Adult games are great, but publishers and players need to be more discerning
In the last week, a couple of adult games were released on Switch. Or, to be more accurate, a couple of edited ports of adult games were released on Switch: Sakura Dungeon and Demon Sword Incubus.
Both of these games are titles that featured full-on nudity and/or explicit sex scenes in their original PC incarnation, but as Switch games, they have been edited to be “ecchi” at best; Sakura Dungeon’s clothes-ripping feature no longer takes characters down to complete nudity, while Demon Sword Incubus no longer features rape scenes when the character’s clothing has been torn off and she is “grappled” by an enemy.
There are a few things worth saying about this. Firstly, Sakura Dungeon still “works” as an adult game without full nudity. In fact, depending on your own preferences, you may find the inadvertently introduced “teasing” aspect of the game more erotic than simply being presented with full-on naked T&A right in your face. But the most important thing about it is that the game which is there to back up the erotic content is actually pretty solid and enjoyable. You could take out the erotic content completely (rather than partially, as has happened) and still have a decent game.
Contrast with Demon Sword Incubus, which is simply a mediocre adult game that originally featured erotic scenes that will only appeal to those with a specific type of fetish. Strip out the latter aspect, no pun intended, and you’re just left with a mediocre game, full stop. That makes its console port almost entirely worthless, because the one reason it might have found an audience on PC — its erotic scenes — is no longer present, and the underlying game isn’t strong enough to hold itself up on its own merits.
This has happened a few times previously — indeed, we’ve looked at a few titles of this type here on Rice Digital. A while back, prolific localiser-publisher eastasiasoft brought several different adult games from the PC indie space to Switch, to varying degrees of success.
Plunderer’s Adventures, for example, was a poor quality lane-defence adult game whose original PC release (which had the subtitle “Sea of Whores”, clearly a sign of quality) had full nudity, albeit no explicit sex scenes; the Switch version, meanwhile, removed this latter aspect, with a few mildly suggestive poorly drawn pixel art lewds your sole reward for enduring the title’s moribund gameplay.
Sofiya and the Ancient Clan was originally known as “Sexcraft: Sofiya and the Lewd Clan” on PC, which made it sound about a thousand times less classy, but it was at least up-front about what it offered: it was a mediocre adult game in which you’d defeat enemies with magic, then fuck them to finish them off. The Switch port omitted the latter aspect, as you might expect, but didn’t bother to actually put in any console-specific death animations; enemies simply disappeared.
Neko Secret Room at least kept the nudity in its Switch port, but was such a dogcatshit awful game at its core that it really wasn’t worth playing in the first place, whether in its PC or console incarnations.
None of these games were really worth releasing on console, because the sacrifices that had to be made meant that in every instance, you were simply left with a game that wasn’t worth playing at all, rather than a game that wasn’t really worth playing, but which you might at least be able to get some naughty jollies to.
Contrast with something like the Pretty Girls and Otoko Cross series or Shuttlecock-H, both also from eastasiasoft, and the difference is very clear. In those instances, like Sakura Dungeon, the games are worth playing regardless of whether or not you get to see boobs and fanny — and indeed, in the case of Shuttlecock-H and the physical releases of the Pretty Girls series, you do indeed get to see boobs and sometimes fanny (and willies in the case of Otoko Cross) — so they’re worthwhile experiences that are worth supporting.
I understand why people want to buy and support even the worst “adult” releases — the idea is that it helps send a message that adult content is something people want and are willing to support. But I think we all also need to be a bit more discerning.
If you blindly buy anything with tits in it, regardless of quality, then the only message you’re sending is “I want games with tits in, regardless of if they’re any good or not” — and this leads to the situation we have with Steam (and, increasingly, the eShop) right now, where we’re flooded with games called “Hentai [x]” that are absolute pish, with no redeeming value whatsoever and often including stolen artwork, to boot. Henceforth, publishers end up being less discerning about what they localise, port and release, believing that people really will buy anything a little bit naughty, regardless of quality.
Surely the more optimal message to be putting out there for erotic game fans is “I like games with tits in, and I expect them to be decent games as well as including erotic content”? There’s no need to support the dross just to make an ill-advised point — because there’s plenty of genuinely good lewd stuff out there already. And that’s the stuff we should be supporting. If you just want to see anime girl tits, there are much easier ways to achieve that online than enduring a rubbish game.
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