MrZed,
I had an idea for a grapple system for sidescroller beat-em-ups. Totally understand that it's too much to add to this game but maybe you'll like the idea:
Enemies can grapple you if you get close or fail to block/evade a grab or whatever, but they only grapple half your body, and the grapple boxes out other enemies on the side you're grappled from. Then you're still exposed on the other side, but you can use the ungrappled half of your body to defend yourself/damage enemies on that side. But you have to choose what to spend time on: fight other enemies (ungrappled attack), try to struggle out of the grapple (grappled attack), or resist whatever they're trying to do to you (block). Struggle and resist should have animations or at least cooldowns, so you can't just spam them, you really have to choose between one or the other. And of course, if you don't choose attack, another enemy could grapple you from the other side too, at which point you'll have twice as much struggling and resisting to worry about. If double-grappled, hitting resist could resist the actions of whichever side you tried to struggle on last (e.g. hit punch>block to resist the upper-body–grappler's actions, kick>block to resist the one holding your legs).
The grappling enemy could be trying to strip you, stimulate you (e.g. makeouts, nipple play, butt/genital rubbing, to increase your arousal), apply bondage, damage you (e.g. slapping, spanking, body blows). These all could be either fill a bar and you get x% damage/arousal/a single device, or it could be open-ended and they could just gradually arouse/damage/bind you until you manage to escape - the latter sounds hotter to me but might be more complicated in practice. Meanwhile, they're also trying to advance the grapple to the next stage. Hitting the block (struggle) button button both slows their advance progress and increases your escape progress. "Advancing" could be straight to sex instead of multiple takedown stages.
So to pull it together with an example: an enemy lunges you from the front and grabs your upper body somehow, and tries to apply wrist cuffs. You can hit kick to mulekick enemies behind you, punch to try to struggle out of the grapple, or block to temporarily stop their progress applying the restraint. If they finish their grapple process, you're now forced into sex, and if they finish their bind process, you now have a device and they can either let you go or keep trying to add devices.
If you're grabbed by the legs instead, block still tries to resist what they're doing, meaning no blocking other enemies. If someone swings at your face you gotta just out-punch 'em! Alternatively, block could work but you can't resist, or block could be variable (but only if blocking is available, i.e. grappled by the legs from behind specifically).
Of course your struggle and resist would be debuffed by arousal and other debuffs.
I hadn't even considered the complications of player-initiated grapples, gaining the upper hand in a grapple instead of escaping, and how grapple dominance would work. I guess if you win a grapple you'd start sex dominant, if you lose submissive. But would that replace escaping or should you have both options? Maybe just before you fill the escape bar, you can hit special to counter to a dominant grapple instead of escaping. Then you fight your way through that grapple to initiate dominant sex. This could be odds-based, full escape bar making it more likely to successfully counter, and failed counters lose you progess or stall you so you can't act at all for a bit.
I suppose if we want yet another layer of complication, the player in a dominant grapple could stimulate or damage the npc they're grappling. So then, for example grappling with arms: punch to try to win the grapple and dominate them, block to rub them for arousal damage, kick to knee them in the ribs. That of course leaves no way to defend yourself, so player grappling is dangerous if you haven't cleared your six.
Currently downed sex starts out with the dominance bar still in play, so I suppose grappling should have a way to lead to neutral-dominance sex. Maybe as the grapple goes on, there's an increasing chance that the hormones and contact will overwhelm both parties and they'll fall in lust and mutually start sex with the dominance bar reflecting the escape bar position (full escape bar on an NPC-dominant grapple would be 50% dominance).
I've been thinking of struggling as trying to escape, but it could instead be thought of as trying to gain advantage in the grapple. Then the default action is to counter to a dominant grapple when the struggle bar is full. In this model you'd hit special to escape, relying on a better strugglee bar position for better odds. This adds a complication of NPC escaping, if escaping isn't the default for a full bar – do they never try to escape? Or it could be something they randomly attempt, with odds based on the bar. They could even "attempt to escape" when they're dominant in the grapple to simply release you, though if they're trying to bind you they'd obviously make sure to get at least one item on before giving up.
Perhaps the escape chance is odds-based even when player-dominant, so if you grab someone in a crowd thinking you'll let go as soon as enemies close in behind you, you could get unlucky and the enemy keeps you bound up, or even gets a chance to counter to an NPC-dominant grapple!
Sorry, I'm very tired so I lack the self control to write concisely, and certainly overcomplicated the hell out of this suggestion. But the basic idea is fight/struggle/resist actions vs half-body grapples that also try to stimulate, hurt, or bind you. I think that would be fun for this sort of game and if you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them.
I don't think I ever said this: I really enjoy this game, it's probably my favorite porn game short of modded skyrim, and connecting toys via the mod makes it a runaway winner. And the fact that it's more straightforward than skyrim's endless sandbox gives it the advantage in playability for me.