Episodic game structure

[Mr. TurTur]

Hello there,

I sat down and thought about how to make an episodic game format work.

The main points of episodes for me are a relatively regular release rhythm and knowing what kind and how much content you will get.

My answer was to make it only partially an episodic game.

So my example is about an adventure game on a ship. Also the developer knows what theyre doing (wich is not me lol)

There is always a part on the ship where you continue your relationships with the main crew,
and the episodic part where you reach a new island that you explore with a small, self-contained story.

So you would have 2 gameplay sections. The first with the usual avn setting and the second on the island of the week to explore.
Here the content can get wilder and kinkier without a too long buildup phase​

I have tried to create a graphic:


Tell me what you think of this structure

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

I find the structure generally quite interesting, but doubt that this will solve the problems you describe, especially the regularity of updates and amount of content.

 

[woody554]

you can of course do that, but why on earth would you force linear story after free gameplay.

it'll just force you to either converge all 'free stories' into one expected state (which makes every prior choice irrelevant, all of them leading to same result), or you just flat out cut all causality betwen the two (ie. nothing that happens in xmas special affects relationships 'back in real life').

if you start free you must stay free, or your 'freedom' was really just railroading to begin with.

like, as far as I see nothing in your game matters until the finale where actual choices for different endings are made.

 

[Ashira13]

As long as the C-plot contains a lot of repeatable content, it seems intriguing. so a developer should really focus on that first, after a proper intro of course. without that the player is just dropped into the "action" without really knowing what to do. maybe implementig a type of quest-log. this approach would work on any type of game, adventure, avn, rpg, etc.. sounds really interesting. reminds me a little of how writing a novel or the likes works.

 

[Zardoz23]

you can of course do that, but why on earth would you force linear story after free gameplay.

it'll just force you to either converge all 'free stories' into one expected state (which makes every prior choice irrelevant, all of them leading to same result), or you just flat out cut all causality betwen the two (ie. nothing that happens in xmas special affects relationships 'back in real life').

if you start free you must stay free, or your 'freedom' was really just railroading to begin with.

like, as far as I see nothing in your game matters until the finale where actual choices for different endings are made.

I understand where you're coming from but I disagree. And I think the concept has some merit.

For context I've been noodling around with the idea of an incest game that avoids the harem trap all incest games seem to fall into. Part of the appeal of the taboo is the risk of others learning about the relationship and what that would mean. I think you can take that concept and build a decent game around it.

So imagine if you will an incest game where you can choose who to pursue or not (no forced plot paths meaning you don't have to romance Partner D just to continue the stories with Partners A and C) but the plots are independent. The overlap comes during non-sexy moments like the evening meal where everyone is around the table.

I don't have a nifty graphic but I imagine it like individual plot threads wrapping around a singular core non-sexy plot line. This way you can have a core plot that is set in stone while the individual love interest plots feel meaningful in their own right but ultimately don't change where the core story goes. It's a little different than what is suggested in this thread but similar.

 

[woody554]

I understand where you're coming from but I disagree. And I think the concept has some merit.

For context I've been noodling around with the idea of an incest game that avoids the harem trap all incest games seem to fall into. Part of the appeal of the taboo is the risk of others learning about the relationship and what that would mean. I think you can take that concept and build a decent game around it.

So imagine if you will an incest game where you can choose who to pursue or not (no forced plot paths meaning you don't have to romance Partner D just to continue the stories with Partners A and C) but the plots are independent. The overlap comes during non-sexy moments like the evening meal where everyone is around the table.

yes, that's a very basic branching VN structure and it has its own attraction. but what he has is a linear bit after the initial branching, which means all roads must converge to that linear branch. either that or it's not linear.

to make the same incest game free gameplay you allow harem. that's where the harem usually comes, from giving player that freedom. I don't think most 'harem' games here are done to be actual harem games, it's usually just to allow freedom of choice.

but yeah, I totally get why restrict choices in order to have real consequences for getting caught. I do love the element of real danger as well.

I'm myself rather going the way of hard game overs for big offences, and laborous setbacks for smaller offences. grab mom's pussy on day 1 and you can only blame yourself for game over. but after you've gotten her to agree on handjobs the same will only make her mad for a few days. that sort of thing.

the general idea is that failure must hurt or winning will feel meh. but I still want to keep open the possibilty of getting any or all of the girls. it just will be increasingly difficult and might even seem impossible at first glance.

my game won't have rollbacks for choices for that reason, I want the player to sweat over his decisions. dialogue will have rollback so you can check what was said, but never past choices. whatever you pick you'll have to live with like in real world and deal with the consequences as best as you can. - the flipside is the punishments must be in line with the severity of failure, and mostly it means the majority or failures will have a way to crawl back to where you were, and try again. it just might take time and extra work to make girls forgive you.

 

[Zardoz23]

the general idea is that failure must hurt or winning will feel meh. but I still want to keep open the possibilty of getting any or all of the girls. it just will be increasingly difficult and might even seem impossible at first glance.

Lot of good stuff in this post but this bit is an important point to me. I've learned to enjoy visual novels but I will stand by the fact that if there is no fail state in a game then it isn't a game in the traditional sense. For a game to be a game you have to be able to lose.

Sounds like you and I might have similar thoughts on porn games. If you ever want to bounce an idea off of someone feel free to DM me.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

I tried to think of a game that does something like this, and I came up with Something Unlimited, which does have 1-2 (or maybe more by now) mostly linear sections in between the sandboxy main game. I think the way it's done is to just kinda have them be self-contained, with characters you don't normally interact with much in the main game, or they aren't malleable, so there aren't that many states to account for. It can be okay, or it could destroy the flow of the main game in an unwelcome way.