Art of Pori, the Love Sponge

Pori, the Love Sponge is one of the harlots in "The House of Hellish Harlots".  The public demo of that has been updated to v0.025 and can be played here.  Here is a lovely pic of her, showing her in all her comfy loveliness.

While I'd love to say I was responsible for this, the piece was independently commissioned by Mark45 and he kindly gave me permission to share it.

The artist is HunggryCroissant and more of their work can be found here.

I like this.  If I was to add art to HoHH it would be through profile pictures like this.  The ideal GUI for HoHH would likely take the form of a book with artwork on the left page and the text on the right.  Unfortunately, I lack the wherewithal to create this, so the project will likely stay text-only for the moment.  What I did think of doing was to create a profile page on houseofhellishharlots.com and list all the harlots with profile pics and details (Kind of like Monster Girl Encyclopaedia, but if all the monster girls were offering services in a massage parlour/brothel).  Art like this would be perfect for that.

Public demo version of "House of Hellish Harlots" updated to v0.025

Not quite the "hopefully, by the end of the week" as I originally said, as October was bedevilled with technical problems for me which ended up in me needing to replace my computer, but I've finally managed to update the public website version of "House of Hellish Harlots" to v0.025.  It can be found here:

https://houseofhellishharlots.com/

The major change is the addition of an accelerated restart mode.  I got plenty of feedback about how annoying it was to have to go through the Barman's introduction and warnings for every new game and so added an option to skip that for subsequent playthroughs (similar to how the original car journey and Madam's tour are skippable on subsequent playthroughs).  I also extended this to the Madam's explanations of how Mulligan Tokens work.  The accelerated restart option drops the player right in at the first round of harlot choices.  This should make the game a lot more playable!

I've also given the demo a designated endpoint.  There were reasons for the "we've run out of harlots" comment from the Madam, but it probably seemed weird to players to get it after only seeing 6 of 40 harlots.  Now, the demo runs for the first 5 rounds.  The 5th round is a designated special mini-boss round.  No 'mini-bosses' have been added yet (they will have slightly longer and more complex scenarios than the regular harlots), but I've moved back most of the really dangerous harlots to round 5 to temporarily fill that role.  This should reduce the chances of the player getting a first round of harlots that are impossible to survive.

I've added a changelog section to the webpage, so the full details can be found there.  I've also added some separate sections for links and begging for any artists to take interest.

Patrons are slightly ahead at the moment as I released a new version at the end of the month that includes two new harlots.  They are at v0.026 while the public version is at v0.025.  Because I want patrons to feel like they're paying for something (and if you wish to support this project, you can do it here), I'll continue to maintain the early access approach of patrons getting the new version a month before the public update.   

As for the overall look of the website, yeah, my webdev skills... suck.  I'm definitely very boomer-esque when it comes to that department.  I probably spent most of last night screaming at the screen because I'd change a font size, hit publish, only for the change to be completely ignored (likely because some other global setting I'm unaware of is overriding it).  That's something I'm just going to have to keep working at until I get better.  At the moment it sort of displays okay as plain white text on a black background to me, but I don't know if it's doing crazy stuff like white text on a white background for other people.  If you notice anything off, please let me know.  Also, because I am clearly noobish, any hints, tips, feedback and suggestions will be gratefully received!

The idea I had for the website was to have it spoof a high-class brothel/massage parlour website, with sections for facilities, ladies available, etc.  As I'm not sure I'll be able to add artwork to Twine without it slowing down to a crawl, a nice interim step would be to create a "Ladies" page that lists all the harlots with a profile and picture.  Think Monster Girl Encyclopaedia, but with the profile listing what services they offer and specialties.  The current site is a long way off that at the moment, but I think that idea is doable and something to aim for.  Consider it a work in progress I'll keep tinkering with to make better

Anyway, have fun and try to avoid those Horror Ends!

New(ish) Story for Literotica's 2021 Halloween Story Competition: "The Subway Succubus"

 My entrant for Literotica's 2021 Halloween Story competition is up:

"The Subway Succubus"

Okay, so this one isn't brand spanking new.  I wrote it last year.  I was a bit poor with competition deadlines last year.  "The Succubus in Mr Herbert's Summer House" was supposed to be my entrant to the Summer Lovin' competition.  I didn't finish it in time, so I entered it into the Halloween competition instead.  "The Subway Succubus" was supposed to be my entrant for the 2020 Halloween competition, but I didn't finish that either.  I posted it afterwards.  It was rejected for being a little too nasty, so I used it as a (temporary) patron-exclusive on Patreon.

Roll around to 2021 and I'm a bit iffy on whether I'll be able to finish a new story for this year's competition.  I lost the first week of October to having to redo most of September's work after a software crash, and I'm currently up to my eyeballs trying to get a new public release of "House of Hellish Harlots" ready.

I do have a half-written story that I was originally planning to finish and enter, and I will set aside a couple of days next week to see if I can finish it.  What with everything else going on, I'm not confident that will happen and it will likely get pushed back for another attempt next year.

Then I remembered I had "The Subway Succubus" lying around.  I thought I'd resubmit it with a nice big disclaimer at the top and see if it would go through this time.  And it did.

As an aside, if I feel the need to put a disclaimer at the start, yeah, you can be sure the story is going in some nasty places.  So, consider yourself warned.  I wanted to write a proper scary-monster-succubus for this one.  It definitely brings the 'horror' of  'erotic horror' and gets a bit icky at the end.

Normally I write a bit about how Literotica's competition scoring works, but it's not really necessary in this case.  This one isn't placing, so there's no need to worry about that!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy (and are not too traumatised!) 

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.