i'm heading into the last stages of developing night train, my latest erotic simulation game. it's a successor to my last project, dark room, which was a smaller project to test the waters.

in this post i want to elaborate on some of my choices in dark room and night train as well as progress on the project. besides sharing these things i want to hear from you, i'm hoping for opinions, ideas and feedback.

inspirations

of all the erotic games i've played i've always been most impressed by those in which the erotic content directly flows from and is inherent in the gameplay. where most erotic games ask you to perform something that is essentially detached from the sex (usually a puzzle) there is something satisfying in truly playing the sex. 

i want to highlight lyonesse, a game consisting exclusively of (mostly) static images where you can only interact by clicking numbers on the screen that lead to different screens. within this very simple framing sex is achieved by clicking parts of the body, leading to different angles and new numbers, or paths, to click. i found this simplicity and directness of input very inspiring.

i'm sure many people have heard of karryn's prison.  a prison simulation game where the goal is to restore order to an overrun prison through fighting it's inmates and upgrading the facility. in this game the combat is uniquely open-ended, your character and opponents have a variety of states like horny or angry, which dictate their respective actions and reactions. once opponents are horny they will try to have sex with your character who in turn can resist or go along with it and vice versa. all of this will play out differently depending on how you upgrade your character and what has happend to them thus far, even within these choices there is subtlety. this directness of input is really uncommon and something i'm desperate to see more of.

night train

in night train you play as a conductor on their first week at work, specifically on the connection to Harlotton where an infamous erotic festival is being held. over the course of the week you get to know your cute colleague and witness the passengers get progressively more rowdy, flirtatious and underdressed. the main gameplay consists of checking the passenger's tickets, they might be out of date, damaged or falsified.  your character is particularly sensitive to nudity and will get aroused when standing next to exposed passengers, giving you limited time to check their tickets.
i don't want to give everything away but i'm introducing new interactions and types of encounters every night of the week to keep the player excited for what's next.

i've talked about games with very hands-on sex, my own project is quite subtle in that regard. it will consist most strongly of voyeuristic content, with interaction here and there. you will be put in somewhat of a passive position. it's a choice that suits my tastes and hopefully fulfills other's as well.

besides the gameplay loop some fun things i've already completed are the procedurally generated passengers, who can look i-don't-know-how-many different ways with apparently already 800 variations in clothes, species and poses, don't know where the time went... 
compared to dark room, there is a higher degree of control on my end of the npc's. i feel that my last game was too randomly generated, this led to mismatches between character dialogue, expression and the lewdity of the photo's they brought in. while occassionaly funny and appropriate, it has felt far better to expand my control and limit randomness.

as i say i'm in the last stages of development, i would say i'm 75% done with the story, 80% of coding and 90% of visuals, with sound and bug squashing being the last big tasks. all this to say that the release won't be too far off, real life circumstances permitting.

questions and feedback are welcome. also, if you have thoughts on erotic game design, possibly contrary to mine, i would love to talk about it. while i work solo most of the time i'm also open to collaboration.

thank you for reading.