Hi Vitklim. Those are some very well thought-out comments.Gonna give some feedback on the game, since I've been following it for a while.
1st off, migrating to Ren'py is something I would utterly support, mainly because since all of the big scenes are one-offs, and the save slots are limited, it would fix the issue of having to prep a save slot for every event. Plus, it would have less potential to crash than html imo, but I'm no expert here.
Feedback otherwise: The content is good, but is overwhelmingly one-time with a lot of easy to miss branches. Just following the main story to get exactly what you want requires a walkthrough and a load of time. Things like combat, training of particular sex skills, gathering ingredients as alchemist, exploring the forest are all functional, but nowhere near deep enough to be interesting. Gathering ingredients is completely random, meaning you have to explore about 50 times for any particular ingredient, and even then you are unlikely to get it. Exploring the forest is overall pointless, since locations don't do anything aside from a few points in the story, so there is no reason to go into the forest most of the time. Combat is limited to two weapons and one persistent enemy type, with you being able to lose in three different ways, and enemies spawning at random, meaning if you are unprepared to fight, the game might throw 3 enemies at you consecutively and run you over, which can fuck up a playthrough by itself. Training sex skills is just a way to increase money earning potential or reduce arousal, but they never come into play for any events or are utilised otherwise. All of these systems are good, but they need work. And purpose. The game is fabulous when it comes to single scenes, but has almost nothing in terms of repeatable content. Only good repeatable scenes are achieved when corrupting the church, and there are 4 at most.
Going along with the tentacle corruption (accepting a blessing, transforming Keawe), currently does fuck all. Your interactions with regular tentacles do not change, the tentacles that apparently live in your garden now do nothing and have no scenes, the transformations you or your companions get barely come up. What the game needs more than anything is more repeatable content at different points of the story, and a ton of bug fixes if it stays in the html form too.
The game has immense potential, but it had this potential for the 4-5 months in which I've been following it, and little has changed since. Again, I like what the game has to offer right now, but it could do with more consistency.
I have played CoC, and it I definitely see the inspiration. However, CoC had quite cleverly tied in most of the things I mentioned into one package. The exploration result was random, but you would always get a combat encounter, an item, an event, meet a character, or find a new location. Combat was mainly the type of "faceroll the enemy if you have the stats", but you got rewards for beating encounters in being able to level up and explore higher level areas as a result, loot, and repeatable scenes, with decent variety for most enemies.Hi Vitklim. Those are some very well thought-out comments.
Part of the reason for the "dead ending" of going along with tentacle corruption, is that that's where the main plot arc currently stands. You can tell Vivianne about the tentacle hive and get some interaction there, but that's about it. As far as things like tentacle behavior not changing, etc., those are all things that are planned, but I either haven't gotten to them yet, or it requires corrupting the Church first, to move the story forward.
In terms of the minimal functionality of the game systems, you're absolutely right. But when I've put out various polls, generally improving those game systems doesn't get very many votes. One possibility is hiring writers to write content for, say, nightly training of sex skills. In any case, improving those is going to take a LOT of time. If you compare games like Corruption of Champions (which heavily inspired this game), which has game systems that are much more developed, the game itself has been around for much longer and has had multiple developers working on it. I'm just a solo dev, and this game has only been around for a couple of years -- most of which has been spent on writing content and plot development, rather than on improving the game systems.
Over the past six months or so, my work situation hasn't been all that great, leaving me with little free time to push things forward in the game. The only reason things improved over the past month, was because I was suddenly able to hire writers to contribute some additional content. I think it'll improve this coming month, but until it happens, I can't make any guarantees.
As far as the forest goes, my current plans for it involve the coven of the Old Gods, the ruined tower and follow-up on what happens to Horace the Wizard, some scenes involving Church NPCs, and one character who has additional content in the Patreon version of the game. It'll get a lot more eventful, but all of that will take quite a while to build out.
Regarding getting the scenes you want out of the game requiring a walkthrough and a lot of time...yes, it does. A question for you, then. If you've played Corruption of Champions, how would you say that compares, in regards to getting the scenes you want? What about secret or hard-to-find items, events, etc.? I've been trying to emulate the general feel of that game, where there are lots of things that you could do in the game that are easy to miss, but that might be frustrating some players.
I think it may be a good idea, after finishing up the "corrupt Keawe" quest line, to focus more on the quest log and hints on what to do next. And yes, the HTML platform *is* limiting me, but I haven't fully committed on how to handle that just yet. After talking to a couple of people, it seems like there's still more performance to eke out of Twine for the time being, but migrating to Ren'py IS looking tempting.I have played CoC, and it I definitely see the inspiration. However, CoC had quite cleverly tied in most of the things I mentioned into one package. The exploration result was random, but you would always get a combat encounter, an item, an event, meet a character, or find a new location. Combat was mainly the type of "faceroll the enemy if you have the stats", but you got rewards for beating encounters in being able to level up and explore higher level areas as a result, loot, and repeatable scenes, with decent variety for most enemies.
Your main gameplay loop revolved around exploring the same area to find every possible encounter, grind as much as possible with simple combat, and eventually get to the content and transformations you want. Since that was rather drawn out and encountering events is random, there were plenty of chances to trigger most of them.
The things that were easiest to miss were the developments for characters themselves, say the multiple variants of what happens to Marble or Sheila, and particular game over scenarios. The branches in the story were mostly self-explanatory and you would likely visit the dungeons at some point anyway even if you didn't remember what the exact quest was.
The thing CoC did best was getting the most out of a simple UI. You selected an area, you explored, you got a cool result. And since exploring consistently provided you with rewards or new scenes/characters, this incentivized you to come back to see if you missed anything. And I genuinely feel like the html platform is one of the things holding the game back here.
In regards to your last question: Since the missable scenes of CoC were tied to characters and events generally separate from the story, you had good chances at getting to 60-70% of the content in one playthrough, with that being more than enough for most people (There's a reason I'm still playing CoC and still finding new things from time to time). In your case, it's basically all main story, with the Church corruption arguably being a sub/side quest. And so the story branches cut off a lot of the content at once for a single playthrough. CoC is more open world in that. However, it is also the case of the quest log not working properly (it displays very few helpful reminders), and the progression consisting of a lot of minor events, some of which can either be failed in some way, or are obscure enough to leave you searching for a solution for a while. So yeah, CoC - rare major event branches and almost everything is side content, TS - many branches made up of minor events and almost everything is main story content.
Keep in mind, none of what I mentioned is a bad thing all of itself, but if you're going to have a story with many branches and unique content for each, some kind of walkthough is going to be necessary.
P.S. Am glad to hear your situation improved, just wanted to give my thoughts on the game overall. Especially since I see you so much in the comments, great so see someone so dedicated.
I am really interested into your game, and the development of the training storylines. Hearing that you would need to hire people to write content make me wonder about a possibility to both help you out for free by volunteering myself to help you with this and improve my ero-writting skills.Hi Vitklim. Those are some very well thought-out comments.
In terms of the minimal functionality of the game systems, you're absolutely right. But when I've put out various polls, generally improving those game systems doesn't get very many votes. One possibility is hiring writers to write content for, say, nightly training of sex skills. In any case, improving those is going to take a LOT of time. If you compare games like Corruption of Champions (which heavily inspired this game), which has game systems that are much more developed, the game itself has been around for much longer and has had multiple developers working on it. I'm just a solo dev, and this game has only been around for a couple of years -- most of which has been spent on writing content and plot development, rather than on improving the game systems.
Thanks for the offer, and sure! You can find me on Discord as mouseguru#0278 .I am really interested into your game, and the development of the training storylines. Hearing that you would need to hire people to write content make me wonder about a possibility to both help you out for free by volunteering myself to help you with this and improve my ero-writting skills.
If this would mean anything, I want to volunteer myself to write night-training scenes for your game for free. I see a lot of potential in this game, and I want to be able to, not only see your game grow to the point where Corruption of Champions got, but also to be a part of this. I know it is selfish of me to simply ask to write for you, but if you can accept this, I would gladly help you. You just need to point me towards the right direction.
First of all, you're very likely up to date. My job situation has kept game development to a crawl.It's been a while since I've been keeping up to date with the game. So here's my thoughts on moving to Ren'py and other things.
First, I think it's a fantastic idea to use Ren'py for the game because it's a fantastic engine for visual novel games and such and if possible you could try to make Tentacle slave as a sandbox, open world VN RPG type of game or something that has like CG or something but it's up to you on how plan on making the game.
Second, I do remember voting for the Hyper-Pregnancy while the poll was open and I hope that everything will be ok at this point.
Questions:
1. Will the Hyper-Pregnancy be part of the public version of the game?
2. Are there other ways to be up-to-date with the development, polls and such besides Patreon?
Thanks. I'm looking forward to it ^-^First of all, you're very likely up to date. My job situation has kept game development to a crawl.
Fortunately, there's good news just around the corner. I should be able to do an interim release sometime in the next week or so, and in addition to that, it looks like I might finally be starting a full-time job again, rather than just doing a bunch of low-paying side gigs.
As far as adding more CG into the game...it'll happen, but it'll take a while to add. I'm considering multiple options at this point, but my current Ren'py plan looks like this:
- 1-2 months of initial development leading to a new 0.1 release with a "placeholder" city map, and all of the existing artwork
- The game will have a text area that takes up most of the left half of the screen, vertically, rather than just the bottom of the screen. That's so I can use all of the existing content, instead of having to drastically shorten all of the scenes.
- As my Patreon permits, I intend to get the city map and background art for the major locations done -- which will go on the right half of the screen. Character art and existing scenes will also go on the right.
And yes, hyper-pregnancy will be part of the public version of the game. In the upcoming release, I have a scene from one of my new writers that continues the Coven path with the priestess of Ukemochi -- and that path will ultimately result in hyper pregnancy (after four or so more scenes). It'll start off for a single NPC, and then you'll have opportunities to make a few others hyper-pregnant, including the main PC herself.
Oh, and there's already a way to achieve hyper pregnancy for Chaya. If you encounter bandits in the forest, deliberately lose the battle, then create a distraction for Chaya and Felicia to escape, Chaya will end up being molested by multiple tentacles while lost in the forest, and eventually get hyper-pregnant with 12-13 (!) spawn.
I plan on adding code into the game that'll better account for her hyper-pregnant condition (e.g. you won't be able to take her with you, once she gets too big to easily move around) as well as for others in the game, but the pregnancy and birth morning events already take her condition into account.