Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Changes with M.E. Hydra books

I should have posted this earlier, but it's been a busy month yadda yadda.

A few weeks ago I received an email that eXcessica would be closing its doors and unpublishing all its books at the end of November.  First up, there's nothing controversial about this.  Excessica was started as a sort of writer's collective right before Amazon's Kindle blew the doors off self-publishing.  This was back when alternative book sites required "publishers" to have at least three authors in their stable and Selena Kitt wanted to both start her own career as an author and recognised there was a lot of untapped talent on Literotica that could be brought along for the ride.  I feel honoured and grateful to be one of those writers and have nothing but praise for Selena and her hardworking crew for having me along.

All good things must come to an end, and in an era where it's trivially easy for a writer to upload their work to Amazon and other places, there is no longer the need for writer's-collectives-cum-publishers.  It's time for us to make our own way, and I fully understand the decision.

What does it mean for M.E. Hydra books on Amazon and elsewhere?

As far as I know, the ones put out through eXcessica will be unpublished at the end of the month, so if you want to grab the old versions, you might want to do it pretty sharpish.  The books affected are Succubus Summoning 101 and 201, and the A Succubus for collections (6 of them).  The Sandwiched by novellas were fully self-published by me and won't be affected (I really should get back to finishing that series off!)

The books won't be gone for good.  As soon as I've sorted out the logistics of rights transfers and the rest, I'll be reuploading them under my own author account.  For Succubus Summoning 101 and 201, that will probably be right away as I'm happy with the current covers for those.  They'll just need some tweaks to the copyright page and the removal of the old logo and should be good to go.

As for the A Succubus for collections, I might use this as an opportunity to tweak these and rebrand the series as a whole.

As part of the rebranding I definitely want to redo the covers and number them as a series.

The other thing I might do is rejig the contents and running orders.  Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed links between characters and events, and realised these are all taking place in a shared universe.

This was not always the case.  Early on, I wrote them as standalone short stories, which means there are some that don't quite fit within that shared universe - the superhero parodies, that one science fiction story, some of the "Succubus vs." stories.

While I haven't put any books out for a while, I have continued to write stories.  Some have been Patreon-exclusives, others have been posted on Literotica.  I probably have enough for a new collection and some left over.  I'm thinking of replacing some of the older stories in the older collections, and then rebranding the collections as part of a much larger ongoing story in the same universe.

What do people think about that?

Go with the rebrand, or preserve the collections with their original line-ups?

Either way, expect the Succubus Summoning series to be reuploaded fairly quickly, and I'll likely follow with the new A Succubus for editions over the first half of 2022.  Maybe, if everything falls into place, a brand new 7th collection to follow the updated editions.

As for covers, I'm still checking on whether it's allowed, but the WOMBO dream app has thrown up a few pictures I wouldn't feel too bad about sticking on a book cover.


A Succubus for Halloween?


A Succubus for Freedom?


A Succubus for Remembrance?

What do you think?

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Wombo-ing up the House of Hellish Harlots website

This is a x-post from my patreon (where I posted a few more pics, coz they can't all fit in this post).

If you've checked out the House of Hellish Harlots website recently, you might have noticed it has a little bit more colour now.


My webdev skills are rudimentary at best (probably less, to be honest - when it comes to IT I'm more of the backend math model coding type).  It looks vaguely okay on my laptop, but I haven't been able to test it for other devices.  If it looks like ass on your display (rather than just garish - that's intentional! :D ), let me know.

The art is from the new viral AI art toy, WOMBO Dream, you might have seen floating around on social media.  You can play with it here:
https://www.wombo.art/ 

You feed it some keywords or phrases, and it spits out an impressionist painting in a variety of different styles (I'm guessing they're using some kind of neural network and trained it on a massive art catalogue).  Obviously, me being me, I fed it a bunch of filth and the results were... interesting.


Currently, the AI only really seems good for abstract and impressionist works.  It seems fairly difficult to get anything resembling a human form out of it, with "house7" below being the closest I got.  Most of the time it spits out a weird jumble of body parts and facial features that looks bad rather than weird or disturbing.


I like it more with buildings and room interiors.  The lines are still 'off', but they're off in a way that looks weird and hallucinatory.  Especially if you feed it conflicting terms such as "house" with "hellish" and "sexual pleasure"/"perversion".  That results in the AI blurring the lush voluptuous curves painted by the old masters with the regular lines of a building, and resulting in something that's 'off' in an interesting and slightly perverse way.  Perfect for the House of Hellish Harlots, which is more than it appears!


I'm not sure if the developers intended it as anything other than a fun toy, but it seems to me like a really good way to produce abstract art for album or book covers (especially for self-published authors).  Looking up the guidelines for use, the people that made the app don't want people trying to sell the artwork, but seem okay with people using it as album/book covers.  I don't know how long that will stay in place as I suspect other people will latch onto the usefulness fairly quickly.


In the meantime I thought some of these would make nice background art to brighten up the website.  It's a nice interim fix to hold me over until I can get some proper artwork commissioned.

Wednesday, December 08, 2021

HoHH Art Commission - Alsharajea Hira, the Corruptress

After seeing how Pori turned out, I contacted the artist, and ran a poll for patrons to pick a HoHH harlot to have art commissioned for.  Alsharajea Hira, the Corruptress won and this is the finished result.



Reception on Patreon has been pretty mixed.  I think a lot depends on how thicc you like your succubi.  Personally, I think it conveys her raunchiness pretty well, but I also understand it might not be everyone's cup of tea.  We all have different preferences.

I hope you enjoy anyway.



The artist is HunggryCroissant.  They have a gallery on Eka's Portal here, and they gave me this link as their artist page if you'd like to contact and commission them:
https://croissantx.carrd.co/

I've put aside a little war chest for character commissions, so I hope to get more harlots commissioned in the future.

Wednesday, December 01, 2021

Public Demo Version of "House of Hellish Harlots" Updated to v0.026

The public version of "House of Hellish Harlots" has been updated to version 0.026.  You can play it here.  There are 2 new harlots added in this release, taking the total count up to 42.

Cíocha Gadaí-na-Bod
The boobfairy.  If you like your monster girls deliciously evil, Cíocha is definitely your gal.  She's a little on the spiteful side.  For some reason, the fairies I add to the House have some of the nastiest Bad Ends, and Cíocha is no exception.  Make good choices and I hope you don't wince too hard.

If you do survive, you'll notice her mention a 'big sister'.  That is Cruiscíní.  I haven't finished her yet.  Cíocha is intended to be a one-two punch scenario similar to Osculia's, where she returns right after with a more dangerous scenario.  That will be in a future release, as well as a solo scenario for the big boobfairy.

Misty
If you remember the very early demo I put out a couple of years ago, there was a fog succubus that killed the player if they dallied too much on the way to the House.  I've given her a harlot scenario.  It's fairly short and simple.  This is close to the original idea I had for how the scenarios would be (so the project wouldn't take too long).  I think I might rattle off a few more like this over the next month or so, just to pump the numbers up a bit.

I've also messed around with some fonts to hopefully make the site a little bit easier to read.  My webdev skills are distressingly basic, so we'll be stuck with plain text for a while until I can get hold of some nice artwork to pretty things up a little.

As I'll be maintaining, the Patreon version is a month ahead.  They're on v0.027 and Suffocatrix Assphyxia finally makes an appearance within the House.  If you want to check that out and help support the project, follow the link here.

As always, any feedback gratefully received.  November was a rough month for some personal reasons, so v0.027 was a small release.  December is also shaping up to be very busy with other things, so I expect that to only add 1 or 2 harlots as well.  I'll post more in detail on that in a couple of days.

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Art of Pori, the Love Sponge

Pori, the Love Sponge is one of the harlots in "The House of Hellish Harlots".  The public demo of that has been updated to v0.025 and can be played here.  Here is a lovely pic of her, showing her in all her comfy loveliness.


While I'd love to say I was responsible for this, the piece was independently commissioned by Mark45 and he kindly gave me permission to share it.

The artist is HunggryCroissant and more of their work can be found here.

I like this.  If I was to add art to HoHH it would be through profile pictures like this.  The ideal GUI for HoHH would likely take the form of a book with artwork on the left page and the text on the right.  Unfortunately, I lack the wherewithal to create this, so the project will likely stay text-only for the moment.  What I did think of doing was to create a profile page on houseofhellishharlots.com and list all the harlots with profile pics and details (Kind of like Monster Girl Encyclopaedia, but if all the monster girls were offering services in a massage parlour/brothel).  Art like this would be perfect for that.



Wednesday, November 03, 2021

Public demo version of "House of Hellish Harlots" updated to v0.025

Not quite the "hopefully, by the end of the week" as I originally said, as October was bedevilled with technical problems for me which ended up in me needing to replace my computer, but I've finally managed to update the public website version of "House of Hellish Harlots" to v0.025.  It can be found here:

https://houseofhellishharlots.com/

The major change is the addition of an accelerated restart mode.  I got plenty of feedback about how annoying it was to have to go through the Barman's introduction and warnings for every new game and so added an option to skip that for subsequent playthroughs (similar to how the original car journey and Madam's tour are skippable on subsequent playthroughs).  I also extended this to the Madam's explanations of how Mulligan Tokens work.  The accelerated restart option drops the player right in at the first round of harlot choices.  This should make the game a lot more playable!

I've also given the demo a designated endpoint.  There were reasons for the "we've run out of harlots" comment from the Madam, but it probably seemed weird to players to get it after only seeing 6 of 40 harlots.  Now, the demo runs for the first 5 rounds.  The 5th round is a designated special mini-boss round.  No 'mini-bosses' have been added yet (they will have slightly longer and more complex scenarios than the regular harlots), but I've moved back most of the really dangerous harlots to round 5 to temporarily fill that role.  This should reduce the chances of the player getting a first round of harlots that are impossible to survive.

I've added a changelog section to the webpage, so the full details can be found there.  I've also added some separate sections for links and begging for any artists to take interest.

Patrons are slightly ahead at the moment as I released a new version at the end of the month that includes two new harlots.  They are at v0.026 while the public version is at v0.025.  Because I want patrons to feel like they're paying for something (and if you wish to support this project, you can do it here), I'll continue to maintain the early access approach of patrons getting the new version a month before the public update.   

As for the overall look of the website, yeah, my webdev skills... suck.  I'm definitely very boomer-esque when it comes to that department.  I probably spent most of last night screaming at the screen because I'd change a font size, hit publish, only for the change to be completely ignored (likely because some other global setting I'm unaware of is overriding it).  That's something I'm just going to have to keep working at until I get better.  At the moment it sort of displays okay as plain white text on a black background to me, but I don't know if it's doing crazy stuff like white text on a white background for other people.  If you notice anything off, please let me know.  Also, because I am clearly noobish, any hints, tips, feedback and suggestions will be gratefully received!

The idea I had for the website was to have it spoof a high-class brothel/massage parlour website, with sections for facilities, ladies available, etc.  As I'm not sure I'll be able to add artwork to Twine without it slowing down to a crawl, a nice interim step would be to create a "Ladies" page that lists all the harlots with a profile and picture.  Think Monster Girl Encyclopaedia, but with the profile listing what services they offer and specialties.  The current site is a long way off that at the moment, but I think that idea is doable and something to aim for.  Consider it a work in progress I'll keep tinkering with to make better

Anyway, have fun and try to avoid those Horror Ends!

Sunday, October 10, 2021

New(ish) Story for Literotica's 2021 Halloween Story Competition: "The Subway Succubus"

 My entrant for Literotica's 2021 Halloween Story competition is up:

"The Subway Succubus"

Okay, so this one isn't brand spanking new.  I wrote it last year.  I was a bit poor with competition deadlines last year.  "The Succubus in Mr Herbert's Summer House" was supposed to be my entrant to the Summer Lovin' competition.  I didn't finish it in time, so I entered it into the Halloween competition instead.  "The Subway Succubus" was supposed to be my entrant for the 2020 Halloween competition, but I didn't finish that either.  I posted it afterwards.  It was rejected for being a little too nasty, so I used it as a (temporary) patron-exclusive on Patreon.

Roll around to 2021 and I'm a bit iffy on whether I'll be able to finish a new story for this year's competition.  I lost the first week of October to having to redo most of September's work after a software crash, and I'm currently up to my eyeballs trying to get a new public release of "House of Hellish Harlots" ready.

I do have a half-written story that I was originally planning to finish and enter, and I will set aside a couple of days next week to see if I can finish it.  What with everything else going on, I'm not confident that will happen and it will likely get pushed back for another attempt next year.

Then I remembered I had "The Subway Succubus" lying around.  I thought I'd resubmit it with a nice big disclaimer at the top and see if it would go through this time.  And it did.

As an aside, if I feel the need to put a disclaimer at the start, yeah, you can be sure the story is going in some nasty places.  So, consider yourself warned.  I wanted to write a proper scary-monster-succubus for this one.  It definitely brings the 'horror' of  'erotic horror' and gets a bit icky at the end.

Normally I write a bit about how Literotica's competition scoring works, but it's not really necessary in this case.  This one isn't placing, so there's no need to worry about that!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy (and are not too traumatised!) 

Wednesday, October 06, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots v0.024 (to be new public demo) released

I was able to recover from the computer crash mishap a little faster than I was anticipating.  This means "House of Hellish Harlots" ver0.024 is now ready for release for patrons at:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-hellish-57036705

This is what I'm hoping will be the new public demo.  It covers the first 5 rounds and ends after the first 'special' round.  I'm going to release it here first to check there aren't any obvious bugs, and then put it up on the public website in a week or so.

Here are details of the new additions:

NEW HARLOT: PEL-V GNOI
Just the one new harlot this month (because of all the other changes). Pel-V is one of the Doctoress's artificial beings.  She's inspired by the watermelon girl from Monmusu Quest crossed with Pel-O.  Her scenario is vore-y.  You have been warned!

REPEAT HARLOT: OSCULIA SUFFOCATI
Osculia gets a new repeat scenario.  This follows right after her first and makes her a lot more dangerous.

The reason there are only the two new scenarios is I had to make a lot of other changes last month, which I'll list below:

QoL: ACCELERATED START
Now with even more acceleration.  I added The Madam's explanation of mulligan tokens to the list of things that can be skipped for subsequent playthroughs.  This option will use up 3 actions, but introduce all of the NPCs and fastforward through explanations of some of The Madam's functions.  It still leaves one action left for the player to grab an emergency potion from The Doctoress, etc.

As part of the implentation for this, I cleaned up the transition going from The Madam presenting the next round of harlots to the Club Activities phase (visiting the various NPCs before pucking a harlot).  This gives me a spot to add little warnings from The Barman to indicate he has new information to impart.  (In this case, a warning before Round 5).

I also fixed the bug where using a mulligan token in the 1st round would force the player to go through the Barman's full intro (again).

QoL: BUY ANY CHARM
As also requested, I added an option to the Buxom Lolibaba where a player can have the option of buying any charm for the cost of a mulligan token (similar to the select any harlot option The Madam offers).  I doubt this will be in the finished game, but it's probably useful now for testing purposes.

SELECTION ALGORITHM
I tweaked this to allow some repeat visits to show up more frequently and also to give harlots the ability to schedule future round appearances.  You'll see what I mean if you run into Osculia.  You won't have to wait long for her to show up again for her repeat visit!

I also designated some rounds to be special rounds with slightly different selection criteria.  These are primarily for the mini-boss harlots when I get around to writing them.  In the meantime, it's a good place to dump the late-game harlots that require stricter conditions to survive.  From the player's perspective, it means they're less likely now to get an unwinnable combination of harlots on the 1st round. 

GRAMMAR FIX FOR PLURAL GIFTS
I fixed a few things that readers have pointed out.  The major one is that gifts now have an .isSingular attribute.  Items like 'grapes' should now be referred to as 'them' rather than 'it'.  It's a minor change, but I know it was bothering some folks before.

Overall, the game shouold now feel like a proper demo that covers the 1st third of the game and has an ending message should the player survive the first 5 rounds.

Unfortunately, I couldn't fit everything in, so this was what I had to cut and hold back for a future release:

NEW HARLOT: BOOBFAIRY
I have about 5K words typed up and just one scene to finish.  She should be showing up in the next release and will also bring a friend.  As with Osculia she has a more dangerous follow-up scenario and putting her back a month will give me a chance to finish that as well.

BARMAN ADVICE
Along with the round 5 warning, I was going to give the Barman new advice he could give out on the relative strengths of harlots.  Then I realised having him talk about Tier 1 harlots after the player would stop seeing them didn't make a lot of sense.  I'll look to have him speak briefly to the player at the beginning of Round 2 and that unlock advice on harlot tiers.

MINI-BOSSES
They're still on the way.  For the moment, high tier harlots like Hiru and Tete can fill that role.

VISION CHARM FIX
This is currently delayed until the beginning of the next round because the round the player buys it causes an issue when they'd see Anna Boa as a human during the introductions and then as a lamia when they went back to stage to make their choice.  If this happens, they should comment on it!

Also, a more unfortunate oversight:

NURSE HONEY'S CURE FOR LIPS FIXATION
This makes Osculia's new scenario a little more dangerous than I originally intended. (I forgot I only added implementation for the ailments currently in use and didn't update to add Lips Fixation.)

Once I've fixed this and any other bugs patrons have noticed I'll update the public demo on the https://houseofhellishharlots.com/ website.  (In a week or so, at a guess).

Friday, October 01, 2021

HoHH ver0.024 Delayed Due to Computer Crash

As I reported to patrons yesterday, I wasn't able to put out my regular monthly release.  My computer crashed while I was in the middle of working on a repeat scenario for Osculia Suffocati.  This managed to corrupt the story file and I wasn't able to retrieve it.

Thankfully I have backups (I backup to an external hard drive at the beginning of every month) and was able to also find a more recent automated backup.

Unfortunately, I still lost the last 3 weeks of work I'd done in Twine.  As I told patrons, this was only the coding work.  All raw texts are in MS .docs, so they were fine.  I also typed the new selection algorithm in notepad first (because the Twine editor runs very slowly now that the project is as big as it is), so I still have that.

I did lose a lot of the QoL changes I made as well as the implementation of the two harlots I was planning to add with v0.024.  This is a massive nuisance as I'll have to redo them, but it is what it is.  No sense crying about it.

I estimate it'll take about a week or two to get caught up again.  Depending on where I am in the month, I'll either put the release out then, or hold it back and treat it as a bumper release for October.

I'm planning for this to be the new public demo as it removes a lot of the repetition on restarts (especially the Barman's intro), moves a few of the dangerous harlots back to later rounds so they're not murdering noobies on Round 1, and a proper demo ending checkpoint rather than the nonsensical "we've run out of harlots" message the Madam currently gives you.

As for guarding against this happening again, now that I know Twine handles hardware crashes very badly, I'll switch my archive policy to after every new feature.

Friday, September 10, 2021

Course Correction for House of Hellish Harlots: Ending vs Checkpoints

Don't be put off by the title.  I'm not going Chaos and veering off in a completely new direction.

Feedback from the public demo and subsequent releases on Patreon has identified some common complaints.

1) Repetition on restarts.

2) A new player getting unlucky RNG and a 1st selection of harlots they cannot survive.

3) Lack of any kind of ending point.

I've been working on tackling 1), and I'm hoping that will be less of a problem with the accelerated restart options (I'm also looking to add The Madam's mulligan token explanation to that as well, as was suggested recently).

When someone raised 3) in an email, I thought about it, and replied with this. 

"Complaints about a lack of an ending point have come up.  I think I probably haven't helped myself with a very non-linear structure to the game.  For other games, there's usually a 1st region, 2nd region, 3rd region, and while it's in progress people know that they're going to get region 1, then region 2 and so on.  For HoHH all the region equivalents (factions, I suppose) run concurrently and the player is supposed to align with one and follow that route to that faction's end boss.  Currently I'm working on completing one faction as a proof-of-concept to get to an ending.  I'm wondering if I might be better off just having checkpoints - fill out to round 5, then round 10.  I might put that to patrons later today.  It might make for a better "endpoint" than a "we've run out of harlots", which probably doesn't make sense when there's about 40 of them! :)"

And this is that 'putting it to patrons' post.  (And also on my blog for additional feedback.)

There are definitely some advantages to getting rid of that "we've run out of harlots" message.  It made sense when there weren't many harlots, but likely provokes a 'huh?' from the player when they know there are nearly 40 harlots in the House and they've only seen 4 or 5 of them.

Having a checkpoint at Round 5 would also let the player feel like they've got somewhere rather than aimlessly trying out harlots until they get a weird message that they can't go on for any longer.

I can put special mid-boss encounters in these checkpoint rounds, which distinguishes them from the other harlots (they will likely have more sex scene options that are more than 'pick the right one or be drained to death').

Until I create the special mid-boss harlots, it gives me somewhere to put Hiru, Tete, Sorpresa, and the other more dangerous harlots, so they aren't murdering unsuspecting new players in the first round.

Currently, if I switch some faction numbers around, I already have enough harlots for 4 rounds + checkpoint.  It would likely require writing some more hint dialogue for the Barman (to forewarn the player) and then a new ending passage.  For that reason it would make sense to push v0.024 back to the end of the month as normal and make this the new, more player-friendly public demo.  I might also try to be a bit more active in putting the word out this time!

There will still be new harlots as well.  I finished writing the 1st draft of a new Doctoress creation this week.  I might also get Volumpula properly ported over as well now I have an idea of how the mini-boss scenarios will work.

Essentially, in the short term, it means there will be a new release as normal at the end of the month, and this will be the one I want to make the new public demo.

Long-term, it's going to be a shift from going 'tall' to going 'broad' again.  Rather than try to build a faction all the way to the end, I will be looking to add new harlots equally across 5 groups to get to the next checkpoint at Round 9, and then finally to the Queens at Round 13.

The work I've done with the smotherbus faction has nicely proof-of-concepted numbers and difficulty ranges.  I know roughly how many I need for each group and can start filling up the other groups as the ideas come to me.  I'll probably still focus factions while the ideas for them are fresh (I have a few queued up for The Doctoress's artificial beings), but I'll also be looking to fit the others in as well so it's not 'all fetish x' for a few months.  I know a few of you have voiced concerns about this.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts below.  It's a change of plans, but not a massive one, I think.

Tuesday, September 07, 2021

Quick Update on New HOHH Public Demo Release

I'm going to push this back a week or two and put out a mid-month interim v0.024 release.  This won't add any new harlots or sexy stuff, but it will fix some of the bugs patrons have pointed out and also add some fixes/features I want in a stable release version.

The features I'd like to add/fix:

Fix singular/plural confusion with gifts.  When I wrote the passages it was with one gift in mind, then I expanded that to gift categories.  As a result I think there are a few incidences of 'it' and 'them' confusion people have noticed.

Bump some of the tougher harlots back to round 4.  Currently, first-time players might end up with a Round 1 choice between Morticia, Tete, and Hiru, which feels a little mean.

As was suggested, I'd also like to add an option to buy a charm of choice for the cost of a mulligan token. This will probably be removed in the final finished game, but feels like a fun option to have for early beta/test versions.

One area I'm on the fence on is with the delayed reaction charms that don't come into effect until the beginning of the next round.  The example that's been pointed out is buying the Sandals of Safraz Shah, which imply they improve dancing (They set base AGI to 4), only for Chen to still reject the player for being a poor dancer (because the charm doesn't come into effect until the beginning of the next round).

This is also true for the Eye of Eric Leidorf (see true form of harlot), although that one was enforced because otherwise I'd have to write reaction paragraphs to cover situations where the player is introduced to Anna Boa and sees her as a woman, buys the 'see true form' charm, then, when they return to make their choice, now see Anna Boa as a half-serpent lamia (and likely get freaked out by it).

I could probably solve both problems by moving The Buxom Lolibaba visits to the post-room phase (with the Portly Gentleman), but I don't think it makes much sense from a story perspective.  (The player has less time in that segment and can't go running off to find the Nurse/Doctoress/etc, but can chat to the Portly Gentleman on the way back to the bar, and the Elegant Woman, who is already at the bar).

The Eye charm I would like to fix, even if it's awkward, but probably for a future release.

The base-stats-altering charms, I like as they are, to be honest. I want the charms to have a "what does this do?" mystery about them, and there's no mystery if the player immediately sees their AGI stat jump from 2 to 4 the moment they buy the charm.  While that does throw up weird scenarios such as the Chen one, I think it's okay for that particular charm type.  (And also distinguishes them from the Doctoress's potions, which take effect immediately).

Anyway, that's a bit of a rambly sidetrack.  I do want to update the Eye charm, but probably not for the interim release.

Back to the main subject.  I'll be looking to put out an interim v0.024 release in a week or so, and this will be the new public demo.  I don't have any harlots to implement at the moment, so these changes will fill that slot while I write and type up the next batch.

I'll then look to add the new harlots for a proper v0.025 release at the end of the month (patron-only timed exclusive for a couple of months).

If there any other QoL (that are reasonably quick to fix) improvements you'd like to see added, let me know in the comments below.  Same goes for any bugs/typos I might have missed.

Wednesday, September 01, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.023 (3 new harlots - Ygolia Campbell, Bebi Ansikt-Sitta, and Pori the Love Sponge)

The new version of "House of Hellish Harlots" is available for patrons and can be found here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-harlots-55594242

Here are the details:

QoL - ACCELERATED START
While the intros are fine, they are really annoying to go through again and again, so I added a skip option.  The accelerated start jumps the player right to the first harlot introductions, similar to the early demo versions.

This also has the bugfix for the rare event where talking to the Elegant Woman at the wrong time about Sgriosar would not produce a Continue option and leave the player stuck there.  I've also fixed a ton of typos people have helpfully pointed out.  There is still a plural/singular grammar problem with some gifts and passages.  I've added that to the Todo list for a future release.

NEW HARLOTS
I'm still focusing on the 'smother' faction.  I've nearly completed their roster now.  This faction is heavy on late-game harlots.  To balance that out, the new pair aren't so lethal.  I'm quite happy with how their personalities turned out as they are a little goofier than my usual killers, but are also more than capable of being dominant.  I hope people have fun with them.

Ygolia Campbell
She's a sleek femme fatale type.  This is because she's obsessed with human spy movies and insists the player play a sexy little roleplay game with her.

Bebi Ansikt-Sitta
She's a new harlot in the House and eager to please her human visitors.  While she's a little naive on some matters, when it comes to facesitting she leaves men gasping for air beneath her pussy.

As with the last release, I have a harlot from another faction to add a little variety.

Pori, the Love Sponge
Another artificial being.  She's soft and lovably scrunchy, and loves men to give her a nice squeeze.  She also has an absorption scene and a fairly nasty horror end if the wrong conditions are met.  You are warned!

Funnily enough, this one was already in progress when I received that lovely Nurse Honey artwork.  While Pori is no Nurse Honey, she'll hopefully hit the spot for people that liked the absorption aspect of that art.  Her horror end is a little nasty, though.  Horror head escaped the cage on that one.

The public demo is at https://houseofhellishharlots.com/.  It's still a couple of releases behind.  As version 0.023 includes the fairly necessary accelerated restart QoL changes (Yep, I know it's a pain going through the Barman's intro every new game - that was an error on my part!) I'll be looking to update it later this week and will post here when it's done.

Friday, August 27, 2021

Art of Nurse Honey being... absorbing.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted on email by someone asking if they could borrow one of my characters for an art commission.  I'm nearly always okay with this as long as the artist/commissioner leaves a note detailing where the character came from.  It's a very nice feeling as a writer to create a character people like enough to make/commission art of!

After seeing the results, I asked for permission to share the results here.  That was kindly granted, so here we are.

Warning: Sex with Nurse Honey can be very absorbing!




The art was commissioned by Mark45.  They have a userpage on Eka's Portal here:

https://aryion.com/g4/user/Mark45

If you like Monmusu Quest's vore-ier monster girls, you can find some other nice pieces in their galleries.

The art was created by TheBigBrap.  You can find their Eka's Portal page here:
https://aryion.com/g4/user/thebigbrap

And their Patreon here should you wish to commission your own pieces:
https://www.patreon.com/TheBigBrap

Tuesday, August 03, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.022 (3 new harlots - Soffocaria Gattagrandi, Chén, and Osculia Suffocati)

The new version of "House of Hellish Harlots" is available for patrons and can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-hellish-54450922

Here are the details:

QoL

Fast Barman Intro
There is now a speedier option to get through the Barman's introductory dialogue.  That should make repeat playthroughs less annoying.

NEW HARLOTS

Soffocaria Gattagrandi
The 'pussy smotherer'.  She likes cunnilingus, but only from men that know what they're doing.

Chén
Not a smotherbus.  This is the glass mannequin doll I couldn't quite finish last month.  She likes dancing and is very elegant... until she opens her mouth.

Osculia Suffocati
The 'kiss smotherer'.  There is a little bit of mind control and hypnosis here, but her full effects won't be seen until I add more lip specialists and give her a repeat visit.  She's still quite dangerous.

There is a public demo version at https://houseofhellishharlots.com/, but this is still a couple of releases behind.  This is intentional as I want paying patrons to have perks.  However, there are some much needed QoL changes that need to be added to reduce the boring repetition at the beginning of each new game (which I suspect is contributing to the demo not picking up much interest at the moment).  One QoL change is already in v0.022.  I'm hoping to add a proper fast restart option for v0.023, and will likely update the public release at the same time.

Thursday, July 01, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.021 (2 new harlots - Suffocatrix Tete Khantu and Nooru)

The new version of "House of Hellish Harlots" is available for patrons and can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-hellish-53140420

This adds 2 new harlots to the House:

Suffocatrix Tete Khantu
She's a much more lethal boob smotherer than Suffocatrix Mamilla.  I see her as a mid- to late-round harlot.  Her scenario is fairly straightforward, but difficult to survive as the player will need a specific piece of protection.

Nooru
Nooru is another import from my H-space bestiary stories.  She's a nuru nuru girl and specialises in slippery body-to-body massages.  She's intended as a starter harlot for the first couple of rounds as it's very easy to avoid her Bad End condition.  Her Bad End path is worth checking out as she gets a lot wetter and raunchier when she's free to have fun with her prey.

While there is a public demo version (at https://houseofhellishharlots.com/), I'll be keeping this two to three months behind the Patreon releases (got to raise money for artists somehow!).

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Public demo of "The House of Hellish Harlots" is now live!

I said I was going to put it up on a website somewhere and finally, it's here.

https://houseofhellishharlots.com/

As will be apparent, my web-fu lags a long way behind my writing ability, so the current website is very minimalistic.  It has a 'play' button and you can play the game demo in the browser, so it represents a start.  Now I have something in place, I can add to it later.  For now, I felt my limited web skills would make something awful if I tried to be clever, and so went for basic functionality.

If you like it, please spread the word.  If you're an artist and inspired to make sexy art of these characters, please get in touch.  Good art is something this project desperately lacks.

I put a non-paywalled version out so I can gauge interest and hopefully raise funding for artwork.  If you'd like to help support, I have my Patreon.  If you'd like to help support but would rather gouge your own eyeballs out than give money to Patreon (understandable), any suggestions for alternate funding approaches are welcome.  I'll probably add them as a sidebar to the website at a later date.

"The House of Hellish Harlots" is currently a text-only game made in Twine.  I think it has the potential to be a decent Western eroge.  It's a bit bland and text-only now, but every project has to start from somewhere.

And now we have a proper public demo.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, June 08, 2021

Hentai Game Review - Succubus Puttel

I've always had a weird relationship with 62studio games.  I pick them up, bounce off them early, then come back and realise they weren't all that bad after all.  Lust Grimm was the first.  Sadly, I played that through at a time when I was concerned I was devoting too much time to writing blog posts over things that pay the bills, so I never wrote a review of it.  It's pretty good.


Succubus Puttel
is more of the same.  I think it's 62studios's 3rd full game.  It's a fairly standard RPGmaker battlefuck game.  It's another game featuring a young man protagonist in a fairy-tale world filled with cum-hungry succubi eager to jump his bones.

The game starts out with everyone being abducted from the starting village by succubi.  The hero sets out to rescue his 'sister' while being given 'help' from a pair of talking chickens.  It's not as it seems, as is revealed through the quest.  The quest itself is fairly straightforward.  Go to different areas, beat the deadly-sin-themed succubus boss of the area and then have a showdown in the final castle.  There are also a few optional quest items to pick up, and these will determine the ending.  Thankfully, they're not too guide-dang-it, mainly because I was playing an English translation and also because the NPCs aren't too overly cryptic in their instructions.

Towns hold many dangers for country bumpkins...

The English translation can be picked up off the ULMF forums here.  It's mostly managed machine translation.  It's good enough to follow the main plot, but some of the Bad End texts are a bit scuffed as you would expect from straight machine translations.  It's good enough to get the gist of what's going on.

One warning.  I found my version to be a little crash-happy.  I don't know if this is a problem with the original game or the modded translation.  Either way, save regularly and often (you don't need to do it at the designated save chickens).

The combat is reciprocal battle-fuck, i.e. both combatants are trying their best to get the other off rather than games like MGQ where the protagonist is trying to fend off the lascivious succubi's advances with regular weapons.  Unlike MGQ, it isn't game over if the succubus makes you pop.  The game generously gives you 3 pops before you become unresisting succubus fodder.  Although, as the succubus gets stronger each time she makes you pop, having two more 'lives' doesn't always help.

Attacks are split into two categories – mouth and hand – and target four different erogenous zones – mouth, tits, pussy, ass.  Each succubus has a weakness to be targeted for bonus damage.  Remove half of the succubus's HP and she'll take her clothes off.  Remove a little more and she'll try to tempt the player.  Accept the temptations and she'll do a special sexy move on you that will force an ejaculation and drain a level out of the player.  This works pretty well with the 3 'lives' system as it overcomes the central problem of most battlefucks in that the player has to lose to see the good stuff.

Hot enough that she can walk around in snow in her underwear

Personally, I'm iffy on 'press X to surrender' mechanics.  One thing I liked about Lust Grimm was some of the succubi had special level-drain moves they'd drop on the player during regular combat.  Gameplay-wise, constantly getting your levels drained might be frustrating, so I can see why they made it something the player has to choose to happen to them, but I think Lust Grimm balanced it fairly well with levelling up being cheap enough that replacing lost levels wasn't much of a grind.

The special holds are also very exploitable.  The player can learn various protective skills that reduce damage from specific areas (eg breasts or pussy) to about a tenth.  Normally, they're not too helpful, as you don't know what the succubus is going to 'attack' with, but once a succubus has you in a special hold, all subsequent attacks will be of the same type.  This means that rather than trying to break out, it's better to stay in the hold and alternate between 'Resist: X' and 'Attack: Weak Point' until the succubus comes.  There is one succubus that counters this – Boobs Yokai/Busty Phantom (one of my favs for the series).  If the player doesn't break out of her hold after a certain number of rounds, they pass out and lose no matter how many 'lives' they have left.  I would have liked to see more enemies do things like this to give more variety to the sex battles.  Once the player has figured out the holds are exploitable with the mid-level succubi, that would be a good time to spring the involuntary level-drain attacks on them from the high-level succubi if the player doesn't break out of their holds fast enough.  I think the game missed an opportunity there.

"So you can protect against breast attacks.  I'll make you pass out instead."

Overall, the battlefuck combat is fine without being amazing.

The art is pretty good in my opinion, although there is no animation.  You get the standard battle-sprite, naked battle-sprite and Bad End pic array of CGs.  I like the style of the main artist and it gives 62studios's games a consistent look.  The other artists are a little more variable, but overall it's pretty good.

The one caveat is that the devs unashamedly love big boobs.  While the Bad Ends cover a range of sex acts, boobs get the biggest share with titwanks, puff-puffs, breast-feeding and nursing handjobs galore.  There's one token flatty and everyone else has cup-sizes ranging from silicone-enhanced centrefold model to utterly gargantuan.  YMMV on which point it passes beyond attractive to grotesque.

If you like boobs and believe there's no such thing as 'too big', these are the succubi for you.

Okay, that might be 'too big'

Overall, I liked it.  Compared to similar games, it falls somewhere in the middle of the pack.  The art is fine and the gameplay is fine.  There were enough succubi designs that hit the right spot for me (smother me, busty phantom).  Story, art and gameplay are all competently executed, but maybe needs an extra spark in something to truly excel.


Friday, June 04, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.019 (3 new harlots, all dummy harlots replaced)

The new version of "House of Hellish Harlots" is available for patrons and can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-hellish-52076419

It's a couple of days late, but it's finally here.  Sammy's scenario took a little more testing than a normal scenario.

This is almost a milestone release.  This replaces the last of the placeholder 'dummy' harlots.  Everything is fleshed out.  This is pretty much the first 4-6(ish) rounds of the game with everything in place (with the main exception being the harlots aren't organised and tiered - you shouldn't have to choose Sorpresa or Hiru in round 1!).  There are 31 harlots in total.  All with full scenarios.

Almost, as there are still a few minor bugs I need to fix.  Mostly corner cases that shouldn't come up very often.

And with that, let's get into what's added for version 0.019.

NEW HARLOTS

Acarina.
She might be familiar to readers of my stories.  She showed up in the "Vampiric Boobies" short story.  She gives a lovely paizuri that will really drain the player.  And also regular sex.

Sammy
Sammy is a little special.  She's similar to Panta Prota in that a lot of different variables affect how she responds to the player.  She's one worth playing around with to try and figure out her turn ons.  (She was also a pain to implement and test - I think I covered nearly every variation, but if I missed any and you get ugly fail code or typos, let me know.)

Khanara Anandanum
Another unusual harlot.  Not a lamia, slug, or slime, but with properties of all three.  She'll wrap you up and drown you in pure bliss.

NEW CHARMS

Yes, I probably have too many charms in already, but I added a couple of new ones.  One is something that should have been in before - an anti-sleep charm (or maybe anti-sheep charm).  The other has an interaction with one of the new harlots.

HARLOT MAINTENANCE

I finally caught up with the last outstanding harlots.  Both Sorpresa and Suffocatrix Mamilla now interact with the charm you think they should interact with.  Cibi is also updated and interacts with a new charm that offers some but not full protection from falling asleep.

All of the old harlots are now updated, so if you think a charm should protect against a harlot (or interact with) and doesn't let me know.  The reason it doesn't is for game balance reasons, but if it looks illogical, and lots of people point it out as illogical, I'll need to at least reference why it doesn't work.

And that's it.  I overran a little this month, which was unfortunate.  I do have a head start on the next batch of harlots, and also less restrictions on what can be included.  Hopefully, I'll get back to regular releases at the end of the month, rather than a couple of days into the next month.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

This is pretty much the version I want to use for the 1st public demo.  Virtually everything is in place and I've replaced all the 'dummy' harlots. Next week I'll be looking into getting a website set up and seeing if I can get House of Hellish Harlots to run in-browser.

My web dev skills are very rudimentary at best and I don't have any artwork, so don't expect anything earth-shattering.  I'll be happy if I can set up something similar to how the old demos ran on philome.la! 

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Thoughts on Resident Evil: Village, Lady D, and Vampires

I don't normally buy games full price nowadays.  You rarely lose anything by waiting for them to halve in price in six or twelve months.  I made an exception for Resident Evil: Village.  Partly due to hype, and also partly to recapture that nostalgia of walking into town to pick up the newest game in the series many years ago.  Also, the Lady Dimitrescu character and her vampish daughters appear to have generated a lot of interest, and as someone who specialises in writing sexy femme fatales, it's only natural to look at that and think 'how can I take advantage of this?'

Sadly, Lady D and her three daughters don't appear in the game for too long as their castle is just the first area to explore outside of the main village 'hub'.  While Resident Evil 7 clearly took inspiration from horror films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw, RE 8 goes back much further to the schlocky old horror films of Hammer and Universal.  You have the usual vamps and woofs (sort of), as well as creepy dolls, fish people and a more industrialised Frankenstein.  Overall, the game is a fun rollercoaster through various classic horror themed areas.


Gameplay-wise, it's a hybrid of the mechanics of RE 4 and RE 7.  At one point I thought it was going to avoid the shooty-shooty action bullshit that blighted the last area of RE 4, and take the crown of best RE as a result.  Sadly, there's a segment near the end that's very bullshitty and drags down the rest of the game.  Still, I enjoyed my time with it.  It's a solid 8.5 and it's good to see the Resident Evil franchise return to relevance after losing its way with 5 and 6.  (If only Silent Hill could do the same, sigh.)

But what are you doing writing about regular AAA games, you might think.  Isn't your domain monster girl porn games and succubus snu snu stories?

Well, there's this tall vamp lady MILF and her three psychotic, blood-crazed daughters.  Rule 34 is clearly going to have a field day there.  Might as well join in.  Sort of.

I don't write fan fiction, ever.  Homages and nods are fine.  Taking inspiration and then taking it in a completely different direction is part of the creative process.  Lady D, after all, is another take on Bram Stoker's iconic Count D and his three wives.

While I have to be careful to skirt spoilers, I thought the explanation of what the daughters are is particularly creative.  The core rule of the Resident Evil universe is that everything must have a pseudo-scientific explanation.  Sometimes that is to the series' detriment, other times they can be quite clever within that constraint.  Lady D is a more conventional Resident Evil monster – i.e. damage her enough and she'll start growing extra bits.

It was during Lady D's boss fight I was thinking about what I'd do with that transformation and my own particular philosophy towards blending erotica/porn with horror.  I might play around with that in a future story, as well as writing on that philosophy in more detail.

Talking about it on Patreon did raise an interesting comment from one of my patrons about why I hardly ever write about sexy vamps.  The main problem is succubi tend to beat them out when the creator has greater freedom to be sexually explicit.  They do the same thing, but better.  The vamp approach to death by snu snu is to pause the fucking to fang the victim in the neck.  The succ approach to death by snu snu is more fucking.  Succs win that round.

At least in my eyes, which is a bit limited for readers that would like to see more traditional vamps get in on the sexy action.

Back to Lady D and her lovely daughters.  While they're clearly a nod to Bram's Babes, there is a (unsurprising) bait 'n' switch going on as to whether they're vampires.  In fact, the 'v' word is never used in the game.  Even the game protagonist, Ethan, calls them witches.


Ethan regretted forgetting the safe word after telling his new BDSM club to 'go wild'.

If I was going to write a story influenced by them, I'd also be bait 'n' switching the readers with respect to vampires.  (You're going to rule 34 the monster form of Lady D, aren't you, Hydra.  You betcha 😉)  While a certain franchise far, far away has tarnished the concept of 'subverting expectations', it can be a useful story-telling tool, but the creator also has to know when they should just give the reader what they want.

A "Lady D and her three lovely daughters" will make for an interesting story project for this year's Literotica Halloween competition.  If I do that, I think I should also write a conventional vampire story as well, as an apology to the vampire lovers for bait 'n' switching (and probably also traumatising) them.

That leaves me with the problem of trying to figure out how to write a sexy vamp without them automatically being better as a succubus.

It's also something that applies to House of Hellish Harlots.  One of the more commonly requested harlot types is a vampire.

And I think I might have it, for HoHH at least.

I brainstormed some ideas and came up with... uh... a whole clan of vamps.

As for the story ideas.  Can't promise anything.  Reality has an unfortunate habit of fucking up the creative process, and what feel like good ideas at the time don't always reach fruition.  I think it would be a nice project for Literotica's Halloween competition, so... fingers crossed. 


Sunday, May 02, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.018 (new NPC Barman and new harlot Hiru no-Koochi)

The new version of "House of Hellish Harlots" is available for patrons and can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-hellish-50724665

Here's a list of the new features:

THE HANDSOME BARMAN
This is the last of the regular House NPCs.  His role is to provide a seamless introduction to the other NPCs.  Later on he will also dispense advice on how to escape the House, but that is to be implemented later.  With his addition that means the basic game framework is now fully written.  The only placeholder material left are the three remaining placeholder harlot scenarios.  There are some optional features I'm thinking of adding later (random events, side quests), but for now the core game framework is fully written.

NEW HARLOT - HIRU NO-KOOCHI
Just the one new harlot, but she does have a big scenario.  I keep saying I shouldn't make the basic scenarios this long, and then do it anyway.  After seeing how popular Suka no-Hirudo was, especially her 'just one more suck' aspect, I created 'evil' Suka using the leech-tongue succubus from my H-space stories.  She's so nice she'll make that difficult 'one more suck' choice for you.

You'll probably get sucked dry by Hiru a lot.  Her scenario is quite difficult.  She's intended as a late round harlot.  Even if you find the right protection, she'll still give you options that will make sure you never leave her room.  On the positive side, she'll make your time in her room very pleasant.

What isn't in ver0.018.

HARLOT MAINTENANCE
Cibi, Suffocatrix Mamilla and Sorpresa Ombra still haven't had their charm interactions implemented.  I was hoping to get that done, but it got crunched out when Hiru's scenario ended up being bigger and slower to implement than I was expecting.  I will try to get that done for the next release as well as fix some minor corner case bugs I know exist.

April ended up being a bit of an off month.  I was probably due one to be fair.  That's why there's only one new harlot.  Her scenario is one of the longer ones I've written, so I hope that makes up for it.

This means the proper public demo is going to be pushed back a month.  While the basic game framework is now fully written, there are still 3 placeholder harlots I want to replace.

I know some of you would like to support this, but really don't want to give money to Patreon, and I understand that.  When I put the proper demo out, I'll look at additional funding options.  What I'd like to do is ramp the project up to include decent artwork.  The game will primarily remain text, but Monster Girl Encyclopedia type pictures of the harlots would add a lot to a playing experience.

For now it's just about continually adding new content and growing interest.

Thursday, April 01, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots ver0.017 (Full Intro and Madam's Tour)

The new version of "House of Hellish Harlots" is available for patrons and can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-hellish-49457831

Here's a list of the new features:

FULL INTRO
The game has a beginning.  I adapted the very old intro and streamlined the options.  Yeah, the car breakdown scenario is a little hackneyed, but it's the classic.  There are also multiple options to set character dispositions as well as chat to some NPCs for some background.

MADAM'S TOUR
On entering the House, the Madam will give the player a tour which has a primary purpose of explaining her 'rules'.  It also introduces a succubus I'll be giving a scenario to at a later date.

The full versions of both the Intro and Tour are quite long.  They exist to set the scene a little better than just throwing the player into the first set of choices.  Because they're long, I also added options to skip through them quickly, so on subsequent playthroughs you should be able to get right to the first harlot selection in about 5 clicks.

FLESHED OUT PASSAGES
The main game loop passages have all been fleshed out, so it should feel more like a continuation of reading a book rather than the barebones instructions that were there before.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to complete The Barman NPC in time, so the hub passage for pre-room actions is still clearly a placeholder.

NEW HARLOT
The stoner caterpillar girl, Kanna bi Grafolita, makes her debut in the House.  This was an attempt to write a monster girl a little different to the usual ones.  I hope people like her.  I'll post something on her creation later when I'm not frantically trying to beat a deadline, because it opens up another harlot idea.

MADAM REVAMP
This is just part of the regular updating and improving I do to the NPCs.  The main change is that the 'Buy Mulligan Token' option unlocks a little quicker.  I also put in support for harlots that are multiple girls such as the Muchadh Sisters, so that The Madam refers to them naturally as "they" instead of "she".

HARLOT MAINTENANCE
I carried on updating the harlots I didn't get a chance to finish for ver0.016.  This means that Calliophi and Queen Colubridis will now reveal their true forms earlier if the player has the right charm among other interactions.  I didn't get them all done, so Suffocatrix Mamilla won't interact with the anti-smother charm even though it might seem like she should.  This is queued up to be done.

What isn't in ver0.017:

THE BARMAN
Too many rewrites and awkwardness this month.  I have rough drafts of his segments, but they still need a bit of editing to hit the right tone.  I'm hoping to get him out of the way early April.

SOME HARLOT MAINTENANCE
I'll save you some time and experimentation.  Suffocatrix Mamilla, Cibi Somnia and Sorpresa Ombra have not been updated to interact with charms, so don't torture yourself trying out combinations.  Mamilla will have an interaction I'll add later.  Sorpresa may have an interaction.  I forgot to create an anti-sleep charm, so Cibi still has free rein to eat your dreams.

SOME BUGS AND ODDNESS
These are things I've noticed and queued up to sort out.  They're corner cases that shouldn't come up very often.  An obvious one is the 'true vision' charm.  If the player picks it up, the text will behave as though they've seen the true form of the harlot at the presentation stage when this didn't happen.  The fix will be delaying its effect to the start of the next round and I'll add that for a future release.

I'm not far off what I want for a public demo.  I still need to add the Barman and replace the 4 remaining placeholder harlots.  I'll be looking at options to get the file hosted somewhere in the next couple of months.

In the meantime, all support is appreciated.  I'd love to be able to hire artists for this and give people a game as good as Monmusu Quest and the others.

Friday, March 19, 2021

Hentai Game Review - Succubus Academia

I do still review the odd hentai game that tickles my fancy and Succubus Academia very much tickled my fancy.

Succubus Academia is an RPGMaker game made by SQDT.  If you've been around a very long time you might remember SQDT was responsible for Succubus Quest.  I think the original Succubus Quest might have been the first game of this type I played after being lured in by the original Monster Girl Quest demo.  I'm not sure what happened to SQDT after that.  I think there was a follow-up game that fell through and they fell off my radar until coming back with Succubus Academia.

I played this using text hooking and very sketchy machine translation, so you'll have to forgive me for not being able to go into as much detail on the plot and game mechanics as I'd like.  Thankfully, even with sketchy machine translation, I was able to get a good way into the game.  I haven't yet completed it, for reasons I'll go into later, but I have seen pretty much all the content apart from the final boss(es?).

Turn her from this to...

The plot is interesting from a protagonist perspective as rather than playing a single character, you play multiple.  From what I can gather, a college has been sucked into a dream world and the surviving students are being picked off one-by-one by semen-hungry succubi.  Some of the female students have either been replaced by or turned into succubi.  They can't be defeated.  The only way to make them go away is satisfying them sexually.  Unfortunately, satisfying a succubus sexually is the end of the (un)lucky volunteer tasked with doing so.  Thankfully, we have reserves (but not many), as you find and unlock future succubus sacrifices throughout the game world.  All progress – levels, items, money – is transferred to the next (un)lucky sacrificial lamb.

It's an unusual mechanic, and one I wish more games would use.  From the non-H world of games, the only one I can recall is Eternal Darkness.  However, the player does need to be careful.  Each succubus can only be properly satisfied by a specific character, and if that character gets all his juice sucked out by a dryad beforehand, it's no longer possible to complete the game.  It's not as terrible as it sounds.  There are five 'boss' succubi and three optional succubi to satisfy, and eight playable characters to pair them up with.  I did follow a guide, but the game makes it reasonably obvious who should be fed to who – the swimmer to the mermaid, the runner to the track-team bunny, and so on.  For the optional bosses the game will hint you have the right character for them as they'll drop ID cards in front of them.  It's also short enough that even if the player screws up, it's not too onerous to play through again.

Pay attention to the ugly demon shopkeeper that shows up early in the game.  He sells key items to remove certain obstacles (eg gasoline for a motorbike).

...this, and satisfy her (and then die).

There are five areas for each of the succubized student bosses, some being unlocked later.  Each area has two regular encounters (pixies and dryads for the 1st forest area), a mini-boss encounter (usually a pair of one of the regular encounters), a 'notorious' succubus (more on them later), and the boss.  If your character dies to anyone other than the boss, reload.  If the character dies to the boss without her transforming into a succubus form and giving the "And she is satisfied" message, reload.

'Combat' is sort of battlefuck.  Sort of, in that the objective isn't to win, but to hang on for dear life until the succubus is satisfied.  So, it's mostly about raising their mood while not letting them drain your life and semen too quickly.  There is a bar on the left for the succubus representing their mood.  There are two bars on the right for the player.  The first is the ejaculation meter, which the succubus will fill by using various sexy moves.  The red bar is the player's life, and that will get depleted every time the succubus gets them to ejaculate.

This is where I'd like to go into more detail, but the vagaries of machine translation prevented me from getting a full understanding of the game mechanics.  There does seem to be some kind of stance system and also spells that cost life to cast.  On Normal difficulty I was able to muddle through most of the game by just picking whatever option looked sensible and using the occasional item to restore life or lower the ejaculation meter.  The upgrade system looked interesting enough I'd like to get my hands on a proper English translation for a less completely-blind playthrough.

Drowned or drained, your choice...

And mainly to stop the 'notorious' succubi draining me to a lifeless husk second time around.

Recently there have been a few collaborations between eroge game devs/artists that have resulted in characters guesting in other games.  There are five 'notorious' succubi in Succubus Academia.  I recognised Alma Elma (Monmusu Quest), Shiki's Sophia and Succubus-chan.  The other two (Elfride and Fulbeua) are unfamiliar.  I'm kind of interested where Elfride is from, for... uh... research purposes.

Initially, I was a little disappointed with the Alma Elma and Sophia scenes, and then felt I was probably being a little unfair and coming in with too high expectations.  I also thought they were guest cameos without much link to the rest of the plot.  Which turned out to be wrong.  After doing all the sacrifices correctly, the game opens up for an additional chapter and you get to 'fight' the notorious succubi again, and those scenes are a lot hotter.  So, if like me, you sped through the game to find them, only to be a little disappointed, fear not.  They return again later and those scenes will likely lead to you getting satisfyingly drained.

(Perhaps a little too drained.  I still haven't figured out how to get past them!)

Alma Elma, animated! Get a ride from the Succubus Queen.

The art in this game is gorgeous.  The bosses and notorious succubi also have some animation, which adds a lot of appeal.  It's a shame that the regular encounters get overshadowed because their images are static, because they also have really nice art as well.

One thing I liked, which won't be to everyone's tastes, is the streak of cheerful morbidity running through the game.  Nothing exemplifies that better than the scene after the first boss.  After draining her childhood sweetheart to a skeleton, she tells him she's going to take him home with her, only to just snap the arm off the skeleton and leave with just that.  I couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be romantic and touching, with the spirit somehow united with the succubus forever more, or a funny bit of cruelty mocking such romantic delusions.  Either way works for me.

It is quite a morbid game.  The characters are all doomed to death by snu snu and new abilities are learned by burying relics of dead classmates.  The succubi are pretty much all on the predator end of the spectrum.  So, if you like your monster girls fluffier and waifu-esque, you might find the tone of Succubus Academia a little too dark and cruel.

(Obviously, I loved it, but that probably isn't a surprise to anyone that's read my stories!)

The monster girls and succubi are also more on the vanilla end of the spectrum (in design).  There are the usual staples such as harpies, lamias and mermaids, but nothing too crazy.

Overall, I found it a really nice game.  Luscious sexy succubus art.  Interesting plot (from what I can glean).  Enough game mechanics for it to feel like a game without being complex enough to be frustrating, especially with the language barrier (although it would be nice to know why Succubus-chan gets bored so easily and then mercilessly drains all my life away – merciless predator indeed).

She's cute until she gets bored.  Don't let her get bored...

Definitely worth a look if you like this sort of thing.  Maybe around Succubus Prison level in terms of quality.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

House of Hellish Harlots ver0.016 (Charms)

The new version of "House of Hellish Harlots" is available for patrons and can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/house-of-hellish-48099339

Here's a list of the new features:

THE BUXOM LOLIBABA
She's a new NPC that sells various charms to the player.

CHARMS
Charms last for the duration of a run (until the player dies or runs out of harlots).  They have a variety of effects.  The Buxom Lolibaba will give vague hints as to their use, but you'll have to play around with them to figure out what they do.  All but one have been implemented.  A lot of them are protective in nature but won't do anything for now as the abilities they protect against will be added with future harlots.  The other ones have a few interesting effects I hope you have fun finding out.  There are 36 in total.

NEW HARLOTS
Three new harlots have been added to the House.  They are:

Veronicalla - a squishy slug girl.
Asphya - an enigmatic harlot dressed fully in black latex and wearing a gas mask.
Pêl-O Sugn - A synthetic being that wants to give you a sexy bounce on her big rubber ball.

All 3 are oddballs this time around.  I'll try and mix in a few regular succubi/monster girls for the next release.

MAINTENANCE TWEAKS
There have been quite a few of these.  The Portly Gentleman and Elegant Woman have been tweaked to bring their structure in line with the other NPCs.  I'm hoping this will finally fix the occasional infinite Action bug that leaked from The Elegant Woman.  I've also gone back and tweaked some of the older harlots to fit changes to The Portly Gentleman as well as interacting with the new charms.

And some notes: 

"Why doesn't Charm X affect Harlot Y?"
I'm still going through the existing harlots and updating them.  Some have been done, but I wasn't able to do all of them (hence why the remaining charm is only partially implemented).  There will be occasions where you might wonder why a charm didn't reveal a harlot's true form, or protect from an ability you thought it should protect from.  It's because I haven't updated them yet and it will likely be fixed in the next release.  Thankfully, it's only a small handful of interactions.

"The economy doesn't seem balanced."
Portly Gentleman payouts and prices of potions, charms, etc. are mostly back-of-an-envelope calculations.  This will be tightened up as I add more content.

I'm getting closer and closer to a public demo version.  The main NPCs and mechanics are all in place.  I need to add a few more 'real' harlots to replace the placeholders and flesh out some of the interior descriptions.  A couple of months at a guess.

The hope then is to get more people interested and maybe start think about adding sexy CGs and the like.