Organization of part 5
Added 2020-10-07 22:08:30 +0000 UTCI'm going to push out an update later today, but I wanted to organize and share the flow of part 5. I tried making a flowchart - it got messy. I'm going to post a set of concepts instead.
It starts with an initial infestation. Currently its a bathroom scene but the victim is awake - this doesn't make much sense, especially since the people you are infecting are aware of the parasites and are actively trying to destroy them. I'm changing it to a stealth infestation at night, which introduces the mechanic of Stealth Infestations, where the victim is unaware they are infested.
Then there will be a breeding phase - currently in order to speed up the game for testing purposes there are a bunch of parasites in inventory at the start. This will eventually be removed so that there is a bit of a grind for building up parasites - a 'slow buildup' which I think is a hot part of the parasite story. There will be options put in for jumpstarting it (apart from cheating) that will allow rapid growth but the default will be a slow, methodical infestation. There will not be any sort of time constraints as long as the player remains undetected.
Detection will be similar to the previous part - once you get detected, the detector can succumb to sex/perversion or they can maintain sanity and push the detection bar past the threshold where you lose. Surface parasites and overwhelmingly obvious parasites will cause detection (choker/breast/mouth canal) while internal parasites will not. Perversion will increase from stealth parasites and when/if the big reveal occurs if they are perverse enough the NPC will simply not care and just accept their fate.
There will be multiple pathways to infesting the entire base. One will be complete stealth - never being detected until everyone is stealth infested, perversion is maxed, then there's a big reveal and everyone simply succumbs at once. It should also be possible to stealth infest, then take control of a person, use them to trap/infest the base as a backstabber, and slowly convert the resistance members one by one. A mechanic that intertwines with both paths is to allow the resistance members to infest each other via just increasing sexual activity.
Other random concepts:
- Retrieving your old body
- Conversion of the male resistance members into female
- Mindhacking (orgasms cause victims mind to open up to you further)
- Relationships between resistance members can be exploited
- Different parasite mutations will match various personality types
- Biosuits should play more of a role, the art will be easier to do since the bodyart was standardized
- Art is still the slowest component of the dev process at this point
I think that's everything for part 5. I don't think any more mechanics are needed and the game is probably way larger in scope than it should be for a starting game title, but that's okay. These ideas are all part of the aesthetic and I'm willing to attempt to include them even though its led to some ridiculous delays.
Once part 5 is done, I don't think I'll start on part 6. I'm going to prioritize finishing the earlier parts, cleaning up all the loose ends and bugs, then put part 1-5 together as the final Parasite Infection game. Part 6-9 (yes there is plotline out to 9) will come later as either a sequel or expansion or something of that nature.