New LOP Game. My Sex Date: Emily

[danigonz]

I'm amazed Leonizer hasn't announced yet his new game at Lessons of Passion, called My Sex Date: Emily.

It basically uses the same structure of his previous sex date game with Megan: a first part of questions, a selection of possible gifts to the girl, and the sexual scene itself, in which you have to make the right choices to reach the endings.

So, nothing new, but vert funny, playable and sexy. As always, you can get multiple endings, which goes from the total loss (she rejects you) to the possibility of becoming this pretty girl in a "cumslut" (I use the words of the game) A very wide horizon of posibilities ;-)

And, by the way, Emily is one of the hottest gals I've ever seen in a game. I just love redheads, and this part nerd-part gothic thing of her is very appealing.

[Nalogan]

I've played with Emily several times and found Ending 5,6 (the best Ending?) and 8.
Once i lost, mabye it's ending 1.

I agree with danigonz, Emily is one of the hottest gals I've ever seen in a game

[NightStalker73au]

A very enjoyable game.

[iksanabot]

This is a great game. I love the artwork, it's awesome as always. In additon, I think the animations are getting better and better. And I love that there are lots of facial graphics.
Thanks Leo and team!

[Llares]

Emily is absolutly adorable. Never seen such a beauty in a game. Wonderful!

I played most of the free LoP-games and I really love the girls. Wonderfull artwork, but what I can't stand and don't understand is this pulsing-effect they use. Does anyone of you know, why they are doing it? Really hate it.

[tlaero]

This is an enjoyable game. The artwork is great, but what really stands out is Agrippa's writing. I loved the characterization of Emily--especially her dialog and vocabulary. She really comes across as a straight-A student who's secretly into Emo. I also really like that, in the storyline, she's not easy and that she's known you for a while. There are hints in the dialog and description that she's been interested in the player character for some time, so this isn't another, "I just met you, but if you say two nice things I'll let you bang me..." I especially liked that the player character doesn't push her to do things she doesn't want to do. The whole thing came across as premeditated consentual, where many of these sorts of games amount to the male taking advantage of the female. I'm a big fan of the ending where you and she build a solid and lasting relationship. Nice work.

The "Friend Zone" line, in particular, made me smile.

I saw two minor bugs. There's one spot where the player is saying something to the effect of "If you're not having fun, we're not doing anything I want to do," (which is awesome, by the way) but the title says "Emily" not "You." And, at least for me, when it came time to shave her she already had shaving cream on. I think the "how much shaving cream does she have on" variable got initialized incorrectly. It was wierd moving the shaving cream bottle back and forth when she was already creamed up.

Not a bug, but I found the shaving thing a little wierd. To my eyes, she already was shaved. In my experience, hair doesn't really grow that neatly and cover that small amount of area without being trimmed etc. Maybe other people are different, though.

The gameplay is pretty good. It's got most of the elements of a date from an RPG dating sim, and those are fun. In future games, I'd work a little bit on the distinction between the "good" responses and the "bad" ones. I felt that there wasn't enough information to let you know which things she'd respond well to and which she'd dislike. It really resulted in trial and error, which isn't a great gameplay technique. The ideal is have the answers be clear to players who are paying attention but not to those who don't. For instance, there's a page of text at the start of the game. I read it carefully. The typical player probably clicked through it hoping to see nudity sooner. The more you can reward the players who read your text, the better. You sort of did that with the line about her not being who she seemed to be, but by that point there were a lot of other clues that made that obvious (as her response rightfully pointed out :-). Another option is to put hints in the environment. Most guys are looking carefully at the girl and aren't paying much attention to the background. Of course, I'm saying this as though it's easy, but I know it's not. I struggle with this in my games too. Finding the right difficulty balance is probably the hardest thing we do.

Graphically, Emily is very attractive. I like the bloom effect (I consider that to be a hallmark of a LOP game). I'm not personally a fan of the pulsating effect, but I know why you do it.

The "rub her legs" part was rational and reasonable. Much better than the typical, "I'm laying here naked with my legs spread, but you'd better rub my arm first..." garbage we see in other games.

The during-sex controls are the best you folks have done so far, but I'm still disastified with them. I've been spending time thinking about how to make them better, though, and haven't come up with anything. )-: One simple thing is that I missed some of the things she said during one of the "move the mouse in a circle" parts because it changed too quickly. I guess I was supposed to move the mouse slower, but for that you could have her say something like, "Slow down tiger, this isn't a race."

I'm interested in hearing other people's ideas and suggestions on gameplay mechanics during sex in these games. In the end, as programmers, we've really only got mouse movements and keypresses available to us. And the pictures need to be fairly static. I don't feel that anyone (least of all me) has come up with a great mechanic yet, though.

Tlaero

[iksanabot]

Hi Tlaero, nice to see you.
I agree with what you've said about this game. And I have some thoughts about game play during sex scenes. I think Pusooy does sex scenes quite well, though I know some people hate how long things can take in his games. For me, I like it when the actual mouse manipulations I have to do are centered on the action, but without obscuring the view of the action. SO for instance, Leo and teams' moving circles and stuff kind of gets in the way, and also prevent you from seeing some of the dialogue by making you concentrate on that one spot. Pusooy tends to have mouse movements connected to big movements on the screen, so you can keep the required movement going without having to focus so hard on it, and can enjoy the full graphic. Sometimes he does make the hot-spots pretty small, and usually the cursor is already there, but I still think playing his sex scenes is highly erotic, all else being equal (i.e. context and story factors/ graphics that can make a sex scene hot independent of how the playing goes). I would like to see game play where getting the cursor to the right place causes the player to "pick up" an animation. The "picking up" of the animation is difficult, but once you've found it, maintaining it is easy enough to take full concentration away, while it still takes enough attention that the player feels like their physical movements merge with those movements on the screen (feel like you are licking her, or whatever). Shark does it like that to great effect, I think. I also like having choices during sex scenes (not just where to come at the end, though I like that) but also how to proceed, with multiple paths through a sex scene, including some paths that are mutually exclusive. This sounds like a ridiculous amount of work, but Leo does it to an extent. I'm thinking of things like having the choice to start fucking before the girl's clothes are fully off, that leads to partially clothed sex scenes and clothed orgasms that wouldn't happened had the player chosen to "take off her skirt" before choosing to "pull her underwear aside and lick her pussy." That kind of thing.

One, I may be repeating, or I guess summarizing here, but I think for me to get the most satisfaction from a sex scene in a game, there are five keys:
Two, I want my actions at my computer to closely parallel the actions on the screen. Three, I want to manipulate the characters body parts rather than a cursor, or a disembodied hand (sorry Leo, I really do love your games). Four, I want the large portion of the manipulation to be easy enough to maintain without having to focus to hard on any one point in the visual - the challenge can come from finding where to begin each animation. the challenge could also be built in to the choices you make during the sex scene - do you please the character enough for some further consequence (like she tells her hot friend you are great in bed). Leading me to five, I want to have choices in the sex scene that give it replay value and can allow me to pursue my own preference for the way the sex goes. Oh yeah, and six, I want to build to an orgasm with lots of during- and post-orgasm graphics so that if if I'm jerking-off (sorry, but sometimes I am) the scene doesn't end suddenly before I've cum - the orgasm scenes can trigger my own orgasm, and I think I lot of people would like to see those scenes drawn out for exactly that purpose. In this game especially, Leo and company really seem to have responded to that kind of feedback (Thanks again Leo).

[tlaero]

That's a really good suggestion, iksanabot. As I think about it, that's effectively how Super Deepthroat works, and it's one of the more satisfying game mechanics I've seen (even if the game itself is rather short). I'll keep thinking about this.

Tlaero

[TheBrain]

I think the games that have done these sorts of scenes better were those that actually treated the interactions as a game, rather than just something to keep you busy while viewing the scene.
A good example is Orgasm Girl, which is essentially a puzzle where you have to get both the order of doing certain actions right, as well as the timing. But at the same time it doesn't prevent you from directly ripping her panties off (and it's probably still possible to solve it that way). Now of course, given that the girl is not awake, this gameplay doesn't really translate all that well to dating games. But I think the basic idea that the option of failure exists is one to keep, but rather than "the girl wakes up" it would have to be something more like "the girl is left unsatisfied" (with whatever consequences in the rest of the game).
Now there have been a few games that used a second "pleasure meter" for the guy, which posed the challenge of pleasuring the girl while keeping the guy from orgasming. I can remember one game in particular that divided the sex scene into a number of stages, with each becoming progressively harder to keep the guy's pleasure in check (it had randomly flashing icons with actions to perform, if anyone remembers it).
Some of sharks horny afternoon games have included a point of failure in the form of Nanny interrupting, which was a good thing, but also has a lot of potential to be used a lot more often (not necessarily with a character imposing on the sexual stuff, of course).

Now you can put these examples against what is done in this game, but also the majority of scenes in Shark's and Pusooy's games. While Shark and Pusooy pose some minor puzzles, the majority is still a linear sequence of actions where the interactions merely serve as a way of progressing through the scene (or in fact, slowing you down). The equivalent in dating games would be clicking through a series of images with just one option each time.
Of course there are probably quite a number of examples in these games that do not strictly follow this. I can think of one in Pusooy's cheerleader party, where the girl actually prevents the guy from touching her breasts, unless you distract her by rubbing her legs and getting her guard down. In essence something like this is still fairly simple (perform action A to allow action B, repeat until B is complete), but provide a reasonable puzzle. But even these scenes are the exception. I think it would be nice to see more of things like this.

Another point may be the linearity, although I think the options for branching a sex scene are fairly limited. I would be thinking more along the lines of optional events, rather than full-blown "multiple ending"-style branches. But having choices which actually have influence would be a good thing. And these do not necessarily have to be limited to the sex scene in itself. An idea that I had while writing this was the concept of a "shy vs macho" variable in the game, based on which the sex scene might reward differently for going slow and letting the girl take control (if you made the impression of being 'shy') as opposed to being in control and escalating quickly (if you went 'macho'). The player could be punished if his actions in the sex scene would be inconsistent with his actions during a date, for example.
And while I'm throwing ideas, I think that one gameplay mechanic that hasn't been used at all is 'quick time events'. If you're not familiar with this, the basic concept is that the player gets one or multiple choices and has to respond in a limited amount of time, where not responding at all is usually bad (for example, think of a scene where you're running through falling debris, and every now and then you have to hit a key within one or two seconds to dodge stuff, not responding means you get hit and lose health/die/etc.). For a sex scene you'd basically be watching the animation passively, but are forced to make choices every now and then. These could be changing positions, rubbing different things, going faster/slower, etc. Even not reacting (i.e. just keep going with whatever is going on) could be a valid choice.

Anyway, in short I think the main thing is to steer away from the interactions being 'filler pieces' and including them into the game in some meaningful way. I think this almost automatically implies that there has to be some form of failure, or degree of success.

[Graen]

An idea that I had while writing this was the concept of a "shy vs macho" variable in the game, based on which the sex scene might reward differently for going slow and letting the girl take control (if you made the impression of being 'shy') as opposed to being in control and escalating quickly (if you went 'macho'). The player could be punished if his actions in the sex scene would be inconsistent with his actions during a date, for example.

Get. Out. Of. My. Mind!

And while I'm throwing ideas, I think that one gameplay mechanic that hasn't been used at all is 'quick time events'.

A QTE was used in Thorn-E:VP, although we didn't tell the player exactly what to do, I haven't seen very many complaints about it.

It's always a challenge to get story and puzzle elements to mesh well in any game. And keeping puzzle elements from appearing as filler is really more of a matter of knowing when enough is enough. On the same token, having too little of a challenge can make the game short or not even feeling like a game at all. And as always, some people prefer more of one thing over another.

[neogoblin]

great game but i am stuck on the shaving part of the game there are no visual clues to help or i am missing. please think about make sure people know what to do as this has ruinded this game for me. but i have found the graphic and plot enjoyable apart from the shaving sceen.

[Agrippa]

Whow, feedback AND a discussion in a game I worked on. The mall's ads were right, Christmas came early this year!

Tlaero, to tell you the truth, I was not completely satisfied with the characterization, and precisely because of the issues you mentioned. I also think that right and wrong answers should naturally arise from information readily available to the player without being completely and utterly moronic, something that I think I didn't quite accomplish with Emily, although I tried to use "wrong" lines as foreshadowing for further scenes (when she expresses disgust about even talking about her relationship with her parents and later doesn't get angry when you play with her while she talks with her mother). It wasn't noticeable but I think it's an idea that I will play with in further games ("rewarding" wrong choices by giving further information, by pointing to the player what it is that they did wrong or what they should do in further scenes). In any case, I think that when faced with the dilemma of difficulty versus verosimilitude, it's safer to err on the side of the last one. Also, I giggled like a schoolboy when I typed the "friend zone" line.

On another note, the discussion about sex gameplay is very interesting to me. I must say that QTE have been used quite often in LOP games (I think the first one to do so was High School Romance) and it adds some spice to the gameplay, yet it shouldn't be done more than once in a game or it will feel like the usual "press X not to die" mechanic that I personally despise in many games (again, when it's overdone; after all, I liked the first two thirds of "Farenheit: Indigo Prophecy"). The mechanic about having nice or rough sex... well, I tried to do something similar in Moonlust, establishing a nice, romantic Human path and a primal, visceral, Vampire path. They were not mutually exclusive, and the girl did not complain either way (mainly because, as a vampire, you used mind control, super strength, etc... difficult to voice any kind of complaint on the subject), but they affected the ending of the game and the kind of person the main character became (which was kind of the point of the story).

But the problem of interaction is certainly difficult. I would generally agree that Super Deepthroat is one of the most erotic games out there because ot it's mechanic, even though it got old after a while (well, till they introduced dialogue recently and opened a metric ton of replayability cans). Another one I enjoyed was Miminazori, in which you get a diverging maze and the progress along its branches triggers changes on the scene as if you were interacting with it in real time. But all in all, this kind of animations is really hard and time consuming to make in any medium, let alone a good 3d render.

The pleasure meter for the male (the need to hold back) is a fun mechanic, but also got done to death by many awful Hentai Key demos in which you just stared at the screen and paused the action when it was close to a game over. Rinse and repeat. I found it more interesting in the first LOP, in which the stats you built in the sim part of the game carried over to sex scenes, tying the two parts of the gameplay together. The player could get into an unwinnable situation, but he was aaware that it was his own fault for not developing his character beforehand.

So, a very desirable mechanic is graphic hell for the developer, other fun mechanics have already been done (well, that's pretty much a given in everything) and things that require a good hand-eye coordination or two hands on the keyboard would be a really bad idea (which is also a given... in the present genre). What we are left with are either simple interactions or turn-based gameplay (we could say Virtual Date games use the last one), in which case the sophistication of the gameplay becomes more mental, and thus abstract, and that could lead to the player feeling outside of the scene... Well, if there were easy answers we would already have them, wouldn't we?

Edit: Neogoblin, you just need to wave the cursor sideways over the "target zone". You will see graphical progress as you do so.

[TheBrain]

I must say that QTE have been used quite often in LOP games (I think the first one to do so was High School Romance) and it adds some spice to the gameplay, yet it shouldn't be done more than once in a game or it will feel like the usual "press X not to die" mechanic that I personally despise in many games (again, when it's overdone; after all, I liked the first two thirds of "Farenheit: Indigo Prophecy").

Since I don't remember seeing any such event, is there any chance you're referring to the circle popping up next to the progress meter as the QTE? Because I really don't think that's much of an example of the mechanic, since you could just hammer the area where it would pop up and you'd get your progress. I meant to point out that a QTE is a good mechanic to allow split second decisions, and I definitely have not seen that in any game I've played. Obviously the "press X not to die" is an example of a rather bad and annoying QTE.

The pleasure meter for the male (the need to hold back) is a fun mechanic, but also got done to death by many awful Hentai Key demos in which you just stared at the screen and paused the action when it was close to a game over. Rinse and repeat. I found it more interesting in the first LOP, in which the stats you built in the sim part of the game carried over to sex scenes, tying the two parts of the gameplay together. The player could get into an unwinnable situation, but he was aaware that it was his own fault for not developing his character beforehand.

In my experience the vast majority of hentai games have terribly bad gameplay, a gameplay mechanic shouldn't be discarded just because a hentai game has done it badly, if anything you can learn from it. While on the subject, I think that this "progress meter with a single trigger"-gameplay barely stands out above the Meet'n'Fuck series for example, which has been quite unanimously regarded as having terrible gameplay.
I think it's interesting you grab back to the first LOP, because I sincerely think that has been the best game produced by leonizer and associates. Even the sexual interactions had some form of the option of failure I mentioned before, when you failed making the shapes with your mouse you wouldn't get infinite chances to repeat it and it affected the outcome of the date (less points if I recall correctly?). Anyhow, I think in the games that followed there has been a lot of use of the same mechanics that you really ought to be experimenting with. Look at shark/pusooy, there are more interesting ways to fill up a progress meter than repeating the same action ad infinitum.

[iksanabot]

That's a really good suggestion, iksanabot. As I think about it, that's effectively how Super Deepthroat works, and it's one of the more satisfying game mechanics I've seen (even if the game itself is rather short). I'll keep thinking about this.

Tlaero

@Tlaero
I had checked out Super Deepthroat a while ago, but tried it again in response to you post. And yeah, that's the kind of interactive gameplay I had in mind (though I'm not a fan of depictons of sex acts where the man is rough with a woman who appears distressed). Strictly in terms of the mechanics, Super Deepthroat is a great (but limitted, I agree) game. But I would have the cursor disapear when the player has "picked up" the animation. So once the cursor has been moved (or mouse has been clicked) in such a way as to activate the next stage of animation, the cursor should disappear, leaving the player to use the action itself as an indication of where the cursor is and to guide his/her movements. The cursor would only reappear when the player either "drops the animation (goes outside the appropriate hotspot, or something like that), or if the animation has concluded and it's time for something else. I think this method could work reallly well with PlayforceOne-style games, especially given that they are constantly improving their animations, so are heading in the direction where the could potentially include Super Deepthrout-style animation in each individual sex-act they depict - wouldn't that be awesome?!

Of course, for your's and Phreaky's games, it may not be feasible because you don't typically include movement-based interaction, just hotspots. I don't know enough about programming to speak to that. But if you were going to try and take anything from this discussion to improve your own games, and the movement-based interaction truly isn't realistic without changing your whole style, (which I hope you don't because I love your style), I will repeat that more choices during sex scenes helps the player to feel more immersed in the scene, I think. And also that lengthened and graphic orgasm scenes can facilitate the player's full satisfaction if they are the kind of player who gets so turned on during the game that they just have to satisfy themselves This last, by triggering the player's orgasm at the time of the character's orgasm, without having the scene abruptly end just when the player is on the verge... This often happens to me: When an orgasm scene starts to push me over the edge, and I click for one more image/animation to have a fresh source of further arousal, but the next image is a fully clothed character doing something mundane, and I am just disapointed instead of satisfied. In this PlayForceOne game, they do a great job of including some extended orgasm scenes.

[tlaero]

(though I'm not a fan of depictons of sex acts where the man is rough with a woman who appears distressed)

For sure. I only like the "she's happy" setting in Super Deepthroat.

I've been thinking about how the Javascript would work if I wanted to do this sort of thing. I'm also looking into HTML5, but I'm not sure that's really necessary. I agree that the mouse cursor should disappear when you're controlling the animation with it.

Tlaero