Introducing "The House of Hellish Harlots"

(x-post from Patreon)

(Update.  Whoops, did not realise the formatting had been completely borked after cut'n'pasting from Patreon.  This is why you always cut'n'paste to Notepad first to remove all the crap MS Word and other places bundles in with text and check your post afterwards.  Sorry for making everyone's eyes bleed with that atrocious formatting snafu.) 

Firstly, apologies for another lengthy period of quietness. I ran into a fairly severe productivity slump on the second draft of the carnivorous plant girl story and had to change things up for a while rather than plowing on at measly couple-of-hundred words a day (it is still being worked on - more on that in a follow-up post). Of the side projects I busied myself with, the one that won the race to have something to show for it was this one. "The House of Hellish Harlots" is a prospective framing device to hold all the Escape the [Succubus/Monster girl] scenarios together. I had vague ideas on how to do this, but nothing really clicked until I got some inspiration from "Rusty Lake Hotel". If you haven't played it, "Rusty Lake Hotel" is a macabre point'n'click puzzle game where you murder five guests in overly complicated ways and serve them up for dinner for the remaining guests. Essentially, it's a framing device for 5 single-room puzzles where you combine various items to "escape" the room (by offing the animal-headed guest). I realized I could make this work for a succubus sex game. A while back I mapped out the beginning scenario for a porn gamebook in a similar vein to the classic Fighting Fantasy gamebook "House of Hell". The idea was to have the player wind up at an isolated brothel where all of the prostitutes are various sexy - but also hungry and dangerous - monster girls. The goal was to survive the night and escape the brothel, with a lot of sexy Bad Ends for failing to do so (in a similar vein to Tokinokogiri's "Succubus Prison"). I decided to write it up in Twine as an intro. It's probably more detailed than it should be (a lot of different ways to basically knock on a door, with some NPCs that may or may not have a future role). I think the concept has potential. The brothel is the framing device with the central hub of a bar within it. You have the madam, other clients and maybe an NPC on the player's side to give helpful advice (probably a barman of not-quite human aspect). The "hookers" represent the individual scenarios. The player has to select a girl, go to her room, then survive her attentions (the CYOA scenario - a puzzle or stats test with a whole bunch of inappropriate and perverted sex acts thrown in). This makes for a fairly straightforward core gameplay loop: -Select monster girl (with the barman giving hints to their nature). -Solve the puzzle (or just let her creatively Bad End you). -Repeat with next girl until the player wins their escape in the morning. From a development perspective this makes life very easy as each encounter is compartmentalized in its own CYOA. Once the framework is in place, I can keep extending the game indefinitely by adding new monster girl encounters. If things really shape up well, I can maybe also start to think about commissioning art and voice acting for the encounters - that is probably a long long way off though! But before we get too excited, the demo at the moment is a very short intro. There is only one Bad End scene and all I've written up so far is the background info leading up until the front door. So don't go in there expecting a full scenario. I've still got a fair bit to do, but I thought I'd post the chunks as and when I finish them. This first demo chunk is currently available for everyone on philome.la: http://philome.la/manyeyedhydra/house-of-hellish-harlots-v001 I thought I'd make it available to everyone to start to get as much feedback as possible. (Although currently it's very short, any suggestions on game mechanics, etc are welcome.) The sexy scenarios will likely be temporarily gated on Patreon and then added to the public version later. This is assuming I'm able to maintain steam on the project. As you may have already noticed, I tend to be a little chaotic and wayward on such things. But I think a modular approach might work better with my natural weaknesses. Rather than create a single large game (which I'd never finish), I'll be creating a lot of individual CYOA scenarios and stitching them together. In theory, I already have two scenarios with Volumpula and the arachne. I suspect they will need a bit of re-jigging. Arachne is too simplistic. Volumpula has too much. Emphasis will purely be on walking out of the door afterwards rather than trying to grab their "trophy" Anyway, this does get me back to doing some sort of text-based game dev stuff again. I'll still be writing regular short stories, but I think I need to be bouncing between both to keep myself from feeling like I've fallen into a rut. As for the carnivorous plant girl story (and other stuff that I've gone quiet on), I'll post on that later this week (hopefully releasing the short story soon after - I have 5.5K words typed up at the moment). Start of the year has been mixed for one reason or another. Thank you to the people sticking by me despite my rather erratic progress at the moment. I'll continue to produce hot succubus/monster girl smut to the best of my ability, even if the output frequency will be a little all over the place. (As a blog bonus - because Patreon is a bit crap with embedding things, here's a bit of the map for the intro - even if you can probably reach the front door in about 4 clicks!)

Open version of "Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly" is live!

As I said I would last week, I've posted "Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly" up on philome.la for everyone to play.  You can enjoy it here.

I'm still not sure what is and isn't allowed on philome.  I put in a few links to my Patreon (because I do like getting paid to write these and it's a good incentive to make me write more. hint hint. ;) ).  Some websites can be a little iffy about that, so I'll keep an eye out and resubmit a linkless version if the first gets bounced.

Putting a week's delay on the general release seems like a good balance between rewarding patrons for their contributions while not shutting out entirely people that can't contribute for whatever reason, so I'll continue doing it (maybe eventually migrating the CYOAs to my own web domain).

I hope you enjoy playing with Volumpula.  Writing her took a little longer than I anticipated, but the scenario is out now and I hope the wait was worth it.  Please let me know what you think in the comments below.

As I mentioned before.  I'm in the brainstorming/planning phase for the next scenario.  However, there are a couple of short stories I'd like to finish first, so those will likely be my priority for the rest of the month.

In the meantime, I'm sure Volumpula will take very good care of you...

"Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly" is done!

Whew, and breathe.

Sorry for the extended quiet period here.  Once I started to overrun on the CYOA project, I hit that horrible type of deadline paralysis of trying to focus everything on getting the project done, but not really being able to hit any kind of productivity.  Having the Patreon was pretty good, in that knowing people were paying for this meant I had to deliver it, so it kept me on the path rather than abandoning or putting it on hiatus.  I definitely struggle with any project once it goes past a certain timeframe.  It's probably no surprise my two novels were written first as bite-sized serials.

I did want to to try and take the pressure off myself of thinking I had to make regular blog posts (which resulted in some ill-advised decisions in the past with serials that weren't ready), but I didn't intend going dark for quite this long.

Anyway.

I completed the "Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly" CYOA.  Lots of gooey fun there.  Probably a little too much gooey fun.  I did get to write various different slime girl sex scenes, which was fun.

For now the Twine scenario is only available to my patrons on Patreon.  If you're not a patron for whatever reason, you'll be able to read the scenario for free when I post it up on hitome.la in a week's time.  I figure this is the fairest way to give patrons some perks for their dollars without paywalling away my work entirely.

As for the blog here and my other writing, rest assured I have no plans to abandon either.  Literotica's Halloween short story competition is coming up, and I'd like to get an entry in for that.

Update on Next CYOA/Gamebook Scenario

It's not working out.  Looks like I'll have to move onto something else.

/joke

(Although I have done that far too many times with other projects over the last year...)

It's actually moving along quite nicely.  I've planned out the scenario and mapped all the routes through it, along with the various tests the player character needs to perform.

It looks a bit like this:

Oh, and this:

Because I couldn't fit everything on one screen.

I definitely feel like I'm in a "hot" productive phase, so I'm going to keep mining it for as long as it stays "hot".

As I said in the last post, the scenario is going to feature a lovely lady very similar to this one.

Some people asked for it, so I've included some options for non-lethal sex this time around.  She's not quite as predatory as the spider girl, but she will quite happily suck all your good stuff out if the mood takes her.  Escaping with the trophy/statuette should also be a little more of a challenge this time around.

But what we really care about are those Bad End scenes.  Assuming this one pans out the way I've designed it, there will be 4 "good" sex scenes, 5 Bad End scenes and a couple of Very Bad End scenes if you manage to annoy her too much.

I'm now working on writing all the raw text.  I'm estimating it will take about 1-2 weeks to write, type up and edit the scenes and then another week to correctly test and debug the scenario.  The raw text is critical.  Once I've got the big scenes (those sexy Bad Ends) written down, then I'll be confident I'll be able to see this through to completion.  This will be the point I crack open the Patreon and start panhandlin'.  The plan will be to release the finished file to patreons first, and then post the story to philome.la for everyone else a week later.

One question remaining is what to call it.  The H-space Bestiary names I gave monster girls were... variable in quality.

"Escape the Pink Cushionblob" doesn't quite have the right ring to it.

I could use "Escape the Slime Girl", but I have a rough idea of another scenario with a slightly gooier slime girl.

"Escape the Pink Jelly Girl?"

"Escape the Pink Slime Girl?"

Post your thoughts below, as well as anything else you want to say on this.

Working on next CYOA/Gamebook scenario

"Escape the Arachne" has been live a week and has so far nearly racked up 8,000 plays.  I hope you enjoyed it.  If you have any feedback to make it better, please leave it below.

Also, if anyone feels suitably inspired to create some art of L'hesperusa having "fun", feel free to go ahead and send me links of the results.

I'm personally having fun with this and currently in the process of creating the next scenario.  I refactored bits of the arachne scenario to tidy things up and give me a nice generic template to start the next one off from.

I also added a difficulty mode.  All the stats tests are based off rolling 2d6 and comparing the result against the stat.  Currently you only need to roll less than or equal to your stat value to pass the test.  I added a hard mode which changes that to just less than (ties count as failures).

e.g.  Your Strength is 7.  You're asked to perform a Test of Strength.  In Easy mode a roll of 7 would be considered a pass.  In Hard mode a roll of 7 is considered a failure.  You need to roll 6 or less.

This should shift the probabilities around and give the monster girls more opportunities to have "fun" with you.

Changing difficulty mode isn't in the current "Escape the Arachne" scenario, but I will be adding it to future scenarios.

Now about those future scenarios.  As far as I know, there is no way I can package these up and sell them on Amazon, so I will (finally!) be setting up some sort of Patreon to beg for funding for my smutty endeavors.  It will either go live when the next scenario is ready (and I can prove I can deliver) or earlier if I think it will help motivate me to sit at my desk 8+ hours a day.

The Patreon will also include my short story writing, and I'll look at ways to release things early to patreons as part of the rewards (and hopefully get back to posting smut on Literotica again!).

Is there a game here with all this Twine stuff?

At the moment I'm just going to create them as separate scenarios until I figure out the best way to stitch them together.  By going modular like this, even if the whole game plan falls apart, people will at least still have had fun playing a bunch of separate sexy monster girl scenarios.

In case people hadn't already figured it out, the Gold Statuette in "Escape the Arachne" is a placeholder and serves no function other than extra bragging rights when you escape.

This could end up being replaced by a key item if I take the Fighting Fantasy approach of sending players through a fiendish maze and remorselessly killing them off at a checkpoint near the end because they missed the key numbers engraved in a rock in the very first cave.  That would be fun to create, but would require a lot more work to put everything together.

An easier approach would be to treat it as a more perverted Crystal Maze.  Each scenario is a puzzle room where the goal is to escape with a statuette.  At the end a succubus "rewards" you depending on how many statuettes you retrieve.  That would fit very well with a modular structure and allow for juggling of the scenarios so players are encountering them randomly and in different orders.

This is all for future consideration.  For now I want to get 4 or 5 scenarios under my belt first.

As for now I'm working on the next scenario.  It's going to feature a soft and comfy pink cushionblob like the one in this H-space story.  She's waiting to give you a lovely erotic body-to-body massage.

As with the arachne scenario there will be multiple sexy Bad Ends, and maybe some sexy Good Ends as well.

I probably need to give her a different name though.  "Escape the Cushionblob" doesn't have the right ring to it.  Escape the Pink Jelly Girl?

Anyway, let me know your thoughts below?  Do you like the idea of more Gamebook scenarios like the arachne one?

(I haven't forgotten about my other fiction either.  I want to get a serial started back up on here as well.  I'm trying to feel around for the right one.  But while I'm currently excited on this, it makes sense to channel the crazy manic phase into as much productivity as I can while it lasts.)

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

Okay, now you can get excited (maybe).

"Escape the Arachne" is live.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game Design Fumbling: An Arachne Scenario

While playing around with some GameBook/text-based videogame ideas I sketched out this scenario for an arachne encounter:

It ended up coming out a little more complex than I thought...