There are some things you never know you need until the moment you realise their existence, a fundamental truth that is responsible for almost every infomercial and episode of Shark Tank ever created.
Note: This story contains NSFW imagery.
I wasn’t expecting to find one of those on itch.io, but here I am, on the page for a PC game called NSFWare, and in amongst the neon-pastel legs and dicks and surprisingly perky pixel asses, I am confronted with a one-sentence description of my next half hour:
“WarioWare meets Pornhub.”
I mean, that pretty much nails it on the head, but if not, let me explain:
NSFWare, like its SFW inspiration, barks imperatives at you like a dominatrix. “SHARE,” it demands. “PLEASE. PUNISH. TICKLE.” Based on those commands, it’s your job to figure out exactly which combination of the four arrow keys will achieve your objective.
Perhaps it’s a rapid sequence of left-and-up that controls someone’s fingers on their neon pink vagina in order to COME; maybe it’s a rhythm-based task that requires you to SYNC with another person as you simultaneously thrust into two others, sprawled out before you, holding each other in obvious rapture.
And yet, this level of detail is somehow achieved with minimum fidelity and simple, yet effective animations. Gone are the low-poly pyramid tits of Hot Coffee and the disturbingly perky nipples of a BioWare romance. In its place are chunky lumps that somehow manage to actually be sexy while never being properly explicit.
Your brain, apparently horny for even the merest suggestion of dick, seems to fill in the gaps. In the same way that two dots and a line means “face,” the approximation of vaginas, dicks, tits and butts in NSFWare conjure up images of the real thing. It might even be rotoscoped over actual porn, it’s that convincing.
The best part of NSFWare by far is how it manages to simulate facets of an actual sex life through minimal interaction. Obviously there are more things to do in the bedroom (or kitchen, or bathroom, or bouncy castle) than just barking orders and thrusting in and out, but just like WarioWare depended on the player not knowing what they were doing the first time around, and gradually learning all the minigames, so too does NSFWare rely on this idea.
No one is ever super confident the first time they try something, whether that’s vanilla sex or a new and exciting kink they read about in the weekend papers. The fun isn’t always in getting it right, but in getting it wrong together – jamming your fingers on all the keys and yelling I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to make you come but I’ll keep trying!
NSFWare feels like a game made by someone who’s moved past the po-faced seriousness of a usual in-game romance – the one where sex is the only marker of a relationship and the cutscene is awkward and scripted and about as sexy as watching porn with your parents – and arrived at a place where sex can be, and often is, a bit of a game.
And yeah, you might get it wrong, lose a few lives and get a game over … but you can always just try again.
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