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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!).

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!

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.

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.

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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! 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

House of Hellish Harlots ver0.015 (Doctoress + Potions)

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Wrapping up 2020

So, 2020 was... a year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

So, a mixed year overall.

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

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

House of Hellish Harlots ver 0.014 (succufairies)

(x-posted from Patreon)

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

Version 0.014 of House of Hellish Harlots is ready.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

 (x-posted from Patreon)

Version 0.013 of House of Hellish Harlots is out.

This release introduces 3 new harlots to the House:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Look At: Monster Girl Dreams

I blogged about this game last year, then forgot about it for a while.  It was while checking out some other H-games I remembered it and decided to take a look at how it has been developing.

Very promising, I'm delighted to say.

Monster Girl Dreams is an RPG battlefucker.  It's currently being developed by Threshold and you can find both the game and their Patreon here.

You play a hero that sails off to a land to fight the demon queen, only to find out when he gets there that the land is covered with an enchantment that prevents regular combat and 'fighting' is about fucking sexy monster girls and succubi into submission (or the other way around, if you just wanna have sexy fun times).

It's fairly light-hearted.  Even if you lose, the monster girls and succubi get to have fun with you for a little bit in a pseudo Bad End before you're yanked back to the church in town.

It's still mostly text-based, but what's changed since I last looked is that nearly all the characters have artwork now.  Even though it's just character sprites rather than CGI h-scenes, it does add a lot and they complement the writing well.

Currently the game is unfinished, but has plenty of content.  There are five locations to explore, plenty of side quests and sexy encounters galore.

"Your fetish for hot ninja succubi has intensified"

What makes it stand out to me is the battlefuck combat, and I think this is largely down to the stances system.  Similar to Monster Girl Quest, each of your succubi/monster girl opponents will try to wear down your resistance with a battery of pleasure attacks, but it expands on that with a variety of sex stances that either the player or succubus can lock their opponent into.  This then opens up further sexy moves while in that stance.  It's similar to Succubus Rhapsodia, but without the nuisance cursor-pressing mini-game.  As with Shrift, the most enjoyable 'fights' are those where the monster girl/succubus gradually gets more and more control over the player until they finally succumb to bliss.

Of the encounters, the ninja succubus Shizu is still a favourite.  She's supposedly a masochist, but that probably won't be apparent while she's busily fucking you into submission with a whole smorgasbord of erotic moves designed to drain both will and energy.  In her boss fight she creates two clones to triple the sexy fun.

Another one I really liked was the blue oni, Mizuko, which surprised me as oni are usually a meh monster girl for me.  She's all about hypnotising you with her gorgeous booty and I found that fight pretty sexy as she uses her ass and then anal sex to melt the player's will away.

Defeated by dat booty

Now onto the criticisms and suggestions.

One obvious area of improvement would be to add Bad End H-scene artwork and change the character sprites to give a visual representation of the various stances.  I also think this might be too resource-intensive to be practical.  Similar to Succubus Rhapsodia, there are fights with multiple succubi that usually end up with a variety of stance combos (face sit + sex, boob smother + paizuri, etc).  Representing all that visually would require commissioning a shit-ton of different art, so I wouldn't really expect it in this case.  The text descriptions plus character sprites are already fine.  Anything on top of that would be a bonus.

Other things I wouldn't mind seeing are various quality of life improvements to the interface.  Inventory management is a little fiddly at the moment.  Area exploration uses a 'string of beads' system in that the player travels through a series of encounters and events in sequence (fixed at first and the pre-selected by the player and randomised for subsequent runs after defeating the boss).  It would be nice to see this represented visually (something like Slay the Spire's map or even as simple as what some of the later Violated Hero games did).  Whether it would be practical to do these things I don't know.  I'm guessing the game is being developed on a visual novel creator (Ren'py?) and there are probably limitations as to what can be done with the engine.

Overall, seems pretty damn promising at the moment.  I look forward to catching up with the game again further down the line as more content is added.

(I also need to get off my ass and get my own game project, House of Hellish Harlots, moving again!)

Art Commission - Setouchi's Illustration of Volumpula

A while back I set aside some money for an art commission of Volumpula. That fell through unfortunately. Fast forward to about a week or so ago and one of my patrons (thanks Stephen!) pointed me in the direction of Skeb, a Japanese site that facilitates commissions of various artists, including some of the artists of Monster Girl Quest. I love Setouchi's work, especially his gooey slime girls, and put in a request. This is the result:

   

It's lovely. Volumpula does make for a nice soft comfortable bed while she gently drains away all that... tension. If you're not aware of who Volumpula is, she's a pink cushionblob. About a year or so ago, while first experimenting with Twine, I created a couple of monster girl CYOAs. One of which was "Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly". That can be played here: Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly Setouchi did a great job here. I love his monster girls in Monster Girl Quest, so to be able commission him to draw one of mine is a dream come true. I'll talk a bit about Skeb.jp, in case any of you are interested in commissioning pieces for yourselves (which I highly recommend). It's an intermediary site. You put in a request. It's put to the artist. They say yay or nay, and then you get the piece within a certain time period. Setouchi was very very fast with both acceptance and delivery. Some things to note. You deal through the site and not with the artist directly (In fact it is frowned upon to contact them outside of the site). English requests are translated to Japanese with DeepL. As with all machine translation, it's a good idea to run the output Japanese through the translator to make sure you roughly get back to the original English. (I originally described Volumpula's colour as "cherry-blossom pink", which came out as "cherry red" - glad I caught that one!) Payment is taken on submission of request and then held until the artist delivers the piece, so make sure you have the money up front. The work is for personal rather than commercial use. I think that means it's okay to stick it up on a blog or social media site, but not okay to package it up in a game for sale without asking the artist for additional permissions beforehand. This means I'll need to find a different approach if House of Hellish Harlots progresses to the point of needing artwork. If you have a favourite monster girl from MGQ and would like to see more pieces of her in action, I'd recommend dropping in a request. As you can see from Setouchi's page, there are a lot of MGQ pieces requested by fans. There are also other MGQ artists on Skeb such as Shiki (although currently closed to commissions) and Xelvy. Overall I found it an easy and professional site to use. I think I might commission a few more pieces in the future. Never hurts to have more artwork of sexy monster girls and succubi floating around!