HTML The Archmage [v0.1.2 Alpha] [Black Dahlia Studios]
Hmm... So here is what I'm looking for when I come to this or some of the other sites looking for "games". I'm looking for Porn Games. The order of interest for myself is 1) Porn (Art over Text, but either works), 2) A game, 3) Story. If a Porn Game also has a great story, then it's a solid win.
Nothing bores me faster than a "Porn Game" that is neither a game nor has porn, but is only story. There is one 'game' that has almost 100,000 words, a ok story, and after 2 hrs of play, not a single sex scene or nude shot. I haven't bothered to continue following that one. I don't believe every 'game' should be I meet this person and we jump into bed right now, but at least include some sexual content, and I've come to despise the "Virgin True Love before sex" trope that is the basis of many VN's.
Choices matter. If I'm not given choices or those choices don't matter, then the story becomes a kinetic novel, and if I wanted to read a book, I'd have picked up a book. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd turn on Netflix. I prefer full sandbox, but at the same time a good story is going to have to have key moments that must happen at key times. Exploration/sandbox combined with story can be a great thing. Just be careful of making arbitrary random choices dictate the path the player follows (example: the player chooses a radio station in the prologue, and which station that is chosen dictates the players future path).
Advice: On the topic of paths... If you plan on writing specific paths, be careful to limit yourself. I recommend not writing more than three paths. After completing the mains, you can branch out from there, but I know its huge amount of work to write even a single path well, and with three, it's going to be even harder. More than that, you'll likely get lost. A well known (at least at one time) VN had a great concept, and the starts to a great story. However the Author bite off more than he could handle, and ended up creating something like 13-14 different paths. Each of these paths were supposed to tell a different viewpoint of the same story, but they were so very different that the story became muddled and lost, and with so many paths, the story progressed at a horribly slow rate, and it was almost 2-3 years to get a single "day" update on many of the base paths. This VN when from one of the top popular VN to one that is hated because of it. Along this same lines, If you don't already have the end of the story in mind, take some time and decide on the end goal. I think that also hurt the aforementioned VN, in that as time went by, it became clear the Author had no idea where he wanted to take the story.
Also, avoid locking people into a single path. Try to allow cross pathing. One game, one Day 1, as you are trying to figure out what's going on, the person you have lunch with, on one of your first choices, locks you into that specific path. I chose to eat lunch with one character, and for the rest of the game I felt like I had a stalker. I couldn't move without that character being there, and I had no option to even talk to the other characters. It really put me off this one, and maybe it got better, but I'm not planning to find out.
Up until now, I've avoided naming any specific projects, although I'm sure some will know the ones I was referring to, However, if you are looking for an example of the kind of game I'm looking for, look at "Shelter" by Rausmutt. I know this game isn't for everyone, but it is still one of the best 'games' out there in my opinion. First, there is porn. Not huge amounts of it, but it's in there, mainly, it's a game that sex happens in, not really a sex game, but it's also a game. There are choices, and the three paths have many branches and cross path interactions. Decisions made earlier get mentioned or affect the store later. It is a great deal of fun, and on top of it all it is a truly great story with lots of humor carefully constructed on a dark theme of "Are my friends really my friends or are they just using me ?"
I hope this helps some,
Good luck with your project.
- Nov 18, 2020
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I'm still actively working on it. Spending more time on The Monastery though. I'm fine either way, but I plan to publish a minor update soon.
- Nov 18, 2020
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A game with sex, rather than a sex game perfectly describes my goal with this project. I appreciate your concerns about the development path. I'm planning to finish two main branches (good and evil) before creating any more branches. I'm also learning as I work that I need to plan the story before developing branches. I agree that choices should matter, shouldn't be random, and generally shouldn't be absolute.
I would like to play the VNs you don't name. Which VNs are you referring to? I also played Shelter and left a glowing review even while it was in early access.
I'm learning as I go that I bit off a larger bite than I first expected with this project. I'm working through technical challenges in the demo, and I've learned some serious lessons about design and development. Primarily, I need to focus on the skeleton and add details once I have laid a proper foundation. I didn't really understand how to do that at first, so I was working on details as the ideas came to me. Now I have a better idea how much work and time each idea will require.
I'm about to publish my first book, so I've learned some lessons about writing and editing that will improve my writing quality in the future.
This is my first game dev project so I'm working through growing pains. It's also my first serious programming project, so there are plenty of growing pains there as well. So, writing aside, I've been doing a lot of learning. I'm hoping that once I merge the demo, my vision of what I hope for this project to ultimately become, will become visible to the players. I recognize that my vision is ambitious and in order to truly complete it, I will be working for many years. I have gained a lot of satisfaction from the work so far, and hopefully as I get more experience, I will be able to work more efficiently. Even the next demo update will be large in scope compared to previous updates, and that happened naturally. I'm hoping that trend will continue.
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- Apr 14, 2021
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So it's been a year and we're still in a "pre-alpha" stage? Even though it's a pure text game?
Yeah, this is probably going nowhere.
Yeah, this is probably going nowhere.
- Nov 18, 2020
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I've been updating The Monastery. It was removed from the thread by mods.So it's been a year and we're still in a "pre-alpha" stage? Even though it's a pure text game?
Yeah, this is probably going nowhere.
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- Nov 18, 2020
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- Sep 21, 2018
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There literally game with the tag "no sexual content" and they remove a game because it lacks porn? This is the definition of insanity.
To be entirely fair, that usually refers to a game's current state as opposed to its overall goal (i.e. "no sex yet in this version" as opposed to "not a porn game"), and also usually refers only to active sex acts and not fetish content that doesn't directly involve sex, as a game can still be erotic without having any sex.
But it's still dumb because they forced the dev to split the game into two threads even though the dev intended to merge the games when The Monastery was finished (it's basically the prologue/prequel to The Archmage, which for now is uploaded as a separate file), and *then* they deleted the Monastery thread for not being a porn game.
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I guess it's semantics. I'll be happy to finish the merge so there won't be a complaint anymore.
- Nov 12, 2017
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That really isn't the case there are plenty of Complete games that have the no sexual content tag apparently there are 311 of them. Also there is in the comic section "I Hate Fairyland" which to my very hazy recollection doesn't have much if anything that might be considered even vaguely erotic, also its missing the no sexual content tag but to be fair I'm not sure that tag existed when it was added.
Or to put it another way moderation is always gonna be iffy
I mean, it's still true that the rule is for the tags to only be added if they apply to the current version of the game, and it's also a rule that a game has to be erotic to be posted here but doesn't have to have literal sex. While there may be examples of games that break these rules and haven't been properly addressed, the point is that it's certainly possible for games to fit into those rules and still warrant the tag.
- Nov 18, 2020
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Wow, my first one start review. I feel accomplished! He is right about the NPC spawning since I only have a spawning engine in the Monastery. Confused about the versioning comment since I'm currently in pre-alpha and he suggested presumably that it was not yet worthy of v0.0.1. I guess he wants the version to be v0.0.0.1? Not sure versioning adds value at that point. All pre-alpha seems the same to me. It will be in alpha once all the game mechanics exist. It will be in beta when it is winnable or can be played to completion. That versioning seems reasonable to me. I'm not creating walkthroughs because I intend for this game to be somewhat mysterious and also procedurally generated. A developer walkthrough would ruin the player experience. I understand the frustration of getting lost before I finish feeling all routes. He probably got stuck in an incomplete area. Mea culpa. Update notes will contain enough description of content to indicate what exists, but I'm not afraid to hide content behind walls, so to speak.
- Nov 18, 2020
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Update - I finished the plot outline for two primary plot branches: Ascension and Corruption. Have an idea for a third minor branch. I'm going to write the story before I program the branches into the game this time around. And also work on the merge. I should complete The Monastery by August or September. I'm going to reduce the scale to make it a reasonable amount of work for a Demo.
Very excited to see just how corrupt you are going to go. Will you stick to just monsters, or will you push the limits of what "should" make people hard. So debauched!
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I'm definitely planning on pushing limits. Not sure about the full scope until I finish the writing. Demonic magic can go in any direction. I guess what I can say is that it will go beyond just being lewd and into immorality and evil.
Maybe I'll incorporate this idea.
- Oct 18, 2019
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Seems to start off well enough, but the main stuff that I'm interested in seems to be 'under construction' while the stuff that is implemented is not really that interesting. Might turn out to be decent in the future....
- Nov 18, 2020
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Yeah, I'm unfortunately behind at the moment. Working as permitted...