It's been longer than I planned to go without an update, so to give a quick progress report, the promotional video is almost complete now, but still needs some final adjustments.

Since I can't share that yet, I figured I might as well cover another topic important to the development of this game. I discussed this broadly in an earlier devlog, but if that article was the "what" and "why" of the subject, this one will be more about the "how."

I should note to start with that this is an extremely personal subject. Not that it's difficult for me to talk about (I write porn, I can't afford to be touchy,) but that people enjoy very different things in terms of both content and style, so I can't guarantee that what I do will hit the right notes for any specific audience member. But I think that people who prefer different sorts of sex scenes can also learn something from other approaches; I've definitely learned things from works which didn't match my own tastes.

I've seen a lot of people ask for advice on writing sex scenes for VNs, and one of the most common suggestions people tend to offer in response is that they should try drawing on prose erotica, rather than imitating the style of other explicit VNs. Personally, I also write prose erotica occasionally, and I honestly don't think attempting to draw on the style of prose erotica for visual novels actually works very well. Why? Because the format lends itself to a different sort of pacing.

Players read a visual novel sex scene, which is cut up into small individual text boxes, and whose style of presentation discourages backtracking through the text, differently than they read a pure prose scene. A well-composed VN sex scene should also have a good use of visual beats, with effective interplay between the text and the art, but even apart from that, effective pacing is extremely important for a sex scene. So I don't think that the techniques of prose erotica necessarily transfer well to visual novels, but I think the frequency with which people offer that advice suggests that a lot of people aren't satisfied with the content of most VN sex scenes, and there's plenty of room for improvement.

One of the most common complaints I see leveled at sex scenes in Japanese VNs, and I hear this one repeated a lot among indie developers intending to make their own sex scenes, is that they're too damn long and filled with pointless padding. I sympathize with this complaint a lot, and I've definitely seen a lot more text boxes full of meaningless mouth sounds than I need in my life. So, a lot of EVN developers aim to correct this weakness and cut unnecessary chaff from their sex scenes. Unfortunately, one of the most common complaints I see leveled at the scenes in indie EVNs, especially ones shared with test audiences which don't necessarily make it to public releases, is that they're too damn short and thus unsatisfying.

My feeling is that a lot of EVN developers are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by cutting out the padding common to JVNs without realizing why they pad in the first place; sex scenes follow a natural pacing that doesn't apply to other types of scenes, because the audience's engines can only heat up so fast. Some readers prefer sex scenes which only go far enough to tease, but if that's not what the reader is looking for, an artfully composed sex scene which doesn't last long enough is just irritating. So, it's best to look for a length and pace of progression which suits that natural pacing for a sex scene, just... try to find less tedious content to fill it with.

On the subject of less tedious content, a lot of VN sex scenes tend to be really samey. The audience is generally going to have less patience for a lengthy sex scene when that length is composed almost entirely of stuff they've seen before. Of course, unless your audience has actually never consumed 18+ material at all, they've probably seen the sort of content you're offering in some form; there are only so many ways the parts can go. But the characters themselves should be a source of novelty.

If you're familiar enough with JVNs, you can probably write a Standard Romantic First Time sex scene like a paint-by-numbers game. If so, don't, your audience can probably do the same thing. But they've never read a game about your characters before (provided you're not infringing someone else's intellectual property,) so you might as well aim to show them how your characters' experience of sex is distinct and different, how their personality and preferences and relationships with other characters leads to something the audience hasn't seen already.

More than reading erotica, I recommend studying by reading or listening to other people's real life experiences. No matter how experienced (or inexperienced) you are, you've only ever been one person, so there's always more diversity of experience to draw on.

When it comes to distinct, personalizing behavior during sex scenes, I'd also suggest applying a careful eye to how the characters talk during sex. Are they likely to narrate the whole physical process of sex as they experience it? Maybe, if they formed all their expectations based on hentai, and aren't too distracted to keep it up during, but otherwise probably not. So, what do they say? Do they say anything? If not, what do they do instead?

The fact that Complex Relations is written in three perspectives gives me the opportunity to share all the characters' internal experiences during sex scenes with the audience. But even if I weren't sharing it with the audience, I'd still need to be able to generate those internal experiences to properly write their behavior during the scenes.

That's a learnable skill like getting into characters' heads in any other situation, but not one I can cram into the space of a devlog. But I'll be doing my best to express the results in the game itself.