Thoughts on last HoHH release and what it pertains to future releases
Added 2020-01-30 17:16:25 +0000 UTCThis isn't quite an update post, I'll still be doing that sometime over the weekend.
If you check my last post, you'll see an attachment for "House of Hellish Harlots" ver0.009. This adds four new harlots to play with and is hopefully bug free. Hopefully, they're sexy. Hopefully, they're scary. I'd love to hear your feedback.
There were a few things I tinkered with to try and add a little bit more variety. I personally like femdom-y type succubi, but I suspect the game would get a little too same-y if every succubus was like that. As a result I tried to vary the personalities a little. Hopefully that works even if Couchelaxa is a little... peculiar.
The other thing I tried to do was add more passage breaks so there is no more than a page of text on screen at any one time. I don't like vertical scrolling in text games. This is a minor thing, but might become more relevant once I start thinking about giving the game a prettier GUI.
Then there is the time thing. I did get a little late with the harlots (and even had to drop one because their character wasn't working out and needed a rethink). Looking at my update posts it seems that it takes me about a week to plan, write, type up, implement and then test a harlot. Despite my best efforts, I was struggling to go quicker than that. I think for future reference, that probably represents a good baseline speed - 4 new harlots a month. I'd like to have more than that in a release as I think the overall game idea works better if the player is overwhelmed by a large number of harlots where they don't necessarily know how to "solve" them. But I also think I should be putting out at least one release a month and that should take precedence. So, that's what I'll try to do - release whatever I have ready near the end of each month.
The next chunk I'll be working on will revolve around a "Nurse" NPC. Players already have a means to earn coins through selling their experiences to The Portly Gentleman. The other main thing missing is the ability to replenish semen. It's going to be a long night in the House and as running out of semen is usually fatal, I knew I'd have to add some way for the player to replenish their "juices".
As an aside, I was thinking of hiding the semen stat entirely, so the player wouldn't know for sure if they were out or not. I think that might be a little too annoying from a gameplay perspective. I'd rather have the harlots vary how much they "extract" and have the uncertainty over whether the visit is safe or not come down to that. Thoughts?
Back to the Nurse. Her main role will be to sell the players special drinks to replenish their semen count. That will then set up an in-game economy. I also want her to have a secondary role of curing negative statuses on the player. I had the idea for some harlot visits to result in negative status effects. These might modify stats or serve as tags that would result in Bad Ends with the wrong harlot.
An example would be Suffocatrix Mamilla. At the end of her scenario there's a strong hint she's "broken" the player in some respects. This could be represented with an ENSLAVED or BOOBSLAVE tag. This could then manifest as treating the player's Willpower as 1 until cleared. Or maybe taking some elements of choice away - eg the player being forced to pick certain harlots during selection.
Unlike a lot of the other aspects (which I have mostly planned out), this one is still at the early brainstorming stage. For now I'll likely just release the Nurse with semen recovery options and as many harlots as I'm able to finish by the end of February.
As always, let me know what you think, and I hope you're enjoying the demos so far.
- manyeyedhydra
Comments
I was thinking of a tag, to be fair. I was worried the subtle approach would make it a little too hard to implement. I'll look into it more once I have a better idea of how the system is. At some point I might experiment with 2 versions - one that lists things like negative statuses and semen count, and another than obscures it. (It wouldn't be too much work as the obscure version would just be a layer sitting over the raw stats).
Many-Eyed Hydra
2020-02-02 13:44:22 +0000 UTCDamn. I thought I'd fixed that. I'll go through and see which pathway I missed. Thanks for letting me know.
Many-Eyed Hydra
2020-02-02 13:41:14 +0000 UTCI think seeing the count and having the succubi vary on how much they extract is the better option. LOVE the idea of the succubi inflicting negative statuses/tags - particularly if that's just hinted at in the text rather than a big label on your stats making it obvious. I could see several of the existing ones having lasting effects.
Jimmy the Cannon
2020-01-31 20:56:20 +0000 UTCIt would be cool to see Nurse Honey make a cameo of full return for the role of the nurse NPC as well.
2020-01-31 15:02:19 +0000 UTCGreat release! Love the new Harlots. I think that approaching the statuses qualitively rather than quantitively by forcing/ restricting choice initially and eventually (as it's more writing) triggering altered or new scenes is most appealing (love boobslave!) I'm afraid I managed to break your actions again! If you look around for help and get introduced to The Elegant Woman when you have one action left you then get to ask her about a harlot or topic before the game checks and alerts you that you have -1 action remaining.
Lockster
2020-01-31 14:33:54 +0000 UTCThat could work. Another option would be to keep it vague - using descriptions like "full", "medium" and "drained". The player would have some indication, but not know exactly as drained could cover a range of values from 3 to 0. I'm planning to add a variety of charms the player can buy over the course of a run. Maybe one of those would give the player the exact knowledge of how many "pops" they have left. I might experiment with it in a later release and see what people think. From my experiences playing "Monster Girl Quest" it always felt more fun if the succubus/monster girl sometimes just got you. Having the player know they are likely dead with 0 semen takes a little away from that. But then again, the harlots in the house already have many surprise ways of getting the player anyway, so it might not be necessary!
Many-Eyed Hydra
2020-01-30 23:27:07 +0000 UTCHey Hydra. I really liked the four new Harlots and regarding your semen question, I would say go with both options. I don't know if this is to difficult to implement, or if it is even possible to begin with, but maybe have an easy version of the game where the player sees the semen stat and hard version of the game where the player can't see the stat and the Harlots have a chance of taking more than one point (some specific encounter I guess. If all of them would do it it makes it kinda annoying I think). You could even add a special reward if the player manages to survive the hard difficulty. Like a secret scene or sth.
Wakozi
2020-01-30 23:06:44 +0000 UTCI'd probably be devious with stats and just hide the check was ever made. The game is already pretty sneaky with that. :D
Many-Eyed Hydra
2020-01-30 19:46:20 +0000 UTCThat is strange. Is anyone else having this problem?
Many-Eyed Hydra
2020-01-30 19:41:28 +0000 UTChey I'm new here so I apologize if I'm asking a question that's already been dealt with previously, I combed through the post history but I might've missed something. I can't seem to actually open any of the House of Hellish Harlots files? On either chrome or edge. It gives me a "no valid storage adapters found" error, along with an html traceback that I can supply you upon request, just figured it would be a bit too long to post here. Am I missing something obvious? Also the obligatory "I've been a massive fan of your work for years". In all seriousness, you write wonderfully. And not just the sex scenes (though certainly those). I was re-reading Succubus Summoning again all the way through and I realized I was following it for the PLOT. You got me attached to characters in an erotica. Seriously. That's an accomplishment.
2020-01-30 18:07:42 +0000 UTCThanks for the work! I liked Couchelaxa, if you go to bed in clothes!
Vadim Filatov
2020-01-30 18:00:40 +0000 UTC
