Some notes on LR2 from Vren.
Lab Rats 2 Prototype: Gameplay Overview
I'm devoting this week between the patron and public release of Lab Rats 1 to do a little work on it's sequel, before returning to work on v0.10, the "Cum Slut" update. Today, I'd like to give an overview of the general gameplay. I'd like to stress that this is still very early in the development cycle, and everything here is subject to change.
First, the setting. Lab Rats 2 will be set a couple of years after the events of the first game. You play as the same character after you've finished your chemical engineering degree. Following a job offer, you move to a new city. In short order you find yourself in possession of a small business, and begin producing the serum of the first game for commercial sale.
The game will center around the production and sale of serum by your company. There are several different steps to producing serum, such as:
1) Buying raw supplies.
2) Designing and researching new serum recipes.
3) Working in the lab to turn raw supplies into serum.
4) Searching for new clients to buy the serum at higher prices/volumns.
5) Packaging and distributing the serums you have produced to earn money.
At first, you will be responsible for all of these jobs at your company. Once you have some money, you can start to interview and hire people (usually randomly generated girls) to fill these rolls instead. These girls will have the same array of stats as you, letting you fill tasks with people who are best suited to them.
Once you have some people working for you, you can begin to corrupt them as you see fit. You can reserve some of your serum production for your personal use, and distribute it to your staff in a variety of ways (covertly at first, overtly later in the game). Serum use will make girls more impressionable for a period of time, letting you change their stats and generally build influence over them by interacting with them.
As your influence over your employees grows, you will be able to do things like:
1) Change their standard work uniform, up to and including disallowing clothing entirely while at work.
2) Encourage your sales people to use "friendlier" techniques with clients.
3) Pull individual girls aside to have sex with them.
4) Require each girl takes a dose of serum every day/2 days/week as part of the company "drug plan".
Serum research will be another large part of the game. Rather than having three predefined serum types, as in LR1, serums will be designed and researched by the player. You may design a serum with a long duration, lasting several days but with only a small effect on a girls suggestibility, or one with a very short duration but very strong effect. Serums may also have side benefits, such as boosting a skill temporarily, improving skill training times, encouraging a physical change in the recipient (larger/smaller breasts, gain/lose weight, ect), or improving happiness.
Serums with more powerful effects will be more valuable to sell and use, but take more resources and time to both research and produce. As your lab grows and your staff becomes more experienced, you will gain access to more side-effects and be able to research faster in general.
Sex will be one of the most important methods for influencing a girl who has been made suggestable by a dose of serum. If you're able to bring a girl to climax, you will see a large increase in your control over them and their general slutty-ness. Different positions will also have an effect on their personalities; giving blowjobs constantly would train a girl to be more submissive, while cowgirl would make them more independent. Using sex as a tool to shape a girl the way you would like will be a key mechanic of the game.
The characters from Lab Rats 1 will be included in the game as people you can hire on. You will be able to import your ending stats from Lab Rats 1, which will change each girls starting stats. Nora and Stephanie may make powerful researchers, while Alexia excels at sales, and Mom and Lily handle the day to day operations of the business.
That's what the gameplay design of Lab Rats 2 currently is. It will obviously take some time to complete, and will follow the same general development approach as Lab Rats 1 has: Patron releases for early testing followed by public releases. I hope you find the concept of the game interesting, I'm certainly having fun coding it right now! I will have a look at the new clothing system up for patrons in a few days, the first peak at Lab Rats 2!