Re: Favourite hentai genres
In terms of gameplay genres, my favorites are ones that barely exist within the current market. First/third-person shooters, real-time/turn-based tactics/strategy, survival, etc.
I made a big old thread about FPS H-games and my disappointment that so few exist (And all that I've heard of are shit), and that disappointment extends to those other genres. This is doubtlessly a consequence of most hentai games being produced in the East, while on this side of the globe the industry is still mainly focused on the media of videos and photography, which limits creativity too. I feel as though very few H-Game developers have asked themselves "What if {GAME}, with hentai?" without that <GAME> being a Final Fantasy or metroidvania derivative.
There are a few main factors in this. The fact that adult gaming is still very niche in the west, and that traditional RPG and side-scrollers are still very popular in the east. This means that many western H-devs will follow the trends of the eastern market, while eastern developers feel neither the need nor desire to create a game with a more familiar format to a western audience.
As I said in that other thread, the closest thing we've got is third-party mods for the Fallout and Skyrim series.
I'm talking purely game mechanics here. Just imagine, XCOM with hentai, DeadSpace with hentai, Left 4 Dead with hentai, Dawn of War with hentai, even a vehicle combat game like mechwarrior could be translated.
An XCOM clone is what I'd love to see the most. Even using XCOM its self, several of its mechanics would only need supporting changes to art assets (models, animations, vfx and text) to transition it directly into an adult game. For example, the Seeker is just one step away. It already has tentacles, and an attack based around binding its victim. Thin-man's acid spit could just be renamed and recoloured to be a cloud of aphrodisiac gas. Sectoids' telepathic attacks could be re-tooled to have "other" effects on their targets instead of causing panic. The possibilities there are pretty much endless and I'm surprised nobody has thought to capitalise on it.
Anyway, wishful thinking. Of everything that currently does exist, my favorites are those metroidvania derivatives. RoRs like Koooonsoft's Angel/Shinobi/Witch girl are too simple to be worth much more than the gallery, RPGs and management games are often too drawn out. I like action, I like the H-content occurring mostly within the same context of the core gameplay. I don't like sitting through 5000 pages worth of dialogue and have the h-content drip-fed to me, I don't like grinding for 20 hours to access the next section of a game. RPGs that avoid this type of shit are more often the better ones.
Once again I refer to
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as my favorite of that genre, as it ticks those boxes - While there are a fair amount of cutscenes and dialogue, they're simply used to string the gameplay sections together and provide further context. Its battles are quick and fun, and the vast majority of the hentai is contained in them. It has lots of variety in enemy types and routines and level design, and doesn't keep you in a given level longer than it takes you to get bored of the H or gameplay it contains.
Malise and the Machine is another good example, with an exceptional battle system along with the same principles.
As for side-scrollers, Parasite In City or Anthophobia are probably the best examples. Both have strong enemy variety, actually challenging action gameplay with a good bit of resource management.
However, most side-scrolling/platforming/"ACT" games, PiC/Anth included, suffer poor design choices - specifically ones where the only way you can even see the hentai is by "dying", or if it has scenes that can occur before, putting yourself at further risk of doing so. That means you're having to balance wanting to see the H content against losing, and therefore pairs that content with frustration or self-sabotage (and probably boredom) depending on how difficult the game is, or whether you've completed it already.
However, the biggest plus of this type of game is they mostly have animated h-scenes, whereas most RPGs will use a single static image for each H attack, or way too few frames to really be considered animated.
So to answer the question of my favorite hentai (gameplay) genre, I'm really not sure. Nothing around quite does it without some kind of huge flaw. Most of the arguments I bring up in that last paragraph bring me back around to touting XCOM style games as the best fit for Hentai games, since "combat rape" can still occur without constituting loss of the game or bringing you too close. It also means the gameplay isn't interrupted and you still have things to do while forcey-funtime is still happening.
If by "genre" you meant fetishes, it's all about tentacles/beast for me. Human-on-human is like 90% of pornography and doesn't benefit much from the constraints lifted by art and game design. Human-on-monstergirl is usually male-protag or male-centric. That's not what I look for personally. I like following the same female character(s) in their journey through various situations, getting fucked in different ways by a wide variety of different things. It's about how much pleasure is inflicted on them, how they respond and their efforts to avoid becoming some things' sex toy or breeding partner against their will.
As for 2D vs 3D, it really depends. Many 3d adult games, and even movies and pictures have very stiff and robotic animiations and get well into the territory of uncanny-valley with lots of missing details somehow undermining it. This is compounded when you factor in things like clipping models.
However the gameplay possibilities within a 3d, or 2.5d (Isometric) space are often a lot more compelling than in 2d.
If you do make an action game, my recommendation is either 2d art in a 3d gamespace (Eg. Doom 1), or 3d art in a 2d gamespace (Eg Hounds of the Blade). 3D/3D is too much work to be feasible for most devs, 2D/2D probably won't stand out unless either the art or gameplay are exceptional.
The art vs "subject" question is a very difficult one.
Take a game like Witch Girl, it has very good art, but its gameplay amounts to little more than a stepping stone to the gallery. Now take the millions of Visual Novels, where the world, its characters and events can take all the time in the universe to be established in detail, is that effort worth it for jack-off material? Especially when the amount of and variance in that art often suffers to make room for plot and whatever.
Establishing context is equally important as good art in my opinion. However, strong context without art is close enough to meaningless (For men at least (Your main demographic); 50 Shades is
all context, while most porn is entirely visual) while good art can still be enjoyed without context beyond what the image/scene suggests.
As always, there's a balance to be struck; I'll refer again to 退魔巫女遊戯. We know what the MC is there to do, why she's fighting the enemies she fights, what her goals are. The theme, and enemy and environment designs in each level are cohesive. The MC's clothing can be damaged by several degrees, and status effects are applied in and carried between battles. These all establish strong context for the hentai its self. There are 5 universal poses for the MC when targeted by a H attack, bound or knocked down, with the enemies' H attacks built around them (Some don't have the third attack and only a few have binds), but each enemy (And boss) also has a "Critical" H-attack which is built from the ground up. The only H-scenes that occur outside of gameplay are as a direct consequence of losing to a boss.
I could talk for days about Hentai game design and what different titles do better than most, but this should give you a good idea. Good luck with your project.