- Nov 17, 2017
- 269
- 513
You're welcome Malcowitz, and thank you for your more detailed thoughts too, they really do helpThank you for a thorough reply. I can see how the transformation crowd, coming from games like CoC and others wouldn't vibe with the more forced and incremental ideas from the other end, meaning you have to take the position you do.
My issue was also that there seemed to be little to no gating of any content. Like, when I purchased buttplugs, I could do so right away, even though the character was still male and not really thinking of themselves in that way and hadn't done any anal training, but they also didn't seem to have any effect. These things, along with the lack of gating of scenes goes against the sorta switches ever since Cursed way back in the day and it means progression is, odder.
I didn't even see the point in the trainings, nor in picking any outfits because they seemed something solely for me rather than for gameplay purposes. Also I couldn't find any crotchless underwear
On the whole the game has a lot of good content and I can imagine it going in a good direction. Sorry for being so brief and harsh.
As someone who has been a fan of the genre for a long time, starting on Cursed (still sad it was never finished) and playing through games like CoC multiple times (there's a wonderful community mod pack for CoC too), I can understand that there are elements of my game that play in a different way to many in the genre. When I started to plan out my game I originally outlined a few specific design plans;
1/ No grinding - Grind is mostly just a time sink to pad out games, and is often the most frustrating part of a game. Whilst there is some pay-off to finally achieving your goal, I never wanted the grind to be a major part of the gameplay, relying on other game elements to take over from the usual grind.
2/ Interactive story - I wanted the game to be more like an interactive novel (like the old choose your own adventures) than a quick game loop. This was more due to personal reasons, but I enjoy erotica and wanted to see if a text-based game that had both gameplay elements and a dense narrative could work (kind of like a more game-y visual novel).
3/ No combat - Many of the traditional games in the genre are text-based RPG's with erotica added to them. The thing is, I wanted to try and create a setup without the combat, as sometimes I think it distracts from the role-play and adds to the grind elements.
4/ Transformations aren't just punishments - Too often I'd seen it set up so that transformations for the player were only given as punishments. The thing is, there are a lot of players who are submissive and prefer that submissive content, then feel left out because you don't get the transformations without resisting. This is also part of why I put less emphasis on the transformations, as I don't want players to feel locked out of them just because they decide to play Dom/Sub.
5/ Customizable Gameplay - I always knew the game was going to be a fetish grab-bag of sorts, and with that came the downside that there were going to often be at least one fetish that turned off prospective players. By making the game experience more customizable I hoped that not only would it increase the player base, but also that it would add more replayability as players try out different game customizations.
6/ Customizable Characters - Players like to make cool characters and dress them up in sexy clothing, that's part of the roleplay fantasy for many people and I wanted to help facilitate that. This ties somewhat into the grinding aspect, but because the game wasn't being built around grinding to become your perfect character, it was relatively easy to get the customizations that you hadn't selected an option to actively make hard to get.
There were some more points to my design ethos, but I think those are some of the more major parts. Consequently, parts of this contradict older games (many of which I love), though if'd I just rehashed someone else's content then I wouldn't be putting my own mark on things too. I guess my real inspiration could be considered somewhere in between Corruption of Champions, Cursed, and Girl Life, as I aimed to create a life sim that was full of quests and had an ongoing narrative focus. Since then a few things have changed, such as there being less of a universal feminization angle to the game, along with the addition of trainers (still a very incomplete gameplay aspect) which offer a more focused experience, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from on those matters.
But that does also bring us to the topic of gating. Whilst I do a little of it on regular content (mostly exhibitionism gating for extremely exhibitionist clothing), generally I leave it up to the player to make their own choices on whether or not they'd do something in game. Partly this stems from my desire that people should be able to customize their own characters, and partly it's from the same ethos as my 'transformations aren't just punishments' point above, in that if players want to play their character as a huge slut from the get-go with no resistance then I'm okay with that (I guess you could say I'm not resisting it).
This is different from many games in the genre though, as they usually use mechanics so things are a slippery slope of your character starting relatively normal and becoming corrupted over time. I hadn't thought have different that was until thinking it through, but it is a major change to the formula for sure. Again, I think my best solution to this is still probably the Trainer content, where you have opt-in NPC's who give you that more structured experience that some people are looking for. I also think that as more content is added (with some of it being milder and less sexual - like a planned maid job and a planned secretary job), it'll create a better background situation for players to make these kinds of choices, and to be corrupted down those more sexual routes if that's what the player wants (as set up by their customization). I also think my plans for reforming the punishment system will help here too (partially seen being laid out in the Chess Man content), where I'll be creating more ways for the game to push 'resistant' (those looking to role-play resistance) towards content areas that they really do want to experience.
A lot of food for thought to be sure
Thanks again for the feedback, and I am glad that you enjoy the content. Happy gaming ^_^
