I've been thinking a lot about this game. It is very much a porn game, but it has a very interesting atmosphere that makes me feel like it could be more, even just a little more. I like the concept of constantly fighting not to succumb to the tentacles, fending them off at every opportunity, but with your resources constantly depleting and leaving you ever more vulnerable to them over time. I like the element of randomness in the way that you receive random cards and have to put them up against the enemy's cards. And, in the most recent update, I really like the memories you can get from your wills, which expand the scope of the world that you're playing, and just the idea of using the power of those that came and fell before you to finally be the one to escape the lair.
But, as others have pointed out, it is really easy to survive. The most damning factor is resting; you can rest infinitely, wherever you want, to regain all of your health and mana and reduce your arousal to the lowest level, and sure there is the chance to be jumped by enemies, but that just means you get to fight them for more experience and then rest again. Even without resting, though, it's still really easy to get by just by using your resources carefully, picking the lowest card that can still beat the enemy's card while hoarding all of your higher-value cards, spending your experience points wisely, and grabbing the best will you come across. The very first time I played this game, I got through the end even without realizing I could infinitely rest, and the subsequent times I've played it, I've been trying to define arbitrary rules for myself just so that I can actually get to fail and lose in it.
I've been brainstorming ideas to change this game. I'm by no means a coder, but I am really good at thinking, and so far, I've thought of a bunch of things. I don't want to demand that you change your game; if you're fine with your game as it is, or these ideas don't align with your vision for it, you can disregard them. These are just ideas I've thought of for how I would change this game.
Card changes: 1's are a joke. You'll always have a better card to use, or, in battle, you can just use a fireball to make your enemy roll a lower card, and if you get more 1's than you're comfortable with and can't just spend them on movement, you always have the ability to reroll all your cards. Maybe you could make it so that, for every 1 you currently have, a random other card is disabled, and you have to use the 1's in order to free your cards back up. If you have 5 cards to pick from, and 2 of them are 1's, that means you only have 2 1's and a single other card to pick from. 1's shouldn't disable other 1's, of course, that would be silly. And maybe, if you have an X card and a 1 randomly picks it, both cards are randomly rerolled to be any other cards from 2 to 9.
Area changes: Your arousal level constantly increasing when you're in the 3rd 4th, and 5th areas is an absolutely brutal mechanic, which is absolutely negated by the ability to rest infinitely. It might be really good to only have a chance to increase your arousal every time you move, or maybe instead make arousal a bar, just like your hp and mp. Or maybe both.
Resting changes: Resting infinitely is, as previously described, utterly broken. Maybe you should only be able to rest in certain situations; maybe you should be able to encounter "rest" events when moving, which enable you to rest if you want, but only once. Perhaps this could be the hot spring event, if you make it a little more likely to trigger, or maybe make it guaranteed to trigger after a certain amount of other events, and maybe if you make it so that it only partially restores you instead of fully.
Skill changes: With only 4 skills to choose from, it's only natural that you end up leveling them all up quickly, and there's no limitations on when you can level up, either. Maybe, instead of being able to level up at will, you instead are forced to level up the moment you have the points to do so, and, instead of being able to level up any of your skills at will, you're instead given a couple or a few at random that you have to choose between. And maybe there could be more skills to choose from, to make it less likely you can max out any particular one. Some suggestions could include:
-Defense: reduces the damage you take.
-Focus: reduces the mana cost of spells.
-Discipline: adds a chance to negate arousal increase.
-Spirituality: increases the amount of cards you can choose from. (Maybe you could start the game with only 3 cards, and then at max level you would have 7)
Will and Spell changes: maybe, instead of starting the game with every spell, you can instead learn them from the wills you encounter. Like, for example, maybe you must acquire the Gambler's willl in order to reroll your cards, or the Priest's will to use mana to heal yourself, or the Witch's will to cast fireball, etc. Maybe you can only cast a spell if you have its appropriate will, or maybe you learn the spell permanently. It might be cool to be able to carry more than 1 will at once, too, if the stronger ones-- War Maiden's and Elder Dragon's-- are made either weaker or much less common.
Encounter changes: with it being so easy to manage your cards, you basically have to deliberately fail these in order to fully experience them. Maybe making it so that 1's disable other cards will make them more challenging, but, if that's not enough, there could a couple of changes to the encounters themselves:
-Moving encounters: maybe it should require mana as well as a strong enough card in order to fend off one of these encounters. If you don't have enough mana, then you aren't able to play cards-- maybe there's a button to give up, maybe you automatically fail, something like that. That makes your precious, limited mana even more of a precious resource that you don't want to use up completely if you can help it.
-Post-Battle encounters: maybe playing cards should only affect the conflict situation. Every card you play, regardless of whether it's a winning or a losing one, will still cause whatever enemy you're bound by to deal mental damage and increase your sexual experience. This way, there's more of an incentive to play as few cards as possible, and, even if you play your cards perfectly, your sexual experience will still increase with every encounter.
