The game is most certainly not as bad as you imagine it...
There are no farmable stats, there is no event longer than about 10 lines, that's supposed to be seen twice and there are only day-cycles and no week-cycles.
29 days ago(+1)
I, of course, know the common complaints about sandboxes/free-roam AVNs. Therefore, I tried to minimize the annoying asspects: As stated before, there are no farmable stats and basically no event is meant to be seen twice. Additionally, there are only day-cycles, so you at worst have to "wait" 3/4 of day for a specifc event.
Also, in the free-roam sections, you have a minimap, which shows you where in with whom an event is available in an almost fool-proof manor. And yes, it's only one button press from minimap to said event.
"fruitless clicks" is of course somewhat objective, but I have tried to minimize them as much as possible...
Ok, I'll check it out. Doesn't sound terrible. The good may outweigh the bad.
I appreciate the replies.
For what it's worth, I'll offer this perspective:
I prefer purely kinetic AVNs, but I understand the need to accommodate certain audiences, so some choice inclusion is fine. I somewhat enjoy editing the files to remove the menus and automate the preferred paths, turning them into kinetic novels. This is not so easily done with a sandbox.
I do play a few sandbox games where the good outweighs the bad (The Headmaster, Power Vacuum), but they are ones I started before the novelty wore off.
Other ones that I consider otherwise excellent are on the edge of completely losing me because the direction is not sufficiently clear, and I waste a lot of time just trying to hunt down the correct trigger.
I recently started Origin Story, which has some sandbox elements that are minimal, with a guiding checklist, so it's tolerable, but if I need to do everything to progress, and it doesn't matter what order I do it in (for the most part), then it leaves me questioning why make it have extra steps to begin with?
I don't understand why sandbox is preferable to some creators and players. It just seems like a lot of extra work on both sides to accomplish the exact same end.
I saw one AVN that offered an option to play it as kinetic or with choices, though it was not a sandbox one. I wish more would do that. I don't have content hang-ups that I feel any need to opt out of. I just want the full story and to see everything.
Anyway, that's just my personal point of view. It doesn't have to mean anything to you.
27 days ago(+2)
Generally, there are two extremes of (A)VN players: Those who see the game literally as a novel and usually dislike everything, that detracts from the experience of a standard novel (probably someone like you). Then at the other end of the spectrum, the players see a (A)VN still as a game and want at least some kind of interaction from the medium.
Obviously, I’m in the second team. That’s also why Funkelregen is a sandbox AVN, because free roam/sandbox elements give you (at least the illusion of) more choices/freedom. But of course I know the usual complains about sandboxes, so I went out of my way to make the sandbox as lenient as possible – no farmable stats, day-cycles, almost no events, that are meant to be seen more than once… And also I like the (programming) challenge of creating a working free roam infrastructure... (I'm probably weired...)
Among the games, you've mentioned, I have only played Headmaster and in a comparrison, my game has a far "easier" sandbox.