I also like the idea behind puzzling out hidden kinks from people after getting enough clues off them, but since the game is mostly on rails it just seems more of an automatic thing to happen when you get to the parts you need to trigger the route.
I think it would be great if we'd get some kink info and/or other additional info based on our choices and if we won't talk deeply enough with some LI or be too/not enough manly or cunning towards someone then we won't get all the info.
Personally - as someone who plays adventure games and loves games like The Talos Principle - I wouldn't mind harder kink puzzles and more logical games in vein of chess puzzles in the 1st chapter, but I guess most players wouldn't enjoy it too much.
Regarding the whole hint system, I’m happy to share my (loooong) thought process and then you guys can also give me some feedback.
The hint system went through a few iterations before being what it is now. There was a time where the hints where hidden in the text, and you’d had to mouse hover it to see it was a hyperlink (it would get the typical underline indicating that is clickable, but only when hovered), click on it, and then you’d get the hint. Since the text where a given hint was hidden is kind of arbitrary (you coud argue that many other things that the LIs say could be hints instead of the text I chose), this would lead to a gameplay where you had to check every single line of dialogue before moving forward or risk missing hints. I quickly scraped that idea.
Then I came to this system where the hints pop-up automatically. To make it more challenging I thought about hiding hints behind some choices. However, I thought this would still be a bit arbitrary and the player has no way of knowing what the "correct" choice is to pick it.
Finally, I also considered to "hide" the hints behind some free-roam sections where you have to go through all places to get them, or be at the right time in the right location, or just exhaust all options with a girl. Firstly, I don't enjoy to play or code big sandbox sections. Secondly, it is still arbitrary if I put the hind behind an event that only triggers if you go meet the girl at 11:00 at the beach, on Thursday night. How is the player supposed to know that, besides trial and error?
So, imagine the following scenario. You are on chapter 5. Your favorite girl is ready to indulge in one of your favorite kinks. Say anal sex, or footjob, or oral sex under table, or whatever. You go to the "guess the kink" screen and find out you can't get this scene because you are missing one hint. You have no idea where this hint is. For all you know could be behind a choice you didn't pick on chapter 1.
You have a few options now:
-start a new game, try to pick some different choices to see if you find your missing hint, play through 6h of content until you get to the same place and risk still missing that scene that has your favorite kink ever.
-say “fuck this stupid game, how am I supposed to read the developer's mind and know what choice to pick, or that I had to go to the pub at 11.00pm on Thursday night to meet the girl there and get my hint”, and delete the game from your HD.
-pick up a walk-through online and blindly do what it tells you to do.
I
really wanted to avoid these 3 scenarios so we got the “on-rails system” we have now. The thing is, in a point-and-click detective adventure game, if you miss a hint, you can go back to the crime scene, or to interrogate a suspect, to get the missing hints. In a visual novel you can't go back. If you miss a hint, you need to reload an old game/start a new game to get it.
You might then say it's a useless, gimmick system that doesn't add anything to the game. And you might be right.
In my opinion, the "hints" plus the "guess the hint menu" systems as they are now still do a few subtle jobs:
- flavor and character development: you understand why a certain girl likes what she does. Get a look into her psyche; also, you feel like a smart sexologist that can understand the people around you through only the subtext, and you kind of have to actually work a bit for it. It might have seemed easy for you, but a few people ask for the right answers. Altogether, it gives another reason for why the girls could fall for you. You "get" them as no one ever did before. They don’t even have to speak for you to know what they want. It's not just your big dick that makes them weak in the knees
- helps you plan your choices in advance. Say you're really interested in a girl and there's a hint indicting she might like bondage. You don't have enough honorable points for that skill, but start making more of those choices around her to make her trust you more so when the scene comes you can get the bondage skill and she trusts you enough to accept being tied up and at your mercy for some sexy times; or, you are really into bondage, have all the points needed for the skill, but don't know which girl likes it. A hint tells you which one might be, so you start developing your relationship with her more instead of ignoring her route.
This doesn't mean I don't have other ideas to spicy this system up. There is more that can be done with this and the next updates will bring more twists to the formula. But I really want to avoid frustrating experiences like the ones described above. It needs to be on-rails, or, at least, you need to know exactly what was done wrong so you can easily reload an old game. And even this already seems too frustrating to play if you happen to miss a hint, and borderline bad game design.
Anyway, that was just my thought process. I don't know if I came to the "right" system and there might be ways to improve it and I'm always thinking about ways to tweak the game systems to keep them "fresh" and interesting.