What would you want from a 3D game?

[Chaotic_VDG]

Hi Everyone.

For a few years now, I've been (very slowly) working on a 3D game, a dating game, but based in Unity3D, rather than a browser. I'm now very confident with Unity3d, and have a very satisfying list of locations you can walk around and explore, including :

- Player's home
- Strip club
- Nightclub
- Public Swimming pool
- Bar
- Clothes store
- Restaurant
- Office floor
- Gym
- Park
- Photography studio
- A set of downtown streets












I would love to be able to release something next year, but I'm struggling to decide what exactly the content should be. That's why I want to start this thread. I want some feedback on what everyone would want from a game like this.

My initial plan was to basically aim for a 3D version of Maddison, though not necessarily with that character. You'd meet your date, then visit various locations, take her back to your place if she likes you enough, etc etc. There's a couple of problems with this though. a) I've done it before, but b), and more importantly to me, I've done it before in my 2D games. If it's just going to deliver that, why bother making a 3D game at all? It has to be worth the effort of making it with Unity.

One idea that I like is that you can create your own woman to date. That would certainly be something you can't do in a regular browser game! You can select preset faces, body shapes, skin textures (and therefore ethnicity). You could even select personality types and, should I want to have it voiced, a few different voice actors. I have small reservation that this means the character won't be as well defined, but I think I could essentially write 3 well defined personalities. Everything else is superficial.

My larger reservation with this is that regular players of my games would actually prefer I use my established characters instead. The likes of Rachel and Maddison are very popular, and since she's the poster girl for the site, I'd feel compelled to include Crystal too. One solution could be to include them in secondary roles. While visiting locations with your custom date, you can find, say, Crystal at the pool working as the lifeguard, and she can join in your date for a while. Essentially, the established characters are all the options for a threesome. If this doesn't end up giving them much content, then another possibility if to add an extra mode based on my 'Photographer' games. Without any date, you just explore the city, finding potential models, completing quests to persuade them to model for you, then taking photos etc.

So, what kind or format would players prefer?

- Custom date with established characters as possibilities for threesomes?
- Just a custom date?
- Dates with the established characters, with the option of who (of several) you want to pick at the start?
- Just one date with one established character? In other words, a series with one date per episode.
- A new, but not custom date character?
- A Pool Party? It would certainly be quicker and easier to do. Might be too similar to mistacorn/eek game's House party game though.
- Something else entirely. Not a dating game this time.

I'm interested in ideas and suggestions too. If you've got an idea you like that I haven't listed, let me know. I could end up using it. I'm also eager just to hear any thoughts on idea in general.

[look]

Most games start off on the first date, I wouldn't mind starting from scratch, by that I mean you might meet a lady through the usual channels and she's dressed casually, but have to convince her to go on a date with you, and once you've got the date lined up, you get to look forward to what she'll look like on the first and following dates.

Scenario ideas:
Office affair, trying to keep things secret as the affair heats up more and more.
Crazy spontaneous sex with a stranger at a concert, she says it's honestly the best she's ever had thinking you'll never see each other again, turns out to be one half of the new couple that just moved in next door.
For existing characters: How they came to be, e.g. be the guy who turned Rachel crazy for sex.
Money for nothing and your chicks for free: Existing/new female character has to make it through a week without any money, just using their wits/wiles/whatever, this could go in all kinds of directions.

Personally prefer a smaller cast of characters, because I like a little character development. But my idea of character development is working to convince her to have lots of sexy fun before she gets old and boring and doesn't have a choice anymore.

[Super]

I would like something like harvest moon or stardew valley, not the farming aspect but more the relationship aspect

Have a long (and expanding through future updates) cast of NPCs, each with their own personality and schedule and likes and dislikes and have to manage this. For instance, some characters may or may not like certain gifts, and some may even be more attracted to certain character types (so like have bisexual women or some who won't like men with long hair or whatnot). They could like and not like other girls too which would be useful when trying to score big time. But each has their own schedule and likes and dislikes which you'd need to learn

Perhaps have the entire game playable in third person so that the sex scenes won't be as jarring because I prefer third person there

Personally I think I'd prefer entirely new characters but whatever

[tlaero]

I think you have bigger decisions to make than whether its a new story and which characters to use.

Something to consider is that you don't want it to turn into a "walking simulator." In a 2D game, when you move from area to area, it happens instantly. You click the link and, boom, you're on the other side of the city. In 3D you're likely to animate the entire walk from one location to the next. You're going to have to find some way to make that interesting.

Typical non-erotic 3D games do this in a few ways, but most of these ways don't work for a dating sim.

1) In shooters, you're fighting along the way. It's "walk a little bit, kill a ton of things, walk a little bit." You don't get bored of the walking, because it's more of a punctuation between fights than the actual sentences. In an erotic game, you'll need to find something to make all the walking around time interesting. First thought there is that you have the conversations while walking, but that's kind of confusing if you're controlling the movement. Do you have to toggle between mouse movements change the direction you're facing and allow you to choose your responses? Do you number all of the responses and choose them with the number keys on the keyboard while keeping your hand on the mouse? That would mean you don't get to click on things in the environment anymore. Etc. Do you put the movement on rails? Few people like that.

2) In most 3D games, you spend the entire time running. This makes sense when you're a soldier and there are people dying ahead and you have to get to them. This doesn't make sense when you're a guy trying to pick up a girl. (Even if you're trying to pick up a jogger, you're not going to spend the entire game running.)

3) In some games, the world is SO interesting, that you're really in it to explore. You don't mind walking around because over every hill is something wonderful to find. That'll be hard to pull off in a game set in the real world.


A few potential thoughts:
1) Make it a 2D/3D mix. Sure, you can render it all in Unity, but you don't have to animate moving from place to place. Make the movement be like your 2D games and save the "free motion" for special sections like sex scenes.

2) Come up with gameplay techniques that can only be done in 3D. For instance, in 3D you can actually control what you're looking at. Zoom in far enough that you can't see much more than her face. If you let your eyes wander (to her breasts, or to the pretty girl that just walked by), she'll notice and call you on it. So, if you want to do those things, you've got to time it right, etc.

Tlaero

[dauner]

I think this is a good chance for a series, not necessarily limited to only dates but also for short stories between characters or about a single one.

Starting of with a date with a new or established character at a few different places. From that you can branch off in new episodes to add more places and characters (old or new) aswell as secrets to find while exploring.
For each episode you can chose a different girl you met or stay with the same one. Based on those characters you will have certian events happen at certian places or with certian characters.
Maybe you can ditch your date and go on with a new girl on the same day.
Each day is a new episode where more and more events can happen at certian places with the girl you brought with you. This way you can add more stuff over time and increase the replay value if you added something for the first days.
Overtime you can tell a big story or just exlpore the relationships between different characters.

I'm with Tlaero when it comes to the 2D/3D. 3D is a great tool for exploration, but having nothing to explore while walking from place to place will be boring and unnecessary

And please put in Maddison and Jennifer, my all time favourites.

[Super]

Well harvest moon and stardew valley are readily enjoyable for running around an environment so I don't think I'd want a series of static scenes, that's just destroy the point I feel

Perhaps some minigames would help? An obvious choice would be lettin the character have a camera for the requisite photo shoots. But also have the player be able to take photos whenever, maybe taking photos of secret alien stuff to increase relationships with a conspiracy girl or something. Not sure what else to do in a game set in the real world though...

[Chaotic_VDG]

Yeah, the problem of too much walking was one I went through a while ago.

Originally, the plan was to have a city hub where you can walk to the various locations, but the walking part, whether it was alone or with the date, was kinda monotonous and boring. I ended up changing it so that you just walk up to the exit of the nightclub or wherever you are, then you get a menu to warp you to the next location. Although I haven't tried it out in the context of a full game yet, things seem to flow better this way.

[Mortze]

The issue of walking around being bored isn't because of the actual walking, but because of the time you have to walk. Let me explain further.
If your character has to walk from his room to the door, in the street to the bus stop, from the bus stop to this office, it will be boring sure.
But if you jump those parts (or only have the player do it once and every other time it's set to jump, or the option to Jump To) and the scene is at his office only, where there are other characters to interact with, either male or female, date interests or not, it wouldn't be boring to walk around, talking to people or doing stuff at the computer or at the copy machine. If everything you have to walk to has some meaning (going to talk to Jerry that informs you that your hot boss needs some copies from the file Amanda gives you) it won't be boring. Many RPG games are done that way and I think it is rather fun.
The trick is to keep the walks short and the player concentrated on anything else and not the walk. I wouldn't mind to walk the whole office corridor with the files copied to deliver them to my hot boss.
It reminds me of the games Hitman. To play it well you couldn't run much, You had to walk. And it was fun. You felt like a true assassin trying to blend in. If you walk calmly around the office where there is the hot intern by the left, Jerry the funny guy by the right, the hot boss office a few meters down the corridor, I would think it is a fun game.

My 2 cents advice would be for you to try and build a game with 1 or 2 locations only as a trial, before making a game with lots of places. Run it as proof of concept.

[TheGreatJoeGargery]

It reminds me of the games Hitman. To play it well you couldn't run much, You had to walk. And it was fun. You felt like a true assassin trying to blend in. If you walk calmly around the office where there is the hot intern by the left, Jerry the funny guy by the right, the hot boss office a few meters down the corridor, I would think it is a fun game.

I agree with this 100%. I actually think it may be a good idea to go to YouTube and watch some Let's Plays of the new episodic Hitman game. Come to think if it, if Leo from Lesson of Passion wanted to do a follow up of Spy: Agent 069 then this would be a great concept. You have to sneak in, find your objective, perhaps seduce some people along the way, plant some hidden cameras.....

Anyway I digress. I agree with Dauner that this would work well as a series. You could perhaps start with a single girl you can date but populate the game with multiple potential non-player characters that you could date in the future. It would give fans something to look forward to, waiting for their favorite non-player character to become a potential date. Plus if you're just adding a girl to an existing game and not making a whole game from scratch you can concentrate on fleshing out the girl and her personality. Super already had some good points on this. Also you could add girls that may not be able to sustain a full game on their own such as Carol from the Photographer 2 or use a story that you may not have been able to make into a full game.

I'd like to see girls already established in your games but perhaps set this game in a different universe than the previous vdate games to give yourself a bit of flexibility and give the player some surprises. Try to distill the girls down to their core essence and recreate them again, figuring out how they fit in this new world along the way. There could also be a combination of some new and some previous girls as well. I also like Look's idea of starting even before the date, so you have to meet the girl in the world first and figure out how to hit on them. You could have a story line for each girl that you could pursue or abandon in favor of someone else. You could think of these like side quests in an Elder Scrolls game. Some could be long and complicated while some could be short and simple so you never know what you'll get when you start one.

Some have suggested minigames. I think your job could be a minigame. You may have to go to work and make decisions. If you do well, you can "level up" your job, which means you have a healthier credit card for dates and your home and car could get nicer. You could look at games like the Eleanor games or the Corporate Raider games from Selectacorp on how to integrate work activities into your game. You could also perhaps have a second job as either a photographer or a personal trainer (the vdategames staples), and are only working your lowly desk job until you can get full time work in those other two jobs and spend all day either at the studio or gym.

In regards to how time works I don't think we need a full on "life simulator", where you wake up, shower, eat breakfast and such. During the week the day could be divided into two big chunks. You go to work for the first half of the day (which could be a 2D static shot where you have various decisions to make which appear as buttons on your screen) then after work you enter 3D where you decide how to spend your evening. You can go home or explore the city. If you go on a date that evening, you meet your date and have time for three of the many locations. This could be different from most dating games in that you could make it very difficult to have sex on the first date and perhaps the norm would be to go on two or three dates to get lucky. You could make it like Anna on hard mode level of difficulty to have sex but if you play your cards right you may just get a hand job for your first date efforts. If you don't have a date you can still go out. The evening is still divided into three sections, early evening, mid evening and late evening. There will be different people in different locations at different times. Or you could be going to your part time job to meet a housewife for a photo shoot because she wants to take spicy pictures to give to her husband or to your personal trainer job to meet up with the sexy trophy wife trying to keep thin so her rich husband doesn't decide to trade her in for someone younger and slimmer. Also some locations may only be open at certain times. Some locations may also be different at different times. The park is a much different place with much different opportunities depending on if you visit it during the day on a weekend or if you visit it in the late evening. You could go to the gym after work, go out for a drink or go home (or any of the locations in any combination). At home you could talk to people online and get to know them (which could also be a viable way to get to meet people). You could call or text girls between dates (to build sexual tension). This way the time in between dates is now part of the game experience too. Tension could be build up on a date and then you have time to stew until the next one. On the weekends the day is still broken into two chunks, but instead of going to work during the day you can choose another three activities (so you can visit six locations on the weekend, three during the day and three during the evening. You could knock it down to two during the day if you want, to account for that fact that you sleep in and do what you need to do like laundry and grocery shopping on the weekends). There could also be a mechanic where if you drink too much the previous evening you have a hangover the next day and loose all your daytime activities the following day due to nursing a hang over. This could also negatively affect your job performance if you show up to work hung over on a weekday.

So basically a sandbox type experience with a bunch of side quest loosely strung together is what I'm looking for. I enjoyed Blind Date 3D from Lesson of Passion so 3D dating games are defiantly viable and can be very entertaining. I'm also impressed with the level of work you've already put into this. No matter what you decide to do I look forward to seeing what becomes of this project.

[Kalzero]

While your games have always had a lot of options for MFF threesomes it would be cool if you had another male character for MFM (straight) threesome, not a throwaway character but someone else who has a place in the story. Or maybe a "couple swap" storyline. Either way, i'm looking forward to it. Good luck on your project.

[TheGreatJoeGargery]

While your games have always had a lot of options for MFF threesomes it would be cool if you had another male character for MFM (straight) threesome, not a throwaway character but someone else who has a place in the story. Or maybe a "couple swap" storyline. Either way, i'm looking forward to it. Good luck on your project.

Two guys with one girl threesomes are pretty rare. Couple Swap games looked like they were getting popular for a little bit, such as in the two Hot Wife Story games and games like Hot Wife Tara, but they never really materialized as a sub-genre. I don't know why though. When either of these scenerios appear in other games such as Living With Temptation it gets a pretty positive reaction. I think you could make a whole game just about a swinging couple. You could make it like The Academy games with the couple's swinging getting more and more intense with each episode.

This is kind of off topic as I don't think this is a good idea for this particular game but we're just spit balling ideas here so I may as well say it and sometimes you can never tell where inspiration will come from. My idea for a wife swapping game starts with a married couple going to a wife's friend's wedding. The table they get seated at has the wife's wild female friend from college and one of the wife's former playboy boyfriends from when she used to party a lot with her wild friend and was influenced by her. The husband thinks the wife is a bit of a prude and not very exciting in bed but he didn't know her in collage. Long story short, drinks are had, wife's friends lets it slip to the husband about their former wild ways, wife's old boyfriend dances with wife while husband dances with wife's friend, they go back to old boyfriends swanky hotel suite, and stuff happens depending on the choices made. Either way husband finds out how wild his wife was and the idea of swinging is planed in both his and his wife's head. Next episode the husband and wife put the wedding incident behind them and are on their normal weekly date night. Wife is dressed up at the bar waiting for her husband who will meet her at a lounge after work as he had to work a bit late. By the time husband gets there wife is being hit on by some guy. He approaches them and has the option of pretending like he doesn't know his wife and tries to pick her up too. Wife plays along but decides that she isn't going to just make it easy for the husband and makes him work for it. Husband could get cheeky himself and decide that he "gave up" on trying to pick up a girl (his wife) at the bar leave them alone and go and watch them from across the bar. The scene turns into a game of hot wife chicken between the two of them, where wife lets the stranger get a few feels in while staring at her husband daring him to be the one to stop the situation and nobody is entirely sure how far this situation will go. At the end of the date the wife tells husband how hot she thought the whole situation was and they think about setting up something else. It then escalates into both the wife and husband going out on dates at the same time in different places with different people. They text each other how dates are going at intervals when they can. My idea is to make the date for the husband really hard to put the pressure on him to score, especially if it looks like his wife may score on her date. Then it keeps going from there. Also involved is the 18 year old boy that cuts the couple's lawn who has a crush on the wife and the neighbor couple who asks the husband to come over and help install or repair their hot tub (resulting in a couple's hot tub date), their 18 year old daughter's best friend (the daughter is away at collage but comes home on the weekends, the friend isn't going to collage and visits the daughter on the weekends and could meet up with the husband during the week), and the wife's old boyfriend from the wedding ends up in the couple's home town on business and the wife offers to let him stay at their house for a few days instead of staying at a hotel. Oh, and his flight gets delayed so he has to stay at their house over the weekend when their daughter is home which puts stress on both the husband and wife that he may end up seducing their daughter, which wasn't part of the plan.

Anyway, if anybody finds any of these ideas are useful feel free to run with them. I'm not sure how much it helped this game but you never know.

[Issho]

Maybe you can take some inspiration from the game: "kiss before midnight" ? It was released years ago in germany, so there isn´t any english product (maybe there are some english translations, i don´t know), but it was normally planned as "Singles 3". I think Singles 1 and 2 is well known in this community (similar to the sims genre). Kiss before Midnight was a 3d game from a player perspective. It had 3-5 locations, where the scenes took place. It has some similarities with todays dating-games:
> choosing between different answers => increasing, decreasing certain stats
> a story....romantic but not very bad

E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz-Jj6--gWg (unfortunately in german, but you´re maybe interested in the game mechanics)

The Game was pretty bad, but not because of the story, but more because of a repetitiv boring mini-game between the conversations (similar to the game "Seduce me" with the idea of convincing a women on a conversation (= gaining stats, increasing stats) or to loose a conversation against her (loosing stats)). I hope you don´t adapt the idea of the mini-game, at least not like these two games, if you really think about it

[Maurice]

Ever since Chaotic's very first games I'd love to see him make a lemmings type of game. Where not the girls but the locations are the stars of the story.

The girls would walk around in real time gouverned by a simple ai that tells them how to interact with the objects and environments they encounter.

The puzzle could start simple with one girl and one object (eg take a girls coat).

After each succesfully completed puzzle the player could be rewarded with some additional information about a girls behaviour (to help with (future) puzzles) and background (to give the girls in the puzzle some dept (so the player gets attached to them))

Starting locations of the girls could be randomized so each time you face a similar quest the puzzle is slightly different.

[dauner]

MMF stuff won't work that well if you only have the POV of the male player-character. In most positions you only see half the action or it gets kindy wonky. For MFF you can get a lot more done.
But in a 3D game we could have the opportunity to chose our point of view and operate the camera ourselves to see what we wanna see. Creates a whole new room of possibilities while catering to everyones demand.

[muttdoggy]

What if you combined a few elements from your suggestions?
Staff the world with your regular characters like Maddison, Rachel, Crystal, etc and they've all got jobs in their areas? Like Crystal's a lifeguard at the pool, Maddison's at the photography studio, etc? With all that set and most or all of your characters are working in their respective places, the world is done! I would make each story about 2 or 3 girls for more replay value.
My thought is one of 2 things.. Now I don't know about patching unity or how that's done but what about an episodic development where the first and main release is one or 2 characters who have fleshed out dates with a possibility of threesomes? Then we could "patch in" the new character storylines as they are developed and release those as patches. Eventually, the final patch would include a pool party and orgy. That would end up as a final game where you can pick any girl you want for some dates that might include another girl and if you get all the achievements, a "pool party" date-orgy can be unlocked.
Or my other idea is (since we've already got the base characters and locations done) we could do it similar to what you're doing now with HTML. The first episode could focus on 2 or 3 characters. Then the next game (re-using the template of locations and girls) would focus on a different set of ladies since all you have to do is program the storylines so it could come out quickly. And so on until you've got all the girls done. The finish the series with a "pool party" deal!
This is just something I thought would work and be different yet feel familiar. Kinda like the best of both worlds deal.