TheGrimLord: No. These are indie games made in the RPG Maker platform. They don't even run on phones for the most part. Japan has different games for the phone. And no, the games are not pretending to be something else. There are serious attempts to combine both styles. Having played a lot of these, there is legitimate gameplay in them. Yep, you can die and it doesn't end well. The battles are pretty serious as well as the platforming and other mechanics. They just happen to have sex scenes. Japan certainly has a number of straight up fuck simulators. That's not what these are. Sexual things can happen, but they don't have to. And to be perfectly fair, there is probably a great deal of sex in many commercial JRPG's that developers never were allowed to show. Think about all the games where you have made camp with a party. People on very long journeys like that definitely get horny every once in a while and unless they're banging some monster, there is definitely sex happening in those camp scenes. The ero-JRPG's are just upfront about it. Maybe players just don't want to know that their characters are having sex? Weird, because people do it all the time. It's even weird to think they wouldn't have sex - feels awful puritanical to be honest. It's not reality, and in reality, people who are attracted to each other tend to get busy and in turn, create more people.
marcob: "No" As an introduction to a reply. No because no. And your argument is "this is valid because this is valid", "This is serious because this is serious". And you're saying to me I'm a self-referential / rally-under-the-flag type?!
RPG-Maker was a great amateur engine in late 90s (it was very niche and had some harsh limits, it was more limited than Final Fantasy V). It's not indie, it's amateur quality. And sticking to a commercial, frankly outdated third-party tool doen not speak of indipendence and diy spontaneity (I hate to say it, I loved that sw , but it was way back, when polygons were so few you had box-shaped arms in FPSs and PS1 was good in graphics despite being less then 640x480 and a classless JRPG was considered innovative, etc.)
It was never fully meant to be a tool for commercial games. These games are not something technically great, not feature top-class artwork (not even top class erotic artwork) and have not really original gameplay as far as I can see. They're not free to play and they're not programmed from scratch (which is a plus for originality and effort).
When I think of "indie" I think of Undertale (mediocre graphic, good narrative mechanics, innovative battle system, at least for westerners who are not in the niche that Touhou is in) Spirit Engine 2 (fully hand-drawn pixel art, complex story with variable chara interaction and a full ride in jrpg tributes with plot twists, hard and unusual battle system)
Wadjet Eye games (retro gfx, revival of point-and-click, a ton of love and detail put into it, great aesthetics despite of low-res) Wesnoth (age-long development, varied, rooted in japanese console tradition, a great and ever-improving code and mechanics). Even Project Red was indie and resorted to the objectionable tactic of "insert boobs and get more public" but it had something substantial to add to the scene and to please fans for more than 10 hours.
GoG is losing its focus and identity, just like society in general, and is trying to expand but in an unruly way, including everyone and everything without enough effort to harmonize communities and audiences that have conflicting value sets or just opposite desires when buying a product (a customer is a customer, seems to be the rule, and even from a commercial/brand identity pov is short-lived due to expectation bias and even exploitation of that bias as I said earlier). At least developers/distributors should not make the "youtube promotion trick" and clearly state what they're aiming to be and what gamer are they aiming to, and Gog should try to differentiate and present new releases in a frank, review-like fashion, not just waiving off and implicitly stating "here's the whole lot, sort it yourself"
This is false. There are a lot of people who make commercial games in the engine and it was indeed made, even back in the RM2k days, with the intent that people create and sell their products. There are quite a few professional projects utilized in the engine, several indies that have done quite well. I've actually bought a few commercial games on it and can attest to their level of quality. RPG Maker has gone up in levels of quality across the board. Let's not forget about games like The Witch's House and Mad Father, which are RPG Maker horror classics that recently got remastered. You're forgetting about a ton of games that people enjoy and are beloved in the community. This is because you're wearing blinders. You could say the same thing about RenPy, but Acting Lessons and Being A DIK are both on there and that guy makes about $14,000 a month on those games. In the beginning RenPy was also used to make small visual novels. It's a great wall of text, but it comes without any experience. Of course people are supposed to be able to sell their games in the engine. It's just as valid as unity or anything else people have made games in.
You're also judging the program by the very first iteration. There have been several major upgrades to RPG Maker. MZ is the latest. It allows programming in javascript. Also, To The Moon was made in RPG Maker, as well as Lisa The Painful RPG, which we should have had up here years ago. You also had Corpse Party, Ayevond (as was mentioned) Eternal Eden which had a Kickstarter for it's sequel and Cherry High Comedy Club. Also Ib, which is a horror classic.