Erotic game for Christmas

[Evil]

I thought this was going to be an announcement by m0ds that he's finishing Kinky Island.

[Snarky]

Well, it's soon to think about christmas gifts, but I thought it would be an interesting gift for my boyfriend (He'd get other presents as well, of course). The thing is, I don't know a thing about this type of games and what'd be good and what bad or boring. Can you give me any advice about some of the principes which can be usable in AGS? The star would of course be me, me and only me . Do you think it would be a good idea, anyway?  Thank you very much for your replies.

Not to break up the hilarity of this thread (though olafmoriarty, in particular, speaks wisdom), but what kind of advice are you looking for, more precisely? When you say you don't know a thing about "this type of game", I guess you mean erotic games specifically, not adventure games in general, right?

Have you even decided that this will be an adventure game, or could it have some other kind of gameplay?

Since you're building the game around a set of photos, that sets up a lot of constraints right away. I'm reminded of Dr U-Turn's Revenge, another game made as a gift (though--I very much hope--of a somewhat different nature). You might still want to have a look at that for inspiration, and to get a sense of the level of dedication required.

I guess the big question is: Are you going to use the photos in the game as "live" events, or are they just going to be still images or photos (like the dirty pictures that drive the plot of Au Naturel)? If live, is the whole game going to use photos for graphics? Are you going to appear as a character in other scenes of the game as well? In that case, won't you have to take a whole bunch of photos for other situations, too? That could be a lot of work. Or are you going to use a mixed art style, with illustrated backgrounds and animations for the non-erotic scenes of the game? (That, also, could be a lot of work.)

Another thing: is your character supposed to be you, or are you (role)playing as someone else? And is the player character going to be your boyfriend, specifically? Does the game take place in fantasy-land or something close to reality? That choice determines a lot of how the story and gameplay is going to be.

One way to integrate them is to use the photos to create a non-interactive cutscene, maybe the reward for winning the game or for achieving a major objective (this is how most of the explicit scenes in the Leisure Suit Larry games are used). Or you could put together some gameplay that makes the erotica interactive. That's another major design decision.

Here's what I would recommend: Use the photos to create a scene or scenes that happens "live" within the game. If not, you might as well just give your boyfriend the pictures and not bother with the game. However, I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to make these scenes too interactive. Some dialog options or a bit of multiple choice (maybe branching paths) is fine, but if you rig the whole thing with hotspots and inventory items and so on it can easily get a bit silly and embarrassing (as well as potentially requiring more hardcore shots than you might want to do).

Since it sounds like the point of the game is to get to the pictures, don't make the rest of it more complicated than it has to be. For instance, it's probably easier to make a first-person game (like Myst) than a third-person game, since you don't have to create graphics and animations for the player character. Since the photos are still-pictures, the rest of the game can consist of static screens as well, whether you decide to go with photo-style backgrounds (see The Oracle) or make your own graphics.

The same goes for story and gameplay. August may be early to think about Christmas presents, but it's not a terribly long time to make a game, especially if it's your first time. If you don't have any particular ideas, how about something classic and simple like a "Strip Quest", where the player has to solve a bunch of puzzles to get you to take your clothes off, and see you pose at the end? (Don't make the tasks too difficult: you want it to be fun, not frustrating.) Does that make sense for the photos you were planning?

As for how to make the whole thing "work" and be maximally sexy, you should know what your boyfriend likes better than we do. I think a lot of it comes down to writing the dialogue to go with the pictures. That's what sets the imagination going and makes the whole thing come to life.

If all of this sounds daunting, maybe a game isn't worth it. Have you thought about making something more like a picture book or photo-comic? You could do that on the computer, too. Like an interactive movie with little or no interactivity. It's probably a lot quicker, and can be just as sexy. (In truth, adventure games are not renowned for their steamy eroticism.)

I hope that helps. It'd be interesting to hear what direction you decide to go in. Good luck, and I hope your boyfriend enjoys his present! (He does like adventure games, right? Otherwise, I'd rethink this gift... unless your secret agenda is to convert him to the joys of point-and-clickery.)

(Oh, and if you do feel you need to run it by beta-testers, you could always swap out the images of you with some generic porn model. It's not like it's hard to find pictures of naked women on the Internet. Actually, I encourage you to use placeholder graphics like that instead of waiting for the photoshoot and possible reshoots.)

[olafmoriarty]

I think a lot of it comes down to writing the dialogue to go with the pictures.

Seconded. An additional thought: This would be a perfect game to voice-act instead of having dialogue on the screen, assuming you have a good enough microphone.