Sunday, February 28, 2021

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.

Thursday, December 31, 2020

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.

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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

Friday, December 25, 2020

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.

Tuesday, December 01, 2020

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.

Friday, November 20, 2020

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!)

Thursday, November 12, 2020

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!