Saturday, September 30, 2017

Many-Eyed Hydra’s thoughts on how to make the perfect Monster Girl H-game

For the last few weeks I’ve been running a playthrough of Dieselmine’s Monmusu Conquered World, which seems to be a spiritual successor of sorts to their previous series: Violated Hero.  As is typical for Dieselmine’s releases, the game is a mix of nice, sexy stuff, and frustratingly bone-headed/lazy design choices.  Frustrating, because I think the pieces are there to make a really good game, if assembled correctly.

To deal with that frustration, I thought I’d follow-up with this: my thoughts on how to make a really good Violated Hero game.  I switched the title to “Monster Girl” rather than “Violated Hero” to hopefully attract more general interest.

(As for adding my own pseudonym to the title, yeah, that’s pure self-indulgence.  Feel free to mock.)

For convenience, I am going to restrict this to a Violated Hero-type game; i.e. a Visual Novel/JRPG with a male protagonist having sexy stuff done to him by sexually dominant monster girls.  This is not the only or best way to make a monster girl game (check out Eroico for a 2D platformer and any of camel’s stuff for games with female protagonists), just the one I decided to focus on after playing through Monmusu Conquered World.

To be honest, I think the basic Violated Hero formula is a good foundation to start with – create 15 or so sexy monster girl characters and have the player run through sexy encounters with them.  Once you have those in place, the next steps are to determine how to handle the encounters and what to use as “filler” between them.

(Historically, this is where games like Violated Hero have been weak and games like Monster Girl Quest have been strong.)

I’m not going to go too much into creation of the monster girls.  Generally, you’ll want to cover a variety of types and sex acts.  Monster Musume’s harem of lamia, harpy, slime girl, centaur, mermaid, arachne and dullahan is a fairly straightforward roster.  You can choose to lean more vanilla with only humanoid monsters (elves, succubi, cat girls) or go full Monster Girl Quest weirdness (anything drawn by Delphinus or Xelvy).  I prefer the latter because additional entertainment can be derived from seeing just how fucked up a sexy Bad End can go.

As for the protagonist, I’m not sure on this.  Jude Duval has some interesting comments on my last post.  My thinking is, if you make them a blank, it’s easier for the player to project themselves onto the character, but the character likely won’t be very memorable.  I don’t know what’s best here.  It probably depends on writing skill.  I’d love to create a Geralt or Conan, but it’s not exactly easy.  The only hard rule is your protagonist should be at least 18.  Japanese games tend to be a little more flexible on this, but it’s pretty much a big no-no to go younger in any kind of Western erotica.

The most basic implementation of the Violated Hero model is a Visual Novel where the protagonist is “on rails” and proceeds through each sexy H-scene one by one.  Each scene is represented by one or more static pieces of art backed up by a text description.  This can work if the quality of the writing and artwork is high enough, but the resulting product is unlikely to make any “best of” lists.

We want more of a game, so let’s look at the separate elements.

First we have the character.  I’m going to borrow Slime from Monmusu Conquered World as an example.

Say hi to Slime

The artwork is usually a single standing pose with variations in facial expression to indicate her mood.  While it might be cool to add animation here, improving the other sections of the game are a higher priority.

Those other sections can be divided into “H-scene”, “fight” and “filler”.  “H-scene” is the sex scene, and what most people will be initially buying the game for.  “Fight” is sort of self-explanatory.  “Filler” refers to the segments between each monster girl encounter.

H-Scene

The most basic implementation is a piece of sexy artwork with some text describing what’s going on.  Here’s Slime from MCW having her wicked way with the protagonist.

A typical sexy Bad End

These scenes usually have one main piece of artwork with several variations as the scene progresses.  With Slime it’s going to be show semen spurts inside her translucent body as well as her wrapping more of her amorphous body around the hero (usually a good time to start getting very concerned in MGQ-world).

Sexy Bad End scene art progression

This is your standard monster girl Bad End scene and how both the VH and MGQ series have implemented them in the past.  Nowadays, I think these games need to do more.  Animation adds so much to the scenes I think games should try to work it in where they can.  It doesn’t have to be fantastic animation either.  Even simple distortions/manipulations of a static piece of artwork add a ton to the scene.

This is where Monmusu Conquered World cocked up, in my opinion.  MCW has some nice animated snippets, but it doesn’t use them in any of the Bad End scenes, even though most of them are derived from the same base artwork.

The next step from a simple animated snippet is some variation.  A change of speed or change in the background squelchy sex fx is simple, but very effective.  Currently, I think the benchmark for sexy monster girl Bad End scenes might be the succubi in Succubus Prison.

Start with some gentle paizuri and then...

The animations, aren’t exactly complex, but there are enough variations and screen effects that by the end of it you really feel like a succubus has ridden the fuck out of you.

...time to give that cock a proper squeeze...

I think this is what monster girl H-games should be aiming for, at minimum, in their Bad End H-scenes.

Of course, if you want to go all out, there’s no reason not to take it further.  Play the demo for Monster Girl Island, lie back and watch as demon slime Eris fucks the absolute shit out of your player avatar.  It’s not exactly surprising that Redamz is making $30K a month on Patreon.

Now imagine 10-15 scenes just like that in your monster girl H-game…

(excuse me, just off for a quick… ahem… break)

Fight

This is the interactive portion of the monster girl encounter.  In your typical monster girl RPG, the hero has to beat the monster girl “boss” to continue.  Lose and they get the sexy Bad End.

Yes, it is kind of weird that the sexy stuff is only unlocked by losing, but it makes sense for games where the monster girls are sexually dominant/femdom-ish.  The incentive is still there for the player to “win” as they don’t get to see the next girl’s sexy content until they do.

The most basic “fight” is a dialogue option asking the player if they want to fuck the hawt succubus.

Most games do a little more than that.  I’m sticking with the VH/MGQ archetype, so we’re looking at turn-based RPG combat.  This usually takes the form of:

1) Normal vs Normal (the early Violated Hero games)
2) Normal vs Sex (Monster Girl Quest)
3) Sex vs Sex (“battlefuck”, e.g. ROBF)

Personally, I think the games that drag the sexy into the fight segment are hotter than the ones that follow the blueprint of “bog-standard RPG fight followed by non-interactive sex scene”.

The main reason is interactivity, and – stemming from that – unpredictability.  The Bad End scenes generally don’t have any interactivity aside from clicking enter for the next line of text.  The fights do and it’s way more fun to see exactly how the succubus or other monster girl overpowers the main character to get them to that Bad End in the first place.  Extra bonus hotness if it’s some kind of special sex move that leaves the protagonist empty of energy.

The Dieselmine games have been traditionally lacklustre here, although the recent Monmusu Conquered World gives each encounter a nice animated sex attack.

Slime's special attack - boobs

The original Monster Girl Quest did better, with various attacks that bind the hero and hold them helpless while the monster girl sexily sucks out their HP.  MGQ was also pretty good with the unpredictability.  Sometimes the game would change the rules and the player would find themselves fucked (literally) whether they were trying to win the fight or not – a simple and very effective way to reinforce the femdom theme of the game.

"What, you thought you were supposed to select struggle?  Fu fu fu."

The VH/MCW fights were always too predictable to get across that “lack of control” angle.

I don’t know what a perfect interactive battlefuck system would look like.  It’s something I’ve been tinkering with for years without ever landing on something I like.  I think it wants a variety of pics/animations to represent the various sex attacks.  The better fights in the original Monster Girl Quest series had multiple artworks depending on what was being done to Luka at the time (Sexy Automata Girl and most of the later Succubi being good examples).  Add a little tweak of animation to their scenes and hawtness intensifies.

The shame of it is that Monmusu Conquered World already had elements of this in place.

Along with the animated slime girl titjob scene, they also had the following scene kicking around in the random filler sections.

Do not ask a Slime girl to "get creative"

I think this would have been better used as an alternate sex attack in the battle with Slime.  Throw in a couple more snippets of similar quality and suddenly those turn-based RPG battles become less of a chore and more a portion of the game to look forward to.

How to work them in is a harder question.  I like MGQ’s bind attacks and think some kind of system where the player gradually gets enmeshed in deeper and more explicit sex attacks would be as hot as fuck, but how to implement that, and produce all the art assets to effectively depict it is not a trivial task.  ROBF probably gets it closest in art/animation and Succubus Rhapsodia in text description (If that game could more accurately depict what was happening in art form, it would be amazing.  Unfortunately, creating art assets for all the various combinations would likely be way too time consuming).

These sprites do not accurately convey what this trio is about to do to you...

The Filler

These are the segments that link each of the sexy monster girl encounters.  The game part of the game unless you want it to be just a boss rush of the various monster girls (which is also fine, but requires putting a lot more detail on those boss fights).

Personally, I think this is lower priority depending on how much gameplay you want to add to your sex game.  Most of the time it’s just padding anyway, and exists to stop players blasting through the game in under an hour and then thinking it’s too short.

Dieselmine, with both the Violated Hero series and Monmusu Conquered World, have traditionally been comedicly terrible on this.

VH1 and 2 sent the player through a Dungeon Master-type pseudo-3D maze (Lightning Warrior Raidy also does the same).  They switched that to a branching path abstraction for VHs 3 to 5.  MCW has the player playing a very simple game of JRPG “tag”.  None of these segments really added anything to the games.

To be honest, there’s nothing wrong with taking the Visual Novel approach and filling the gaps with an interesting story.  This is what the original Monster Girl Quest series did and most monster girl H-game fans love that game.

The standard expansion to that is to use RPGmaker software and spread the story out across an overworld map.  This a more interactive option to get the story across, but suffers in that there are a lot of cheap RPGMaker games out there already (but as the focus should really be on the monster girl characters, this is not a substantial handicap).

The RPGmaker approach also moves the game more into being an RPG rather than just a Visual Novel.  The temptation then is to fill the map with random encounters (either normal critters, or more sexy monster girls).  It does add padding, but can also be tedious and grindy (especially if using conventional RPG critters rather than sexy monster girls).

On the surface Succubus Prison looks like an RPGmaker game, but while those games are about having the player explore a large world, Succubus Prison subverts it by confining the player to a small house.  It’s really a puzzle game with an emphasis on finding and combining the right key items while avoiding the succubi.  It’s good as it adds a fresh twist to a well-worn genre (and it also helps that the Bad End scenes are gorgeous).

To be honest, there are a lot of approaches that can be taken here.  The bad ones are those that feel pointless, boring and tacked on.  The good ones advance an interesting plot or give the player interesting character advancement options (or add sex content in a way that avoids being repetitive).

Anyway, it goes without saying that these are my thoughts, and might not hold for the target audience overall.  So, I would like you, the people reading this, and likely target audience for this type of game, to add your thoughts and comments below.  I’d like this web page/post to be a useful resource for anyone considering developing a monster-girl-themed eroge.  Maybe it will.  Maybe it will sink without a trace.  The internet being a big ocean and all that.

Next week we are going deep into the world of Monmusu Quest: Paradox, and I mean deep.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 21

And (finally!) we’re on to the last part of my Monmusu Conquered World playthrough.  The first part was way back here.

We’re right at the end.  We just have Nia’s second form (mother, sister, daughter?) to defeat.

The absolutely, positively, final boss

The game does have an anti-frustration, come-back-stronger mechanic, which should make the third and subsequent battles a cakewalk.  Nia doesn’t seem to be having any of that nonsense.  On about the sixth or seventh attempt, her attacks are finally down to scratch damage and Luka-clone can finally become the hero he’s supposed to be.

After being beaten, Nia gathers the gang and some magic happens.  I’d like to be able to tell you what happened, but I’m running on pure guesswork without translation.  I guess the invasion is called off as attention switches back to a normal fantasy world.  We get happy music and the silhouettes without art privileges seem to be celebrating.

But what about the brave hero that made it all possible…

The brave "sacrifice" of a courageous hero...

Well, I suppose nymphomaniac demon monster girls have to keep themselves occupied in other ways.  Some “sacrifices” need to be made.

And that’s that.

Overall, this was harder work than I thought it would be. The lack of machine translation was a handicap, even for a game as straightforward as Monmusu Conquered World.  To be fair, I should have anticipated this.  The Violated Hero series always occupied the middle ground between a Visual Novel and a (very) rudimentary RPG.  Take out the VN part, and you’re losing a good chunk of what the “game” is.

Many thanks to the people leaving comments shedding light on what was happening in some of the scenes.

I think in future, if I’m going to do series like this, it will be for games where there is more public interest, and where I have some form of machine translation in place.

So, how did Monmusu Conquered World shape up to its spiritual predecessor series, Violated Hero?

To be honest, without translation, it’s a little hard for me to offer an opinion and still be fair.  I can’t exactly judge plot or character depth without knowing the text.  The JRPG mechanics seemed overly simplistic, but that could have been how Easy mode was designed.

What I can talk about is the artwork and some of the games mechanic choices.

The artwork seemed a step back.  The different art styles didn’t mesh together very well.  I did like the sex animations, though, and wished the game had made better use of them.

As for the characters, I thought the first half was stronger than the second half.  I liked the spider girl, steam girl, painting girl and slime girl, and thought both the goblins and mermaids were adorably cute, even if adorably cute isn’t really a sexual turn-on for me. On the other hand, I only really liked Nia out of the endgame bosses and I felt they could have done with something like Violated Hero 2’s additional post-loss scenes to better distinguish them as more important characters.

The auto-lose-the-first-fight gimmick felt like one of those ideas that must have sounded better on paper.  I can get where they’re coming from – it does integrate the H-content better than the player having to choose to lose to get it – but it ended up being more annoying.

The dodge-and-run filler was total shite, but Dieselmine have never really found a good way to gamify the segments between each boss, so that’s no real change.  The sex animations for when you got caught made them a little more entertaining, but that vanished fast when they ran out of original snippets and started recycling them near the end.

The main problem for Dieselmine is that the original Violated Hero games (most notably VH2) came out after Monster Girl Quest had just hit cult success and there was an audience wanting more of the same.  Since then Monster Girl Quest has evolved into an intricate and complex JRPG, other series like ROBF and Succubus Rhapsodia have come out and done the same, games like Tokinokogiri’s Succubus Prison have really raised the bar in sexy-as-fuck succubus/monster girl Bad Ends, and Dieselmine’s games… haven’t kept up from what I’ve seen.

It was one of my frustrations with the Violated Hero series and now with Monmusu Conquered World.  It always feels like all the elements are there to make a really great cult H-game, but something is always botched, or overlooked, or undercooked, or otherwise not assembled correctly.

I’m planning to post my own thoughts on what I think the perfect “Violated Hero” game should look like as a sort of post-series segment this weekend.  Feel free to drop your own thoughts in the comments on that (or this) as I’m hoping it will be a useful article for any devs looking to make similar games (and it is great that a number of Western devs are building games to cater to this niche).

I hope you enjoyed this little playthrough anyway.  As always, if you enjoyed what you read, please check out my novels, short story collections and novellas.  I love writing about sexy succubi and monster girls.

Next up – Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2]!

Monday, September 25, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 20

We’re getting to the end of my Monmusu Conquered World playthrough.  At this point I think we have only the final boss to face.  To go back to where it all began, go here.  If you’re not 18, go to the back button on your internet browser (you can come back when you’re old enough).

In our last piece we took down the second-in-command.  By a process of elimination I think that means we have only have the final boss left, although with Violated Hero games (Monmusu Conquered World’s spiritual predecessor), that’s not always the case.  Also, I don’t have machine translation, so I don’t really know what’s going on anyway.

Before the final encounter we have another run-and-dodge section through a typical RPG-maker map.  The sex animations if you get caught were pretty neat the first few times, but by this point I think these filler sections have well and truly worn out their welcome.  I think the game knows as well.  The last segment is pretty much an open space with lots of identical succubus minions milling around.  It’s not hard to navigate.

And then, the big boss.

The final boss

Her name is given as Nia in the promo materials.  I’m guessing she’s supposed to be some kind of female Satan.  She does have a goaty sort of appearance.

If we weren’t sure she was the big boss, being sent off to fight against a wooshy metaphysical backdrop of stars and constellations clues us into her being the baddest of bads.

Generic JRPG final battle background

Despite this, she fails to do what 90% of all the other monster girls of Monmusu Conquered World have done—OHKO is in the first, unwinnable battle.

Time to accept our horny punishment.

Our final "punishment"

I’m fine with this.

She gets on top for a bout of vigorous fucking that doesn’t stop until she’s completely plastered in white stuff from the ambulatory bag of concentrated semen.  Losing has never felt so fun.

I suppose we should try to win, though, what with the fate of the world and all that riding on this.

And then she does this and…

A devastating special attack...

…whoops, we lose again.

Put it away, Luka-clone we have a world to save.  Think of all those unfortunate black silhouettes labouring away without any kind of art privileges.

After beating her there is a barrage of weird screen effects.

And your reward is…

The prize!

…tits.

Ah, that’s why she only had one Bad End scene.  Nia has gone all one-wing-angel on us.  Or rather, lots-of-hair-and-eyes-in-places-there-shouldn’t-be-eyes angel on us.

At least, I think she might have transformed.  The face differs so much I’m not sure if it’s her or a sister or mother.

This is what happens when you try to do this without machine translation (never never again).

As with the original Nia, she likes to be on top.  So we have to go through all that sexy, being ridden to exhaustion thing all over again.  Saving the world is hard job Luka-clone, someone’s got to be the one ridden by sexy Satan until their bollocks are empty.

The onerous costs of being a hero

The shaggy legs and weird hair eyes don’t detract.  My attention is somewhere else for some reason.

Every time it looks like the screen is fading out, the action jumps back to her on top.  I wonder if she’s taking a page out of Gorgon’s book and trying to avoid the sword’s magic by fuckity-ever-after for all eternity.

It fails (Luka-clone’s heart probably bursts at some point).

She definitely justifies her End Boss status.  For a while I was wondering if the game’s come-back-stronger mechanic has been switched off as she effortlessly swats us aside for about four “unlosable” fights in a row.  It isn’t until about the fifth or sixth attempt that she unveils her sex attack—an animated version of her cowgirl end, which is pretty sweet.

But prevail we must… but that will be for next time.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 19

Welcome back to the (hopefully!) back on schedule Text Play of Monmusu Conquered World.  Monmusu Conquered World is an adult monster girl sex game made by Dieselmine.  The first part of my playthrough can be found here.

Last up we got eaten up like candy by a succubus.  This was rather disappointing if you were expecting smutty sexy stuff, although the succubus did make up for it by riding our brains out in the h-battle later on.

Anyway, she’s out of the way and it’s time to press deeper into the demon lord castle.  The dodge-and-run section this time is that ever-annoying JRPG trope – the teleport maze.  At this point the game appears to be out of original sex animations, rendering the segment even more tedious.

Scrap metal + boobies

After navigating that it’s finally time to fight the second-in-command boss, Ms Scrap Metal Tits.  Number 2, Ms Scrap Metal Tits, appears prominently on the menu page and to be fair, her boobs are bulbously beautiful.

Poster Girl

Her name is given as The Orte, and I’m going to have to call defeat on the origins of that one.  Is it an anime/manga reference?  She’s surrounded by a dark essence, apparently.

Her first Bad End scene will be very familiar to anyone that played through the original Violated Hero series.  It’s the classic VH femdom footjob.

VH Femdom Footjob Scene #7

Every VH game had one of the major Big Bads do this to the protagonist at some point in the game.  The pictures all have virtually the same camera angle and pose.

As with the giantess scene last time, this is a kink that’s outside my wheelhouse.  I’m not a foot person.  I feel a footjob is something I should bucketlist at some point, if only to see what the fuss is about.  But having my balls actually trod on, hmm, I think I can miss that experience with no regrets.

The Orte is one of the “generals”.  That means she gets a second scene.  The footjob is just the appetizer.  Now it’s time for the main course as she climbs on top while getting Luka-clone to press his hand against her big soft titty.

The main course...
This, I think, I can get along with.

At least I could, until I noticed something with the artwork that threw me out of the scene.  What’s going on with her left leg?  It looks like it’s been detached from her hip and bolted on to her pussy.  I’m not sure what’s happening here.  Maybe the artist planned for one angle on the legs and then changed their mind when drawing her midriff.  Or there are perfectly sensible storyline reasons for it to look like that (which I can’t read, as I don’t have translation for this game).  Or it’s just me.

Is it just me?

Does how her leg joins to her body look weird to anyone else?

Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that once noticed, become impossible not to notice.

Which is a shame as the scene looks decent.  The Orte fucks our brains out and keeps fucking while the black stuff surrounding her starts to creep down over our skin.

...is us.  Welp.

Uh oh.

Too late.  Time to add being absorbed by darkness to the list of unusual ways for Luka-clone to die.

Does this mean we now get scrap metal nuts?

The resurrection scene starts off in darkness and for a moment I’m wondering whether we’re going to be hit by some plot-twist shenanigans, but no, we get resurrected and have the normal fight, just like every other encounter.

Her sex attack is an animated version of her second Bad End scene.  This means I can’t fully appreciate it as the wonky leg art is still bugging me.

Annoying really.  I like The Orte’s design and she does appear to be the quintessential femme fatale succubus-esque encounter.

Oh well, let’s see what the big boss has in store for us.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 18

Whoopsies on the bigger than expected delay.  I fully blame getting back into Monmusu Quest: Paradox (that Text Play is coming) and one of those rare weekends where I have to do non-writing work.  Anyway, Monmusu Quest: Paradox is for the future, we’re currently on Monmusu Conquered World and somewhere near the end (I think).

So where are we – part 18 I reckon.

We’re near the end now.  Big Fox and L’il Fox have already been dispatched.  So too has the Queen in Yellow, Hastia.

We’ve still got a few more pointless run-and-dodge filler sections to navigate first.  I think at this point even the game is tired of them as this segment is a leisurely stroll past devil bedrooms.  They don’t even seem that interested in Luka-clone and as the game seems to have run out of original sex anims to tempt us with, neither do we.

Then… succubus.

Yay, succubus, I think...

I’m pretty sure she’s just another sub-boss rather than one of the plot-important “generals”.  I remember Violated Hero 5 doing this with the succubus-esque Nightmare appearing seemingly at random in one of the end-game sections.  Doesn’t really make much sense, but they promised us a “lewd demon”, so let’s…

Loli or starved?

Hmm.  Not really a fan of this artwork.  Sure, I like them busty, but I don’t think it’s requirement that a succubus needs a pair of melons attached to their chest.  In this case she doesn’t look so much flat-chested as withered.  Is that what happens if a succubus doesn’t get her daily feed?  Enquiring minds would like to know.

Maybe we should start a sperm drive for the poor lass.  I’m sure there would be no shortage of volunteers.

The game doesn’t even bother with the first pointless unwinnable battle, it jumps straight to the Bad End scene where the succubus…

Oh fuck.

…pops us in her mouth like a piece of candy.

Hmm, you know what I was saying about your breasts earlier, succubus…

I am truly, deeply, sincerely sorry.

(pleasedon’teatmepleasedon’teatme)

I’m not sure whether we’ve been shrunk by magic or the succubus is really a giantess.  Either way, it’s the classic giantess vore scene.  The succubus gets us off with her big slimy tongue.  No real reason to.  I guess the “cream” gives a bit of tasty extra seasoning before the eventual gulp.

Down the hatch we go, Luka-clone.  Never mind.  The sword will…

…hey, do we even still have that magic sword?  I haven’t seen its graphic for ages.

You promised us a lewd demon, Dieselmine.

I think they’re trolling us, again.

I don’t mind vore.  I even dabble with it on occasion with my succubus and monster girl stories (okay, so maybe more than occasionally with the H-space stories), mainly because it plays so well with horror.  Not so much giantess vore, though.  That doesn’t hit any of my buttons, even if Karbo does draw some of the loveliest monster girls.

That plus the loli (sort of – it might be more accurate to call the artwork just straight-up strange) angle renders this a double miss for me.

For me, I should clarify.  For someone into the giantess fetish, this might be the scene that hits them right in the sweet spot.  That’s one of the great things about these games – they do try to cover a wide range of kinks.

One thing it did do for me was raise some interesting thoughts on the exclusiveness of some kinks/fetishes.  By exclusiveness, I mean the kinks that fall into the love or loathe category.  Taking giantess as an example.  Is it better to make a game with all giantess vore, or a game that covers it as part of a wide range of similar kinks?  For the all-giantess game, you know the audience is going to be really pleased with all the content, but that audience is likely to be very niche and consequentially small.  For the wider range option, you’re going to attract a wider audience, but the resulting game is going to be fairly diluted.  For example, if you’re only into the giantess vore side of things, is paying $20 for a game with 1 scene of interest out of 20 that appealing?

I suspect it comes down to the exclusivity of kinks.  Monster Girl Quest handled this with its vore toggle switch.  That way, the players that liked femdom monster girls, but really didn’t want their boner ruined by a graphic account of a starfish girl everting her stomach around Luka and digesting him to mush, could just flip a switch and not see that content.

(In care you're wondering – no, I don’t come with a vore-toggle switch.  I like my horror too much.)

Also, the creators of MGQ seemed to know which areas overlapped, and which didn’t.  So you might see Luka get eaten by a dragon with a sexy babe for a tongue, or wrapped in the stomach of a starfish girl, but you won’t see him get buggered up the ass by a big hairy bloke, or see Luka beat Alice black and blue with his fists and then throttle her.  Those audiences don’t really overlap (at least I’m fairly sure they don’t overlap!).

But this is too much digression (and another hint I probably should not have done this series without any machine translation).  I’m thinking this might be a topic for a future post.  Mapping out which kinks can or can’t co-exist would be an interesting discussion and possibly a useful resource for anyone thinking of making their own monster girl H-game.

Back to our Luka-clone-popping succubus and the question of whether she’s a giant or using shrinking magic is answered when we finally get to the real fight.  Her sex attack is paralyzing the player, putting them to sleep, and then riding the fuck out of them.

Succubus riding the fuck out of us

Now this is more like what I expect from a succubus.

Overall, Little Miss Succubus is a miss for me, but I’m not going to begrudge the game for including her.

Hopefully, we should now be back to the regular posting schedule, so I’ll see you again on Friday.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Update-ry Stuff

No Monmusu Conquered World Text Play updates this week.  Other stuff came up and I managed to fall behind.

Also, having got much deeper into the game, I'm starting to understand some of the criticisms people posted when I first talked about the game.  It does get repetitive and the lacks the pay-off of either Violated Hero 2's later Bad Ends or VH5's reasonably interesting storyline.  It does have a nice range of monster girls and I think most of the animated sex scene snippets work pretty well, but like a lot of Dieselmine games, all the good stuff never quite comes together to form a truly good game.

This is especially noticeable now I've got around to playing Monmusu Quest: Paradox again (more on this later).

I did think briefly about knocking the series on its head, but I'm not far from the end, so I'll post the last remaining segments next week.  In future I think I'll avoid doing games where I have no machine translation and stick to ones where the story is a little more interesting or where some element of walkthrough/guide might be useful.

Which brings me back to Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  I did write a massive series on the first part that was a lot of fun.  I didn't think I'd be able to do the same for the second because of the problems of running text-hooking software on Windows 10.  I have found a fix for that, or rather some software that does work, so I'm thinking a Text Play of Monmusu Quest: Paradox part 2 might be back on, providing I find a schedule that doesn't devour all the time I should be spending writing.

So yep, been replaying Monmusu Quest: Paradox a fair bit over the last week or so.  The Dargoth translations really improve the playing experience.  Dargoth and co. didn't complete a full 100% translation of part one before part two came out, but they seem to have followed a sensible priority list of names/items -> main plot -> H-scenes.  I'm nearly done with a replay of part 1 (Just Gnome and 3rd Tartarus to go) and it's been mostly English all the way.  If you're looking for English translations of a fave monster girl's H-scene, you might be disappointed (especially if she shows up later in the game), but the main plot seems fully translated from what I've seen so far.

So, there's a decent chance I might launch straight into a Monmusu Quest: Paradox part 2 series right after finishing up with Monmusu Conquered World.

As for my own personal writing, that's rather chaotic at the moment.  As usual I have too many projects on the go simultaneously, but at least some of them are approaching completion.  Here's the full list for people that might be interested:

H-Space Monster Girl Bestiary

I have one on the way and another batch of ideas to write.  I'm still suffering with a bloat problem on story length.  At 2.5K words they're not quite long enough to be what I'd consider a quality short story, but are taking up more time to write than the original purpose of sex scenes I flesh out into full stories at a later date.  I'm conscious of the fact I'm unlikely to put out a new novel this year.  I'm also conscious of the fact I put out the equivalent of an average novel's word count in H-space stories/profiles that I don't really know what to do with.

Priorities - not one of my strong points. :)

I'll keep adding to them when I get a chance anyway.  The setting is a little too hostile to human life at the moment, but I have a few ideas to fix this and make it a little more interesting.

Short Stories.

A H-space piece that builds up the lore a bit.  I'm about halfway through this one and I think people will like it.  I have it penciled in for Lit's Halloween contest.

Nude Day piece.  This one was penciled in for Lit's been-and-gone Nude Day contest.  A trio of lads, a derelict mansion, a lot (and I mean a lot!) of succubi in the basement.  Intro and first 3rd is done.  One of the characters needs a tweak to be less annoying/abrasive.

Novellas/Sandwiched by

"Sandwiched by Smoke".  This one's been crawling to completion for a while.  I keep coming back to it to add a few more pages.  It's inspired by '60/'70s spy serials like The Avengers and The Prisoner and should be a little more zanier than the ickier "Sandwiched by Stomachs".

Sandwiched by Slugs.  This was going to be a H-space Monster Girl Bestiary short.  I liked the setup and +1 slug girl gives me the sexy slimy sandwich to make it part of the Sandwiched by series.  (yes, it'll probably be icky).

Novels

Nicole standalone.  This was going to be the novel I wrote in between SS201 and SS301.  First two chapters are done.  I have a rough idea of the full plot and how it ties a bunch of my short stories together.  Then chapter 3 hit a roadblock, so it's sitting on the backburner until I get a chance to come back to it.

Succubus Invasion/Barry Lyle.  The backup novel I was going to write between SS201 and SS301 for the first half of this year.  Chaos writing screwed up here and I kept bouncing myself off the project to do other things (Sandwiched by, H-space Bestiary) instead of blasting this out while the ideas were hot.  I thought this was going to be parked on the backburner after I failed to finish it in the first half of 2017, but the words have started flowing again in the past couple of days (which is partly why you're getting this post and not Monmusu Conquered World Text Play part 18).  If I suddenly go very quiet in Oct/Nov it'll be because I've decided to stop jerking around and finally hammer this out.

That or:

Succubus Summoning 301.

Unsurprisingly, this is the one I get asked the most about, and the one that should be my greatest priority if I didn't have a very bad habit of my productivity being inversely proportional to the amount of pressure I put on myself to write something.  I know I'm way slower than I should be, but I also know I won't (can't) shove out of a bunch of rubbish to cash in on the popularity of the first two books.

If I hadn't finished in-between standalone novel by the 2nd half of 2017, the plan was to move on to SS301.  This is broadly in place dependent on where chaos writing takes me.  My productivity is so sketchy at the moment I'll settle for writing 10 pages on something random than trying to force a slow half-page out on whatever I think I should be writing.

This probably isn't what people want to hear, but the more I try and push myself, the more my feet dig in on things like this.  It'll come when the chapter is ready to come bursting out of my skull (which I don't think will be much longer - Rosa is very keen to go wild after I made a joke of her not getting any in SS201).

This is currently where I'm at.  Obviously, I'd prefer to have completed 1 novella + 75% of a novel, rather than 10-50% of about seven different projects, but that's how it is.

Friday, September 08, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 17

The Monmusu Conquered World series continues.  We’re into the “generals” now, so I think we’re (finally!) approaching the end.  (The journey began back here in case you’ve only just tuned in now.  If you’ve only just tuned in now I should also warn you Monmusu Conquered World is an adult game and you should press the back button on your browser right now if offended by such things.)

After sending the Family Fox packing, we’re back to more pointless run-and-dodge.  There’s a doorway leading to the shopkeeper (that I’ve never felt the need to buy anything off, because I chickened out of selecting ‘hard’ difficulty for a game I had no translation for).  Hmm, she appears to be hiding out in a luxurious bedroom this time around.

Oh, I wonder what that new option on the menu i—

Additional services are available at this shop

Oh.  Yeah.  Why was I even surprised?

You’ve come a long way, sorceress girl from Violated Hero 1.  (And I suspect Luka-clone also comes a long way, or would if her throat wasn’t in the way.)

At the end of the corridor we run into weird slug/tentacle/too-many-damn-eyes girl.

She seems very very angry for some reason.

Um, hi...?

I suspect her design is a nod to the King in Yellow, what with the tentacles, yellow cape and being named Hastia (Hastur).  All very Lovecraftian, or rather Robert W Chambers-ian, as the King in Yellow was his creation and preceded Lovecraft’s work by a decade or so (Lovecraft liked it).  Most people might remember it nowadays as the bait that fooled people into thinking a police drama was going to be more interesting than it ultimately was.  (The first season of True Detective is still pretty damn good, but ultimately never had the balls to fully peer behind the veil, as I’m sure most horror fans were hoping it would.)

Anyway, back to our little hentai game.  Hastur.  Tentacles.  What could possible go wrong?

We probably don't want to lose this one...

Let’s be honest.  The Violated Hero series was famed for being a little... shall we say... weird.  Monmusu Conquered World has been restrained with the last few scenes.  Not wanting to worry you or anything, Luka-clone, but this one might be rough.

I think reality has been twisted...

Oh, she just wants us to lick her clit.  Uh, that’s fine, I guess.  Unexpected.

Hastur is very talkative for an eldritch abomination.  Even more so when Luka-clone starts gently nibbling away on the sensitive parts of her nether regions.

Hmm, you seem a little more adept at this than I would have expected, Luka-clone.  Did you get up to stuff before going off on your adventures?

It doesn’t take long for Hastur to hit orgasm and this time it’s Luka-clone getting a facefull of sex juices.  That’s a novel twist from the norm.  I suppose it should be expected from an eldritch abomination.  They do like to twist reality after all (although this might be too far).

But there is the second scene.  Prepare thyself, Luka-clone, for tentacle...

Reality has definitely been twisted

Oh, she just wants to get on top and ride us cowgirl style.

This is too much.  I don’t think I can handle this much... normalcy.

“What’s the matter, darling?  Are you having that little problem again?”

“It’s all those eyes.  Can’t you shut them or something.  It’s very off-putting?”

Hastur does wrap her tentacles around us to give us an extra little squeeze, but, surprisingly for this genre, the tentacles stay mostly to themselves.

Hastur’s sex anim is also unexpected.  All those tentacles and eyes, and her scene is an as-vanilla-as-they-come blowjob.  I suspect Dieselmine is deliberately trolling us here.

I wonder what Lovecraft and others would have made of their creations being used in this way.  Absolute shock and disgust, I imagine.  Apart from Clark Ashton Smith.  I suspect he’d have found it hilarious.  Seems that kind of dude from his writing.

Tentacles, tentacles.  Anyone want tentacles?  I have tentacles for you.  Come on.  Who can resist two gorgeous scyllas in a bubbly Jacuzzi?

Is that just Ms Scrap Metal Boobs left now?  We’ll see next time.

Wednesday, September 06, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 16

The Monmusu Conquered World Text Play continues (if you’re new to this madness, the first part can be found back here).  Will we finally get to fight one of the major bosses this time?

After defeating ghost girl, the action switches back to Generic Evil Throne Room Backdrop.  In there we have Ms Scrap Metal Boobies, Big Fox and Suspiciously-Young-Looking Fox, and... what appears to be a slug eating a blonde-haired girl.  Oh, for the days of Violated Hero 2 with the bubbly Milfy and that dirty snake girl minx.

Monster girl or monster eating girl?

Anyway, they do battle council stuff while Luka-clone looks for a kip on dirty mats in a cave somewhere.  Flesh Golem returns.  Again, I realise the folly of trying to do a series like this with zero machine translation.  If you know her relevance to the plot, please enlighten me in the comments below.

After a short bit of dialogue, she goes off running through Ye Olde Medieval Towne with sirens blaring in the background.  With Doppelganger, I could make an educated guess at what was going on.  At this point I don’t have a clue – the first stages of invasion?

It means we have another run-and-dodge segment through the tough urban streets.  The highlights of this part of town are having our face smooshed between two enormous boobies, or having our dick slapped.  Personally, I know what I prefer, but I won’t judge you if you like the other.

Then we enter the castle and the music goes all end-of-game dramatic.  Don’t try pulling that on me, game.  We haven’t fought one of the “generals” yet and I’m sure there’s at least four or five of them.

Talking of generals, here’s the first – Big Fox and Please-Don’t-Get-My-Blog-Pulled-For-Dubious-Content Fox.

Big Fox and L'il Fox

And this time we’re fighting.

Fox tag-team

I’d like to think of this as Big Sis Fox and L’il Sis Fox, but according to the product blurb they’re Mama and Daughter Fox.  Which is sort of icky, maybe.  I mean, is it technically incest if you engage in a lurid threesome with a pair of smoking-hot identical twins?  Asking for a friend.  What if it’s mother and daughter?  What if the mother and daughter [redacted] [redacted] and [most definitely redacted]?

Incest/Taboo porn has always seemed a bit weird to me.

(Says the guy who once wrote a story where a demon ate a man’s girlfriend, shat her out and then forced the still-sentient faecal matter to fuck her former boyfriend to death.)

(What, you thought I was joking.)

So, mother and daughter.  A bit squick, or no different to fucking a pair of hot sisters at the same time?

(Again, asking for a friend. Honest.)

Then there’s the age angle.

“Are you quite sure you’re of legal age, L’il Fox?”

“I’m 473. And my mother is 1,032.”

“Shush dear, I’m not a day over a thousand years old, and I have the tits to prove it.  Why don’t you feel for yourself?”

Fox spirits, sigh.

That’s quite alrigh...  Goddamn it Luka-clone.  What have I told you about touching the boobs of strange kitsune women.  Don’t you remember what happened last time?

Yes, I am talking about the “fluffy tail” incident.

It’s better to imagine the preliminary to the Bad End happening that way than what we get – a predictably unwinnable “fight” ending in another OHKO.

Then it’s time for some multi-fox mama-and-daughter fox action.  Mama fox rubs her curvaceous bum against our erection while Baby Fox gets in between and starts sucking.  Yeah, I figured all that innocent-baby-face stuff was an act.

Baby-faced, but most definitely not innocent

After getting Luka-clone primed, L’il Fox gets out of the way so that Mama Fox can sit... where it feels rather nice.  L’il Fox turns her attention to our nipples while Mama Fox bounces up and down.  After a bit of up’n’down, Mama Fox gets off at just the right moment for L’il Fox to get a full facial.  As she’s a centuries-old kitsune (probably), L’il Fox doesn’t mind.

I think they’re slurping up your energy again, Luka-clone (Or chi, or ki, or whatever it is that kitsune gobble).

Mama-and-daughter foxes are the first of the designated “generals”.  That means they have two-scene privileges.  And the second scene is...

Definitely not innocent...

...a rather pleasant fox sandwich.

Has Mama Fox’s boobs got even bigger?  They do look like rather soft and comfortable pillows to lie upon.

L’il Fox preserves her pretend virginity by attempting to get Luka-clone off with a bit of intercrural action between her thighs.

Or maybe not.  Naughty L’il fox.

Luka-clone still makes a big mess of her dress because he is the ambulatory bag of concentrated semen.

For the follow-up (i.e. non-OHKO) fights, their animated sex attack is Mama Fox bouncing away on Luka-clone’s cock with L’il Fox watching on intently.  What a lewd pair.

Do I need to even tell you at this point...?

Again, I’d love to be able to actually read the dialogue as after their defeat they get all sad-faced before (I think) teleporting away.

Not a bad scene.  Loli Fox and the Mama’n’Daughter angle might make it a little too uncomfortable for some folks (me included), but at the end of the day it’s just pixels.  I’m here for the boobies and Mama Fox has me amply covered in that department (I suspect literally as well, should she so desire).

Hmm, Kitsune.  Another “classic” monster girl.  I was trying to think of any kitsune stories I might have written and then remembered I’d been sneaky wi—

I have not written any stories with kitsune in them.

Huh?  Strange.  I dunno what came over me there.

Oh well, that will do for now.

To the next part.

Monday, September 04, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 15

Blimmin’ Hell.  What is this, week 6 of my Monmusu Conquered World Text Play?  (It might have been a mistake doing this…)  Never mind, here’s where the insanity started.

We’re still not even on the final bosses!

With Monmusu Conquered World the distinction seems a bit blurry compared to Dieselmine’s previous Violated Hero series.  The Flesh Golem girl we fought last time had two Bad End scenes and I thought she was just another standard boss.

The two fox sisters show up after the fight.  Again you’ll have to excuse my lack-of-a-clue as to what’s going on as I don’t have machine translation for this series.

(Then why did you try to do this series anyway?  That is a question I have been asking myself…)

I think Luka-clone might have got bonked on the head.  We wake up in that same rustic room with all the cobwebs.

From there it’s more run-and-dodge filler.  Nominally, the sex anims are all new, but they’re basically variations on one’s already seen.  The slime girl one is still pretty nice though.

I wonder if Luka-clone is as lost as I am as we end up on the shore of a lake, seemingly slashing at empty air.

Another scenery change and is this the time we get to fight Big Fox and L’il Fox?

Nopers, it’s time for a walk through a graveyard instead.  There are zombies, but they seem more interested in eating ass than brains.  Gorblessyou, H-RPG world.

The long way around to eating braaaains

I mean, if we weren’t in a hentai game, this backdrop of wooden crosses might be a little intimidating.

When did we leave the sex game again?

(I’d make it terrifying)

In such charnel surroundings, it shouldn’t be that surprising that our next opponent is a spooky ghost girl.  I’m more scared by the art style clash to be honest.

A little too bright for a ghost girl?

After our predictable OHKO, it’s time for a spot of spectral 69 as Ghost Girl wants us to get a good sniff of her pussy.  Or make use of our nose in rather creative ways, it seems from the artwork.  Can you still breathe down there, Luka-clone?

Spectral 69, yeah yeah, baby!

Hmm.  Is this a ghost girl or a succubus?  Having our face stuffed in pussy brings the little man to attention (as it would) and rather than keeping up her end of the 69, Ghost Girl drops a magic circle on our erection instead.  "Energy Drain" is mentioned.  Uh oh.

That's not your mouth

It doesn’t take long before the white stuff is fwooshing out of Luka-clone’s cock.  I don’t think that’s just semen, mate.  I think that’s our energy fwooshing out as well.  That’s why you shouldn’t seek carnal knowledge of ghosts, Luka-clone.  They’re just energy-hungry vamps who are only interested in your life force.

Fwoosh, fwoosh.

Um, we’d better stop fwooshing or… never mind.

Bad End.

The real fight has Ghost Girl blast us with dark energy.  When that fails to work she binds us, puts us to sleep and then smothers us with her pussy.  I don’t think that finisher is allowed by the WWE.

Time for more fwoosh.

It’s not a bad encounter despite the art style.  But then my love of succubi-type monster girls means I tend to go weak at the knees at the mention of “energy drain”.

Having all your energy sucked out will do that.

Oh.

Anyway, time to exorcise this ghostly bitch and move on.

Whoa, luv.  This is just a harmless snu-snu game.  There’s no need for that overly dramatic death wail.  It might get me wondering how Luka-clone is dispatching his opponents and I don’t need the guilt trip.

(Although I wouldn’t exactly blame him.  Being swallowed whole or having all the blood sucked out of your body isn’t exactly good for the mental state.)

As always, if you like this series, please consider picking up one of my books.  There will be some new fiction coming out soon.  I’ve been using this series as a screen while I catch up and finish some of the multiple (too many) writing projects I’ve got on the go.

For the next part, go here.

Friday, September 01, 2017

Text Play Monmusu Conquered World! part 14

The blind Text Play of Monmusu Conquered World continues.  The madness began back here.  There are slightly more bosses than I was expecting.  The Violated Hero blueprint used to be 10 regular bosses and 5 bigger bosses.  We’re on part 14 and other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her appearance from The Orte (whatever that is), the only bigger bosses we’ve seen are big and little fox.

After a poisonous (literally) date with Alraune, it appears we are still in the forest of somewhere else.  The run-and-dodge filler sections through the forest are starting to get a little stale as well.  Nothing new to see here before we’re back in Visual Novel mode and...

Where exactly did you get those hands?

Flesh Golem.

Not sure why she’s showed up in the forest.  You’d think graveyards or scary gothic castles would be more her thing.  Or maybe I’m just unfairly stereotyping her and stitched-together zombie girls like nothing more than kittens and long walks through nice nature spots.

Obviously not, as right away she wants to get down to bludgeoning us with those... what’s with those crazy hands anyway.

Bonk.

And then...

Where did you get those boobs!

Bonk.

Unsurprisingly, she’s on top.  Monster girls always like to be on top.

Flesh golem must be more important to the plot than I first thought.  She gets a second CGI with a cutaway internal shot.

You get a special prize if you're able to fill it

So is this the subgame where Luka-clone has to completely fill zombie girl’s womb with white stuff.  He can probably do it.  It’s the hidden superpower of all Luka-clone’s after all.

But no.  It’s starting to leak out.  Zombie gal is playing with it between her fingers.  You’re losing it, Luka-clone!

Where did you get those hands anyway, Ms Frankenstein’s Monsteress – a bear?  Weren’t there any good pianists available?

Luka-clone’s bottomless balls superpowers fail him as we fail to completely fill Zombina’s womb.  So we have to fight her again.

And again.

And again.

Um, Ms Flesh Golem.  You do know this is a sex game.  How about some snu-snu instead of *bonk* hitting us *bonk* over the *bonk* head with those ridiculously oversize paws.

I think she’s following the Lizard Gal program as it takes a while before she decides to knock us to the ground and start riding away.

Once again, the lack of any machine translation is jiggering this up.  I read on one of the threads that Flesh Golem is a pretty sweet character, and a good candidate for a few people’s fave waifu despite her ugly-cute stitched together appearance.  And I know she does show up again later.  Unfortunately, I have nada on the dialogue front.  From the artwork I get she has big hands, big boobs and a nice smile.  That is one of the downsides of playing these games blind when you can’t read Japanese.

(On the translation front, the good news is that I’ve managed to find a version of ITH that does cooperate with Windows 10.  The bad news is that whatever engine Dieselmine uses remains resolutely unhookable.  I have got it to work with other games though, including the big one – Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  Not promising anything, but there might be another really crazy Text Play series coming to the blog at some point in the future...)

As for the Dieselmine vs manyeyedhydra competition, zombie girls aren’t really a thing in my repertoire.  I don’t really do the undead stories for some reason.  I think the only conventional vampire character I’ve written (unless you count blood-sucking boobies) was a comedy character in a Disgaea parody.

Given how I think, this might not be a bad thing.  I mean if you’re writing zombie horror, it has to be gross and gory, otherwise what’s the point.  Same for the sexy horror stuff.  If the zombie cheerleader isn’t trying to erotically asphyxiate her partner with her own large intestine, you’re not trying hard enough.

Yeah, I should probably stick to the succubi...

That’s it for this week.  Come back next week for more... tasteful... erotic stuff (maybe!).