Wrapping up 2020

So, 2020 was... a year.

It was mostly an up, then down, then up year for me.  As a writer, I didn't think the lockdown would affect me too much, but it turns out being confined to a rural village and only going out to the local supermarket and back would put the head in a little box.  All things considered, that was likely an above average experience compared to everyone else, so I can be thankful for that.

Writing productivity for the most part was good at the start of the year, went a bit messy in the middle of the year where I had one month where not a lot got done at all, and then finished strongly at the end of the year.

House of Hellish Harlots
This was my big project for the year.  I'm still excited about it as I think it will make a good H-game.  I made some good progress at the start of the year, the wheels fell off in the middle, and then I refocused and got it back on track in the last few months.  Currently I'm up to version 0.014.  There are 21 harlots for the player to choose and 4 of the 'mechanics' NPCs are implemented.  In writing content alone, it probably already matches most H-games, although I will need to look at commissioning art at some point.  In 2021 I want to get that public demo out to try and gauge what kind of budget I'll have to play with if I do want to evolve it beyond a text game.

Where I erred was underestimating the complexity.  The core game loop was fairly simple.  Letting each harlot scenario get more and more complex was not sustainable given how many the game needs.  That was what caused me to lose focus.  Thankfully, I had a rethink, and have been steadily writing new scenarios since late October.

H-space Bestiary
This was the escape project of sorts.  I want to flesh out those stories and turn them into a themed collection.  The Sun Lamia received a 3rd rewrite and became "Sun, Snakes and the Great Uncle Fergus Stash."  There will be more.  That will likely be something I fit in between work on HoHH, with an aim of finally getting a full collection together.

2020 was also a year of finishing off some of the half-written short stories I have lying around.

"Breastfeeding as a Combat Art" was another H-space story I put out for patrons.  I was undecided on this one.  It didn't come out as well as I'd have liked, so I think it will join the others for a future tweak.

I felt much better about "A Sweet and Deadly Taste of Milk".  This is more where I want the H-space stories to be, although maybe not all 7K words.

General Short Stories
Length was a definite theme to the short stories I put out this year.  I didn't write that many new stories, but the ones I did were long.

I finally finished "The Succubus Heart Squad".  That was a story I intended for a Literotica Valentine's Day competition and failed to finish.  I ran it as a min-serial on the blog for a while and that too failed to finish.  But this year I went back and finally completed it for Lit's Valentine's Day comp.  At 11.5K words it was a bit of a monster.

So too was "The Succubus in Mr Herbert's Summer House".  That was a spur of the moment idea I wanted to enter Lit's Summer contest, but that ballooned to 11K words and went in the Halloween contest instead.  It also presented me with an interesting little novel idea I have filed away to be worked on later.

In continuing the theme of finishing off half-written stories, the main story I wanted to enter for Halloween is another story that's been hanging around for a while.  That one I didn't finish, mainly because I had another spur of the moment idea inspired by a viral social media video and foolishly tried to work on both simultaneously.  Unsurprisingly, I failed to finish them in time.

This turned out not to be that bad, as the one I did finish, "The Subway Succubus" was rejected for being a little too nasty.  With both "The Succubus in Mr Herbert's Summer House" and this, I was trying to use some more conventional horror themes.  In the case of "The Subway Succubus", a really icky fate for one of the protagonists.  I don't blame Literotica for deciding that was a bit too much!  It was also another lengthy story at nearly 7K words.

-

So, a mixed year overall.

Most of these were Patreon-exclusives.  That will likely continue as it's now a regular source of income.  It's not much, but I'm fairly prudent and it pays the bills.  I would like to get some new Amazon ebooks out, though, as it has been a painfully long time since the last one.  While they've kept their Orwellian tendencies quiet for a while, having Patreon as a main funding source is still a big risk considering how randomly ban-happy they can be. In 2021 I might see if I can mirror things on Subscribestar, which will make the exclusives available for people that refuse to have anything to do with Patreon.

Anyway, the fireworks are going off, it's time to grab a beer or six.  I wish a Happy New Year to you all and let's hope 2021 is better!
- manyeyedhydra

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.014 (succufairies)

(x-posted from Patreon)

Not sure if this is best day to release new dirty smut, but I suppose it's a present, of sorts... :D

Version 0.014 of House of Hellish Harlots is ready.

This is the succufairy release and adds four new harlot scenarios and switches player mindset over to fixed player disposition attributes.  I went over these in more detail in the previous posts, but here's a quick summary.

The succufairies are four new scenarios - Cèis nan Cridheachan, Balla-Balla an Buachar, the Mùchadh sisters, and Sgriosar Balgan-Buachair.

They all make use of the same 'trick', so if that trick leaves you cold, this release will be a bit of a blank.  That's the risk of a themed batch.  If that's the case, I hope the next batch has harlots more to your liking.

Their scenarios are fairly linear and have no repeat visit functionality.  This is in keeping my current plans of getting a lot of base scenarios out and then going back to build on existing scenarios to bring them to the same level as Suffocatrix Mamilla.  As for building on scenarios...

Sgriosar might be controversial.  If you're squeamish and wish I wasn't such a horror-addict gorehound, just pretend she isn't there.  Normally, I keep my cards to my chest, but I'll be open here.  She only has a horror end at the moment, and it's fairly nasty.  You can get some lore on her by chatting to the Elegant Woman.

I'm still undecided on her.  I like the character idea and the options it opens up for a questline players can undertake to "fix" her.  But there's also a risk her presence is a mood-killer and shouldn't be in the House.  I'll wait and see what the reaction is like (and to the succufairies in general).

Also, the Mùchadh Sisters is the first time I've added a harlot that is actually multiple harlots (there will be more).  This will screw up some text.  I've fixed the reference in the main game loop to refer to them as "they".  I haven't yet updated The Madam's passages, so expect a few odd references still referring to them as "she".  That's on the TODO list to update, so I am aware of it.

Lastly, now that disposition is set at the start and fixed, this will make some harlot scenarios unwinnable depending on starting attributes.  This is only temporary.  There is an NPC on the way that will allow players to alter stats to get past these harlots (for varying costs...)

---

It's still Patreon-exclusive.  I am back to making good progress again and hoping to get a proper public demo out in 2021 (so I can attract enough interest to make paying for artists financially viable).  In the meantime, it's only a $1 (+tax) per month to keep up with progress.  I'm trying to get back to putting out at least one release per month, although I still have the occasional "off" month.

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.013 (Gift revamp + 3 new harlots)

 (x-posted from Patreon)

Version 0.013 of House of Hellish Harlots is out.

This release introduces 3 new harlots to the House:

Sorpresa Ombra - A lamia that likes smothering men with her boobs.
Zuripai Suponji - A large succubus that gives a full-body paizuri service.
Cibi Somnia - A sleepy sheep girl that likes to cuddle and give relaxing massages.

All three are slightly tricky and will likely kill you a few times before you figure them out.  Sorpresa Ombra in particular is designed as a mid-to-late round harlot.  She is survivable, but has some fairly narrow and cryptic requirements.  Cibi's scenario might also come as a bit of a surprise.  I was talking about going back to simple scenarios and Cibi's, as you'll find out, has a lot of player interactivity.  Weirdly, I also found her fairly quick to write, type up and implement, so the productivity problems I did struggle with for a while are not in creating this type of scenario.  I did try to make her nice and friendly and non-threatening... and failed utterly as I'm helplessly addicted to horror.  Sorry.

There are also some other additions that were done a while ago before I switched to working on short stories for a couple of months to recharge my batteries.

One is hopefully a bugfix to the slowdown problem people were reporting.

The other is a revamp to the gifts.  Under the hood I switched everything to just use a reference to the gift Id rather than gift object to be more efficient.  The other change was to group gifts into categories and have some harlots only care about the category rather than specific gifts.  It only affects a few harlots, but it should open up a few more options in the future.

-

Yeah, this is the first update in six months.  I was shocked myself when I realised it.  That little digression when I went off to write short stories for various Literotica competitions was much longer than I thought.  Anyway, I'm back on this now and with another 5 harlot scenarios written and ready to be implemented, hopefully I can get this project back on track again.

Currently, this is still a Patreon exclusive.  I want all the NPCs in place and enough harlots for it to be playable before I put a proper public alpha out.  If you want to keep up with the progress, please support me here.  It only costs $1 (+ tax) a month to grab all the previous builds plus various short stories.