CarolJ
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The Milk of Inhuman Kindness Introspective ( + Porn Game Design Thoughts)
🕑 Added 2020-07-07 16:55:23 +0000 UTCI dunno if this would be an introspective or a retrospective or some other type of spective, but the fact of the matter is that I have a few thoughts I want to put down on paper about the game I released recently The Milk of Inhuman Kindness, which you can get here if you haven't already done so.
This was my first serious attempt at making a "game," even if it's "just" a visual novel made with a super simple game-maker engine, and I'm pretty pleased with the end result... With my levels of experience taken into consideration, of course. It's funny, I don't even necessarily have a lot of experience playing visual novels, much less making them, so this was kind of an example of the blind leading the blind, who is also themselves. Basically I just linked hands with myself and spun around in a circle.
As a few players have already kind of spotted, the biggest (and arguably only) specific inspiration for the game is pretty clearly Monster Girl Quest (aka MonMusu Quest) by ToroToro Resistance. I can't link to them specifically, considering some of the content contained therein is objectionable at parts, but the influence is plain to see. The UI elements are pretty close to the default frames in MGQ, the NPCs are represented by colored silhouettes, and as it turned out, the first music pack I got by KOU-G has a lot of tracks in it that are used in MGQ! I think I managed to avoid all of the "familiar" tracks that I spotted, though.
A more general inspiration can be found in how the game's only H-scene plays out, however. I definitely more lean towards Japanese porn games, or "eroge" as assholes like me online will call them. While Western porn games (and a lot of Japanese visual novels, to be fair) have porn scenes or H-scenes that happen as a result of loss or victory or just by interacting with characters, a lot of eroge kind of reserve H-scenes for the player's loss or bad decisions, purposefully-made or not. More often than not, these losses come at the expense of the player's progress, often in the form of a "bad end." You're supposed to lose, in other words, to get to the "good stuff."
In The Milk of Inhuman Kindness (I'm gonna refer to it as MoIK going forward, typing that out is a pain), the only H-scene is presented as a "bad end." You end up willingly submitting to Isabella and becoming her brainwashed slave. The alternative is being trapped in a village of her thralls and living in constant fear that they'll find out you're not entirely "one of them." Stuck between a rock and a hard place, in other words, but one of them gets you a nursing handjob, so that's clearly the one you're supposed to choose. Still, it is by no means a "happy ending" or even a "good ending." You still end up brainwashed, you still end up trapped, and you still end up her obedient slave. Definitely a bad end.
To kind of further muse on this subject, I think it's interesting how there seems to be a stigma against H-scenes being tied to player loss among Western audiences. For me, it's a completely natural progression that ties into a lot of expectations on the player character and the enemies that seek to aggrieve them. The player character is, of course, supposed to be the noble, valiant protagonist. They have a big, important goal, and they're supposed to take care of it as soon as possible and not get sidetracked. They're supposed to do the Right Thing, and... Well, call it part of a Catholic upbringing to say so, but the Right Thing pretty rarely involves superfluous sex!
With that in mind, it follows that the enemies in a porn game wouldn't seek to kill the player character (because that wouldn't be sexy (unless it's that kind of game (which is totally fine (I'm not trying to kinkshame, I swear)))) but rather distract them or otherwise lead them astray from their noble goal. Often through sex. There are a lot of reasons that I feel this just works better for porn games, but the plain and simple truth is that I feel like it works better when sex is evil.
And yes, sex positivity all day every day in real life, but in-game? There have to be stakes! There has to be context! There has to be a fail state. There has to be some degree of temptation and seduction, and it's not really possible to seduce someone into choosing something that isn't any worse than the other option!
Well, I've now gone on a tangent wholly unrelated to the game I actually made and released, so that's fun. I guess this is a subject to go into more formally (mormally?) at a later date. If there's any interest in that from you guys, I mean.
Back to MoIK specifically, though, there are a lot of elements that I'd redo if I had the chance. The opening of the game drags on so long, and it brings very little to the table. Sure, it provides context, but it ultimately doesn't do anything that really serves to make the H-scene hotter. And given that it's a porn game, everything should be in service of, y'know, the porn. I would definitely cut back on the NPCs you "interact" with at the beginning if I were to do this again.
I'd also make sure to get more art! Argh, it was (relatively) expensive to get the pieces for MoIK, but I'm really disappointed that it only has one H-scene. One H-scene in a game! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Well, I guess it was released for free. Still, of all the things I'm upset about, that's what I'm most upset about. There's only one H-scene, and it's very short compared to the rest of the game. Real disappointing.
Speaking of disappointing! TyranoBuilder seemed to fight me every step of the way making this! I picked it up because it seemed to be a pretty straightforward engine to make a game in, but there were so many weird quirks and roadblocks that made it so frustrating to work with. I was talking with a friend who has a lot of experience actually coding things, and after a while of listening to me gripe about the tricks and shortcuts I had to pull with Tyranobuilder, she announced "Congratulations, you're a Real Programmer now." If this is what Real Programming is like, I think I'll pass. Ironically enough, my experience with TyranoBuilder pushed me towards Ren'Py, so I think that may end up being the route I go for more complex games in the future. I want to include combat in an upcoming game, and I simply can't see it being anything but a headache using TyranoBuilder.
That being said, some of the limitations in TyranoBuilder made me get off my ass and- Well, no, I was still sitting, but it made me dust off GIMP and create a bunch of assets by hand. All the buttons and UI was made from scratch, and even if they're not especially complex, I think they still look pretty good! They definitely look better than what TyranoBuilder gives you, especially if you want to use a specific (and apparently "nonstandard") resolution for your game. I had to use Audacity to fudge with some of the music, too. That's right, it wasn't just writing and programming I had to do!
Despite all my frustrations and the various disappointments I have with regards to making the game and the game itself, though, I'm really proud of myself! I managed to finish a pretty big project, and I did it all by myself! Excepting the art, of course. And the music. And the- Well, you get the picture. The Milk of Inhuman Kindness may not have been some revelatory smash-hit, but it's up to around 600 or so downloads, which is insane to me. I dunno how many people actually enjoyed it, but the idea that 600 people downloaded and ostensibly played a short game I made is an absolute delight to me, one that's really encouraging and gratifying.
As many problems as there may be with MoIK, I'm proud of it, and I'm confident it's going to be the first of many "one-shot" games before I move on to bigger projects. This was always supposed to be something for me to cut my teeth on, but as far as "test" games go, I'd say this is a pretty serviceable one!
Hopefully you got something out of reading this! A lot of thought goes into the things I do, even if it pretty much boils down to "INSERT PENIS INTO WET HOLE (VAGINA?)" most of the time. If you're interested in more little posts like this where I go into the thought process of the things I make, let me know! Otherwise, I'll probably just save them for "big" things.
Thank you so much for your support! I hope you've been having a lovely day and I hope you continue to have lovely days!
Comments
Pangolin
Yeah, that for sure, and aftermath-wise things like characters ending up dead or even just (and I'm aware this will sound a bit childish) characters ending up sad. :D I don't think your epilogues have featured that kind of stuff. All totally personal preference, of course. And even so, obviously "not hot to me from hypnosmut point of view" doesn't mean "bad writing"! Sometimes consequences are bound to pile up, especially in longer stories.
Carol J.
Ahhh, less the aftermath of the main story itself and more kind of breaking the fourth wall to say "you are also a bad person for liking this, because it's fucked up." Well, I try to avoid that, too! I was just kinda worried that one of my evergreen habits was spoiling part of my stories for you.
Pangolin
Not that I recall, no! My bad, I worded that part kinda strongly while at the same not stating clearly what I was referring to (the comment was already getting pretty long). I meant the kind of stuff where the reality of ”mind control would be super messed up in real life” hits in a dark and depressing way. Definitely wasn't meant as a slam on epilogues in general, though I can see how first part of that paragraph was sort of phrased that way!
Carol J.
That fourth paragraph is kind of interesting to me, because I always try to include a little epilogue at the end of my stories! Typically it's short and more of a wrap-up after the sex scene ends, but I wonder if it's ever soured the experience for you!
Pangolin
Oh, looking over my post, I just realized - I swear I didn't put in "knight/detective/superhero" to evoke Batman! :o I was just listing "types of determined protagonist dudes with a cause". Edit: Ooo, but that gave me another idea for a GG bonus pairing suggestion!
Pangolin
(Warning, wall of text incoming. :D) The tangent was actually the bit that that was the most interesting to me (not that the game-related musings were <i>uninteresting</i>, I just don't know enough to comment on those except to say ”Wow, sure seems to have been a lot of work in many ways I hadn’t even considered! As probably was obvious from my comments on the first MoIK release, I assumed you had some magical easy-to-use VN maker and the main issues with any follow-ups would be with commissioning art and the complexity of the story tree, rather than literal programming, not to mention drawing the UI elements from scratch!”) But like I said, I know basically nothing about that stuff. So let’s head on to the tangent, which is the point of my comment, while the point of your post, addressed above in my comment, was to me a mere tangent! Ahem: Personally I do find mind control stories way hotter when there are real stakes (cheating/homewrecking, theft/robbery, espionage, converting a determined enemy like a knight/detective/superhero/etc.) rather than just seduction with a bit of extra spice. Maybe because it gives a "realistic" reason why mind control needs to be used, rather than traditional seduction, and it also makes the whole process more back-and-forth, since the "hero" has a reason to resist. That being said, when it comes to ”stories with stakes” I’m also very much NOT into reading an epilogue about the fallout once the story hits its climax and the stakes are lost (whether it’s heartbreak, financial/professional ruin or actual physical harm to the protagonist or others). I see the stories as fantasies that don’t need a ”crash” part - mentioning it in passing during the seduction can be hot, but describing it in detail once it’s happened will usually sour the experience. Anyway, regardless of what I just said about stakes, I gotta add that consensual courtship with hypnokink thrown in for spice is often truly great as well - for example, <i>Chi Chi Chi House</i> was FUCKING AMAZING.
