October 30th, 2018: Announcement of Karen's Prison

It's been so long since my last progress report, and there are so many things for me to talk about this time. I'm going to get straight to the main point and the rest of this post will be about the events that lead up to it.

The development of Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale, also formerly known as Akemi in an RPG on here, is now on indefinite hiatus. In it's place, Sachinama and I are working on a new game tentatively titled as "Karen's Prison" for now. Karen's Prison will be created using RPGMaker MV and is currently planned to feature only one female the entire game, the titular protagonist named Karen. Unlike Meltys Quest and the original plan for Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale, Karen's Prison will fully feature combat sex. In fact, the plan is to have 95% if not 100% of the game's sex scenes all be inside a battle. 

In combat sex, also known as 'battle fucking', is part of something that can only be uniquely found in an eroge. That's why I want to improve on what has been out there. I will be taking over as the director as well as programmer for Karen's Prison, and the focus will be the battle sex gameplay of the game. To that end, I've been brainstorming and coding non-stop since last Monday to complete the most fundamental framework of the game; and I'm very proud to announce that it has been completed.

Karen's Prison will still be using the basic part of the combat system behind an RPGMaker MV game, that is the player character chooses a skill, enemies choose their skills, and then everyone takes a turn to use their skills. Then when certain conditions are met, enemies will start being able to have sex with the player character, and you see a CG of that act on the screen.

This so far is not too far ordinary for the battle fuck RPG eroges that are already out there. However, what my ideals were, what I wanted to see realized in a battle fuck eroge, was the sex being changed depending on many factors such as who the participants are and the status of the player character. In many, many battle fuck eroges, even if there are four enemies on the screen, if they are all the same enemy type then they will be all using the same sex skill. And when that sex skill is used, the event, the situation, the CG, are essentially always the same whether there are only one enemy or four. 

My ideal was for example: The first enemy starts fucking the heroine doggy style. Then the second enemy joins in and anally fucks the heroine too, reflecting in of course a change in the CG. Finally the third enemy comes and puts his dick in the heroine's mouth. This is one pattern.

Another pattern is that the first enemy starts fucking the heroine doggy style. Then the second enemy just watches and jerks off. The third enemy makes the heroine give him a handjob while she is being fucked doggy style.  The first enemy cums inside the heroine and pulls out. And then the third enemy flips the heroine over and fucks her missionary style. Finally the second enemy also cums, and bukkakes the heroine's face. 

This dynamic style of battle fucking not seen yet in any 2D eroge that isn't text-only, is what I wanted to see in an eroge. And before this project started last week and up until right now, I wasn't even sure if it was possible. But it is possible, because I just made it. The very, very basic and fundamental idea behind the system: allowing enemies to join and leave the sex act as well as reflecting that change on the screen in the form of CG change, is completed. And it is because I managed to code this system that I am writing this post right now. With this basic framework completed, this project can now officially begin.

There are still a lot more features I wish to implement and see realized before the first public test build of it can even be made such as:
Having Karen (the protagonist) be able to also start sex acts;
Creating a system where Karen's gained sexual experiences will cause her to gain new sex skills or passives that for example could make her derive more satisfaction from anal sex, or make her start off each battle already wet, etc etc
Create a system for non combat related battles. Right now every battle starts off with weapons drawn and both sides trying to get the other side's hit points down. But I also want to use this same battle fuck system for special events such as let's say Karen is working as a stripper in the bar. It's still a battle, but instead of using a weapon to bring the enemy, Karen will be dancing and stripping to try to get the enemy's hit points to zero before they can bring her own hit points to zero from groping and sex. 

There are so many ideas and things I want to do with Karen's Prison; and this time as the game director I got a rough idea of what features I really need or want and also Sachinama's full support. As long as neither of our health fails us, I can't envision a future where we won't produce an amazing eroge for all our fans and even people who don't know they are our fans yet.

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The second part of this post will go into long events that lead to the creation of this project, and cancellation of Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale.

Long time readers of my Patreon might recall that originally, Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale began as a localization of a Bitch JK in an RPG, an RPGMaker VX Ace released in 2014 by Sachinama/Happy Life. 

Then it became a remake into a RPGMaker MV version. And then since we were going to port it to RPGMaker MV, we might as well add new sex scenes. New features. A different protagonist. New characters. New gameplay systems. Bukkake. Skill trees. New plot. A redesign of the protagonist. A change in the plot. 

It just never ended, and although we both worked hard for months and months, we didn't have much to show for it. It was a project that had no clear leader or vision other than that I liked Sachinama and he liked me and we really wanted to create a new eroge together.

It felt like an eternity and also yesterday, but I think it was around two or three weeks ago when there were articles being published about how the staff in Rockstar had 100 hour work weeks. I calculated my own hours and I realized I was working 90 hour weeks. So I took a break for half a day to clear my head. And that was when I realized a couple of things:

1. We were working hard, but just working hard is not good enough and doesn't absolve us of making a potentially bad game.
2. There was no direction to Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale.
3. The gameplay loop of Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale was frankly not very exciting. There is a bukkake system coded and completed sure, but it was added onto the normal battle system instead of a system designed for it.
4. Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale was supposed to be a story focused game, but because of all the constant new ideas and changes added into it, the heart and soul of the game, the story, was nowhere near complete even at the most basic level.
5. I wanted more gameplay systems, but it was getting increasingly difficult to design them because everything is revolved around a very basic gameplay system.
6. And when I discussed all the above with Sachinama, we both realized that each of us secretly really wanted to make a battle fuck eroge. 

It wasn't an easy decision to scrape Pina and the Hero's Amazing Tale. We both poured our heart and soul into it for months. For me, it was since July and for Sachinama it was even longer. But I think it is better for the both of us to restart again with a fresh new project, this time with a clearer plan. 

It's not a total lost for the months we spent on Pina. Some of the character designs, concepts, character sprites and maps that Sachinama made can certainly be reused with little to no changes in another game in the future after Karen's Prison. And while a vast majority of all the code I wrote in the past several months won't be reused, I gained a lot of valuable experience learning the ins and outs of RPGMaker MV's Javascript system. I certainly wouldn't have been able to code the basic framework system that I just finished if you asked me to do it several months ago. 

It's ironic that all this started two weeks ago when I realized that I have crunching too hard every week. The end result is that since last Monday, I've basically been doing 105 hour work weeks. But now that I finally completed the basic framework, we can fully move forward with Karen's Prison. I'm exhausted, but it is also the happy kind of exhaustion.

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A big special thank you to everyone supporting us. Please look forward to November when more details will be posted about Karen's Prison. Also join us in Discord in the #karen-prison channel where a concept art of Karen is already posted.