If I started work on a sequel to Fleshcult, what would you like to see changed?
I have lots of ideas myself, and I’m mulling over a Patreon campaign with a detailed roadmap, but first I’d like to see what everybody else is thinking without tipping the discussion in a particular direction.
(If you’re wondering, yes, this does mean my G-rated games business got indiepocalypsed. Oh well)
I like Fleshcult a lot, which is a bit of an issue when talking about a sequel as my suggestions would focus on small tweaks. For example, the way the “combat” system breaks sexual encounters into individual actions is wonderful, but I’d like to be able to read the whole log after an encounter is completed to get the full picture of what transpired.
Beyond that, I think the erotic game market’s changed quite a bit lately. Especially if you’re talking Patreon, it seems text-only doesn’t really cut it any more. Art is a whole separate can of worms, of course – given the potential character alterations, there would need to be modular portraits – but it also opens more possibilities, like an actual map of the city with locations to visit (clubs, or brothels, or markets, etc).
Generally speaking, I think Fleshcult’s overarching plot is underdeveloped, but delving into the consolidation of power by an infernal entity would tilt the game further into the “management” side. If you wanted to focus on that for the sequel, there should be multiple avenues of advancement. For the stealth approach, there could be the secretive building of a personal demonic army of kidnapped townsfolk, with unaltered but utterly devoted sleeper agents in various districts with various levels of social power (street bums for intel, merchants for cash, politicians for power, turned hunters for defence, etc). For the direct approach, there could be “pyramid scheme” style recruitment starting up in the slums and snowballing as more and more people (matching the PC’s preferences) are funneled through the swelling ranks by the subordinates to be turned into the demonic army’s lieutenants or generals. The culmination of either effort could either see the complete takeover of the city and an establishment of a demonic nation in the mortal realm, or a tearing of a dimensional portal and an invasion in either direction – from the demon realm into the city if the PC wants to please demon lords and be rewarded by them, or from the city into the demon realm if the PC wants to assault a demon lord and (re)take their place by force.
I have similar thoughts about the metagame, though I’d like to keep the player an underdog rather than letting them scale up massively. Like you say, it might get increasingly managerial when most of the erotic potential is being hands-on.
As for what plays well on Patreon, I’m seeing some niche appeal stuff making sustainable money, so that has me optimistic about doubling down on Fleshcult’s strengths rather than emulating the hits.
There are definitely lots of places that graphics could go though. When I did the original pitch for v1, I had a character viewer in mind but I’ve come to see that as too confining. The trick would be to feed the imagination without attempting to do a literal representation of whichever permutation the player’s set up. Maybe close-ups of individual body parts and actions, maybe portraits of characters before they’re recruited and transformed? It all depends on budget, of course.
One advantage a text-only game has over games with graphics is the lack of limits on size. In a text game you can have Y-Cup breasts. You can have a 30-inch penis. Those things look ridiculous when you actually draw them out, but when left to the imagination can be incredibly hot.
Thank you for making this game! I just found it and am really impressed.
There are VERY few adult games that are remotely playable on iOS browsers. Fleshcult is by far the best I’ve found. The layout is strong, even on small screens. The game mechanics are relevant, meaningful, and interesting.
The writing is really, really good. It conjures imagery in a dynamic way that art assets can’t match. I’d suggest doubling-down on that.
I especially enjoyed the custom writing for the special characters (nun, hunter, sorcerer, size queen, etc). Along with the custom writing, I appreciated the fresh challenges that those characters’ traits introduced. More please!
Other ideas:
Option to augment some beasts to be better defenders, and others to be better breeders.
Explicitly pair beasts and concubines (using the current drag-and-drop list) for special benefits.
•Pairing with beasts might boost production, but fatigue the concubine and reduce the beast’s defensive skills.
•Pairing occasionally results in foul offspring. Perhaps a resource, an offering, a defense, or something to send into town.
When seducing followers, I’d like the character dialog to hint at and help navigate their kinks and hangups. Working to overcome their hangups over a few visits could be fun.
Instead of trying to always seduce followers to your lair, players could deny them, using them as wanton informants in each section of town. When revisiting them, they may spill local information each time they are brought to intense orgasm.
•unlocking new unique characters
•warnings of surprise attacks
•location of new vendors/deals
•gifts to you, like a keepsake that you could give to disarm a difficult target.
Casting Illusion repeatedly to manage horror gets a bit boring. Having characters that can be immune, resistant, or force cooldowns regularly would keep me on my toes.
If any art is to be added, perhaps pixel art representations of the concubines and beasts. Something suggestive but abstract enough to not steal focus from the writing. A stretch goal to consider.
I’d support a patreon sequel.
Thank you for this amazing game!
One small, but great improvement that I feel this game could benefit from is the cult aspect. While limited, there is a lot of flesh sculpting options. But I’d like to see maybe some cult management mechanics. The ability to visit people, not just so that I can enslave them in an orgasmic contract. But also warp their minds into my worshipers. From drawing mana in their masturbation prayers, to ultimate orgies powerful enough to summon me.
I’d also think it would be more effective to make the PC “weaker”, like begin the game by just giving people wet dreams, and require the more complex rituals that your cult uses to actually sex someone up in the mortal realm
I would like to see a longer and branching story behind this already great mechanic. More abilities and “enemies”. Maybe an option to go to underworld (for a new spell, for example) and fight/fuck with creepy monsters. And some sort of character viewer, but of a high quality, because low quality graphics destroys the atmosphere (so, it’s better with a high quality or without at all). Could also be done in a newer game engine, such as Unity or Unreal and that would allow to use 3D models with lots of dynamic modifications. I even can help with the programming part).
I’m pretty familiar with Unity at this point – it’s my go-to for action games, been using it since v3.
With 3D, the coding’s not a problem for me. It’s recruiting and paying somebody to do all the modelling and rigging so it doesn’t look like something out of MakeHuman. I can’t model to save my life.
That said I’m impressed by how decent the DAZ characters look in Abandoned: A Tale of Forgotten Lives, which is a solo effort. It’s that Fleshcult would demand a shitton of custom mesh work. Not something I’d attempt without a serious budget.
Personally, I prefer text only. Most of the graphical games land hard in the middle of the uncanny valley and is a real turn off. If you do plan to do graphical, then I’d suggest 2D with a good artist, like Crushstation’s Female Agent.
I’d suggest starting up a forum discussion topic to help facilitate discussion as well.
Worshippers or cult followers that aren’t directly part of the player’s lair could be an interesting mechanic. The player can visit his worshippers, possibly recruit from them, or use them to further his agenda. This can help break up the loop.
Having your followers interact with each other would be nice as well. In my own playthroughs, I like to pair up certain concubine and monsters as couples. A more complex and flexible system could facilitate the player’s imagination.
Another cool idea could be to capture enemies who attack your lair. Then the player can slowly corrupt them and have them join his ranks. As an extra bonus, there can be exclusive monsters/transformation available only from captured enemies. Couple this idea with a war of heaven type deal, with things like fallen angels. The primary antagonist for FC2 would then be like an arch angel or something.
Lastly, a “standard” feature in a lot of management game nowadays is staffing your minions in special tasks. So being able to assign favorite concubines for certain lair functions can add another layer for the player to toy around with.
For graphical options, I recommend the dynamic avatar drawer that I developed
you can find the tester here: http://perplexedpeach.gitlab.io/dynamic-avatar-drawer/
source code: https://gitlab.com/PerplexedPeach/dynamic-avatar-drawer
The biggest benefit is that the graphics are entirely generated from stats, so it changes with changing stats essentially “for free” (artist doesn’t have to redraw anything). It’s quite a powerful engine that handles clothing of various layers, and mixed or missing body parts (elf ears or whatever).
I’m not sure what development environment you’re going to use for fleshcult 2, but you can let me know and I’ll see if it’s compatible (DAD uses Javascript and web canvases, but can be made to work outside of a browser). If so and you’re interested, I could help with its integration.
As for the gameplay/story, I think introducing a dom/sub system would make it more interesting. Currently the player character is always the dominating person (who has the initiative in choosing a sex action).
Vying for sexual dominance (or not) could be implemented as a parameter dependent on personality, clothing, and other effects.
I am very interested in power subversion (you are strong, but someone weak exploited an opportunity to permanently take away some of your power). An example situation: you only let a slave worship and cum on your feet, but their boldness grows every session. Eventually they sneakily came in your shoes and impaired your movement as you put them on. Taking advantage of this, he dominantly fucks you and gives you a magical piercing. The piercing becomes permanently bound (cursed) to you as you climax. The magical effect makes you always submissive to him (could lead to future events), and lowers your overall dominance.
To be honest, I don’t find a procedural vector graphics approach very appealing. I find it way easier to appreciate form when it’s fully lit and shaded.
On the other hand, I dig the idea of outside forces trying to get the protagonist to submit. In particular I could be doing way more to explore their supplication to Narcissus Apotheotic and other gods.
How bout a little of what you have just expanded further, actually being able to make your home and potentuenly take thos that are less inclined (clergy, and those above them) into your dungeons and corrupt them.
I personally would like the game to have more of a visual presence. So like, there is already some stunning, gorgeous artwork in the game. Instead of it being a background covered by text and links, I think it should be the foreground, and you navigate to various rooms in the lair and different outside areas by clicking on the different bits of the picture. The encounters themselves and everything else could still be text, but having varied and amazing backgrounds that you click on to navigate would be a huge improvement and add to the feel of the game and where you are in it.
Secondly, I would like the sex minigame encounters themselves to be more customized to the personality of who you are having sex with. The varied personality intros to the encounters are good, but the text after that for each of the actions is pretty generic for everyone no matter who you are sexing.
On the subject of portraits for characters, I think you could go halfway and not have portraits for the generic characters you collect for your harem, but instead have unique characters that join you who, mortal or otherwise, have only specific story and/or transformation paths, so the number of possible variations for their portraits could be greatly limited, while also adding substance to the world via a more in depth permanent non generic character.
As for what I would like to see in the second game as an expansion to the first game: I would like to be able to visit your harem members in your lair, or people outside, and instead of doing the battle sex mini game, choose between various sex scenes to engage in. So by collecting different people into your harem, you unlock various sex scenes for that personality type. So for example, choosing to visit a housewife/husband could trigger a scene to find them cooking something in the lair’s kitchen for other harem members while wearing nothing but an apron, and you could then choose one of a few sex acts to engage in with them, which triggers a written sex scene describing that. It makes collecting different personality types more rewarding than just the different bonuses you can get. You could then unlock new sex scenes or just variations of the sex scenes after you transform them. I would also like to visit people outside of the lair and engage in similar unlockable sex scenes, which would open up different settings and scenarios. Like going to a club late at night and picking up someone for some fun but not recruiting them. Or going to a church repeatedly and proceeding down a seduction storyline and engaging in various lewd behaviour with the priest/nun in a church setting.
I would also definitely like to be able to engage with unique non generic characters, both out in the world and being able to add some to your lair that you can visit for various sex scenes. My main request is that you have male and female versions for every character, so if you play as gay/straight you are not missing out on that character or whatever else they bring to the lair/world.
Adding a lot more transformation types would be interesting. Maybe bad ends just taking a general look around /d/ would give you an idea of things people would like that you may have yet to think of.
Even holding polls in those communties for people who don’t visit your blog.
As well as if your sequel was a more RPG like game in the vain of CoC, or what carnal souls is trying to be.
And something that could be nice is if you teamed up with an artist like Lucien (https://www.hentai-foundry.com/user/Lucien/profile) to make assets for you.
There’s a million directions you could take, but starting up on patreon, and amassing a following would help.
You could definitely be a giant in the H-Game community if you strive for it hard enough.
The transformation, and alternative hentai market will always be thirsty as fuck.
One of my favorite aspects of the original fleshcult is the sheer customization you could have. You can usually be any orientation and customize what features/kinks you wanted. But the flip side there wasn’t as many scenes revolving around such things. For example, followers who have body modifications just boosted stats and descriptions but not add content. So a guard that had an ovipositor didn’t have scenes where they would dominate and lay eggs in invaders. Same goes for the Player Character as well for some scenes which eventually leads to repetition a lot once you have everything. So I think adding more content to those things in a future game would really flush things out while still keeping the extensive verity.
Gameplay-wise, I really like the layout of everything and the fact it works on mobile devices is such a huge thing. One recommendation is perhaps adding verity for the middle to late game sections so it isn’t just going to the next level of a town the whole way through like other hub areas or changes in the game mechanics with certain people. Dominance/submissiveness can be a big thing as well . noncon/reluctance could also be a thing/option but considering the theme of this game, it seems that it something more suited for invasions/enemies rather than followers (unless you get a feat?).
As for Patreon, there could be access to new versions first for patreon users first that comes out later for non users. That way everyone gets the content but backers can get it first and perhaps even influence things like have requests or votes based on donation levels. (I have no idea how you do your patreon so sorry if a lot of this is wrong)
Overall, this is one of my favorite games because you can really chose what kinks and gender orientation you want which is rare. So I hope it doesn’t fall into being just another transformation game with just females and instead covers a lot. (Male/Female versions for all may help?) I think keeping that as well as expanding it to include lots more content is a strong way to go. As for things like art, I would say it doesn’t need to be a strong focus and could be something that’s on the back end of things or optional and flushed out later. Either way I’m really excited to see how things go for Fleshcult 2 with whatever direction you go and I wish you the best of luck!
From a plot PoV: I’d like to be able to convince the surrounding areas that of *course* having multiple sets of tits is normal, and that having a vaginatongue is a perfectly common thing to have; in a similar vein, I’d think that there would be some subset of the population that would explicitly seek it out, and some that would break out the torches and pitchforks.
As for the game aspect: TBH, I don’t find the actual seduction mechanics to be super rewarding; lots of clicking in a fairly mechanical fashion, much like playing video poker. Having to mentally juggle “OK, if I recruit this person, I can only add a total of six mutations, some of which cost double, and….” ain’t my cup of tea, either, although being able to pipeline a final form without having to check up on things might ease some of that, too.
Pregnancy maybe as an optional feature would be great!
Fleshcult sure had a lot of options but the bulk of them just seem to bolster the plain sex.
I was always hoping an adult game involving monsters would get options for more exotic (and not just flavor text) sex and I don’t mean that parasite stuff (though that has some fun too).
I’m very sorry to hear that your G-rated project fell through, but I am happy to see that you’ll be turning your attention back to the pervy side of the equation. I was one of the backers for the crowdfunding campaign way back when, and I’m excited to see some more attention being given to Fleshcult!
A few things that I think could be improved for a sequel / enhanced version of the game:
1) Follow-up for minions that have been transformed. In the existing game, once minions have joined the lair, they are mostly passive. While they can be transformed, the transformations don’t have much impact outside of gameplay stats – they don’t lead to any new sex scenes, for example, nor do we get any idea of how they might be reacting to their new bodies.
I’d like to see something – a random encounter, a sex scene, or even just some description text – which gives us follow-up on the changes that characters have been subjected to. It would help to engage players more fully with the transformation mechanic.
2) More detailed transformation scenes. Right now, transformations are pretty straightforward – they either happen instantaneously, or immediately after waiting a set number of turns. The player never gets to ‘see’ the transformation occur.
I’m thinking that when the player selects a transformation for a minion, they might see a scene which describes how the transformation is taking place. The minion might be cocooned in the lair, or they might contract a mutagenic virus which changes them, or they could have a parasite latch on to them, and so on. You could go further, and describe how they react as the transformation moves forward – I.e curiosity, terror, arousal, etc.
2.1) Connected transformations? Right now, its possible to inflict very disparate mutations on minions, which don’t necessarily sync well together. It would be interesting to see ‘themed’ transformations – I.e connected transformations meant to turn a character into something specific, like a busty incubus, or a petite incubus trap, etc. Connected transformations could have stacking bonuses, which increase as the player adds more of the set.
3) Less inter-changeable characters / add ‘major NPCs’? Currently, the people that you recruit into the lair are mostly indistinguishable, save for differing stats. This makes it difficult for players to become engaged with lair management, especially during longer playthroughs.
A way to break up this interchangeability might be to add some ‘major NPCs’, who have more content than the regular minions. These could be ‘permanent’ additions to the lair, who are available for additional scenes after being recruited, or who might provide unique bonuses to player stats.
To go a little further, such NPCs might factor into the overall advancement of the story. Important NPCs could serve as ‘bosses’ for various levels of progression, and who, in turn, unlock new gameplay after being recruited – e.g. one NPC could be the specialist who runs the flesh loom, another might lead the defenses, and so on.
4) Enhance the main plot. Right now the plot is a bit thin. There’s the bit about how the main character has made off with the tome, and the conflict with the baron, but this isn’t fleshed out. I’d like to see more material that expands the background narrative. Adding some additional characters, whether they join the lair as described above, or not, might help to accomplish this.
5) Rework the lair defense mechanic. Right now, lair defense is more or less just a check against the lair’s defenders and defenses. Ideally, I’d like to see a more skill-based mini-game here, or at least something with more diverse options for dealing with intruders.
I think that the greatest strength of any recruitment game are the NPC’s you are supposed to recruit. As it was, the process felt slightly mechanical and was starting to become repetitive towards the latter zones due to the recycling of text.
You could add more conversations and flavour text to different types of people, or you could write a few major NPC’s with more unique interactions. Ideally, both, but, you know.
At least, could you please add a short description to the minions? It’s really easy to forget who is who going just by names. Something as simple as “former nun” or “corrupted punk”‘ (on that note, it was such a shame to swap out priests and nuns for concubines with higher stats).
Maybe a way to interact with minions: scientists as well as concubines and beasts.
Also, could you make so the gameplay doesn’t push you to get huge muscles/tits and an equally huge dick/balls? A lean appearance is more appealing to me and reduced stats made things more difficult.
Thank you for listening to us!
Do more gay demon stuff
One of the best aspects of this game in my opinion is when the humans start inflicting lust on the succubus. It makes each encounter far more engaging, and I’d love to see that expanded on in the future. Maybe humans could counter with their own attempts at seducing the PC somehow. Whenever the humans don’t reciprocate (imo) the game becomes less interesting, more work, less pleasure.
+1
Threesome, group, double and triple penetration