Jackson in HRPG-World: 4-5 Bubble Bother

Bab leads floats Jackson up to her bedroom for a little foreplay.


Jackson in HRPG-World: 4-5 Bubble Bother

He pushed ineffectually at the elastic walls.  Through the translucent membrane he saw Bab looking up at him with an impish smile on her full lips.

You really walked into this one, Jackson thought.

The bubble continued to float up higher.  Jackson’s options at this point were rather limited, imprisoned as he was within the sphere.  A hamster in one of those plastic balls could at least pick a direction to run in.  All Jackson could do was push his hands out against the rubbery membrane like a convict clutching bars.

Bab gave him a little wave and walked back up the curved staircase.  Jackson floated up with her on the other side of the room.  The bubble followed a preset path and rose up past a balcony and into what looked like a sumptuous bedchamber.  Really fancy.  Like something out of a period drama—all frills and elegant furnishings.

Apart from the arcade cabinet standing against a wall with its electronic guts strewn out of one of the side panels.  That didn’t belong at all.  Naked girls with scales, wings and a tail were not exactly a regular sight in Downton Abbey either.

Bab sat a fancy white Regency table and nonchalantly filed a nail.  Or rather claw.  She held up a stiletto-tipped finger and blew on the nail.  If this had been a cartoon Jackson suspected there’d have been an exaggerated glint of light to emphasise the pointyness.  Bab looked over her shoulder at him and smiled.

Jackson didn’t like that smile at all.

He struggled in another ineffectual attempt to burst out of the bubble.  It drifted slowly across the bedroom, about five or six feet off the ground.  Bab stood up and walked over to meet the bubble in the centre of the room.  Still smiling that impish smile, she held up a single pointed fingernail and let the bubble drift into it.

The bubble popped.

Jackson somersaulted out of the popped bubble as if flung by catapult.  The world shifted again, only this time it felt like he’d had lost a dimension rather than the world around him.  He felt like he was a paper cut-out.  And blue, oddly.  Blue like a cartoon character coming out of a frozen lake, although he didn’t feel any cold.

He ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.  Bab tracked his progress as he bounced around the room.  She bent down and blew another bubble, orange this time.  Jackson’s spinning form fell into the bubble and it flattened out like one of those airbags movie stuntmen dive off buildings into.

Ugh.  Jackson felt proper sick.  He felt like he’d experienced every ride at Alton Towers simultaneously.  His stomach was not in a happy place.

It wasn’t the only part of him struggling.  He lifted up his arms and saw he was flickering in and out of existence like a hologram with a faulty battery.

Worrying.

Bab’s smiling face and expressive wide eyes appeared over the side of airbag bubble.

Even more worrying.

She reached over and buried a claw-tipped hand right into his flickering chest.

Let’s just say the mercury had burst right out of the top of the worry thermometer on that one.

There wasn’t any pain, which was really surprising as her hand had vanished up to past the wrist and was rummaging around inside his rib cage.  Jackson was fairly sure that should at least sting, but he couldn’t feel a thing.  Bab continued to grope around as if rooting for treasure.

And treasure she found.  Jackson’s eyes widened as she pulled a handful of gold coins out of his chest.  Where the hell had they come from?

Bab’s green eyes lit up.  “Ooh, that should keep us going for a while,” she said.

Jackson didn’t really catch that.  He was currently stuck in a full-on weirdilepsy fit.  The picture had gone wrong, as if all the colour had drained out of the world to be replaced with shades of black and white.  The sound was fucked up too, like he was hearing everything through ears filled with cotton wool.

Bab walked over to the ancient arcade machine that looked completely out of place amongst the opulent furnishings.  Jackson heard electronic bleeps as Bab fed the coins into the machine.

“I hacked the game,” Bab called back at him.  “I was fed up of men flickering out and vanishing the moment they lost their last life.  It was annoying.  To get all hot and wet and then, poof, they’re gone.  So...”

She stabbed down on a button.  The machine burbled out an electronic jingle.

“...I added a continue option.”  Smiling ear to ear, she looked back at Jackson.

The queasy insubstantial feeling left him.  Jackson held up his arm and saw it was solid again.  His vision and hearing returned to normal, well normal for being trapped in a virtual world made out of pixels.  He struggled out of the deflating orange airbag and stood back up.

Bab dropped some leftover coins onto a table next to the arcade machine.  She crouched down around the other side and plugged something in.  Then she retrieved a piece of bubblegum from the bowl on the table, undid the wrapper and popped it into her mouth.  She chewed on the gum and blew out a pink bubble.  A normal-sized one this time, not like the weather-balloon-sized one that had swallowed up Jackson before.  She ran a hand over the pink surface as if lightly caressing a breast.

“Hmm, yes,” she said after sucking the gum back into her mouth.  “I think you’ll like how that feels.”

Jackson was wondering why he wasn’t already halfway down the stairs behind him.  He suspected it had something to do with her naked breasts.

And a certain ‘quick screw’ comment.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for a while,” Bab said.  “Not many gamers frequent these parts nowadays and the ones that do are a little...well...beardy.”

“Beardy?”

“Old and nerdy,” Bab elaborated.  “Oh, they’re sweet enough, but they don’t really get a girl’s motor purring, if you know what I mean.”

Jackson did.  Bab’s expression was positively filthy.

Bab walked around him, looking up and down his naked body.  He knew he’d been doing exactly the same a few moments ago, but he hadn’t been so gratuitous about it.

“And I do?”  he said.

If Jackson had a body that ‘got a girl’s motor purring’, it was the first he’d heard of it.  College and university would have gone a lot easier with this knowledge.

“Of course,” Bab said.  “You’re real.  Flesh.  That’s incredibly rare in here.”

Uh-oh.  Things usually turned very bad when game characters noticed that.

“Oh, is that the time?  I really must be—”

Bab crouched down in front of him and grabbed his cock.

That was stepping backwards out.  Not unless he wanted to leave his dick behind, and that wasn’t an option as far as Jackson was concerned.

Bab snapped gum between her full lips.  She looked up at him with her deep green eyes.

“Have you ever had a bubblegum blowjob?” she asked.

to be continued...

An Appetizer for Monster Girl Quest pt3 - Monmusu Delicious -Breakfast-

In this case 'appetizer' is an apt word.  This is a collection of alternative scenarios featuring characters and monsters from Monster Girl Quest and is available on the English dliste here.  First off, it's exclusively Vore.  If you played Monster Girl Quest with the 'Let's-Watch-Luka-Get-Eaten-Afterwards' option box firmly ticked off you're probably going to want to give this a miss.

That caveat out of the way, it's not a bad little curio.  You get a bunch of new artwork and alternative Bad Ending scenarios with appropriately gloopy sound effects.  It's not a game as such, more like scenes from a visual novel that 'play' in any browser.  It's not translated yet, but I suspect someone will come along soon with a translated version.

Most of the vore girls from the first chapter are featured.  Luka gets gulped down (again) by the Lamia, Alice, Alma Elma's tail, and also has a very sticky ending at the hands of the Mimic.  Sara meets the Sphinx (aka the What The Hell Were You Smoking Monster at the end of MGQ1) without Luka.  It doesn't go well.  Camel's Cecil puts in an appearance and ends up in the Jellyfish Girl's bell.  Not even other monster girls are safe as the Two-Tailed Kitsune ends up in the Spider's web and the Goblin Girl (what did she ever do to anyone) goes down the throat of the Genie.  In the guest section the Ghost Girl gets a vore scene she didn't have in the original game.  There's also an alternative Bad End for the Blob Girl which is a big improvement on the fairly rubbish one in MGQ2.

"Yay, I get sex this time before she eats me."

If you're a voreaphile, you'll want this.  If you're in the 'eww' camp, steer clear and wait for MGQ3.  I totter on the fence in between.  I like seeing sexy monster girls render their prey helpless, but it's more fun when they follow up with life/soul-draining sex (you may have noticed this trope repeated over and over in my stories! :) ).  Belly bulges and digestion don't really do anything for me.  Each to their own and all that.

(I did quite like the Ghost Girl and Blob Girl scenes)

With the exception of the Blob Girl, all the monsters are from MGQ1.  Given that quite a few people appear to have downloaded Monmusu Delicious -Breakfast- already, I wouldn't be too surprised to see a Monmusu Delicious -Breakfast- 2 featuring the Canaan sisters, Starfish Girl, Scylla Maid and (shudder) Cassandra from MGQ2.

Oddly, they missed off the Sea Anemone Girl.  Never fear.  I have an idea for a Sea Anemone Girl scenario I might turn into short story.  I'll post it here when done.  If anyone wants to throw some artwork my way I'll happily incorporate that (and throw a link back to the artist's page).

Jackson in HRPG-World: 4-4 Bubble Bother

Jackson meets the dragon.  The scenario does not go as expected...


Jackson in HRPG-World: 4-4 Bubble Bother

"There you are," a feminine voice called out.

Jackson turned around.

He'd found the dragon.

The dragon was not the dinosaur-proportioned fire-breathing monster he expected.  She was a hottie of a different kind.  He watched her descend a curved staircase at the far end of the room.  She was naked and actually kind of fit.  Well, if you ignored the scales...and the thick tail...and the leathery wings folded behind her back...or the long quills she had instead of hair.

To be honest, Jackson thought, she was a bit of a babe even with those.  It was the face.  Aside from a few scales and the hair that wasn’t actually hair, you could almost trick yourself into thinking she was human.  A very cute human, even if her pink skin tended more to lilac than fleshy tones.  The vivid skin tone only added to her exoticism.

Nice pair of boobs as well.  Big, round, totally naked...not really a surprise they caught his eye.  It was her face that held his attention, though.  She had big bright eyes and a wide, expressive smile.  It was the face of a girl that was both beautiful and fun to be with.  Jackson could really fancy a girl with a face like that.

Which made it all the more soul-crushing she was obviously the dragon.

"I've come to rescue the...princess."  Jackson tailed off.  An uncomfortable suspicion was settling in his gut like a bad balti.

“Oh, that’s so sweet,” the naked dragon girl said.  “You battled all the way up here for that.  I don’t really need the help,” she partially extended her wings to show the top of a mountain didn’t exactly qualify as a prison for her, “but the thought is very touching.”

"You're the princess," he said.

The dragon girl nodded, a wide smile on her full lips.

"Princess Babelixiafukiona the forty-eighth.  Seventh in line to the throne of Tay-e-tow."

That suspicion slithering through his guts had been proved right.  Dragon royalty.  What was he supposed to do now—bow to her or slay her?  Slaying might be problem, he thought, looking down at the jagged half-inch of metal sticking out of the hilt that was all that remained of his sword.

“But I’d prefer it if you called me Bab.  Much less formal.”

As was her smile.  And the glint in her eyes as she looked at him.  He didn’t think the shiny spanner twirling around in her left hand was part of the standard distressed damsel wardrobe either.

“Ian,” he replied.  Dragon royalty, would you effing Adam and Eve it.  “I’m a little confused.  The villagers told me there was a princess needing rescuing from a dragon.”

“Oh, I told them to say that,” Bab said.  “Well, ordered really, on pain of crispy-fried barbequed death.

“I didn’t mean it!” she added, seeing Jackson’s shocked expression.  “You know how it is.  Good folk, but not the sharpest knives in the drawer.  They need focus.”

“Why tell them that at all?” Jackson asked.

It was Bab’s turn to grimace.  She sighed.

“Stupid family tradition,” she said.  “We’re not morons like you humans.  We don’t force royal blood to marry royal blood until everyone’s everybody else’s second cousin and the blood is as thin as peasant’s broth.  That’s not the way to maintain a royal line.  Good blood needs fresh infusions of prime genetic stock and what better source than heroes.  Strong, quick, clever, resourceful heroes.

“This,” her hand swung around to encompass the room and the hundred levels below them, “is tradition for the womenfolk of the Mitsuji-Doraga line.  We build a dungeon and mate with the heroes strong enough to make it through to the end.  That’s the path to strong hatchlings, as my mama used to say.”

“This is dragon dating?”  It sounded so crazy it was probably true.

Bab nodded and smiled.

“Well it used to be,” she said.  “None of you idiots play this type of game anymore.  Whatever happened to patience and backbone?  Lose a couple of credits and most of you are gone in a huff before even getting as far as the twelfth level.”

She twirled the spanner around in her hand.

“Maybe it’s my own fault.  Mama did say I was too smart for my own good.  And designing and building these things can get a little addictive.  I must have ramped the difficulty up too high.”

“That’s why the umbrella,” Jackson said.  His ‘heroism’ didn’t seem quite so heroic now.

“It gets lonely up here,” Bab said.  “Sometimes a girl fancies a quick screw.”

Quick screw?  Had he heard that right?

“But with protection.”  Bab held up a finger.  “You’re not a suitable mate.  You failed to spot the significance of the bubblegum at the base of the tower.”

“Bubblegum?”

“A pity.  I think you’d look cute in scales.”

Jackson didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.  To be fair, he was still thinking about that ‘quick screw’ comment.

“So you mean, you...and me?”  He pushed a finger through the hoop of his forefinger and thumb for emphasis.

Could he?  Even with the scales, wings and tail?

Bab smiled coquettishly.  Her eyelids fluttered.  She uncrossed her legs, better exposing the hairless folds of her sex.

Fuck it.  She had a really cute face.

And breasts as big as ripe melons.

The girl not being human hadn’t stopped him before.  Admittedly, those had been situations where the girl hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer, or let him run away.

At least Bab was different.  She hadn’t tried to beat him up first.

Jackson beamed at her.  He dropped his trousers and took off his tunic.  Naked, he took a step towards her.

“Oh,” Bab said.  “We have to fight first.”

Jackson’s smile fell off his face and shattered on the floor.

“Really?  Why?”

Bab gave him an apologetic smile.  “Rules of the game universe.  If we don’t the game might crash.”

Jackson sighed.  “Does it have to be a proper ‘fight’ fight,” he said.  “What if I just tap you and you fall over and pretend it’s a mortal wound?  Would that fool the game?”

Bab tilted her head.  Her bright eyes sparkled.  “Ooh, that’s a good idea.  Yes, that might work.”

“Okay, let’s give it a go,” Jackson said.  He ambled up to her.  A gentle prod to the shoulder should do it.

Bab blew a big red bubble from her mouth.  More bubblegum?  Jackson expected it to pop, but it kept growing and growing.  Before he had a chance to move it expanded into him like a stretchy airbag.  The bubble kept growing and then Jackson was inside it.  He wasn’t sure how that happened.  One moment he’d felt an elastic membrane pushing against the front of his body, and then the next it had melted around him and Jackson was standing inside a giant circular balloon.  His weight provided no impediment as the elastic sphere floated up into the air with him inside it.

He pushed ineffectually at the elastic walls.  Through the translucent membrane he saw Bab looking up at him with an impish smile on her full lips.

You really walked into this one, Jackson thought.

to be continued...

Violated Hero 2, in English (+ other translation sites)

I spotted this question on an old post about Violated Hero 2:

TerraMastero: "Is this game in English?"

Actually...

I wonder what she has in mind...

It has been translated by Dargoth and the English translation can be found here:
http://dargothtranslations.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/vh2-english-1-01/

Checking out some scenes (which may or may not have involved a certain bouncy empress of slime) made me realise my poor little AutoTranslator had got a little confused first time around, which is pretty much to be expected with machine translation.

Fans of Japanese Monster Girl eroges are now fortunate to have a couple of people working on translations.

RogueTranslator is the person to thank for the English version of the Monster Girl Quest games.

Dargoth also has a website devoted to their translations.  They also post information about new and forthcoming monster girl games every so often, so well worth checking out.

Jackson in HRPG-World: 4-3 Bubble Bother

See, I said I wasn't done with him yet...


Jackson in HRPG-World: 4-3 Bubble Bother

Jackson dropped down on top of the marching head.  The clockwork head did not squish.  Instead Jackson's foot slipped out sideways, twisting his ankle.  He fell off and landed in an ungainly heap right in front of the advancing clockwork metal head.  It did not stop.  Heavy metal feet crunched down on Jackson, first breaking his legs, then crushing his vertebrae to powder, before finally shattering his skull like an egg.

It was as painful as it sounded.

* * * *

The unseen figure slapped a scaly hand against its forehead.

"Oh my, you really are stupid," it said.  "Looks like you're going to need some help."

It rummaged through a collection of items in a bowl on the table to the right of the cabinet and plucked out a small cross made out of bright red metal.  It pulled out a tray beneath the screen and dropped the cross inside.

* * * *

Jackson had just rematerialized back at the starting point, thankfully with his bones fully intact, when an object appeared in the air above him and bonked him on the top of his head.

Huh?

He looked down and picked up a metal gothic cross about a foot high.  The metal was black everywhere apart from the edges, where the cross appeared to be picked out with a flame-red outline.  Jackson wondered what he was supposed to do with it.

Oh crap, one of those clanking clockwork heads was already bearing down on him.  More in hope than anything, he thrust out the cross as if warding off a vampire.

A fireball erupted from the centre of the cross and blasted the oncoming head into a shower of bolts, springs and shards of twisted metal.  They faded away leaving behind a ruby as big as Jackson's fist.

Sweet!

The jewel was a piece of abstract treasure.  Jackson couldn't even pick it up.  The moment he reached down, the giant ruby vanished and 700 floated up from where it had been.  A bonus to his score, although he had no idea what that score represented in real terms.

The other two heads dropped down from the level above.  Jackson pointed the metal cross at them and blasted them into glowing shards.

All right!

Following a pause after the last monster had faded away, Jackson was hit by a sudden bout of disorientation.  It felt like he had been snipped out of the world.  The room fell away like the turn of a fruit machine reel while Jackson stayed in place.  Another room moved down to take its place.  Jackson saw a pyramid structure with four of the clockwork metal heads sitting at the top.  And then he was in the room and the clanking monsters were marching down towards him.

Jackson lifted up the cross and blasted them into showers of cogs and springs.

He did the same for the next three levels and was beginning to think the game might be a little too easy when the cross suddenly crumbled away in his hand.

Oh shit.  What now, Jackson thought as he was forced to take hasty evasive action.

* * * *

The unseen onlooker watched Jackson's antics on screen with mounting irritation.

"Okay, that's enough.  I'm not watching you fumble your way through another ninety-five levels.  It's been too fucking long."

They reached into the bowl sitting next to the cabinet and pulled out a vividly patterned umbrella.  It was about the same size as a cocktail umbrella, but far more detailed, like a doll's house miniature.  They opened the tray and dropped it in.

* * * *

Jackson saw an umbrella appear on the top platform.

An umbrella?  What kind of a weapon was that?

He wouldn’t have expected a cross to spit out fireballs either.

He jumped up and put his hand around the handle of the umbrella.  The umbrella opened and the world froze.  He felt that strange dislocation again as if he’d been snipped out of reality.  The room fell away and was replaced by another.  Jackson saw a new type of monster, creepy little hooded spooks, had joined the clockwork heads.  He didn't get a chance to observe them for long.  He'd barely stepped back into the game before he was plucked out again and the world was moving up to the next level.

This happened for the next level, and the one after.

The umbrella was a shortcut, he realised, a level skip.  But how many?  Ten rooms went by, twenty, fifty...  He was halfway up the tower now, floating up on the open umbrella like a regular Mary Poppins.  Floating wasn't the right word.  All his senses told him he was stationary and it was the world around him that was moving.

...sixty...seventy...

Was he supposed to let go or something?  What kind of game dropped a bonus that skipped the entire game?  It didn't make any sense.

It was what happened.  The world finally stopped moving as the umbrella deposited him in a much larger room near the top of the tower.  His feet touched the ground and the umbrella closed before vanishing with a poof.

Jackson glanced around.  The third dimension had returned; he was standing in a room rather than a rectangle.  What type of room though?  Judging from the walls and fittings it looked like a fancy waiting room in a posh mansion or palace.  At least originally.  Now it more resembled a workshop.  The centre of the room was turned over to a large workbench covered in wires, springs, nuts, bolts, cogs, metal plates...

Jackson jumped as he saw another of the clockwork heads.  He needn't have worried.  The thing was upside down and inert.  Its jaw had been removed.  Lying on the floor next to it was a large ball of purple fur with a wide mouth and blank eyes.  It was inert too.  A hatch was opened up in the top of its head and wires trailed out to dangling green circuit boards.  Overall, it looked like someone had taken a sumptuous palace lounge and turned it into a grease monkey's paradise.

"There you are," a feminine voice called out.

Jackson turned around.

He'd found the dragon.

to be continued...

Hero (Monster Girl Quest 3D) - It's the constraints and realistic expectations, stupid!

So after comprehensively stomping all over someone’s puppy I should try and say something positive about the whole 3D Monster Girl Quest (probable) trainwreck.

To be fair, the dude seems pretty good at modelling.  The new Alice model looks pretty good.

But again there’s the time and expectation issue.  How long did it take to make?  What are the range of facial expressions?  What movement animation does she have?  Is she just going to sit there and wag her tail a little, because if that’s the case what is the point of using 3D over Kenkou Cross’s already expressive artwork? 

And remember, there are another 150 monster girls to go after this...

It’s constraints and realistic expectations.  Small game companies and indie developers make very good games because they’re fully aware of their limitations and work within those constraints.

A good example of using 3D graphics to good effect is Pretty Warrior May Cry.  It’s an eroge Dungeon Keeper.  Obviously they didn’t have the budget or team to make full eroge Dungeon Keeper that wouldn’t suck to play, so they abstracted the gameplay to what they could do and stuffed the eroge elements into 3D H-scenes showing exactly how their minions slow down the marauding heroes.  (The lilith animation is available in the trial).

The original MGQ does the same thing.  It’s a RPG with exploration and branching paths replaced with a linear Visual Novel.  This frees them up to concentrate on other things like the story and puzzle(ish) battles (and of course the sexy bad ends).  Violated Hero constrains the player to a Dungeon Master-style Grid.  Desire Dungeon does the same but makes the map a straight line and throws in a chest/loot mechanic.  All the RPG-Maker clones already have most of the RPG mechanics provided by the game maker they’re using.

Hero, Monster Girl Quest 3D, has no constraints.  It’s trying to build everything from the ground up.  In the original MGQ the Succubus Village is abstracted away to a few background pics.  Hero built the town in 3D.  Cool.  But what are they going to do for the Plansect Village, the Harpy Town, the Slime Cave, the cities, the underwater segments, the Demon Lord Castle...?  We’re in George Broussard and Duke Nukem Forever territory here.

No abstraction = too much work = vapourware (or seriously shitty end product that leaves players feeling like someone took a dump in their mouth after eating a foul homemade vindaloo)

Where 3D could really shine is if combined with the combat and Bad Ends.  A Monster Girl Quest with the sex battles/Bad Ends depicted in a similar way to the animations in Pretty Warrior May Cry could work really well.  Aside from the obvious being-ridden-by-a-succubus scenes, various different struggle scenes as Luka is dragged deeper into a slime girl, plant girl or similar enemy would add a lot more to the game than the simple bound/unbound pictures that are used now.  I think a game like this would pick up a lot of interest and have no problems getting indie funding (although it might mean going through offbeatr and smaller dlsites).  It's the difference between going for a niche audience that will definitely come, or jumping for a mainstream audience and falling flat on your face when they don't show.

Again the marketing adage applies: Don't bother trying to appease people that aren't interested in your product anyway.

Hero. Monster Girl Quest...in 3D!

3D Monster Girl Quest, sounds interesting, right?  When I found out an indie developer had picked up permission to make a 3D version of Monster Girl Quest in English I had to check their site out.  3D Monster Girl Quest, got to be awesome, right?

Well...

What I read left me with misgivings.  Major misgivings.

First off is the plan to take all the sex out of the game.  I can see how this might be forced as they want to try and raise funding off Kickstarter.  The problem is Monster Girl Quest is a sex game.  I’ve seen raging fights break out on various parts of the internet (including TVTropes’s shameless decision to redirect the MGQ page to something completely unrelated rather than delete it and lose the inbounds) where people have tried to defend the game along the lines of: “Yes, it’s a porn game, but it’s not bad, really.  It has an actual plot, real characters and it’s funny!”  All of which is true, but...

Here is a simple truth.  Some people are prudish.  They are extremely uncomfortable around any kind of media featuring graphic depictions of sex.  But the thing is, no one actually ever wants to own up to being prudish because prudes are seen as a bit repressed and totally uncool.  Instead they’ll get all haughty and critical.  “It’s boring.”  “It’s shit.”  (You will have read many many movie reviews along these lines – there’s a reason why talented filmmakers like Ken Russell, Paul Verhoeven and Jess Franco end up stuck making tiny indie films in the latter half of their careers)  And to be fair, most things with graphic depictions of sex are shit, because the creators know sex sells and get lazy.  Monster Girl Quest is not one of these things, but it won’t matter because it’s a sex game and they’ve already made up their mind.  It doesn’t matter if you take the sex out, they’re still not going to be interested because they know it was based off a filthy sex game.

Marketing 101: Don’t waste time appeasing people who aren’t going to buy your product anyway.

Another simple truth.  People that say “I’m here for the funny plot and well-written characters.”  Lying.  They’re there for the sex, they just don’t want to admit they’re there for the sex.  MGQ is a sex game.  Taking out the Bad End H-scenes will not stop it from being a sex game.  It’s a world where all the monsters are female and want to hold down the main character and suck out all his cum.  Yes, there’s plenty of funny dialogue between Luka and the others, but most of that is about sex, because—you guessed it—MGQ is a sex game.  Sanitising MGQ by taking out all the sex is not going to leave much behind and certainly not much of what attracted people to the game in the first place.

There is the mention of putting the sex back in for DLC, but that’s even worse as it guarantees the mainstream markets they’re aiming for will banhammer it for being a sex game.  This is a bad start.  In trying for a mainstream audience they’re going to leave themselves in limbo with a game that isn’t a sex game to the people expecting and wanting a sex game, while still being dismissed as a sex game by the people that weren’t that interested in the first place.  For the small funding they’re trying to raise they could have gone straight to offbeatr with the adult version and raised five times that amount in half the time.

Maybe.  It wasn’t the only concern I had.

Graphics come up next.  The reason for 3D seemed very much to be “2D, that’s so last century.  3D modelling is far superior!”  Not really.  Basic 3D artwork usually looks far worse than 2D artwork.  It only starts to get the edge if you want to show complex animations from multiple camera angles.  And you’d only want to do that if you were planning to make a more open world game, which brings me to the next point of concern...

Hydra, just picture it, Monster Girl Quest in a fully open 3D world like Skyrim, wouldn’t that be totally awesome?

Yeah, it would, but we’re in la-la land.  A game like Skyrim has hundreds of developers and a budget of squillions of dollars.  This is a tiny indie developer trying to raise a few thousand on Kickstarter.

And then there’s the demo.  Whoa boy the demo.

If you’re thinking of funding this, please do yourself a favour and play the demo first so you’ll at least know what you’re buying.

The succubus village looks nice, but to be perfectly blunt it’s a horrorshow to play.  It doesn’t look like much thought has been put in to translating the turn-based RPG combat of MGQ into a 3D game.  Press button to swipe at oncoming succubi, die if you’re slightly facing the wrong angle. Brainless button-mashing for the roaming sections wouldn’t be so bad except the controls are horrifically fiddly.  The special skill wheel, while looking like a good idea in the video, plays very poorly in execution.  Then there’s the odd choice to switch back to turn-based for the boss battles.  The mechanics are a mess.

But it’s only a demo, you might say.  Yeah, but this is supposed to show the game off and get the punters excited enough to break out their credit cards.  They’re supposed to play the demo and think, “Yeah, I want some more of this.”  All it did for me was raise the alarm bells to deafening levels.

I don’t know what to make of this.  They have a slick promotional video, but not much in the way of a game.  The cynic in me thinks this is a scam.  They’re using the name and a 3D model of Alice to drum up interest before crapping out a turd and running off with the cash.  The more charitable part of me (a very small part floating around in a sea of corrupt black brain cells) wants to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Their heart’s in the right place, but they’ve pledged to deliver something they have no realistic chance of building.



To be honest I don’t really like putting on the steel toecaps and putting the boot into someone’s pet project (unless they are a filthy scam artist!).  Especially as they seem to be a small developer with limited resources.  But there has to be a some common sense.  If you’re a single developer with a four figure budget, don’t try and make Dark Souls, because the results are not going to be pretty.

Here are some cold hard facts.  MGQ as a game is really just a linear visual novel with some simple RPG combat bolted on over the top.  It still took Torotoro Resistance and multiple artists many months to get part two out.  They haven’t even finished part 3 and it’s been over a year.  This is for a simple linear game.  I don’t want to imagine how much work it would take to remake it as a 3D game with open roaming sections.  There are nearly 150 different monster types in the two chapters.  Most commercial big-budget RPGs don’t have that many!

I wish the developer well and I hope they prove me wrong, but I don't think they have a prayer of pulling this off with the resources available to them.

This was was where I was going to try and counter all the Donny Doom negativity with some helpful suggestions on how this could work.  This post has already run on far too long though.  I'll see if I can get a follow-up post out before the weekend.