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What kind of text game should I make?

Hello everyone, it's been a long time since I made Sleeping Sister. Over the years I've come up with various ideas for a new game, but I constantly overthink things, feel like my ideas aren't good enough, and end up scrapping them. Also life gets in the way and I have a full-time day job now, but this is something I've always wanted to come back to because deep down I'm terribly perverted and love creating erotic content.

So, I am asking you, my humble followers and anyone else reading this; What kind of game would you like to play? A theme, a setting, story/narrative driven or more game-mechanic driven, what kind of game-mechanics if so??  Incest will also be the primary kink of whatever I make, because it's personally my biggest kink(don't tell my family 馃か).

Also keep in mind my limitations are pretty much 100% text based. I would, love love love to create a game with actual visuals, but my current living situation(no bedroom, I sleep on the couch. my computer is basically out in the open) offers me exactly zero privacy to create visuals, and I'd rather not have my family see me making stylized porn on my computer monitor, let alone them knowing I make incest content. I think I would just shrivel up and die if they ever found out about that haha... ha.

So toss me some ideas! I think hearing from other people and getting ideas that I may have not considered would help me along the path of actually fuckin' releasing a new game.

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Hi! I've recently picked up Godot and I decided to remake your game as an exercise for myself. I'm largely copying all the in-game text and just focusing on the UI/backend aspect for now, but I may give a shot at extending some things later. Anyway, I was wondering if you would be okay with me uploading it here once it's done, obviously crediting you.

No. Do not copy my game's text verbatim. I appreciate that you are a fan, but please you can make your own game. Use it for practice while you develop your own game system in Godot, but don't publish it. My game scenario is generic enough that you can come up with your own variation of it. Just please don't literally copy-paste my writing.

I've had someone rip my game, make some changes, and re-upload as their own game before without my permission and I had it get taken down.

I know you are creative enough to come up with your own writing, don't doubt yourself.

No worries! I saw you had mentioned you didn't plan to continue with that particular game so I wondered if you'd be fine with letting others continue playing around with the setting. But I totally understand why you wouldn't want that as well. Anyway, thank you for making it and I look forward to your future work. :D

(+5)

I'd mostly just like to see you iterate on what you've already made, if I'm being honest. I enjoy sleeping content and there is nearly none of it to be found. Its why I've replayed your game many times. I can't give much writing advice, as I only dabble, but as far as game dev advice, my main suggestion would be to just release what you do make, and accept the fact that you will never reach the quality you WANT to. It will never be perfect, but it can be finished.

Many people are happy to do basic proofreading for free. It can help avoid repetitious language and phrasing.

As far as visuals, I'd rather you stick with not having any? At the very least keep it ambiguous like the current picture. One of my favorite eroge games is Degrees of Lewdity, and it is very careful to never give explicit descriptions of what partners or love interests LOOK like. It'll describe mannerisms and actions and behavior, but leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks on appearance. It even allows you to choose their gender and genitals independently which if nothing else gives a fun angle of replayability.

It was also something I really liked about your game as well. The more specific you get with your description, the more you inevitably alienate people. Each trait becomes a way to whittle your audience down further. Blonde, cuts out the people that like brunettes and redheads. Call them small and soft and you're push away the people looking for big or fit. Part of the appeal of the medium of words is that you don't have to lock those things in. You can use language like "loving gaze" or "looks of worship" and the reader will happily put in their idealized form on the other side.

(+3)

Thank you for the comment!

"...accept the fact that you will never reach the quality you WANT to. It will never be perfect, but it can be finished."

Well if that isn't the god honest truth I don't know what is haha. That's definitely something I struggle with, trying to make something better than it honestly needs to be. Sometimes good enough is good enough, and releasing something is better than scrapping another project because I'm too self-critical.

Somnophilia is definitely something I will include in whatever I make, and I do have ideas for making it a main focus as well.

As for your points about explicit descriptions, I agree and disagree. I don't like to be super specific about things, but I also prefer giving the reader a general image in their mind they can fill the rest of the details in themselves. A basic description of a character's body type; curvy, slim, athletic, etc. If a female character has a large, small or flat bust. Sometimes height if it's important that a character is specifically tall or short.

Yeah i personally like when there isn't a wall of text just to describe one of the many aspects of a single character, i just want the general idea

(+1)

What if:

There was a set timeline that was going to happen. You could choose to play as the father of the household or the son and the summer would pass as set out in the script. A family of six, father, mother, eldest son, and three younger daughters/sisters. The main character, depending on who they are, has a limited supply of pills to put everyone to sleep and a perfect delivery method to do it (The water filter). This way, as the summer progresses, relatives come over and the main character gets to pick from any of his siblings, cousins, aunts, or female friends that happen to come over during that time. There could be a sleep over, cousins coming to visit, or just normal incest with his sisters/daughters. 

This way, not all experiences can be had at once with the limited number of times everyone will be asleep. What about your uncle getting married? All of the bride's maids that would be sleeping in your large house, or even the bride to be?

Just ideas. Pregnancy would be good ;)

(+4)

I can't say much about what type of game I'd like to play, but I can mention a few things from Sleeping Sister that I feel could be improved in the upcoming game. 

First is the player character's versatility. I mainly mean that in Sleeping Sister the player didn't have that wide of a choice board and that those few choices were straightforward and to the point. Of course, Sleeping Sister is a small game with a simple premise, so this is a given, but more variety in what the player can do would be a great addition. 

The second is vocabulary. I noticed quite a few points in Sleeping Sister where the text seemed identical to other parts of the game. This was most prevalent where the player character orgasms, and the line "Ecstasy surges through your body" is the main thing here. I don't mean to suggest that you need to do anything over the top to amend the vocabulary or phrase usage (for example the synonym system from BDCC), but I do suggest that you look over the text a few times to see if anything feels repetitive. 

Last but not least is the feel of the text itself. Sleeping Sister had a great feel to it, and it was put together well, but in my personal opinion, the text was the most lacking part. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the text or the feel of it, but the flow. Every choice felt less like a transition and more like a block of text being stacked onto the previous block. I can't really describe it well, but to me at least it feels a little... monotone? Every time you wrote in either the player character or the sister showing emotion, you didn't really make them express it, just stated that they were feeling the emotion. I can't think of an example from Sleeping Sister off the top of my head, but I'll make one up. Instead of "You stop when your sister moves a bit, scared that she may have woken up," I would personally write "When your sister flinches at your touch, you freeze up. You watch her with wide eyes, seeing her eyes twitch back and forth under her eyelids." I know it's a small gripe of mine, but I do like descriptive text.

That's all I can really think of in terms of suggestions, but no matter how the new game turns out I'll be here to love it to death just like I love Sleeping Sister. Keep up the good work!

(+3)

Appreciate the feedback.

I wanted to keep Sleeping Sister small in scope, which is why the choices were rather limited. Originally I actually wanted to be able to have her sleep in different positions(on her front, on her side) but ended up scrapping it because it felt like too much scope creep. I'm much more open to making a game with a greater depth of actions and choices.

There was certainly a lot of re-use of writing across like-passages(such as the orgasms) due to me being lazy and not feeling like writing a bespoke variation for each one. It's certainly something I would do differently now, and honestly isn't that hard to do with a text-based game.

And I really appreciate your last point. I've honestly not gotten much, if any good feedback on my actual writing. I definitely see what you mean, which basically boils down to the classic "show, don't tell" which is definitely a weak point of mine I can improve on.

(+1)

Hey, if you need someone to go over your writing and proof-reading, i don't mind volunteering.
I'm an avid reader and write short stories from time to time on reddit's r/writingprompts

The "Show don't tell" point is something I also struggle with. I think the only reason I could notice it in your text is maybe it felt like I was reading something that I would've written. If you ever need Alpha or Beta readers do tell me, I'm happy to help.

(+6)(-3)

Sleeping brother, a different family were you play a slightly older sister and toy with your brother until you get pregnant.

I absolutely second this idea!

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(5 edits) (+5)

Hmm, perhaps keeping in theme with Sleeping Sister somewhat, perhaps a daily life type of game like My Oblivious Milf, where you do perverted things to your family, like groping your mother whilst she's cooking breakfast, cumming in your sister's morning coffee, using your aunt's panties as jerk material, peeping on your cousin showering, etc.

this way you can have more variety, rather than just sleeping situations, heck, you can possibly even incorporate Sleeping Sister as part of the game, using the sleep mechanic. Perhaps a day cycle mechanic, maybe not as varied as  MOM, perhaps Morning, Noon, Evening and Night will be just fine.

I linked this post on reddit's r/lewdgames and r/NSFWgaming as well, hopefully you get more responses and players,
I quite liked Sleeping Sister.

comment from u/nudes_welcomed

Sleeping sister was really good, great mechanics and progression.

Not sure what else I'd like them to make, but while I enjoy some text based games my favourites usually have images. Even just some form of stock images would help. May not be possible with the developers situation but if they could find a way that would be great.

Maybe the next game could include moving around the house and having other interactions and dialogue, more characters to interact with. Combine that with the a similar sex mechanic.

(+2)

Thank you for commenting(I wanted to reply a lot sooner but work's been killing me 馃檭)!

A daily life sim type of game is likely what I'll be going with since it seems like such a popular format. I've actually made my own systems in SugarCube 2 for exactly that(time and day, rooms, npc schedules, quests, items and inventory, even a basic crafting system).

(+4)

I would suggest keeping it text based, so the imagination can flow with the scene. (Or something, iunno.) As for theme, the weirder the better. Let the off collar ideas fly.

(1 edit) (+3)

I agree with the text-based part, and that way our dev doesn't have to worry about their family catching them making a porn game as easily, they'll have to read what our dev is looking at to realise

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An erotic text-based sleep-sex game
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