TheGatewayOfRealities
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The Big Reboot
🕑 Added 2022-02-26 20:44:02 +0000 UTCApologies for taking a long time between updates: I re-wrote this post 5 times during the month, then when I had it almost ready, I got very ill (and still recovering). Overall we also needed more time until we could show some screenshots of what I'm about to talk. I hope you'll find it worthy of the wait!
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So you all know how we haven't managed to make a new build in a few years, and despite us pushing for it with all out strength, it wasn't approaching any faster.
Without getting into details, it's sufficient to say that making games is really hard, and making an **immersive sim** game I dreamed of is quadruple so. Additionally, game just grew way too big for two people to manage.
To do something about this situation, before its too late, I started cutting ideas out, trimming it to its core essence. And then over a few months I repeated this process multiple times, cutting and shuffling everything.
Now, with ballast thrown away, combined with our modular codebase and years of experience, I feel like development on the game is finally taking off, much faster than ever before.
So what was sacrificed? What is the game like now? About that and more, read in this post!
New Direction
I think we can agree that "a game where you play as a sexy nonhuman creature" is roughly what we all wanted. It can take many forms with such vague formulation however.
To avoid further pitfalls and delays, I decided to re-wrap this idea around a much simpler, manageable form. After a lot of deliberations, this is what I formulated:
A lewd adventure across various interconnected levels of a sensual world, focused on acquiring and using traversal abilities. Featuring plenty of horny creatures and various exquisite kinks that our synthosaur protagonist is eager to explore!
Lets take a look in detail what that means! Everything I'm showing down below is a product of this month alone, so it's all rough work-in-progress, but I'm very happy with how much it progressed already.
Sideways Camera
One of the hardest decisions was to return back to a fixed, 2.5D camera perspective, like in the original vision, except sideways instead of top-down now.
I love full 3D worlds, but I had to do this to reduce the workload. Making full 3D open spaces is an immense time requirement that we'd rather spend making the game better and more rich in content variety. As we can't afford hiring anyone to help us, we have to prioritize.
Most of the models and assets are still 3D though, not flat drawings. After this game is done, we could reuse and expand these assets for the next project as well, one that could be in third-person.
Lewd Themes
Of course I would not be Salireths if I was going to make just a regular side-scroller. It's lewd and kinky: it has tentacles, vore (of all kinds), and even inflation as planned game mechanics. I'm aiming to properly explore this mostly untouched (by games) creative field.
It's not a "realistic life simulation with organic freedom" anymore, its a full-on adult game. Easier to market it this way - another simplification to help us make it happen, and to distill what our game is truly about.
Cute Protagonist
Another big decision was to make a protagonist character, instead of trying to design a game around a blank slate that is supposed to be filled by any character of any species created by the player.
I started with drawing some concept art pics. I wanted to design a cute playable character - got plenty of inspiration from classical platformers, from a statue in a theme park, and from that one anime series about digital world. In general I struggle with cuteness, but I think this one suits!
YoYo is a synthetic dinosaur, with a sad backstory of being an advanced, emotional AI animatronic working at a theme park, who got shutdown for developing a passion towards "inappropriate" things. His gentle, curious, ever-wanting synthetic soul was saved - though how and why we are going to explore with development of the game's story, I can't wait!
Another reason why I made him synthetic - when the game world starts doing some weird things under his tail, it would be generally more acceptable and less disturbing, I think?
Yoyo is not a "hard robot", there is a lot of fleshiness and stretchiness in him, for obvious reasons :}
🔶 Having a fixed protagonist also removes character editor from the game, however it's not gone - we're splitting it into a separate project. A standalone web-based furry/scalie avatar creator, for any game, animation, or VR. More about that in the future posts!
Lewd Movement and Abilities
We're going for a traversal-focused metroidvania, where player unlocks new abilities as they progress through interconnected levels. The core lewd theme has to always be maintained throughout its world and its inhabitants.
There is plenty of ideas to explore, so much things can be done to YoYo's bodyparts (once he gets them installed).
While I don't intend it to have regular metroidvania combat, interactions with other creatures are a goldmine of kinky ideas... Tongues, tails, tailholes - so many "tools" to use creatively! However more planning and prototyping work is needed first, so I'll leave explanations at that for now.
Example Ideas:
- Ability to crawl up a creature's tailhole to assume direct control over them.
- Inflating YoYo with propellant gas that can be expelled to gain speed boost or double-jump.
- Using a tongue as a grappling hook, or as a weapon to make other creatures expel their essence.
- Inserting various things up YoYo's tailhole to gain various passive benefits.
- Spraying off liquids to lubricate or make surfaces sticky.
Abilities aren't set in stone - we plan to naturally grow the game and explore what's fun and what isn't. You know, how "proper" game developers actually do it.
This sketch describes a few possible powerup ideas, entities that YoYo could swallow and then either spit out or lay, producing various effects necessary for progression (or for some multiplayer mayhem).
For now, we set a simple and achievable goal of blocking out levels, prototyping movement, animating, and giving YoYo just a couple of unlockable abilities.
Possible Multiplayer
While the majority of the game is for a single player to experience, we're thinking about retaining multiplayer in some form, most likely as party mini-games taking place on separate maps. After all, we didn't spend time coding multiplayer features for nothing!
Perhaps that's what we should focus on asap, so people have something to play while waiting for new builds, for the story campaign to be finished.
Co-op is technically possible too, however I have yet to find an example of a metroidvania that has a drop-in/drop-out co-op, thus I'm having hard time imagining how that would work at all.
Kink-Inspired Worldbuilding
🔷 Full map concept with annotations is in the attachments down below. Don't forget to check it out, it has a lot of additional information in it.
Any good metroidvania should have a deep, immersive world. And for our game, it is especially important to describe why the world is so damn lewd, scientifically, of course!
Thankfully, I already have laid out the groundwork for a such unique setting: an extraordinary sensual world set in Astral Planes, ruled by Great Dragon Gods, who each represent a different kink and lead a Guild of dedicated followers. This is my multiverse that I will likely continue to develop all my life.
But in order for this game to be released sooner than that, I have to pick and choose the most important (and interesting) elements, while leaving the rest out. This will be, as always, a great challenge. I'm still working on figuring out the plot and locations for the game.
🔶 Regardless, I will likely keep working on my world at large in my (nonexistent) free time, making more lewd concept art - if not for the game, then just to show its many wonders to people (like I already did a few times)!
🔶 I'm also Game-Mastering a tabletop-RPG now, where I intend to develop the world further together with players, and I would love to make stories of our adventures public. And perhaps, one day, it will become a proper centerpiece for the next game, comics, or even a book!
Conclusion
Yet another giant post after I promised to keep them short...
But in my defense, this time it was imperative to lay it all out at once - there is so much changes, so I was afraid it would make following further development without having this proper context would be impractical!
Some people might not like me steering our project to such a different direction...
But please keep an open mind, I'm doing this because I want to finish the game within a shorter time frame, partially also in hopes to gain some financial security (something I still don't have, and I'm turning 29 in three weeks).
I gained lots of experience over the years, and now I know how much time these big ideas of mine take. So now instead of dreaming about making an impossible for a two-people-team game, I know what can be cut to save time, still, hopefully, producing a decent lewd game.
And I've made up my mind
I ain't wasting no more time
But, here I go again!
With lots of Dragon Love.
- Salireths.
Comments
Lapsio
tbh I think 2.5D is not good choice for anything else than platformer. All approaches to make somewhat-open worlds in 2.5D space (like eg. Kincaid) feel awkward and unnatural. Also I fail to imagine reasonable multiplayer in such environment. Probably original idea of 2.5D with topdown camera could work much better for that. It still significantly reduces height of world so should make development a bit easier than full 3D but without enormous restrictions of side camera That said Little Big Planet was 2.5D with side camera and imho it was one of the best co-op games of decade and it still had some kind of story and progression and overall felt quite consistent and complete. They simply nailed it. I believe you could learn a lot from the way they executed it (even if it'd require you to purchase PlayStation just for that lol... Imho this game alone is worth buying PS).
Trance!
I feel like 2.5D may be a little too constrictive
