TD's Adult Game Spotlight

For my inaugural spotlight, I wanted to highlight a game after my own heart, and to express my admiration for a project that grabbed me by the dick to firmly remind me of my silly love for all smut interactive:

Photo Hunt, a sandbox visual novel by Moochie.

There is something about this game that I find hard to put into words, which is why I’m driven to try. It has a number of objectively good qualities that l will enumerate, but I fear what I won’t be able to express as well is my personal sensibility. As a game dev myself, Photo Hunt speaks to me on a molecular level that even I don’t fully understand. Its approach, tone, and presentation are melded in such a distinct way that even now, as I try to organize my thoughts, I feel happy and inspired. I see the warm act of creation and of someone doing what they enjoy; not always perfectly, not always tirelessly, but with pride behind their work. What’s more, I’m grateful that an artist poured some of their limited time on this earth into sharing said work, and it makes me want to simulate that feeling for others with my own.

I know this all probably sounds hyperbolic for a porn game, but I can’t help what I feel. At the end of the day, I’ve simply fallen in love with Photo Hunt. Behind its trope-ladden scenario is a clear, loving care for premise and character. A game that doesn’t shy away from what it is, porn, but embraces it with an enthusiasm that sometimes takes what you’d expect and enriches it and at other times twists it in fun, colorful directions.

With that bit of rambling out of the way, let’s move onto the more substantive and formulated portions of the review. Spoilers ahead!

On the Subject of Smut

Out of all the sections, this is the most subjective. How good is the porn? After all, that is what it is all about, right? 

Personally speaking, no matter how good the writing or how fun the systems are, any adult game that doesn’t speak to me on a base level (Rance series aside) has an uphill climb. One that can be made mind you, as good writing can make you care about the characters and give even the most run-of-the-mill scene an erotic edge, but I can be pretty particular. Scenes need some heft to them, some distance, some color. Nothing kills my enthusiasm for a good set up more than truncated sex scenes that feel like an afterthought.

So, let’s first get the obvious out of the way. Both in execution and concept, Photo Hunt is an extremely lewd game that speaks my language. The project’s themes are practically tailor-made to my tastes to an uncanny degree. No other game ingrains photography, voyeurism, corruption, and prostitution as seamlessly into its DNA as here. Hell, the fact that you can induce the player character’s mother down the path to becoming a pornstar shines a light on a specific, fucked up corner of my brain that would be enough to propel it into the filing cabinets of my eternal spank bank.

Now, the scenes aren’t overly long like the word salad approach I use in Pale Carnations, but they’re varied and have just the right amount of size to ‘em to enjoy. There are a few super short trainer-like scenes, but those act in service as a game play abstraction, and I don’t mind them so much in the greater picture.

Plus, the game has shades to its depravity. There’s a few paths that go full tilt, some that ride the line, and others that are kinda sweet. It ranges from scenarios like reuniting with a childhood friend, to slowly un-icing a rich girl’s frigidity, to the various corruption routes sending characters down the path of the Red Maiden – the secret members-only brothel that our player character may or may not have unwitting ties to. In all cases, even the more innocuous set ups, there is some color to be enjoyed and even the mean stuff is so over the top that it’s fun.

The smut really, really, really works for me is what I’m saying.

On the Subject of Writing and Scenario

_{*Plus some character stuff, too.}

This is, on paper, the most surprising element when weighed against my supposed personal tastes. There is nothing immediately inspiring about the game’s premise. At its onset, its a story about a man who moves in with his “adoptive” mother and sister after an extended separation. Shit goes from there, with a smorgasbord of creepy perverted player character elements that would be right at home in an early days of the Patreon boom. It is a set up as old as time and you’d be forgiven for giving it a hard pass on that basis alone.

However, nestled into Photo Hunt’s scenario is an intersection of intrigue, romance, humor, and good ol’ ball-slapping depravity. Moochie juggles the meeting of numerous character plot lines with a deceptive finesse –  and make no mistake, there’s nothing profound here. There’s no tears to be jerked or catharsis to be had (yet), but that is not a negative. Where there are countless mundane fuck fests out there, Photo Hunt layers its scenario with a cast of vivacious characters that are simply fun to spend time with.

In a medium that is primarily character focused, that has to be the secret sauce. Take for example just one bad mama jama:

Evelyn, the player character’s “guardian.”

From the start, she’s not what you’d expect. She forgets to pick up our lonely main character and is quickly revealed to be a workaholic with a drinking problem. She ain’t perfect. She ain’t motherly. She’s got vices, hang ups, and a neglectful dimension to her character. 

Yet, she has her charms. Her abrasiveness can be endearing. Funny, cute, and as with anyone attractive, there’s room for sympathy for her. And sure, the scenarios that drive your interactions with Evelyn are absurd. Rooted in a porn logic and just-go-with-it-dude, but they play out with such a distinct voice that you implicitly buy into them. They’re tempered by real notes of helplessness and coping that most people can relate to. And obviously your tolerance for that will vary. You could play it and think man this is fucking stupid, but I truly do believe the character writing in Photo Hunt to be fantastic. It sneaks up on you past the initial intro, where things are bit awkward, and the English is more shaky… but it quickly smooths out and you find yourself just enjoying these colorful characters interacting.

It is worth mentioning that the game also pays a notable care to its male cast. They’re few, but they get screen time, and aren’t wholly bereft a sense of agency. I like that characters like Harry are integral to the plot. Fathers are often missing from these games, and I get a big kick at just how much he informs the player character’s relationship with Evelyn. Not to mention, there’s also Will. It would be so easy to write him as the generic woeful cuck, but goddamn it, you there’s a bit of pathos to him. It is easy for the reader to actually like the dude, and it makes you want to take the Alice route down the slightly more wholesome alternative.

This is a good thing in my books, as I find that AVN writing that takes any dick swinging character outside the MC seriously indicative of a more realized world.

So, yeah, man moves in with his estranged family. Been there and done that. But have you seen …

• Helping a character angrily get over her separated husband by sending him escalating risque photos? Have you navigated your dad dangling one of his college sluts in front of her in a game of sexual chicken? And, somehow at the end of it, inadvertently won his approval?
• Have you saved fthat character’s job from her best friend slash work enemy? The outcome of which I’ll add goes in wildly different and fleshed-out directions.
• Have you ever pushed a character in a new “career” direction as an act of subterfuge against a blackmailing baby mama as your father works on putting a stop to it?

I haven’t, and that’s just a loose overview of one character.

Which is to add, the project is ambitious. There are 8 main heroines, most having two distinct branches. But, smartly done, some come much later into their arcs than others. And when you sprinkle all the side character stuff into the mix you end up with a staggering promise the dev is making to the reader should it be finished.

Fortunately, the game is heavy in content, which bodes well. Filling out stuff to see seems to often present a development problem for serialized sandbox games, but there’s a lot of fun to be had as of v16.3; hours and hours of it if you give the text a fair shake. Much more than some sandbox games with similar development inception dates. And, certainly some paths are more developed than others. All-in-all though, nothing feels too lacking when you’re juggling all the different characters.

With that as a segue…

On the Subject of Sandboxes

Perhaps the most contentious design element an adult game dev can put into their visual novel. There are plenty of people who exclusively avoid them, and for good reason. Personal preference aside, a lot of sandbox games just don’t cut it as games. They feel empty or they’re so grindy that they chop up the pacing of the narrative elements to the utmost detriment.

Not really much so here, in my opinion, although my tolerance for these kind of games are relatively sky high. Still, player economy often just comes down to work for money, raise a stat, or advance a story line. There’s not much in between, little affection points to grind, and no repeat the same event over and over until you are bored. The only issue I foresee is knowing the totality of what to do, but you can buy a walk through via the player character’s computer. That in itself is much clunkier than just simply using a walk through mod, as you have to repeatedly return home to check the next step, but hey: point is, you won’t be getting stuck in this game too much.

If anything, I wish it leaned a bit heavier on the sandbox stuff. At a certain point, potentially before you even clear up the player character’s debt, you’ll be near the soft cap for stat checks, making that aspect of the game mostly useless. That is (highly-likely) a potential plus for most people, though. Similarly, you also run out of a use for money at a certain point, although the game mitigates that by letting you turn your excess cash into a lot of extra goodie renders to leer at.

On the subject of Art

This is an important one; maybe not so much for most adult games, as I usually put an emphasis on writing, but Photo Hunt puts you in the shoes of a nascent photographer — and it is quite fortunate that Moochie’s rendering skills can support that theme.

Now, the start is a bit rough. It still looks good, but some of the initial maps are not high quality and the lighting isn’t nearly as crisp, but that is to be expected. The fact that the game five years ago looks notably worse than it does now is not a not a knock; it’s an aspect to be lauded as a sign of the developer’s growth as an artist.

What a growth, too, as I consider Photo Hunt one of the best looking DAZ games out there and I hope the choice shots I’ve provided in this spotlight support that.

More than just looking shiny, however, the attention to detail is what sends it over the top for me. There’s oodles and oodles of thoughtfully composed renders, posed with care, that just look gorgeous. Characters have a sense of movement to their posing and nuance in their expressions. Also, the dev cares about hands!

I mean, I know this is gonna sound insane, but bad hand posing in renders stick out to me like a backwards thumb. Just going the distance to make it look like your characters are actually holding the thing that they’re holding, that nothing is clipping, is the sad low standard that gets major points from me. It is a barometer for the question “does this dev give a fuck?“

I’ll add that I enjoy that the game is littered with random renders that support the myriad of talk topics that you can select. These are images that aren’t exactly needed for the few lines of text that occupy the screen, but show just how much love is behind the project that they’ll put the time to create wildly different scenes when its not needed.

Honestly, there’s such a variety and liveliness to Photo Hunt’s renders that I often just pause and gawk — and it has nothing to do with feet, I promise.

In Conclusion

If you couldn’t tell, I kinda like this game. Its existence motivates me as a game dev myself, and while Photo Hunt certainly isn’t for everyone, nothing good ever is. So, if you happen to give it a try and enjoy it as well, please consider throwing some support to Moochie on Patreon or Subscribestar.

Thanks for reading.