The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

Last year, there was one game more than any other that consistently brought people to MoeGamer; I was seemingly one of the few people on the Internet who had actually written anything about it. I chose to celebrate this game with The Traffic Magnet award.

This year I encountered a similar situation with a different game — last year’s winner still regularly appears in my top search results, but the posts about this year’s winner still appear in my top posts pretty much every day.

And the winner is… somewhat NSFW, so consider this before continuing!

Ahem. As I was saying, the winner is…

Honey Select Unlimited

Once again, I feel the reasons for this title topping my post rankings is simply down to the fact that not many places online have actually written about it; offhand, I only know of Digitally Downloaded, though I’m sure there are others.

Honey Select Unlimited, for the unfamiliar, is a freeform pornographic “sex simulator” game by developer Illusion, in which you can create characters, develop virtual relationships with them and enjoy a variety of fully interactive 3D sexual scenes with them. It was localised earlier in the year by prolific Western hentai publisher Fakku, and it was a noteworthy title for the fact that it was one of the first of this type of game to be brought West in an official capacity. Previous popular games like Kiss’ Custom Maid 3D series and indeed Illusion’s back catalogue had typically remained confined to Japan, though many had strictly unofficial fan translations available if you knew where to look and how to implement them.

Game-wise, Honey Select Unlimited is pretty simple and straightforward; while there are “mechanics” and “progression” of sorts involved, it is more interactive pornography than full-on “game”, and that’s absolutely fine; it does an excellent job at being porn.

The reason Honey Select Unlimited attracted such interest — and delight at Fakku’s announcement that it would be officially bringing it West — is not because it’s a good game, though. It’s not even because it’s good porn. It’s because it’s an absolutely amazing software toy with which you can get creative; a digital dollhouse unlike any other in which, with a bit of fiddling around (and perhaps a few mods from the extensive collection available online) you can create almost any situation imaginable. (Well, okay, the sexy side of things very much emphasises heterosexual encounters, but there are… ways around that.)

For those with an interest in “virtual photography” — and Lord knows I’ve fallen into that category ever since my Second Life days — it’s an absolute essential, and has provided me with a great deal of enjoyment ever since I got hold of a copy earlier in the year.

There are two core aspects to Honey Select Unlimited’s long-term appeal in this regard: the character creator and the Studio application.

The character creator allows you to build custom characters in several different ways. You can ask in-game character Sitri to “find you a girl” and provide her with a few preferences; the game will then generate a character using the available parts and randomise elements within your specifications. Alternatively, you can take full control and lovingly sculpt your creation from top to toe, then dress her as you see fit for her “everyday” outfit, the clothes she wears when relaxing in her room, and the clothes she wears to go swimming or take a public bath.

This is probably the most well-known aspect of Honey Select Unlimited. The level of detail you can go into with the creator is astonishing. Every part of the body can have its size and shape adjusted using simple sliders, and many can be recoloured. And within the colour options, you can adjust the texture and shininess of these body parts or clothing items, allowing you to create all manner of different effects.

Want to make a robotic-looking character with shiny silver skin? Go ahead. Want your waifu to wear a swimsuit with a metallic effect? Have fun. Want to make the “player” character a dude with a small floppy wang? You can’t do that, though you can otherwise sculpt him in as much detail as you can the female characters, and you can always turn his cock off altogether if you’re feeling a little inferior.

The second part of the equation is the separate Studio app. This allows you to load in any of the characters you’ve created and place them as you see fit in any of the game’s 3D environments — or in a void if you want to do some “green screen” shoots, adding a custom backdrop later. You can trigger any of the animations in the game or create your own poses by using an “inverse kinematics” (IK) system where you drag “joints” around within the 3D space. You can adjust facial expressions, state of undress and whether there are any “fluids” present. And, most importantly, you can create dioramas of situations that you would never see in the main game, perhaps involving lots of characters at once, or characters interacting with one another in ways that aren’t programmed into the game logic. If you want to make big gay orgies of guys and/or girls, Studio is the place to be.

The sheer amount of control you have in the studio app coupled with the flexibility of the character creator — particularly with some mods installed — makes Honey Select Unlimited something that it’s very easy to lose hours to without realising. And you don’t even need to touch yourself while playing, though of course that option is always there if you do need to unwind a bit.

Want to know more about Honey Select Unlimited? Apparently I am your man if my stats are any indicator. Head on over to the game’s Hub Page to find out more, and don’t forget to say hi to the ever-growing crowd that forms the Hundred Honeys Project!

More about Honey Select Unlimited

Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this article. I’ve been writing about games in one form or another since the days of the old Atari computers, with work published in Page 6/New Atari User, PC Zone, the UK Official Nintendo Magazine, GamePro, IGN, USgamer, Glixel and more over the years, and I love what I do.

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