Devlog #5

Greetings and salutations!

Battle Succubi has been out for 2 weeks now, and I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk a bit about it's status, the design of the game, and the goals for the coming weeks and months.

First off, I'm proud to say that Battle Succubi has seen just over 4000 views, and a little over 600 downloads. It has been added to around 80 collections. I'm not sure how this compares to other NSFW titles, but I'm absolutely tickled that so many people have taken an interest. Speaking just for myself, I'm just happy that there is now another NSFW title that is NOT just another visual novel built using Ren'Py. I know that many of these are quite popular, and I have enjoyed some of them myself, but they do start to all run together after a while.

That said, as I pointed out in the first devlog, this is a project in its extreme early stages. I've been working on a large number of disparate systems (see below) for approximately one year.

• save/load system
• status effect system
• character attribute system
• sex pose system
• sex skills system linked to sex poses
• menus and UI
• weapon attributes, abilities, and upgrades
• blessings
• sound system triggered from animations
• dialogue and quest system based on ink
• base upgrade system

Besides these systems, I've been making the sex animations myself, as well as all the visual effects for the status effects, and doing the level design.

None of these systems are 100% completed to my satisfaction. Most of them are working in some form, although not all of them are currently accessible in the build of the game on itch.io. I'm always trying to iron out bugs while pushing on with development. I can't say how appreciative I am of the understanding and kind comments from several of the users, in particular Derpasta, who has helped me track down a number of UI and animation issues. There will be more bugs in the future, and I hope users will continue to understand that this is a side project built by a self-taught solo dev, not a well-funded game with a multi-member team of industry veterans. Please keep your expectations in check!

Second, I'd like to speak a bit about the design of the game. The gameplay loop I envision is most similar to Cult of the Lamb. Basicially, it is like Hades, with a more detailed base component.

You send your succubi out of your base and engage in battle with enemies and bosses through different areas. Like Hades, I'm planning on making 4 areas. The areas will be based on castle locations, for example:

1. outer courtyard
2. gatehouse
3. inner courtyard
4. keep

Each area is divided into a set of rooms or encounters, and you will receive a randomly generated reward after each encounter. Since you battle as a succubus, one of the four succubus queens may grant you a blessing.

• Lilith: earth-based status effects
• Agrat bat Mahalat: air-based status effects
• Naamah: water-based status effects
• Eisheth: fire-based status effects

You might also receive different items to level up one of your blessings, shekels to use back at the base, or other items.

Each area will have a boss, with the final boss being your father's killer. Now, I know this seems to imply a linear story, but I have a plan that will justify repeated playthroughs.

In order to level up your succubi, you need mojo. Mojo is a sexual energy resource that you collect by having sex with volunteers you've captured in battle. You can also unlock more poses for a greater variety to the sex action, and level up your succubi's sex skills.

Because the volunteers have refractory periods, you need to go out and do battle in order to give them time to rest. I'm also toying with the idea of receiving some kind of special buff by having sex with a particular volunteer. The volunteers will become habituated to the wiles of the succubi over time, reducing the amount of mojo they give. When it doesn't make sense to drain them anymore, you can dismiss them.

Lastly, regarding the goals for the coming weeks. Currently, many of the blessings you can receive from succubi queens
are just place holders. I hope to begin adding different effects to them and testing these effects in battle. I also hope to build the first boss for the first game area. Below are some more long-term goals.

• rebuild sex pose system for more flexibility and variety
• redesign the status effect, ability and skill systems so that there is less hunting around different scriptable object folders in Unity (this will have no effect on gameplay, but it will speed up development and make finding errors easier)
• add a professional animator to redo the sex animations
• add a graphic designer to redo the UI
• contract out some professional voice actors for more variety in the sex sounds, and to read the dialogue lines in the story

Just for sake of completeness, here are some things which I don't plan on adding:

• pregnancy mechanics
• sexual violence (raping, choking, punching, etc)
• any kind of anime/Japan theme (way too many games/visual novels do this, and it is tired and boring, and seldom done well)
• incest / faux-incest (step-father/daughter, step-brother/sister)
• fishing mechanics

That's about it for now. There will be a new version of the game coming later this weekend, which will remove some of the testing tools, such as the generate volunteer button. This means players will be forced to engage with the combat system.

Cheers,