Game now released to public - here.
--- Original Post ---
So, for about the last month I've been working on my own little game. It's of course nowhere near complete yet, but I'm getting close to requesting play testers/qc and thought I might give a bit of background on here. This is the first I'm telling anyone about it, in fact!
The Plot
You are uprooted out of nowhere and flung into an unknown world. This is a hub world, a junction if you will, the place travellers connect and travel through gateways to connect to distant worlds and universes. It is soon clear you are somehow embroiled in the machinations of someone else's grand game spanning centuries, and to gain power for yourself and another, you're tasked with growing this hub world by making it appealing to the travellers passing through. Unable to travel back through the portal, you are forced to make a home here with the "strays", nine women who arrived, much earlier, but in similar circumstances to yourself. However, you quickly come to realise your arrival and reason for being here is vastly different to theirs and that their lives are now irrevocably connected to your own.
I do not believe I'm adding any new ideas or anything particularly exciting into the mix, but I hope to create something enjoyable with enough twists and turns, some obvious, some not, to keep players entertained.
Sandbox
I'm aware this simple word is quite divisive within the community, but I personally enjoy sandbox, when it's truly sandbox. Of course, sandbox elements grow as the main story does, but I always get upset if a game marked as sandbox is just free roam with no actual side or branching content because of the sandbox inclusion. But when it is actually sandbox, I enjoy it, more so with management games, and that's what I want here.
Management
Speaking of management, that's exactly what this is about. While I haven't delved deeply into the management aspects yet (I've just done the barebones of the system for prototyping) the basic concept is that of a town management sim, without the permanent residency. Build stuff, research stuff, and send your workers out on expeditions through the gateway to get resources to build and research more stuff. This grants you power to further advance the story line.
Branching
I have taken a College Daze approach to branching, though given how early my game is, it's not yet anywhere near as complex. But, the main story line is somewhat linear with only a few major branch decisions. However, the details of that, when you discover things, who is involved in it, etc, is all based on who you interact with and when. One of the first "branch tasks" for instance, has eight different variants. Six of them are similar, and only change the dialogue slightly, but you get much earlier access to side content (lewd) based on the decision. The seventh is outright lewd and the eighth is the task being forced on you because you didn't do it yourself already. Other branching tasks have fewer options, but more far-reaching ones. Depending on how you solve a task, you may enable more side content, or skip main story tasks simply because the current one gave more info than you were tasked with.
Actresses
So, there's a lot. Most are side characters, the nature of the world allows me to introduce transient characters relatively easily, but even without that I've gone a bit heavy. I've tried to use actresses you don't normally see in these games. There's still some overlap, but even with those I've tried to use them only when I've seen them as side content. Obviously, I haven't played every real porn game out there, so there's highly likely to be some overlap. But here's the characters that currently have lewd content (BJ or sex at least).
Armani Black, Cassie Del Isla, Kayla Kayden, Lacy Lennon, Molly Little, Moriah Mills, Britt Blair, Monique Alexander, Vanna Bardot, Whitney Westgate & Val Steele.
There are more characters in the game, but they don't have scenes (yet!).
Sex
Real porn. Several months ago, I originally had the idea for the game and had wanted to make it in renpy with 3D assets. I happily got my basic cycles and stats working in renpy as a little prototype, then decided to try my hand at Daz before moving on. I'm simply crap at it, whether that's down to lack of skill or lack of patience I'm unsure, but I'd basically given up my hopes at that point. Then, I played Mayor of Mount Pleasant, my first HTML game as well as my first real porn game and decided that I could still follow my desires in this format. HTML works better for me, though I'd still much have preferred to do 3D to be honest.
Most lewd scenes are a video clip (not gifs) of 5-10 seconds. There's also a couple of medium sized scenes with multiple positions (Lacy/Val) and one large scenes with several positions (Monique). As of the current test build, there are 17 lewd scenes (bj or sex), 1 lesbian scene and few lesser lewds (hand job/masturbation).
Fetishes
Right now, I've got the usual landlady stuff in, but the story is only just progressing to the interactions with immediate family so are no sex scenes with them. There is however stuff with the landlord's sister. Relationships with the landlady and landlords’ family are customisable from the moment you meet them. As is everyone's name.
Vanilla Stuff - Obviously.
Voyeurism - Both you peeking and you being peeked upon.
Transformation - You can prevent any male characters ever coming to your world if you want, just transform them into a woman! Other options will come later.
BDSM - Other than some kinky talk, there's nothing under this header yet, but I will add it as an option for some characters should the player wish to explore it. I'm unlikely to do anything too in depth, though. Probably just keep it light with some gags, paddles, and pillories rather than anything too intense.
Lesbian - Avoidable.
To be honest, other than sharing options (avoidable) I don't particularly have plans for this. Mostly, the stuff comes organically as I write and try to find corresponding scenes. I'm open to most things MMF/MFF/MF but no male gay or bi content. Beasiality, big/lttiles and old age content are stuff I won't be including either.
Beyond that it's gonna be case by case and how it fits into the world, and whether my chosen actresses have any appropriate content.
Writing
I'm not going to lie, I don't think I'm good at writing erotic scenes, and I have struggled to keep the dialog of each character feel unique to them. Once there's been some play testers involved and I have a better gauge of potential interest, I can then move toward hiring a writer, probably freelance at the start, to edit and improve what I've written. Something akin to a ghost writer mixed with an editor, I guess.
The first few passages are somewhat pants if I'm being honest. I struggled how to get my character into the new world proper. My original intention when it was going to be 3D was a camping trip with the family. But once using real porn, I could find no such scenes that achieved what I wanted with the actresses I'd chosen, so I went down this restaurant route and it just feels a little off to me atm.
Money
Game will be entirely free. Given I'm using real porn, I'm not sure I could ever do anything different even if I wanted to. But if there's enough interest, I would be willing to explore patreon, hence the landlady move. But it's no deal breaker and regardless all content will always be free. I'm doing this for my enjoyment, as a hobbyist in my spare time. Though as mentioned above, if it were to gain any sort of popularity, I would need some form of game-dedicated income to pay a writer.
Updates
I have a full time job that I mostly enjoy, sometimes upwards of 50 hours so there won't be massive content updates every month like some games, though I would like to always have something out each month, even if minor, I don't think it's wise I commit to anything until I've a better idea of the potential popularity of the game. Given I’ve chosen HTML & real porn, and the number of management games is low, I'm not particularly expecting a horde, but it would be nice to have a small fanbase.
Current Status
I'm currently working back through my TODO list for the existing content, tying up loose ends and checking for any plot holes I may have added unintentionally. Once I'm happy there's a good amount of side content for all the current characters, and most importantly, lewd content, I will start seeking play testers in the recruitment thread.
The game has grown both exponentially faster than I expected, but then way slower in other areas. The main story for instance hasn't moved too far (on top of that I feel like on day 3 I may unload too much plot too quickly) but the number of scenes, and extras has gone on way more than I thought. I have yet to get into the major decisions, though I have briefly touched upon foretelling some of them, and I'm sat at over half a million characters already. I worry the game may be too wordy - another reason for the writer mentioned previously, but this is also why I feel it lends itself better to Twine than it does renpy.
From Twine.
Screenshots
Note: I've not done all that much to work on aesthetics, and other than making it mostly presentable, I probably won't until much later.
Main sandbox area.
Worker/facilities management. You just change the work shift, then drag and drop the workers to assign them.
General greetings. Distinct locations may grant different options and images.
The computer syncs up with all the women’s schedules, including when they're working, in case you want to preplan anything.
So, what next?
Well, as mentioned earlier, right now I'm working to clean up the loose ends and ensure all women have lewd content. My next step then is to make interactions use their lust/like stats more as right now some of the girls you can bypass their 'development' and just chat with them a couple of times to have sex with them. For a couple of characters this is entirely intended as it matches their personality, but for most, while I don't want a super grind, there should still be a litltle more "foreplay". I then want to get working on the skill and traits system before continuing the main story.
Thanks
Thanks for reading. My hope by posting this is quite selfish in that I hope it drums up some intrerest, but also to hold myself accountable by laying out some of my shorter term plans. There's a lot I haven't talked about that's in the game, as I feel the post would go on too long... and it's already damn long, but perhaps that will add to the joy of discovery when players get involved.
Any questions, or advice, just let me know.
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