I'm curious to know what everyone's favorite adult game format is. For me, I tend to enjoy the video game format when it comes to adult games. I enjoy the challenge of the gameplay and see the sex scenes as the reward for overcoming the challenge of the gameplay. I tend to enjoy visual novels the least because of the amount of reading (which is ironic, because I very much enjoy reading and am always reading novels on my phone). But that's not to say I don't like visual novels. There are a few I really enjoy like Eternum or Once in a Lifetime.
As far as I can tell, adult games fall into 3 broad categories. One of the categories that I can think of could be argued to be a subcategory of one of the other categories, but I think it actually has enough adult games associated with the category that it could be considered its own category. The three categories I can think of are Visual Novels, Video Games, and Dating Sims.
The first category, Visual Novel is fairly straight forward. Basically, a visual novel is a novel that is...visual. What I mean is that you can see images of characters in the novel. Not to be confused with Light Novels, which are novels with a sparse number of images throughout oftentimes presenting a particularly important scene in the story, a visual novel is notable in that there is a visual representation of what's happening in the novel all throughout the reading experience. Visual Novels have little to no gameplay. Usually, the extent of the gameplay involves clicking the mouse on the screen to progress the novel forward, and making a choice at certain times to alter the course of the novel's story. There is a sub-genre called a Kinetic Novel which completely forgoes the ability to make a choice at all. Kinetic Novels are, in the truest sense of the word, a visual novel; like a normal novel, you can only read it and you have no ability to alter the story's conclusion. Instead of picturing what happens in the story mentally, you are given a visual spectacle instead. Many of the games made in the indie adult game scene tend to be visual novels as they are the easiest format to make.
The next category is the (Adult) Video Game. These adult games are primarily video games but will often adopt a visual novel format when communication between characters needs to occur. While these video games might contain visual novel elements, the majority of the game revolves around traditional gameplay and thus is its own separate game format. Visual novels might contain extra gameplay elements such as quick-time events or action/combat sequences, but these are often delivered through choice boxes that comprise the rest of the choices you can make in a visual novel; the visual novel aspect still remains the primary focus of the game in those cases. This category is the least common as I feel they are the hardest to develop and have it be successful. The closer the adult game gets to resembling a normal game, the more scrutiny is going to be placed on how the gameplay mechanics work and if the game is entertaining. Additionally, a developer of such a game has to contend with the fact that many of their audience are primarily invested in the adult sequences of the game. Thus, a visual novel would have the lowest barrier to entry with regards to a player reaching an adult scene. As such, an adult video game will have the smallest audience of the three formats because the player has to be willing (and able) to successfully navigate the gameplay sections in order to unlock/reach the adult scenes.
The final category, and the category that I could see people arguing belongs in the Adult Video Game format, is Dating Sim. A dating sim is a style of game where the player attempts to woo one or more lovers through repeated forced interactions with the love interest(s). By 'forced' I mean that the player will often visit specific locations in the game world in order to interact with a specific love interest. While dating sims can differ a bit between each other, they often share many mechanical similarities: an open world/sandbox area to explore, stats that are used to progress down a particular love interest's storyline, visiting specific locations in the game in order to interact with a desired love interest, an item-gifting mechanic, and an energy/resource management system that limits the number of interactions that can occur within a specific period of time. Other mechanics such as a time/day limit are often used in dating sims, but that mechanic tends to be less utilized nowadays in favor of having no time limit in the game to appeal to the audience that wants to setup for the optimal game outcome but don't want to worry about resource limits. Trainer games would also be categorized as a type of dating sim as they share many of the same mechanics. The reason I separated Dating Sim and Adult Video Game is because dating sims have a specific set of gameplay mechanics that is unique to them. However, at the end of the day, it does have a lot of gameplay mechanics and elements, so it would not be strange if someone viewed dating sims as just another type of video game.
