I’ve been doing some experimental stuff lately:
- Giving the player character a lust meter of their own. This would increase when mortals in the sex encounters take actions that arouse the succubus/incubus. When it overflows, the player character cums and this removes some mana from the meter. It’d be cool if ingesting this tainted seed had some kind of corrupting effect on the mortal, but at the moment it just increases the capacity of the horror meter.
I feel that the mortals in the sex encounters are way too passive and it hurts their believability. The last few weeks I’ve been racking my brains for new actions that mortals can take, but having them do more sex acts without any game mechanical effect is essentially just flavour text. At the same time I don’t think this is adding enough to the game yet to justify the extra complexity of another meter.
- I’ve been taking a look at the innards of Andrew Plotkin’s Mutagen. It’s a random sentence generator that manages to avoid some of the Madlibsy qualities of generators that simply use a template sentence with gaps to fill in. There are lots of places in the game I might use something like this, though attempting this much granularity results in spending more time formalising English grammar than writing.
I most definitely like the idea to give the player a Lust metre and getting them to cum, with the potential to mutate the mortal (or at least increase their horror max). The mana cost sounds fair.
Making mortals more proactive is a GREAT idea, and you could actually diversify combat strategies with that. You could have your standard “blitzkrieg” tactic, where you rush the mortal with lust+illusion, doing most of the work yourself, or you could rework the Tease mechanic to “incite” the mortal to be more proactive, making more use of the new system you’re building, where the process is slower but safer. The blitzkrieg, or the current standard tactic, requires careful balance between horror and lust, but implementing a new system where horror raises more slowly but takes longer (and involves more mortal agency) would add tons of replayability and cater to different playstyles.
Mutagen is wonderful.
It’d be good to see the PC cum too, I had been thinking about that myself a while ago.
I’m not fond of the idea of it having a penalty attached, though.
Making the mortals more proactive is also an excellent idea, and even if it’s just flavour text that’s also perfectly fine in my book.
Could add a bonus for making both you and your mortal partner/victim cum at the same time, as well. That’d help add strategy and variety and whatnot. More interested in what would happen if you have no mana at the time- do you just cum with no mana cost? Seems counterintuitive.
I actually approve of the absence of a player lust meter. It increases the sense that the player avatar is in control of the encounter – as he should be, given the perils-of-the-occult themes.
If it is important that the player be able to cum with game-mechanical effects, it should be voluntary. That could be done with or without a player lust meter, so long as this meter would cap out, like the other player meter, rather than overflow like both of the mortal meters. No incubus or succubus should be at the mercy of a mortal’s wiles, except in the case of an exceptional individual (i.e., a unique mortal’s special ability might allow him to force the player’s lust meter to overflow, but this would be a surprise and a special challenge for the player.)
In the end, it’s your game, and you’ve done a good job with the system so far. My prediction, though, is that adding an arousal meter for the player avatar which the player would strive to avoid maxing out would make the game less like the Fleshcult it’s been and more like all the other meter-management fucking games.
It’s funny you mention exceptional individuals because I’ve been treating it as a character-specific ability that varies the challenge in the late game. I only show the meter as needed, though I guess it raises questions about what the player character’s arousal was all the time when it wasn’t shown.
I don’t think the player should be in complete control of everything. I think if the mortals occasionally cause you to change your plans it’ll make it feel more like there’s someone there that you’re actually interacting with. Currently the only way they do this is via the horror meter, and it gets repetitive.
I’m sorta curious about what other ‘meter-management fucking games’ you have in mind. I had a look around at other h-games when I started working on Fleshcult and most of the other ones that fit that description were pretty much just a case of maxing out an arousal meter to advance through a linear series of scenes. I’d be interested in seeing what other approaches I might’ve missed.
For what it’s worth, I agree that the player shouldn’t be in complete control of everything. Mortals should be able to throw a curve-ball at the player, or at least have some form to stand up against the incubus/succubus at their own game. For the sake of challenge, at least.
Hoo boy.
“I only show the meter as needed, though I guess it raises questions about what the player character’s arousal was all the time when it wasn’t shown.”
It raises that question AND some.
The two issues I have with this, and they’re both pretty large, are
1) As you’d hinted at, the PC only being able to cum in CERTAIN encounters and
2) As the “as it’s needed” thing hints at, the PC’s orgasm actually being a thing that the player would strive to avoid.
Let me ask you to strike these two concepts from your mind in their entirety.
You may not agree to do so, but goddamnit, I’m asking for that in the clearest possible terms.
Trying to postpone an orgasm might be fun from time to time, but as SOON as your succubus/incubus/any kind of sex-demon gets into a sexual encounter with the intention of NOT having orgasms, I have a disagreement with yer game, sir.
I’m all for additional bars for PC,that mana bar IS looking kinda lonely.Right now the standart tactic is just too effective and encounters become boring after a while,especially with almost no “flavor text” present.
Ability to cum is my most anticipated feature(i mean,why even grow balls? 🙂 ) right now,so this is great news.
On the topic if the meter should overflow or not,i think making it voluntary and overflow under specific conditions only is a good idea. I think it would make sense to add a”fatigue” bar besides the lust one,which will be gradually filled when partner actively uses special skills,or PC cums.You can even replace horror bar with fatigue one,if you ever employ situations in which PC is on the home ground already(for ex.,trying to recruit one of the intruders,or captured demon hunters).
You can also make current victim attitude play bigger role,like bigger effects on fatigue bar and lesser effects on horror one,or just the level of how proactive the partner will be.