TD's Adult Game Spotlight

Hi,

I wanted to start this blog by asking myself a simple question:

What do adult games, porn games, mean to me? 

For most people, even among those that play them, that is (rightfully) a question to laugh at. Placing any kind of importance on what are mostly badly written, poorly conceived, jerk-off-and-forget-about-them games is absurd and to imbue them with even a sliver of meaning is cringe-worthy.

Yet, they mean so much to me. So much that I want to put those feelings in words and share my passion for them.

Now, one pays my bills, so perhaps my zeal could be excused from that angle, but the only reason I ever wanted to make a visual novel in the first place is because I’m a degenerate pervert they’ve been a fixture in my life for as long as I can remember.

I went through puberty during the Heyday of Newgrounds, alongside flash games like Ganguro Girl 2 and Frank’s Adventure – and those were the good ones! I mean, imagine jerking off to shitty trivia games where an anime girl loses her clothes when you get the answer right.

Then there were the middle noughties, my formative years, with sites like HongFire pushing doujin and Illusionsoft games. That was the time when RapeLay hit the western news cycle, sparking outrage. It was then I was first exposed to people taking an enthusiastic interest in adult games, coming together on forums to share and discuss titles like Violated Heroine or Do You Like Horny Bunnies?

Then, thanks to the fan translation of G-Senjou no Maou, I spent the better part of the 2010s enamored with the medium of visual novels, buying hook-line-and-sinker into Fuwanovel’s mission statement of “make visual novels popular in the west. That was when I first heard the mantra “I play it for the story.” A silly, unneeded distinction that still persists until this day. It can have both!

And, finally, there’s been what I call the Patreon boom. A time during COVID where every Tom-Dick-and-Harry, following in the wake of games like Big Brother and Dreams of Desire, thought that they could spend the pandemic making big bucks from slapping together a Power Point game with half-assed DAZ renders and a flimsy scenario.

God I love this hobby.

And that is what I consider it. A hobby.

I mean, obviously, I’m a horny fucker. No getting around that, but as it goes with life, we imbue meaning where we can fit it. In that vein, adult games have become more than just smut to me.

They are a means of expression, A creative outlet that has given my quiet life a voice. Through it, I’ve met many kind and generous people. Extremely generous people, who have allowed me to pursue and work on what I enjoy, to create and draw inspiration from the work of others.

And, most importantly, all this has put me on the path of working with my best friend, GIL. The real talent behind Pale Carnations.

These games have value, you can’t tell me otherwise, and that is the point of this blog. A place where I can highlight and promote projects that I enjoy, and self-indulgently navel gaze about them to an embarrassing degree. You could call them reviews or analyses, but to me, they are love letters.

Thanks for reading.