Firstly, I won’t play anything that doesn’t have an LI with long hair. If he exists but his personality sucks, then I won’t play - but I like many kinds of personalities, and having long hair comes with its own usual tropes I’m familiar with, so not often do they have the looks but not personality. This also is an art thing. If the art style is so -_- it distracts me from imagining him as hot in my head, I’ll pass.
Once that’s covered, I look at the setting. I don’t care that much about organized crime (even if historical), contemporary corporate culture, or … most other regular contemporary settings. I like historical and fantasy stuff (low fantasy too). I can be won over by things set in this normal world if the basic circumstances are something that probably won’t happen to me, like a death game.
Writing makes or breaks a game for me, but previews can only tell you about word choice and diction, not how the story comes together or how the characters are developed… sigh.
having long hair comes with its own usual tropes I’m familiar with
I’m guessing you like these tropes. May I ask what they are?
Top 4 I can think of are
- Probably most common, the playboy. I used to love these, but over time I’ve started to grow tired of men who are keenly aware of how good-looking they are and use it to their advantage 😭 so now it depends on their motivations and how aggressive they are in their flirting whether I like them or not.
- A calm guy who seems like the shining example of nobility or even divinity. Can be boring easily, I’m not gonna lie, but the eye candy will at least be good.
- Cold, mysterious emo(/goth/some other third thing) guy, aka Peak. My fave here. And the trope the guy in my icon falls under. and last but certainly not least
- Crossdressing guy who is flamboyant and you’d normally assume is gay. It’s tricky because if the writer(s) are still a little homo/transphobic I’ll get pissed off, but when done right it’s 😙👌🏾 to me. My second fave. #bisexualitywin
the trope the guy in my icon falls under
This is a little funny to me because your icon did not federate over, so what I see as your icon is the default for people who don’t set an icon: a cute little mouse head. I checked to see where your home instance is both so I could see your profile picture and to try to figure out why this is happening, and you’re on Mastodon. I have had trouble with Lemmy and/or Kbin and Mastodon talking to each other nicely in the past, so that might explain it.
It’s always pleasing when you are expecting people to handle something poorly and instead they handle it well. I hope you find more of #4.
Curious about your take on Paradigm Paradox now.
If the premise intrigues me, then I’ll usually be willing to play.
Art plays a strong role—but even if I love the art, I won’t play if the premise sounds boring. I’ll push through bad art for a good story. I find this weird because I am not willing to do the same for an anime or manga. This isn’t exactly a harmful double standard, but I wonder why I have it. Off the top of my head I’ll guess that I have less choice of otome to play because there are less otome out in English so I’ll put up with more, while there are so many different anime and manga translated to English that I can afford to be choosy.
If it crosses some personal content lines I won’t play—I am no good with gory images (descriptions are fine!). I also do not want to play a game where the MC faces sexism/misogyny, or anything that reads as too “serious real world issue in the media spotlight today”.
If it has good self-insertion, tropes I love, an MC with a personality I want to see, or gameplay besides usual VN gameplay I’ll be more likely to want to touch it.
For me, aesthetics play a huge role in VNs, so the artstyle would be the first dealbreaker. I’m honestly not much of a fan of the typical Otome game artstyle/character designs and often find them generic. On the other hand, once I stumble over a VN with a unique, strong art direction I’ll instantly check it out.
Can I know some games that you think have strong art direction? I’m wondering if we have the same definition of “generic.”
I think the game I mainly thought of when I wrote the comment was To Eat A God (which is more or less a yandere dating-sim) It’s changed now but the game’s original thumbnail was bright yellow and showed stylized art of one of the love interests and I was instantly like “Yoooo what’s this? Looks sick”. The dev is mainly an artist and this is their first vn but you can see that they went all out with the visuals.
Another I game I had this reaction to lately was The Phantom of The Black Rose revue, since it looks exactly like an 80s shojo manga a la Rose of Versailles, but it’s Yuri so that probably doesnt count :/
