gameplay to speak of. I fully expected to delve into this and come out with a quality assessment, telling you which ones of these deserve your time, but the truth is the majority of these games are little more than niche masturbatory aids with some gameplay elements tacked on.

There are so many puzzle games with nude pictures or models slapped on them that it really does not even make sense to get into it: peruse and purchase at own discretion (and risk). The exact same thing applies to various "dating simulator"/visual novel "games".

There are those who stand above the rabble, of course. But usually, even the best of them are not something to write home about in terms of an actual game. And I say this after buying (with my own money) and trying several of these, and researching the upcoming releases.

There are great games out there that feature sex - sometimes heavily so, like, say, the Witcher series, or even more independent releases like Agony Unrated or Lust For Darkness.

Lust for Darkness, 2018

But games whose selling point is sex are usually trite, or rushed, or boring, or copy a mainstream formula up to apoint with copious amounts of digital nudity slapped on top of them to the point they become veritably tiring as everything in them revolves around getting 3D characters to bump uglies (such as, say, Bonetown or Bonecraft or Whorecraft), to the point they are little more than a porn parody of the game they borrow elements from. The most famous example of this is probably Bonetown, a GTA clone that has been around for a long time.

Bonetown, initially released in 2008, saw a re-release in 2018

Then there are those that are flat out porn simulators, like Succubus Cafe, or niche itch-scratchers like the upcoming Carnal Instinct, and those that feature highly detailed models and features that showcase them for this exact reason, but fail to just own what they are by attempting to be an action game or whatever (such as She Will Punish Them)

Succubus Cafe, 2021

Carnal Instinct, TBR

She Will Punish Them, 2021/ongoing

Finally, you have your entirely unapologetic videogame porn: games that flat out aim to serve as porn and absolutely nothing else (like 3D Sex Villa) and sometimes even aim to do so online with human playmates controlling other avatars instead of bots doing this (such as Red Light Centre) 

Subverse stands alone in this regard, as the only one polished enough to be able to tangibly offer something more than just jerk-off material. But even so, don't expect more than some Mass Effect galaxy map-style exploration, a grid turn-based combat minigame and an arcade top-view spaceship shooter mini game. It's all connected through a very Starcraft 2-like exploration of your own ship, and a rudimentary "dating" mechanic, peppered with high quality animations of...erm..stuff. The story in itself is...eh...ok? I guess? What marginally saves Subverse is its tongue-in-cheek approach and humour, varying from actually funny, to teen comedy of the early 2000s.

There are some that already surpass it (or will when they're actually out, notably Wild Life) in the actually "adult" sections: more control over what happens on screen, better graphics, more realistic models, better animations etc.

But for most of the games in this sub-genre, you are better off skipping the excuse, and just watching porn instead.