BazilRacoondog
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"The More You Shave..." gameplay concept
🕑 Added 2023-10-19 16:28:56 +0000 UTCWell, only I started working on my first Spooktober piece when suddenly i got a big burst of inspiration for my game project and just couldn't stand it, spending recent two days doing this.
It happened suddenly when I was discussing Rhythm Tengoku (Rhythm Heaven) game series with my friends in our small Telegram chat and of course it was impossible to not remember and mention Rhythm Tweezers level. If you don't know what are Rhythm Tengoku and Rhythm Tweezers then here's some trivia:
Rhythm Heaven is a Japanese series of rhythm based games which have its vibe a bit similar to WarioWare game series with short but intense mini-game compilation format full of absurd humor and diverse visual style. But, as I said first, unlike WarioWare it's all rhythm based, hence the name. The first Rhythm Heaven game was released on Game Boy Advance and the fun fact is that it's also the last game officially released on this console. I discovered it about one year ago and for now it's the only game in the series I played myself. Rhythm Tweezers (or Vegeta Pull depending on localization being EU or USA) is one of the first mini-games, iconically known and referred in later parts, it's a funny game where you're tweezers plucking hair from faces of vegetables in rhythm to an arabic tune. Here's a video because no words can really describe it.
https://youtu.be/GNqQqFmCdZw
All this prologue is just to say that being reminded about this game again I got an idea of adding a hair-centered game in my compilation. As you probably remember, my idea was to make 6-in-1 mini-game compilation, three already have all the materials prepared and the rest three were just concepts in my head. The problem is that one of them bothered me a lot. You also maybe remember a gif I made with hyper muscular Vityai from "Vityai's Workout" gaining fat (if you don't then here's the link https://www.patreon.com/posts/game-project-80070486), I very much loved that sequense and wanted to make it one of these 6 games. In one you make him muscular and the other one is a kind of a sequel where he is letting himself go, indulging into food and gaining fat, I'm not saying it's a bad idea and I'm not canceling it but I just couldn't get this unpleasant thought out of my head that I was intended to make 6 completely different games with 6 different kinks and 6 different mechanics. While this game uses Vityai's sprite from another game and more than that it's a weight gain again which was already used for "Volk's Feed-up Time". So, in my opinion it's a good replacement. Vityai's weight gain can be made but only as a completely separate thing when I'm done with this project.
So, about the gameplay. You're supposed to use your keyboard to control a razor blade cursor to shave off the hair from Volk's body with your action button pressed while moving, similar to an eraser tool in a drawing software. The goal is to shave off all the hair before the timer runs out. As you can see, gameplay screen is very simple and consists of body part screen, timer and number level window and full-body view screen which should indicate which part still has hair. Body parts screens are not combined into one scrolling image and will change from one screen to another once you reach the edge, I thought it would be more authentic for a retro game.
Just like every game in a planned compilation, this one should have 7 levels with raising difficulty, mainly changing your time limit and the amount of hair you have to shave. I also plan to find the ways to make the game more random so it can be less predictable and repetitive so it don't get boring too quickly. For now all I have in mind is that levels will randomly have Vityai instead of Volk or a side view instead of front. I still think the game process itself needs some random elements too, it's hard to come up with something for a concept like this but, idk, maybe you can accidentally leave a cut on a body with razor at random and have to put a band-aid on it to have the level finished or something.
The name was called "The More You Shave..." as a part of a phrase continuing with "... The more it grows", referring to a common myth that body hair grow even more when you shave them which I honestly believed myself for a long time. The fact you SHAVE the character in a game is just a bit contradictory to my fetish for MORE hair, especially since I imagined congratulation screen showing both Volk and Vityai becoming super hairy and it can make you question what is it congratulating you for? For shaving all the time only to fail and get your character even hairier than ever? So I pretended it's all intended to make character turning hairier deliberately according to that myth.
I compiled all the materials in one gif to make it easier to look all at once. Also made full-body images with all the screens connected to show that they match each other perfectly and make a good complete picture, first time they didn't match and I thought it's fine, it can be like each screen has a different scale but then I decided it's better to keep them in one scale. I didn't draw palms and feet ends because they're not supposed to be hairy and need no screens even though they're presented on a small full-body view screen just for the fact. I tried to keep body style as minimalistic and authentically retro as possible yet I'm still thinking about adding some primitive pattern to background. There's still a lot of work to do with alternative bodies but once I'm done I'll start working on title screen, congratulations screen and bonus game. For now I have to return to Spooktober ideas. Hope you enjoy!
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