ArianeB 7.2 Walkthroughs

It took me some data mining to dig this out but I'm pretty sure I created the very first ArianeB walkthrough on the 16th of September 2007. In an entry from the day before, called Cyberhugging, I had already declared my unconditional love for adult oriented games that probably started in 1986 with Samantha Fox's Strip Poker on an Amstrad machine (that I still have out of sentimental reasons). The game however, that will be tattooed forever in my brain, is Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards that was shown to me by my brother-in-law who used to play the game all day long during his military service. A good thing that the Soviets never found out that the Belgian army computers, used to protect our capitalist borders, were mostly used for harmless fun.

Four years and three million clicks later the ArianeB walkthroughs now encompass about 50 pages. Most of these game solutions haven't been found by me but by the various members and contributors of the Shark's Lagoon forum where the ArianeB thread now counts over 60 pages or 900 posts (one possible scenario was pointed out by the Creator him/her-self and immediately hijacked by this blog).

With ArianeB #1 probably over, finished, ended, buried and death and ArianeB #2 still in embryonic mode it is perhaps appropriate to point out that the aforementioned Shark is a game creator in his own right. That Cyberhugging post of mine mentioned a game by Shark, called Horny Afternoon and this month the fifth episode of this continuous adventure has seen the light of day: Wendy Birthday Party.

Shark's games, programmed in Flash, are deliberately caricatural. They are in shrill contrast with those Daz 3D and Poser (free) characters. Since a couple of years, and more or less triggered by the successful Shark's Lagoon forum, there has been a boom of adult 3D generated html adventures and frankly all the characters and situations look the same. If I have to play a truth or dare scene again, other than in the original ArianeB dating sim obviously, I'm gonna puke.

Shark's creations bring us a breath of fresh air in an overcrowded adult gaming cyberworld and that's what I like about them. Enough said. Why don't you give them a try for a chance? They are free to play... (paying visitors can play games in advance and are treated with some hidden content, often an extra scene).

The Horny Afternoon series (so far)

All games are playable online and can be downloaded (often in better quality) at Rapidshare. Most versions have a hint system that can be activated by typing the right word, highlight or mark the space between the quotes ("like this") to reveal the secret word.

	Horny Afternoon	HA1	A piano lesson turns into all that jazz. Toggle hint: press "TAB" key to highlight next move.
	Another Very Special Horny Afternoon	HA2	Frank, the handy man, repairs some light bulbs in the bath room. Toggle hint: none.
	An Afternoon at the Swimming Pool	HA3	Cloé visits Wendy's house and they revive those lonely nights at the boarding school. Toggle hint: type "cloe" to highlight next move.
	First Time	HA3+	An additional back-door scene for HA3, with Cloé, Wendy and Frank. Toggle hint: none.
	Secret Fantasy Dreams	n/a	In this spin-off Wendy joins Nanny in bed, truth or fantasy? Toggle hint: type "dream" to highlight next move.
	Private Consultation	HA4	Kenny who studies medicine arrives. The girls ask for some free medical advice. Toggle hint: type "nurse" to highlight next move.
	Wendy Birthday Party (Pt. 1)	HA5	Wendy celebrates her 19th birthday with a Roman Empire themed party... Toggle hint: type "gift" to highlight next move.
	Wendy Birthday Party (Pt. 2)	HA5	Wendy's party turns into a Bacchanalian celebration (password protected, revealed at the end of part 1). Toggle hint: type "gift" to highlight next move.

Most episodes have been turned into walkthrough videos by Arnulf, including scenes that have been deleted from the freeware versions of the game, fun to watch but it takes away the gameplay experience. These are hosted on the contradictorily named Rapidshare server so that by the time you have finally downloaded these you could have played them as well.

Have some nice hot and horny holidays!

Tags: 99. adult gaming

A couple of years ago the adult gaming market suddenly boomed and Shark's Lagoon may well have been one of the main reasons for that. This website not only contains a nice collection of free adult adventures, but has a very active forum as well where programmers, designers and writers meet and new adult games or stories are presented, tested and reviewed.

Some freelance creators suddenly got $-signs in their eyes and over the past few years a few websites were launched where free and payable adult content was offered. Making 3D adult graphics is the easy part. It only takes you an afternoon to learn to create (rather amateurish) 3D human characters, especially with all the free graphic programs that float around, but maintaining a professional website and its webshop is something else. But apparently Virtually Date Games and Play Force One are still around.

Next to ArianeB, who plays in a league of her own, I have a soft spot - what a weird term when it comes to adult gameplaying - for Shark's games and recently a new adventure has been added to his collection. The Jungle Call is one of Shark's 'call of nature' adventures (see also his Whakawai-series) where the western world clashes with the idyllic vision of the noble savage.

The story starts with Flor who enters the South-American jungle to find her sister who disappeared six months ago. Flor is a rather naive girl who isn't aware of the function of several parts of the human anatomy. The Omoro tribe may seem rather primitive, but of course they are well aware of the modern world and like to play around 'for the tourists'.

Head of the Omoro tribe is Ramaoni who initiates Flor to several primitive rituals that will tempt the spirits of the forest to find her lost sister back. But he uses some other tricks as well to get her private attention. When he claims to be bitten by a snake Flor immediately proposes to suck the poison out although it would have been safer for her to ask first where the bite had taken place. After a while, when he has slightly abused his shamanic privileges, even the villagers come into action, although their Pythonesque intervention is not exactly what Flor had hoped for.

You get the point, here is a typical Shark's adventure with humour, innuendo and a lot of caricatural sex. As usual this game is playable online and can be downloaded (often in better quality) at Rapidshare. It has a built-in hint system that can be activated by typing a secret word.

	The Jungle Call (Pt. 1)	JC1	Flor is looking for her sister who is missing in the Jungle. The Omoro tribe welcomes her. Toggle hint: type "river" to highlight next move. More hints at the forum.
	The Jungle Call (Pt. 2)	JC2	The Omoros revere the spirits of the forest... but they love pretty white girls too. Toggle hint: type "river" to highlight next move. More hints at the forum.

It's always nice to play Shark's games and this one isn't an exception.

Tags: 99. adult gaming

Katawa Shoujo (かたわ少女 or freely translated Disability Girls) created quiet a buzz when it appeared in January 2012, but if failed to attract my attention. As a matter of fact I wasn't aware of the game despite its long history and I more or less stumbled on it accidentally. Manga, anime or bijuaru noberu isn't really my cup of tea, some exceptions notwithstanding.

The story of the making of Katawa Shoujo started over a decade ago. In December 2000 a manga fan art project contained a sketch imagining a game about disabled girls set in a Japanese high school. This idea was picked up seven years later by another group and slowly the plan emerged to turn this into a visual novel / dating sim (or eroge if you prefer the lingo of the initiated).

After months of brainstorming a volunteer group of twenty-one developers from around the world, joined up as the 4LS team. Then it took about five years to bring the project to a good end. According to the official blog:

The first year of KS project was a real struggle. We kept losing people, especially artists, and getting a full stable team was just seemingly impossible.

But slowly the job was brought to a good ending. What could easily have developed into a weird Japanese fetish-driven orgy became a visual novel where compassion, respect and love are central.

Story

After a nearly fatal heart-attack and a long stay in hospital 17-year old male protagonist Hisao Nakai is transferred to Yamaku High School. In this school annex rehabilitation centre, with 24/24 7/7 medical supervision, he will be monitored while continuing his high-school studies. In the beginning he is as shocked as every visitor who enters a rehabilitation centre for the first time. He wonders what he is doing among the crippled and the burned, among the deaf, dumb and blind. It turns the place into a reservation for the unfit, hidden from the outside world. A prison and a sanctuary at the same time.

His bitter-sweet inner monologues sound a bit like Philip Marlowe's pseudo-philosophical - often ironic or mildly humoristic - musings, but slowly he starts to see the people behind their physical handicap and at the same time he tries to cope with his own condition. Here is where the dating sim comes in, as five possible arcs (written by different authors) can eventually evolve into virtual relationships - or not (every branch has two or three different endings, ranging from good to disastrous, including death). Hisao has to learn that the girls he dates all have emotional scars and that he must move rather carefully to win their confidence.

Contradictory to most games in the adult genre you can't get your girl 'in the sack' after a dozen of consecutive clicks. Each storyline takes several hours to develop before the girl can be consumed, but I admit this is a rather inappropriate (and frankly male chauvinist pig) term in this case. Do not really expect explicit sex scenes but a mild form of eroticism that fits in nice with the story. This is not a game about one-night stands (as even in ArianeB is the case) but about creating difficult relationships build on trust. Sort of.

Controversy

Although written and designed by a western volunteering clique the game could be easily mistaken for a Japanese commercial production and for once this is meant as a compliment. There was some controversy when the concept was revealed and immediate online protest by people who were fearing fetishist sexploitation but the released product clearly shows that the controversial concept has been dealt with in an adult (meaning: grown-up) way.

Another controversial point lies in the title. Katawa is actually a derogatory term in Japanese, meaning something close to 'cripple' (literally: 'one wheel'). But the 'crippled girls' title was taken from the fan-art picture that started the project and at that time nobody from the 4LS team was fluently enough in Japanese anyway to understand its pejorative meaning.

A very slow path

As a visual novel each story benefits from a slowly evolving and meandering approach, but unfortunately this is where the dating sim as a game fails. It takes at least an hour to get through the introduction that is roughly the same for the five different story lines. Add an extra five hours to explore one of its many endings. A completist who is willing to track all possible paths in the game will be busy for weeks. For those that are impatient there is an express way using this walkthrough and the fast-forward button.

The game has a few crossroads where a decision of the player is asked. What happens next is arbitrary and not always logical, but since the butterfly effect we know such is life. For most of the time the dialogues are quite banal: conversations about the bus schedule, the food in the cafeteria, the exams... Weirdly enough this works quite well and creates an atmosphere that fully surrounds you. There is, in my opinion, one arc that seems out of place and doesn't interact as well with the others, but 4 good stories out of 5 isn't bad at all.

So if you are in for an airport novel that evolves more like Kurosawa's Dreams rather than Tarantino's Kill Bill this is for you. Some have baptised this the most boring game of the world but the simplicity and repetitiveness of things make it something special and unique.

Katawa Shoujo deserves to be read with attention and at slow pace. Those who are hastily clicking forward in a frenzy session will be duly disappointed when they arrive at the naughty bits. Those who want to be slowly immersed by these bitter-sweet symphonies (the soundtrack with 38 different tunes is excellent as well, by the way) will be agreeable surprised.

Katawa Shoujo download area.

Tags: 99. adult gaming