💌 Fake dating sims, sex-positive gaming, and more in Mr. Hands' Naughty List #23

Apr 4, 2021

Hello, lovelies!

Welcome to the best time of year to be a furry, where you get to don your fursuit and pretend it’s for the kids. 🐰 Unfortunately, due to the ongoing pandemic, it’s still not advisable to go out and have someone fondle your hairy eggs. Which is why I’ve selected another great batch of news for you about the wonderful world of adult gaming!

And if you would like to receive the latest adult gaming news in your inbox every week, why not subscribe to the newsletter?

Now let’s get into it!

Dating sims are still not taken seriously by the games industry 💔

It is a tradition at this point. Every year on April Fools’ Day, game companies pull the rug from under us and announce a “hilarious” dating sim based on one of their properties.

Here’s Valorant throwing their hat in the ring for 2021:

VALORANT @PlayVALORANT

The VALORANT world expands. Here's your first look at VALORANT: Agents of Romance. Coming to PC soon.

What irks me about these fake dating sims is that it feels like these companies are making a joke at the expense of people trying to make a living in this space. And then we turn around and praise a game like Hades, which borrows heavily from the narrative language and conventions established by visual novels.

And the reaction from fans to these types of “joke” games is always the same: “Oh, I would love to play that!”

maia @mxmtoon

@PlayVALORANT PLEASE DONT BE A JOKE.... REYNA IS TOO HOT FOR THIS PLS

Johnny Hibner @JohnnyH2000

@PlayVALORANT Okay but I’d actually like this

It’s almost as if this is a real genre of games enjoyed by fans around the world!

At some point, we have to ask ourselves what it is about dating sims that makes them the go-to genre for “joke games”. Is it because they’re not seen as “real” games? Or is it that they’re enjoyed by an overwhelmingly non-male and non-Western audience?

Miko ✨ @MikomiKisomi

All the VN dev salt flows freely today. Every time a brand makes fake announcements we grow stronger (read: our salt grows)

And make no mistake: this does in fact hurt the people who make and enjoy visual novels and dating sims. It tells them that their preferences aren’t valid and that their medium of choice isn’t worthy somehow.

In any case, I do hope to play Agents of Romance. It sounds neat.

What’s out in April 🥚

Sex Positive Gaming has a great video out about the new adult games on Steam in April:

They showcase a number of games I would be interested in covering as well, including:

YouTube is giving them a hard time right now though, making it difficult to show footage of the actual games. So be sure to send them some love!

Get hands-on with your spanner in Space Rescue: Code Pink 🔧

Space Rescue: Code Pink is a point-and-click adult adventure game by Moonfish Games*. You play as Keen, a lovable repair guy on a Rescue & Relax class spaceship. Your job is to fix what keeps breaking and indeed, lay pipe from time to time. But what starts as a series of straightforward tasks quickly devolves into some rather sticky situations!

I personally had a lot of fun with this title! It uses exactly the kind of laid-back sexy atmosphere that I’m trying to create with my own game as well. It’s sexy, it’s funny, and it has gorgeous art, so what’s not to love?

Space Rescue: Code Pink is out now on Early Access on Steam.

*Thanks to TinyHat Studios for the correction!

Writing Wrap-Up 📖

Ana Valens is not wholly impressed, but still likes a lot that Subverse has to offer:

But Subverse’s greatest appeal is its women. They’re surprisingly deep characters, often showing tragic backstories filled with trauma, betrayal, regret, and internal conflict.

One of the games industry’s great storytellers has taken her talents to erotica instead:

“I’m an okay novelist, but a really good game designer,” Jane Jensen concluded in 2003, after her second original novel […] was released to little commercial or critical enthusiasm.

According to PinkNews, 2021 is the year of the queer farming sim:

It’s in the wake of these two phenomenal games that there’s been a rise of cosy, comfy games that eschew high-octane action and shooting mechanics for an idyllic, escapist fantasy.

Team Toadhouse has written up an excellent resource for visual novel developers:

How much does an indie game visual novel cost? Short answer: It depends.

Spicy Gaming reviewed Maid Mansion:

Some games will throw gobs of backstory at you while others leave it all unwritten and unsaid. Maid Mansion walks the tight line between the two, giving some backstory but without being hard-handed. That's impressive.

Blerdy Otome has written about their first impressions of Doki Doki Dollmaker:

In the game you play as Lyle, a young man still coming to terms with the loss of his parents. To help cope with his grief, Lyle makes five dolls who through a little magic, suddenly come to life—so it’s basically a BL version of Nameless the one name you must recall.

NicheGamer reports that Super Seducer 3 was banned from Steam:

Valve had previously removed the demo for Super Seducer 3 for its adult material, causing the game to be delayed. La Ruina stated certain scenes needed to be altered or removed entirely in order to pass Steam’s standards.

Pornhub released their first-ever transparency report:

New to the report is that the platform identified and removed 653,465 pieces of potentially-infringing content that violated its Terms of Service and other site guidelines in 2020.