I say newish because those of you with good memories will recognize this as the Sleeping Beauty Mimic story from the H-space bestiary super short stories I put out a while ago. I fleshed the story out to add more background and let Bate have a little more fun with the monster girl before his inevitable grisly demise (and it is grisly, that editor's note at the top is there for good reason!)
Let Sleeping Beauties Lie
The H-space bestiary shorts have given me a quandary for a while. I'd like to put them in some sort of collection up on Amazon (and maybe reveal a bit more of the mystery around Bate and why he keeps dying). I don't think the stories in their current state are good enough. They were only originally intended to be placeholders to show off an unusual monster girl without having to develop a plot of how the protagonist ended up in the monster girl's sexy clutches. I've been looking at taking the better ones and filling in the story to bring them up to the standard of the other stories in my collections.
It's a... trickier process than I thought. Still trying to figure out the most efficient way of doing it as at the moment it seems even more time-consuming than writing a brand new story from scratch! (On a more positive note, I have been chipping away at a few new bestiary stories - this time full stories rather than quick sex scenes ' n ' grisly death.)
The other thing I'm quite relieved about is that the story was accepted and is now live on Literotica. Originally it was rejected and this post was going to be very different - me bemoaning how my usual Bad End stories were no longer acceptable and wondering if I'd ever have anything up on Literotica again.
I wouldn't have blamed Literotica for that, to be fair. This story does feature one of my nastier bad ends and we live in the sort of outrage-hungry times where owners of sites like Literotica have to walk a fine line in what they allow. Sucks, but that's how it is. It would have also made continuing the Succubus Summoning series on there tricky. At some point Nyte would be Nyte and then I'd have a chapter I couldn't put up.
Fortunately, rather than mope around in a funk, I reread the rejection note, saw that it mentioned "snuff" and then PMed Laurel (Lit's head honcho) for clarification.
While I have seen my good (vile) self referred to as "The Snuff Guy", I don't consider what I write to be snuff. I think I've written on this before. Snuff in erotic literature is generally writing from the perspective of someone getting their rocks off by killing someone else. The sexual titillation comes from the act of killing. You can do this in regular horror to depict a particularly nasty character, but it's a little trickier in erotic horror. With erotica the purpose is to sexually arouse and titillate the reader. If the reader is getting turned on by putting themselves in the shoes of someone killing someone else there is a real risk of feeding unhealthy fantasy. Now, as far as I'm concerned, fantasy, even unhealthy fantasy, is still fantasy. If it remains fantasy it's harmless, no matter how sick other people might think it. The nightmare scenario is if someone indulges that fantasy, develops a liking for it, finds fantasy is no longer enough, and then - to try and recapture that same thrill - takes it into the real world. With that risk, you can understand why a site like Literotica would not want to publish that type of story.
Then you get to my stuff. There is sex. There is death. And while I do like to blur one into the other, the viewpoint is always from the victim, and the sexual arousal comes from the sex stuff the succubus is doing to them rather than the death stuff. The death stuff is also nearly always supernatural in nature, and therefore impossible to copycat into the real world. That to me is the important distinguishing feature between "snuff" and regular (even if extremely squicky) erotic horror - is there a risk someone might copycat this and cause a tragedy in the real world?
I didn't get a reply from Laurel (I imagine she's way too busy to be fair - Literotica gets a massive number of submissions every day), but as the story is now live it must have been given a second look and deemed okay. This is an important thing to remember, if you're having stories bounced by Literotica, remember they get a ton of submissions daily. Sometimes it's worth giving Laurel a (polite!) PM to check if a story got bounced by the filters by mistake.
I'm happy anyway. The horror in erotic horror is still allowed at Literotica (although I should flag my nastier stories a little better next time!).
Hope you enjoy the new(ish) story!
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Friday, August 23, 2019
Ideas for a Darkest Dungeon-esque H-game - Being the Warlock
Ok, here's some more random musings on the type of Darkest Dungeon-esque succubus H-game I'd like to see (because I don't have the technical chops to make it myself).
Last up, I talked a bit about the combat, which is going to have various smutty succubi and monster girls mucking up the standard 4-on-4 structure by jumping the bones of members of the opposing party. This is where we have the excuse for lots of lovely and gratuitously xxx-rated pixel art (and hopefully some strategy to make the fights a little interesting as well).
The next question: Are we Team Succubus, or Team Succubus Bait?
I'll start with Team Succubus, as that's probably the most straightforward.
This is pretty much going to be like Iratus, but we're an eroge, so our banshees and vampires are going to be fucking the life out of enemies rather than spooping them to death.
The background setup is easy. Perhaps a little too easy. The player takes the role of a warlock or demon lord, and goes after the human realms with an army of sexy succubi. From that starting point there is plenty of freedom with respect to humour, tone and lightness. The Japanese games tend to push the slider towards goofy cute (although Monmusu Quest: Paradox can get very down and serious when it wants). Personally, given that most of these games are fairly light-hearted, I think it might be interesting to try a darker tone – give our succubi some real fangs and an aura of sexy deadliness. That would require some work on the main protagonist as goofball villain protagonists tend to work whereas deadly serious ones do not.
Maybe our warlock protagonist is the good guy, just using dubious tools to take down an army of corrupt and hypocritical shining knights.
There's also a fair bit of freedom with respect to the enemies. Maybe they're your classic knights and D&D adventuring parties, but corrupt. Maybe it can be a bit of succubus-on-succubus action. While I think you probably want both sexes represented to appeal to a larger audience, this might necessitate extra work in the pixel art department as the monster girl may have different scenes depending on whether she's having fun with a man or woman.
I'd probably go with succubi vs knights, and start out with making the knights all male to avoid needing to multiply the art assets too much. Then maybe adding female enemies to also attract ryona enthusiasts if resources allow.
One key difference to Darkest Dungeon is we'll want to hide a lot of those units behind some sort of unlock system. In Darkest Dungeon all of the available units are pretty much available from the start and gated only by the RNG determining which ones show up on the stagecoach. For a monster girl eroge, the focus is going to be on the sexy monster girls. The lure of seeing new ones is what will (hopefully) keep the player playing, so we want to make them part of the progression system. This then has an impact on balance. The later unlocks should, in theory, be more powerful than the starter units, but then there's a risk of moving away from the finding synergistic parties aspect that makes Darkest Dungeon so damn good. I think just making the later units more powerful than the starter units is back to the problem of boring combat mechanics.
Rather than more powerful, I think more strategic options might be a better thing to aim for. Make the newer monster girls open up new options and new party configurations. Just like Darkest Dungeon, the enemies are going to add more nuisance units to their roster, and that should prompt the player into trying out newer strategies to overcome them.
Another interesting consideration is whether we go roguelite or not. Roguelite would have unlocks carry over into the next run (Iratus does this), whereas a more traditional RPG-type system would require the player to go through the same unlocking process with each new game (but, like a typical RPG, would only be playing one game rather than many randomized runs).
There's also the easy opportunity for more sex content. One source of H-content is going to be in the battles as succubi "overcome" the enemies. We can also have more conventional H-scenes of the succubi having fun with their warlock commander (i.e. the player) outside of battle. Monmusu Quest: Paradox does this with the request scenes in the pocket castle. This is also an additional form of player progression – the player raising affection with their monster girls (through levelling them up or maybe some kind of gift system) in order to unlock their H-content.
In general, I think the game would look something like this:
- The player plays a warlock/demon lord out to conquer various regions with sexy succubi/monster girls.
- There are different regions with different enemy unit compositions requiring different strategies to overcome in each.
- The player grinds short 'dungeons' in each region to unlock new units and strengthen existing ones (with the goal being to get strong enough to take down a 'final castle').
- The player unlocks new succubus/monster girl units. New skills for the monster girls can be unlocked. New H-content for the monster girls can be unlocked.
- The player has a 'base area' to develop with resources taken from the dungeon runs.
- 2D sprite strategic battles. As we're an eroge, a large part of the strategy will be pulling enemy units out of formation or restraining enough of them so that they can be sexually drained. Combat also has to always feel interesting. There's going to be a lot of it, so the player needs to not feel like it's a massive grind. Have different roles for each of the monster girls (but not too obvious and rigid).
So far, so vague. But I doubt the various core gameplay loops can be nailed down until getting more serious about planning and development, and this tricky for me. I have ideas, but I suspect I don't have the technical chops to take it all the way, so there's only so much time I feel comfortable to devoting to something like this. I've always liked jotting down game design ideas, so maybe this is something I'll return to when I need a quick break from regular writing.
Thinking about this did remind me of a 2D sprite eroge that does do some of this stuff, but is real-time action rather than turn-based strategy – Attack it! Devil Legion.
I didn't get on with the demo, but did give the full game more of a try when I was thinking of existing eroge examples similar to the ideas above. Attack it! Devil Legion does have some strategy in the form of various offensive, defensive and support roles, but it mostly feels a little too frenetic. You control a little bat and can interrupt attacks and knock enemies over, but your monster girls and succubi mostly seem to do their own thing. It does have an unlock system (but no H-content with your own minions - for good reason given the protagonist).
I'm not convinced on the real-time play aspects. Most of the time you're too busy flinging your bat avatar around the screen to get a chance to enjoy your succubi double-teaming adventurers in various smutty ways. It's still better than most of the other sexy monster girl eroges I've played recently, so I might give it the full Hentai Game Review treatment if it holds my attention long enough to complete the game. The sprite artwork is really nice. This, but turn-based was what I was thinking of as I wrote this post.
Maybe this will give some of you reading some ideas. I'd love to see a game along these lines, but as I've said already, I doubt I have the technical chops to make it myself (or even organise a group of people that could).
Next up I'll brainstorm the other approach – Team Succubus Bait.
Last up, I talked a bit about the combat, which is going to have various smutty succubi and monster girls mucking up the standard 4-on-4 structure by jumping the bones of members of the opposing party. This is where we have the excuse for lots of lovely and gratuitously xxx-rated pixel art (and hopefully some strategy to make the fights a little interesting as well).
The next question: Are we Team Succubus, or Team Succubus Bait?
I'll start with Team Succubus, as that's probably the most straightforward.
This is pretty much going to be like Iratus, but we're an eroge, so our banshees and vampires are going to be fucking the life out of enemies rather than spooping them to death.
The background setup is easy. Perhaps a little too easy. The player takes the role of a warlock or demon lord, and goes after the human realms with an army of sexy succubi. From that starting point there is plenty of freedom with respect to humour, tone and lightness. The Japanese games tend to push the slider towards goofy cute (although Monmusu Quest: Paradox can get very down and serious when it wants). Personally, given that most of these games are fairly light-hearted, I think it might be interesting to try a darker tone – give our succubi some real fangs and an aura of sexy deadliness. That would require some work on the main protagonist as goofball villain protagonists tend to work whereas deadly serious ones do not.
Maybe our warlock protagonist is the good guy, just using dubious tools to take down an army of corrupt and hypocritical shining knights.
There's also a fair bit of freedom with respect to the enemies. Maybe they're your classic knights and D&D adventuring parties, but corrupt. Maybe it can be a bit of succubus-on-succubus action. While I think you probably want both sexes represented to appeal to a larger audience, this might necessitate extra work in the pixel art department as the monster girl may have different scenes depending on whether she's having fun with a man or woman.
I'd probably go with succubi vs knights, and start out with making the knights all male to avoid needing to multiply the art assets too much. Then maybe adding female enemies to also attract ryona enthusiasts if resources allow.
One key difference to Darkest Dungeon is we'll want to hide a lot of those units behind some sort of unlock system. In Darkest Dungeon all of the available units are pretty much available from the start and gated only by the RNG determining which ones show up on the stagecoach. For a monster girl eroge, the focus is going to be on the sexy monster girls. The lure of seeing new ones is what will (hopefully) keep the player playing, so we want to make them part of the progression system. This then has an impact on balance. The later unlocks should, in theory, be more powerful than the starter units, but then there's a risk of moving away from the finding synergistic parties aspect that makes Darkest Dungeon so damn good. I think just making the later units more powerful than the starter units is back to the problem of boring combat mechanics.
Rather than more powerful, I think more strategic options might be a better thing to aim for. Make the newer monster girls open up new options and new party configurations. Just like Darkest Dungeon, the enemies are going to add more nuisance units to their roster, and that should prompt the player into trying out newer strategies to overcome them.
Another interesting consideration is whether we go roguelite or not. Roguelite would have unlocks carry over into the next run (Iratus does this), whereas a more traditional RPG-type system would require the player to go through the same unlocking process with each new game (but, like a typical RPG, would only be playing one game rather than many randomized runs).
There's also the easy opportunity for more sex content. One source of H-content is going to be in the battles as succubi "overcome" the enemies. We can also have more conventional H-scenes of the succubi having fun with their warlock commander (i.e. the player) outside of battle. Monmusu Quest: Paradox does this with the request scenes in the pocket castle. This is also an additional form of player progression – the player raising affection with their monster girls (through levelling them up or maybe some kind of gift system) in order to unlock their H-content.
In general, I think the game would look something like this:
- The player plays a warlock/demon lord out to conquer various regions with sexy succubi/monster girls.
- There are different regions with different enemy unit compositions requiring different strategies to overcome in each.
- The player grinds short 'dungeons' in each region to unlock new units and strengthen existing ones (with the goal being to get strong enough to take down a 'final castle').
- The player unlocks new succubus/monster girl units. New skills for the monster girls can be unlocked. New H-content for the monster girls can be unlocked.
- The player has a 'base area' to develop with resources taken from the dungeon runs.
- 2D sprite strategic battles. As we're an eroge, a large part of the strategy will be pulling enemy units out of formation or restraining enough of them so that they can be sexually drained. Combat also has to always feel interesting. There's going to be a lot of it, so the player needs to not feel like it's a massive grind. Have different roles for each of the monster girls (but not too obvious and rigid).
So far, so vague. But I doubt the various core gameplay loops can be nailed down until getting more serious about planning and development, and this tricky for me. I have ideas, but I suspect I don't have the technical chops to take it all the way, so there's only so much time I feel comfortable to devoting to something like this. I've always liked jotting down game design ideas, so maybe this is something I'll return to when I need a quick break from regular writing.
Thinking about this did remind me of a 2D sprite eroge that does do some of this stuff, but is real-time action rather than turn-based strategy – Attack it! Devil Legion.
 |
| Attack it! Devil Legion - Your demonic legions of... uh... doom. |
I didn't get on with the demo, but did give the full game more of a try when I was thinking of existing eroge examples similar to the ideas above. Attack it! Devil Legion does have some strategy in the form of various offensive, defensive and support roles, but it mostly feels a little too frenetic. You control a little bat and can interrupt attacks and knock enemies over, but your monster girls and succubi mostly seem to do their own thing. It does have an unlock system (but no H-content with your own minions - for good reason given the protagonist).
I'm not convinced on the real-time play aspects. Most of the time you're too busy flinging your bat avatar around the screen to get a chance to enjoy your succubi double-teaming adventurers in various smutty ways. It's still better than most of the other sexy monster girl eroges I've played recently, so I might give it the full Hentai Game Review treatment if it holds my attention long enough to complete the game. The sprite artwork is really nice. This, but turn-based was what I was thinking of as I wrote this post.
 |
| Hot succubus double team action. I'm thinking this but where you can sit back and enjoy watching rather than trying to figure out where your bat avatar has been bashed to. |
Maybe this will give some of you reading some ideas. I'd love to see a game along these lines, but as I've said already, I doubt I have the technical chops to make it myself (or even organise a group of people that could).
Next up I'll brainstorm the other approach – Team Succubus Bait.
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