House of Hellish Harlots - Mid-2023 Roadmap pt2

(Pt 1, covering the writing, is here.)

We're getting near the end of August, so I thought I'd drop part 2 of my mid-2023 roadmap for House of Hellish Harlots.  The first concerned the writing left to do, which originally was all HoHH was going to be.  Since then I've experimented with Twine enough to improve the display and add art.  It now looks closer to a regular game.  Despite this, text will be the focus, and the project will remain 'words words words' plus the occasional picture to brighten things up.

This is what I think I need to do, or rather commission other people to do:

ART
This can be divided into 5 areas:
- Title Screen + Logo
- UI
- Harlot pinup art
- Character Portraits
- Backgrounds

TITLE SCREEN
I have some ideas - either the exterior of the House, or maybe curtains across the stage.  Either way, I'll need to find an artist for it.  I tried the AI art approach... and it wasn't good.  One option could be to reuse harlot art.  A lot of DLSite games take this approach where they cut and paste a mob of sprites from the game on the cover.  I need a background and I need some nice titles spelling out the name of the game.

UI
This is the collection of icons at the top left of the screen (and top right, if you're playing on mobile).  It displays various player stats ('health', round number, money) as well as buttons to bring up the character sheet or sav/load menu.  I cobbled it together out of various bits of AI art.  It's functional and does the job of presenting that information to the player, but it isn't good.  Getting someone to redo the art and integrate it all within a nice panel (maybe curtains, maybe a batwing) is a high priority.

HARLOT PINUPS
If I had infinite money and resources, the ideal version of HoHH would have animations for every different sex act carried out by every harlot.  Sadly, I don't have infinite money and resources.  HoHH also has a lot of characters, way way more than a typical hentai monster girl game.  What I'm going to try to do is commission a single pinup for each harlot.  Even that will likely be expensive as HoHH will probably end up with around 100 harlots.  I've put enough funds aside to start the ball rolling, but will likely need to look for additional funding at some point to avoid being left dangerously out of pocket.  Any suggestions there welcome.  Maybe higher subscription tiers?  An adopt-a-harlot push for patrons/subscribers to directly fund their favorites?

I have started negotiations here with an artist for the first pieces.  Fingers crossed that will prove fruitful.

CHARACTER PORTRAITS
This is one area where AI art seems to be fine.  Female NPCs will get overhauled when I commission pinups for their scenarios.  I might just leave the car NPCs and Portly Gentleman as is.

BACKGROUNDS
Backgrounds is also an area where the AI art is adequate.  Ideally I'd like to replace them with proper art, and might need to do this if I want to put the game on Steam.  It will come down to resources.  I'd rather focus the limited funds on creating nice harlot art, especially as the backgrounds will likely be more expensive to commission.  If fundraising goes really well, and there's money left over, maybe...

OTHER
There are also a few other potential areas to add art/graphics.  This would be for the vendor NPCs - charms, potions and ailment cures.  It would be better if the player was selecting from a point'n'click shelf of icons rather than a list of text.  The same is true for gift selection before entering the harlot's room.

I have some ideas there and might experiment.  I put these as weak maybes.  Maybe for a hypothetical HoHH 2.

SOUNDS?
Music and sound fx is something I haven't put much thought to.  Maybe the stock ejaculation sound.  Maybe some ambient background noise.  Maybe the same stock music every RPGMaker monster girl H-game seems to use.

I'm not going to put any thought to it for now.  If the game project starts shaping up to be good enough for something like a Steam release, I probably should add some sounds and music.  Everything else is a higher priority at the moment, so it's off the table until it needs to be on the table.

CODING
The core game logic is pretty much all in place.

What might be needed is a bit of optimisation and polish - for instance delaying showing text of a new area until the background jpg has finished loading in.  I'll try to figure this out myself, but at some point might need to get an expert in to iron out the last wrinkles.

I might also need a second pair of eyes when it comes to packaging the game up as a game on Steam or app on mobile.  That's uncharted territory for me, and I'd be terrified of fucking up something basic.

Anyway, that's an approximate roadmap for the fancier parts of HoHH.  The ideal goal is a fully complete game I can release on Steam/DLSite.  However, I'm also aware a lot of monster girl hentai games have big ambitions and then end up becoming bogged down and never finishing.  If I feel I'm out of my depth and it's not something I can realistically do, I'll pare it back down to a simple text project with the odd picture to brighten things up.

This is a little vaguer as it covers aspects I'm not going to be in personal control of.  If you want clarification or further details, ask away below.

And if you'd like to support the project, you can on Patreon or SubscribeStar.  It's a big game project, but I hope people can see I've got a clear plan, clear end goal, and have consistently posted regular updates over the last couple of years.

House of Hellish Harlots 1.5 - v0.001 demo

After a fairly intensive month of so of hacking html, css, js, and Twine, I finally have a playable demo of House of Hellish Harlots ready.

This is pretty much similar to the early demos I put out for the plain-text version.  The demo stops after 3 rounds and there are only 16 harlots for now.  The main difference is that each part of the House has its own background art, each NPC has a portrait and some harlots have pinup art I'm borrowing from old commissions.  There is also a rudimentary UI panel cobbled together from chunks of AI art.  It's the same text and underlying core mechanics, but presented in a better way.

The art is all placeholders at the moment.  The portraits and backgrounds are serviceable.  The harlot art is great, but was not originally commissioned for this purpose, so don't get too attached to it.  The UI is admittedly terrible and one of the first things I'm looking to overhaul.

It is playable, but might be a little rough in spots, especially on mobile devices.

I'm also regretting not giving it a proper title screen.  Unfortunately, I wasn't happy with the interim attempts and wanted to get the demo out there.  As with the UI elements, getting a proper artist in and commissioning a nice 'cover page' is a very high priority.

While it is a sideways step in some respects, it doesn't take long to port the existing harlots across (I did the 16 here in just over a week).  It shouldn't take too long to bring the other 60 across and push the playable round count up.

Then there is the longer (and expensive!) step of commissioning artists to bring the characters to life with a 'pinup' piece for each harlot.

Have a play with the demo here:
https://houseofhellishharlots.com/experimental/

I'd love to hear your feedback below. 

House of Hellish Harlots - Mid-2023 Roadmap pt1

I posted this earlier this morning on Patreon and SubscribeStar, then switched it to public, then thought I might as well post it here.

Time to take stock of where I'm at with House of Hellish Harlots.  I figured I'd put a couple of roadmaps, one focusing on the writing side of things (which I'll be doing) and the other on plans for art and other assets (which I'll need to outsource and pay for).

First off with the writing and this is going to focus on the harlots.

Regular Harlots
Currently there are 74 harlots completed and present in the House, some with multiple scenarios.

There are 8 regular harlot slots left to fill.  Of those, one is a repeat scenario (Assphyxia), two are in progress (poison frog, forbidden smotherer), and two are roughly planned out (Sister Squeeze, a wide-eyed 'waif' succubus).

That leaves 3 slots.  Two of those I'm thinking of throwing open to patron polls to give an existing harlot in the faction (sensuality and classic) a repeat visit and different scene.  That leaves one slot open in the 'classic succubus' faction.  I'll fill that once I get a cool idea that fits (another performance in the bar or Sandy's tormentor are currently floating around)

I'd also like to add another neutral harlot that will basically be a rewrite of elements of Nicole's waterbed massage scene from "Locked in with a Succubus"

That's the minimum count of regular harlots to add.  Because of how the project is designed, I can add more than that, and new factions as well, but that will wait until after a version 1.0 is out.

Mini-Boss Harlots
Now we come to the mini-boss harlots that show up in rounds 5 and 9.  These are more powerful members of their respective factions.  They will likely be harlots with 3-5 different scenes.  This is to give them some repeat playability as the player will need to go through them multiple times to experience all their scenes.

Of those I need 10 - 2 per faction.

Of that 10 I have 7-8 roughly planned out in my head.  Current ideas include Temptacia (finally!), a slime nun, a latex-weaving arachne, an artificial scylla, a harem of imps, a fluffy-tailed kitsune, and Amoebella Glup.  The tentative 8th might be a nautical-themed huntmistress.

This leaves 2 mini-bosses for me to figure out.

Faction Queens
Lastly we have the end-bosses, or queens, for each faction.  This is the round 13 encounter and determines the overall game ending.  They will also have multiple sex acts, but will likely be sequential and how much the player sees will likely be determined by some kind of 'devotion' attribute.

I have pretty solid ideas for 3 of the queens.  I have a name for the smother queen, but haven't figured out what she is yet.  Classic succubus is still wide open.  That might be The Madam, but I also have other thoughts on where to use her.

Lore
I'll also need to give the 3 lore NPCs (Barman, Madam and Elegant Woman) enough dialogue to guide the player through the later rounds.

Writing-wise, this is the bare minimum I need to complete the game to a 1.0 release.

There are, however, a few things I really want to add, and probably will add unless I feel the project is dragging on and needs to be brought to a conclusion.

These are:

Post-room random events
These are just randomly occurring events that might provide bonuses, hindrances, or advance some side quests.

I want them, as I think they'll improve the game, but they're also not essential. 

Harlot team-ups
I have ideas for letting a couple of harlots double-team a player.  These might be related to side quests that result in the player unlocking an alternative round 9 encounter for a particular faction.  Ones I have rough ideas for are Mamilla & Assphyxia, Calliophi & her sister, Aphrou and Sapoonis, and the two huntmistresses.

NPC scenarios
Originally, I was thinking these would belong to a different faction and be a regular or mini-boss encounter from that faction.  The Doctoress is a clear fit for the artificial beings faction, then it gets messy.  Elegant Woman, Madam and Buxom Lolibaba all probably want to be in the 'classic succubus' faction and I can't really see Nurse Honey belonging to any faction other than her own.

I don't think I can tease Nurse Honey in the game and not let her do anything sexy, so she will definitely get a scene, and will probably be a severe late-game threat to the player on most playthroughs.

As for the others... I want to give them scenes, but it's working out where to put them.

This is what is needed for the writing.  There's still a fair bit to do, but I estimate I'm around the 75% done mark.  This ended up being a bigger project than originally planned because I put more into the individual harlot scenarios.  They are better as a result, but each is the length of a short story and takes about the same amount of time to write.

Despite this, I've kept a fairly steady release schedule.  I understand people have concerns about overly ambitious Western eroge projects never getting finished, so I hope this - and my new-release-every-month schedule - will reassure them that I do work on this in a professional manner and do have a clear endpoint in mind.

Thank you for the continued support and I hope you're enjoying how the project is developing.

And if you'd like to support the project, you can on Patreon or SubscribeStar.  It's a big game project, but I hope people can see I've got a clear plan, clear end goal, and have consistently posted regular updates over the last couple of years.

House of Hellish Harlots v0.046 (N3P-NTHes and Aphroú Kanáta ton Ouránia)

As it's the start of a new month, I've updated the public version of House of Hellish Harlots to a new version.

v0.046 has a carnivorous pitcher plant girl theme as both new harlots are variations on that type of monster girl.

N3P-NTHes
N3P-NTHes is another artificial being, this time modelled on pitcher plant lust daemons.  Unfortunately, she's one of The Doctoress's early creations and she neglected some aspects of her personality.  If you want to be brutally drained in a femdom way, N3P-NTHes is very good at that.

Perhaps a little too good...

Aphroú Kanáta ton Ouránia
Aphroú is a more conventional pitcher plant monster girl.  Her pitcher is filled with soapy water and feels like being in a relaxing hot tub full of bubblebath.

But be wary of getting too relaxed...

Similar to Sapoonis, I gave Aphroú a classical Greek appearance.  There's a decent chance the two might have a team-up scenario at some point, as Sapoonis joining the player in Aphroú's pitcher has a lot of potential for frothy fun.

You can have 'fun' with them here:
https://houseofhellishharlots.com/ 

I hope you enjoy playing with the new girls.  Let me know your thoughts below.

While I have been posting recently about a graphics upgrade to HoHH, the main releases are still text-only at the moment.  You can check out how that is going under the 'Experimental' tag of the website (fairly good for desktop, still a little rough for mobile).  If you want to support the project more actively, you can do so on Patreon or SubscribeStar.

Supporters get access to newer builds.  They're up to v0.048 and were given Brittnee, a bratty 'teen' succubus, to play with in the latest release.

I'm still working on a version of HoHH with art and graphics.  I hope to show that off soon.