Developer Diary 8 [Sept 23] (Patreon)

A while back I posted a poll here regarding the game project. I asked you to choose which you prefered out of 2 possible options. I was completely stunned by the results of the poll. I had the complete opposite in mind that you all wanted… so I had to go back to the drawing board and had to rearrange the puzzle pieces to better fit the desires that you have.

Firstly, I have moved back to focusing the corruption/transformation on the player and not a group of characters surrounding the main character. This means the initially faceless main character will now need a face (more on that later).

This approach has some problems however, and they are hard to explain without completely going into detail. A part of the challenge is simply circumventing these problems in an elegant way, but sometimes they are impossible to avoid. A reason why CoC lacked any proper art for the main character is quite simple: the combinations are too varied to be presented in an aesthetic way. Besides that, a lot of the “inbetween” stages of transformation can be (too) subtle in art. When an A cup goes to a B cup, you can easily see the difference in text, but probably not so much in art unless you were paying serious attention.

I also much prefer being able to draw the final stage of a transformation, and then maybe a “super” version, but the inbetween stuff is a bit uninteresting and will probably burn me out quite badly. These are problems I think about and try to find solutions for.

Finally there is the problem of allowing combinations of several transformations (leading to a mess) or focusing on singular transformations which are separately beautiful and sexual. From a designer point of view the second option here is more appealing, as it’s do-able mechanically and simply more pleasing art wise.

One burning desire I have is to make the game non-linear in its structure. I would like some kind of intro to occur (probably in cutscene which is skippable) and then let the player explore the environment freely. This itself creates both problems and solutions. Freedom is worth fighting for, though, even if it is limited freedom.

A week or so ago I spent a lot of time and felt like I had put the pieces together fairly well. I have been critically studying it and exploring the engagement within the game loop and I am not entirely sure anymore at this point. I will probably push to actually get stuff done within the engine soon so I can just experience what I have in my head and try to draw my conclusions from that.

I have also really structured and cleaned my document up and lore/story wise things feel like they are starting to fall into place, which makes me pretty excited!

I have one more question for you regarding the game, but I will make a poll about that, so please take the time to leave your vote and thoughts!

Alba