Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Along came a spider... Escape the Arachne is live!

Okay, now you can get excited (maybe).

"Escape the Arachne" is live.

I don't know much about the people behind philome.la, so I don't know how long it will be live.  They may take exception to the adult nature of the story and/or some political things I've said in the past and give me the boot.  My long-term plan is to buy some web hosting and post these where I won't have to worry about that sort of thing (or at least, worry about it less).

Now onto the story.  It's short, about the length of a short story.  I intended the scenario to be more a demo/proof of concept.  If you follow the optimal path you can reach the end of the scenario very quickly.  It's also designed to be relatively easy.  Even with average stats you should be able to blunder to the end without too much trouble.  It's also possible to escape without even passing a single stat test.

Of course, it isn't much fun if you do that, so I'd suggest letting L'hesperusa "play" with you a little longer.

There are 6 different Bad Ends available (and one Good End).  5 of these are fairly easy to find.  The last might require a little bit of trial and error (hint: nakedness is an attribute within this scenario).

The whole thing is written in Twine using the SugarCube story format.  As this is a demo/proof of concept I was focusing more on the coding and the text rather than the presentation, so yep, it looks a little basic.  Everything has to start somewhere.  Artwork, sound fx, a prettier GUI are things I can look at in the future.

The game mechanics are very similar to old gamebooks, the Fighting Fantasy series in particular.  If people find the scenario a little too easy and want to L'hesperusa to dominate them a little more I might switch the test probabilities around.  Currently the tests call for rolling equal to or lower than the stat on 2d6.  Giving L'hesperusa the tie (so a pass is only if the roll is less than the stat) would shift the probabilities in her favour.  That's something I'm considering doing.  The current stat tests are a demo version anyway and might be replaced by something more complex at a future date.  (Plus I don't know what patents/copyright/trademarks the Fighting Fantasy series still holds on d6 attribute checks.  My gut feeling is simple attribute tests like this are too generic to patent/copyright, but very stupid patents exist...)

Anyway, I hope people have fun playing with L'hesperusa.  I haven't done any coding for a while, so this was a fun diversion.  Please post feedback (and bugs encountered) below.

If the interest is there, I would like to write more scenarios featuring different monster girls.  Maybe even stitch those scenarios together into a full game.  I'd likely need funding for this (especially if it gets to the point of commissioning artwork etc), so it might be an excuse to finally get that Patreon up and running.  So long as the interest is there.  If people try it out and give it the thumbs down, well it was an experiment that didn't work out (although it was great to do some coding again).

I have no plans to stop doing the other writing.  Ideally I'll have a nice serial up and running next week (although probably not "The Heart Squad" as that's proving stubborn and will likely need to go back onto the backburner).

Hope people enjoyed this little game demo anyway.  Please leave feedback below.

Oh, and I probably should add.  If you like it, please spread the word.  :D

26 comments:

  1. Hmm, got a good few endings, but nothing changing when I was stripped nude. Also can't seem to find any purpose for the statuette. Any hints?

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    1. Statuette currently has no purpose other than victory objective. Scenario is proof of concept. Needed an item to be retrieved. If I expand it further, it might be changed to a conventional key item, or even the objective for each scenario, like a very perverted Crystal Maze! :)

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    2. When you're stripped nude go to the right. You need to fail the agility test there. Think I found them all. 4 basic ones if let her choose counts, left tunnel end and right tunnel end.

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    3. I did finally find one where if you're nude and wait to see what she does, she fires what seems like energy draining silk. But it seems it's random if she does that or if she tries to capture you normally. So the 3 normal ends, that, and the 2 tunnel ends make six. Unless we missed one.

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    4. What triggered the energy draining silk for me was being naked and waving the torch at her, then waiting to see what she did.

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  2. I found a nice way to reset your Fatigue to 0. After you get the torch, you can swing it at the Arachne. She backs away and you can take a moment to catch your breath. This reduces you Fatigue by one. After that you simply repeat the process until your Fatigue is at 0.

    Dunno if this is intended tho

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  3. This was great fun, and I would definitly pay to see some more of this.

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  4. Very nicely done, M.E. Hydra. I would love it if you were able to do this on a Kindle book. I know I'd read it over and over, purposely losing. Keep up the great work and can't wait to read more stories and play more CYOA games/books of yours in the future.

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  6. More!

    One little thing: " I am L'hesperusa the arachne" sounds a little strange, like me saying I am Bob the human. I would have it just as "I am L'hesperusa"

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  7. I would love it if a ‘sex slave’ scenario were one of the bad ends. ��. If this arachne isn’t the ‘taking prisoners’ type, maybe that could be one ending for a future CYOA piece?

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  8. very much enjoyed it, maybe something like a maze story where you gotta get to the end but there's several monster girls in between you and freedom thus you gotta avoid them to reach the end.

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  9. I love your work manyeyedhydra !!
    It's a pity that you left the literotica page ...
    PD: I need more of annette brite !!

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    1. Did he leave literotica? Not even sure to be honest

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    2. Not intentionally. I've had some recent problems finishing stories off. I have about 4 or 5 in progress I intend posting on Lit as soon as I can get them unstuck.

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  10. Enjoyed your work for a long time and this seems like the logical progression. It reminded me a little of the old text based adventure video games with a bit of RPG element thrown in. I'd be happy to see more and would most likely put money down if it were to become a full blown thing.

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  11. Is this game going to be free when fully done or do we have to buy it somewhere or what?

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    1. Too early to say at the moment. For now I'm planning to create a few separate scenarios and see where that takes me.

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  12. I do like spiders, since you ask. This was quite enjoyable to play through and would be fantastic with sfx and illustrations. I wouldn't mind seeing this scenario expanded on in future iterations; anything involving an arachne is good in my book.

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  13. Also, Patreon might be a good way to get some funds for art and sound development, hint hint.

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    1. It is something I'm looking to set up. ;)

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  14. The only bad thing about it is the fact the girl kills you. Which is a shame because it is lovely other than that single part which taints it.

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    1. You must be new here if you don't like the end killing.

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    2. That's why it's called a "Bad End".

      On that subject though, I think it would be fun if there were the possibility of escaping after she's had her way (but before killing you). It'd add more of a risk-reward element; in the current form there isn't much incentive to let her catch you in the first place.

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    3. That might be something I'll play around with in future. It might create some interesting tension for the player to try and get as much of the sex stuff without ending up with too many of their juices sucked out.

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