(Disclaimer: While this first article is largely table-setting, it goes without saying that the articles in this series are going to include frank discussions of sex, kinks, and other issues surrounding sexuality. The same rules that apply to the Weekly Relationship Thread also apply here: please refrain from any kink-shaming, objectification, or any other behaviors that might make another user uncomfortable, or otherwise violate the Avocado Site Rules and Community Guidelines.)
Sometime last year, I started playing a peculiar little game called Hole Dweller. The game opens with the player being addressed by an faceless and omniscient (albeit clumsy) presence who has dropped one of their powerful relics: a Magic Drill, which subsequently falls to the world below and shatters. Not wanting to gather all the pieces themselves, the presence tasks the player with the sacred duty of retrieving all the pieces of the Drill for them. They assign the player the role of Captain, and transport them aboard a giant mechanical caravan/drilling machine roving the world below. The Caravan is empty, save for you and a cute little AI companion, who briskly walks you through the basic tutorial. After the tutorial completes, you’re effectively on your own. The core gameplay loop is relatively simple: pick a spot on the map, and start drilling. Placing a drill will initiate the level where the Captain and crew drill to the bottom of the level and obtain a Drill piece. After beating a level, the Captain has the option to place a Village on the drill spot that will passively accumulate resources for them while the Caravan moves around the map, like grass, wood, and stone. The Captain can find these easily enough by breaking resource blocks while drilling. But there is one additional resource they’ll need before they can start building villages: they’re going to need babies. You know the saying, “It takes a baby to raise a village!”1 So, how does one get babies (resource)? Well…you get ’em the old fashioned way: you have sex.
Hole Dweller is, per the developer+ description, a “sandbox furry incremental porn game” released on January 19, 2024, available on Steam and Itch.io. While it does still have the gameplay content described above, a very significant portion of the gameplay loop also involves having ridiculous amounts of goofy-looking sex, to impregnate your goofy-looking companions, who in turn give birth to a bunch of goofy-looking babies. As explained above, you need babies to build villages on completed drill spots, which will passively gather resources while you move around the map. Building enough villages will eventually gather more resources than drilling does on its own, so you can focus on other things, like recruiting crew members. Crew members have various sex-related stats that do everything from make them hornier or last longer during sex, to carrying more babies. More babies means more villages/resources, which means less time spent level-grinding, and more time to focus on…other matters. Like upgrading the caravan! Now you can go more places! Meet new people! Drill for new people, then drill the new people!2 …Wait, why am I talking about this again? Oh, right!
One reason I bring up Hole Dweller is that I’ve been playing it again recently, had a lot of fun with it, and wanted an excuse to talk about it. More to the point though: I off-handedly mentioned a different porn game I was playing during a the most recent GamesCast recording. After getting some jokes and laughs in, Merve mentioned that he “doesn’t have any moral objection to porn games, I just don’t understand why anyone would spend their time playing them.” It was all good natured ribbing, but it also got me wondering: Wait, why do I spend my time playing these? Why does anyone? What am I getting out of playing porn games that I don’t get out of other more “traditional” pornographic mediums? What even is a “porn game” anyway? Why is it that people who both play video games and readily admit to watching porn, also have an aversion to the very idea of playing a “porn game”?3 This short series of articles is an effort to explore these questions, unpack the answers. and maybe even introduce people to games they might not otherwise play. Let’s close that door, dim those lights, and grab some noise-cancelling headphones, shall we?
Q: What makes a game, porn? What is the experience of playing one?
A: It Depends! Usually the porn part / Equal turns fun, sexy, surreal, occasionally embarrassing, and pretty goofy if you try to describe it in words like I just did
To start, while asking anyone to define porn is a bit of a loaded question on its own, it gets even trickier when you add the word “game” to it. Games as a medium require a level of engagement from the player that typically isn’t required of a medium consumed more passively, like a movie. A movie will play in its entirety to an empty room if you let it, but games don’t start–or even end–without an active, outside, participant picking up a controller and playing it. So, how does that sort of “required engagement” for a video game work when you add porn–something that you’re usually just letting play on its own while you’re…otherwise occupied? Well, let’s try a thought exercise: Let’s say a game has porn content, and all you had to do to reach said content was click through a series of prompts–no combat, no roleplay, no minigames, just periodically clicking to progress a given scene until the characters start having sex. Is that a game? Mindlessly clicking a prompt to make the porn happen so you can just watch? Is that any different than pushing play/pause/rewind/FF on a video player? If that hypothetical example counts as a porn game, does that mean the spicy unmarked VHS tape you found buried in the woods, is, in fact, the first porn game you ever played? Yes! It does! Congratulations, you’ve Played A Porn Game!
Wait, you’re saying that doesn’t count? It has to have “actual game mechanics” in it to be a game? Uh…hm. Well, okay, how about this: what if instead of merely clicking through prompts, you had to create a customized character to participate in the porn, before you get access to it. Hairstyle, eye color, the kind of genitalia you have, you name it. Done? Okay now–no, you can’t have sex yet, you have to allocate your stat points and pick a background first! Then you have to watch the intro cutscene that introduces the story, lore, and the characters! Look at all those people you can potentially have sex with! What? No, you can’t have sex right now, you’re being attacked by sexy tutorial monsters, kill those first! Okay, all done with that, now go on, introduce yourself. Don’t be shy, they’ll love you! …It didn’t give you the dialogue option to have sex? That’s…weird. Well, hang on, it’s daytime right now, maybe the mood isn’t right? Yeah, that has to be it, try waiting until you make camp at nighttime, and asking them then.
(SEVERAL IN-GAME HOURS LATER): Hey, any luck? Still haven’t had sex yet? You did try talking to them at camp right, when it was nighttime? Oh, it only gave you the option to chivalrously flirt. Well…it is a bit early in the game, still. Just keep them in your party and go through the story quests. Maybe they just need to spend more time around you. I’m sure they’ll see how great at sex you are once they get to know you!
(TWO REAL-TIME HOURS LATER): Hey, sorry, had to step away for a sec. Y’all have sex yet, or…? You cuddled with them by the fire after getting caught in an abrupt-but-romantically-fortuitous rainstorm? Okay, promising start, what happened next? Come on, don’t leave me hanging! Oh…they said it was getting late and went to bed while giving you a lingering glance before entering their tent. Was it like a, sexy, “come hither” glance, or–oh, a “good night” glance, never mind then. I mean…progress is progress, right? What’s this you’re giving me, the quest log? Sure I’ll take a look at it…wow, that’s…quite a laundry list of tasks you’ve done. Still nothing, huh? Not even a peck on the cheek? I mean, you’ve progressed far enough into their quest line that you should have the required amount of relationship affinity by now…oh wait, I recognize this quest! Okay, you’re almost there, just go back to the ruins, retrieve the relic, for them, and talk to them at camp during the nighttime with the relic in your inventory. That should trip the final flag to initiate the first romance cutscene. Porn content here we come!
(ONE NOT-DIFFICULT-BUT-DEFINITELY-MORE-IRKSOME-THAN-IT-SHOULD’VE-BEEN BOSS FIGHT LATER): Whew, that was…some boss fight. Good call on equipping the fire-proof nipple tassels by the way. Anyway, you give them the relic? Well, what’d they say? They just…repeated the same dialogue? That’s weird, getting the relic should’ve tripped the flag–you want to play something else? Wait no, don’t close the game yet! You’re SO close to the porn part, I promise! Here, let me check the Steam walkthrough. Did that…yeah, did that…just beat the Muscle Mommy Dragon Queen…OH! That’s right, I forgot about this part, my bad. Okay, so you still have to talk to them, at night, while at camp with the relic in your inventory, but the scene only triggers if it’s raining. Then they’ll invite you into their tent to “stay dry”. But yeah, try that and it should populate the dialogue option that leads to the porn scene. Good luck!
(TEN SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT-MINUTES-LATER): Heyyyyy look at you, champ! You’re practically glowing! Guess you finally got to the good stuff, huh? How was it, what’d ya think? …Yeaaaahhhh, I thought the relic was suspiciously butt-plug-shaped the first time I played too, it’s pretty obvious what they actually wanted it for, in hindsight. I’m glad you liked it! Well, no time to rest, there’s 10 other romance options to have sex with after all! Go get ’em tiger!
So, there you have it! A porn game with ” actual gameplay mechanics”: character customization and progression, multiple characters and romance options, challenging combat, bosses, and even branching questlines with multiple endings! You uh…you okay there? You’ve got a kind of concerned expression on your face. You say the structure of this hypothetical porn game sounds similar to another game you’ve played…? Which one?
Q: Is Baldur’s Gate 3 A Porn Game?
A: No, Baldur’s Gate 3 is Not A Porn Game…but why isn’t it?
A few weeks ago I posed a purposefully loaded question: Is Baldur’s Gate 3 a porn game, why or why not? I stressed there was no right or wrong answer, but general consensus was “No, BG3 is not a porn game.” The reasons cited were that the romance/sexual content one might encounter on an average playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 is 1) only going to amount to a few minutes of scenes, when the game itself is nearly 100 hours, 2) no more graphic than any given Game of Thrones episode (probably less actually), and crucially, 3) entirely optional. I don’t bring this up to argue that BG3 is actually a porn game when it clearly isn’t. But the game described in the previous section has quite a few gameplay elements in common with not just BG3 but RPGs in general, and is an amalgamation of two real porn games I played: Princess & Conquest, and The Last Sovereign. At a surface-level, these two games aren’t that dissimilar with a lot of modern-day RPGs: both games have surprisingly in-depth level-progression systems with stat point allocation and passive/active skills, multiple and romance options, questlines that progress the romance enough to unlock a romance scene, etc. TLS in particular has some standout characterization, with character arcs that are just as nuanced, complex, and thought-provoking as anything you’d find in any given triple-A RPG (even better in some cases). For the purposes of this column though, there are really only two key distinctions to keep in mind between actual porn games, and games that have nudity/sexual content like BG3:
- Porn Games have sexual content that was clearly made with intention to arouse and/or titillate (no need to read between the lines here, as the creator themselves will often define it as such in the Steam description).
- A substantial amount of the gameplay in a porn game will be devoted to engaging with said sexual content, such that the only way to avoid it is to stop playing. You can get through the entirety of Baldur’s Gate 3 and not engage with the sexual content, or even the romantic content, at all. With P&C, TLS, and other porn games like it, the sexual content is baked into the premise. The story, the characters, the combat, the gambling minigames, even the in-game economy and setting’s political climate (in the case of TLS)–there is literally no aspect of those games that doesn’t involve your character, or other characters, having sex. Sex is the answer to every question, the solution to every puzzle, and the reward for every quest (well, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes, the reward is clothes. Sexy clothes). 6
Q: What other genres of porn game are out there? Are they actually, you know…good?
A: As many as you can think of! / Sturgeon’s Law remains Very In Effect
The Adult Only tag on the Steam store boasts a whopping 6,032 titles (available in English anyway), in various genres. While I obviously didn’t go through every single one of them, scrolling through the top-sellers, I noted several subcategories that I think are worth highlighting, which will give a general overview of the current porn game landscape. Regarding whether the overall quality of porn games is comparable to non-pornographic games, I’ll slightly reword the first corollary of the above-referenced Sturgeon’s Law: “The existence of immense quantities of trash in porn games on Steam is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.” Where there is Yuck, there is also Yum–if you’re willing to dig for it.
- Visual Novels: The vast majority of porn games on Steam fall into this category. I can kind of see why: you don’t really have to worry too much about having gameplay mechanics that are too robust, because that’s not what people playing these games are looking for. And due to the lower barrier to entry, the scope of the content on offer for pornographic visual novels is pretty varied! Well-written stories with diverse casts, a lot more emphasis on the narrative rather than the porn, and it’s a great option for folks more into written erotica. There’s also eroge, a Japanese style of visual novel that has a history dating back to at least the 80’s, where the focus is almost entirely on the relationship between the player and their chosen love interest. The porn content typically doesn’t even come until the very end of the route. A lot of well known IPs originated here as well: Clannad, Kanon, and multi-media juggernaut Fate/Stay Night all got their start as eroge visual novels.
- A Mobile Game By Any Other Name: This probably sounds meaner than intended; just because it’s a mobile game doesn’t mean that it can’t be genuinely fun to play from a mechanical standpoint. There are a lot of match-3s, idler/clickers, lite management sims, and even merge type games that have great writing or mechanics that are deeper than they appear at first. That said, if you take the porn out, there’s little to distinguish them from any number of the ones on GooglePlay or the Apple Store. But most people these days consume the majority of their media content on their mobile devices anyways, so it follows that they’re probably consuming porn on ’em too.
- RPG Maker Porn Games: Most of these games are just turn-based RPGs with porn CGs. RPG Maker is marketed to newcomers, but having played around with it myself, the sheer amount of content in it can be intimidating.4 This slightly higher barrier to entry means the content isn’t quite as diverse as visual novels. However, this space is also where you tend to get the porn games that have absurdly in-depth mechanics. While still shorter than their mainstream counterparts, you can spend just as many hours playing them: completing all the character routes, making different story choices that change the ending, tweaking your character build, experimenting with party comp, etc. Some of them are so mechanically complex, lore-heavy or both, that it almost seems a little silly that they’d put all that effort into making a porn game, specifically. Makes you wonder what the solo-developer of some of these titles could do if given a AAA budget and full team of developers.
- Simulations, or A Literal Sex Machine: These aren’t so much “games” as a suite of tools for staging sex scenes. The short version is that you customize your dream partner to look, wear, and sound however you want, and then and fuck them when, where, and how you want. The longer (and less charitable) version is that you pay a full-retail price of $69.99 (not including DLC), to spend between 2-3 hours trying to intuit a very unintuitive UI of ill-formatted fonts in machine-translated English, to navigate a series of menus with a vast array of tabs for various body parts that contain multiple slider-sets of increasingly alarming specificity. When you’re done fine-tuning your digital sex golem, you go to scene-staging, spend another 30 minutes setting the scene, poses, and sequence you want, and THEN have sex. Some of these may also have a time-management sim aspect to them, where you have to juggle having sex with other assorted responsibilities, like cleaning a house, or working in an office (I already have to do this in real life, so I personally don’t see the appeal).
- AI GENERATED SLOP: There is a common saying on the internet, when talking about whether an emerging technology will see mass-adoption, or remain in the sphere of niche hobbyists: that if people are making porn with it, it’s probably here to stay. If the porn game listings on the Steam store are any indication, we are regrettably in the thick of that phase with AI tools. Freemium gachas employing predatory dark patterns and low-effort Hentai puzzles are plentiful on Steam. Now, developers on Steam are (allegedly) required to disclose when their game was made using AI tools. But speaking anecdotally, I’ve never seen a developer admit that up front, nor have I ever been able to figure out where on the store page these disclosures actually are. Used to be you could tell more or less at a glance whether something was AI-generated: check if the hands have extra fingers, if there’s more than one person in the image check if the faces in the background are consistent, see if the edges of the hair are too smooth, or have a soft, slightly blurred finish, etc. But as these tools grow more sophisticated, the content they produce has fewer visual “tells” than before, so the criteria used to identify it is less reliable. So, how does one determine whether a given porn game has AI-generated content? Ironically, kinda the same way one determines whether something is porn: you just…know it when you see it.5
All right, that should be enough table-setting! If you made it to the end of the article, thank you so very much for reading! Seriously, I mean it: this was a very fun but occasionally embarrassing thing to research and write, and it means a lot that you took time out of your day to indulge my weird, horny hobby. I’m planning to write at least two more of these (for now anyway), so I hope you’ll stick around for the next two! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment down below!
Next article: Okay but seriously Quinley why do you play porn games?
- …That is how the saying goes…right? ↩︎
- HEYOOOOOOO, UP TOP! …geddit? Drill the new people, because, ya know, sex? …Anyone? Is this thing even on? ↩︎
- You’re already doing the other two things, doing both simultaneously has to save some amount of time, right? ↩︎
- General consensus is that while programming knowledge isn’t required to use it, there is a soft limit to what one can accomplish in it. Learn a bit of javascript though, and the sky’s the limit! But then you have to learn javascript. ↩︎
- A few visual tells: washed out and dull color palette, character textures appear airbrushed to look preternaturally smooth, all animations look like still-images that were animated using Live2D techniques (because they were), and every female character has “Belle Delphine Face” (check her Wikipedia article, you’ll see exactly what I mean) ↩︎