Tuesday, August 03, 2021

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.

Thursday, July 01, 2021

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!).

Sunday, June 20, 2021

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!

Tuesday, June 08, 2021

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.


Friday, June 04, 2021

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

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! 

Thursday, May 13, 2021

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. 


Sunday, May 02, 2021

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.