Aw thanks, glad you enjoy the worldbuilding. Like I've said, a lot of how I make the games just comes down to instinct and what I want to see in a game I play, what I think is neat. And instinct leads me to having actual interesting backdrops for the stuff to happen on (and also spending ages editing together tilesheets to make that happen -.-).
"Cannon fodder" is actually pretty simple in this engine/genre though: the enemies are fairly easy to kill, and there's a lot of them. They exist to make the player feel good about themselves, feel like they're powerful and making progress, and also a safe introductory zone for learning the feel of the mechanics and gameplay. That's the general RPG framework anyway. And then we sprinkle on the filthy implications of that. I try to make most of each game first from the perspective of being "legit" and clean, and then add in "but what if it went wrong?" In theory if you play through the games on the "pure" route, they should almost entirely resemble ordinary RPGs. I want the filth to feel like you took a wrong turn down an alley in the game somehow and suddenly significantly changed the narrative and framing.
In terms of more specifics than that though, not a lot to share because I haven't fully worked it out yet. I will say that the fights with the rats will be fairly simple: not a lot of battle-sex art (because again, the meta-implication is that you're "not even" supposed to lose to them, so why would there be?) But if things go far enough south, there will be some...interesting things happening during fights. And after.
Viewing post in Chapter 3 Progress Update: New Areas, New Enemies comments
Oh, so you mean a lot of weak enemies on the map? I guess it was confusion on my end, but I thought you meant in the fight itself, as in a cat/dog mentioned along with the cannon-fodder rats.
Now that I'm thinking it through, it wouldn't make much sense for them to team up given the little background you just gave about them. Oops, I guess! xd
I remember we got some sprites of the dogs a while ago, which made me wonder how they fit into this setting. I might take a look into the hideout computer and try to match for myself. That lore dump you did was much appreciated lol
Lastly, had that whole ordeal with payment processors and Itch.io been solved or will it affect your next chapter's pricing? I haven't been able to follow the news.
No, you were somewhat right to begin with, though to some degree it's both: more enemies to a mob, and probably a few more mobs on the map (though not going crazy with this).
The payment processor thing is part of larger push this year, and into the future, for increased censorship and surveillance, driven by moral panic and apathy. The specific situation with payment has not gotten any worse or better, but the larger picture continues to get worse. Even more states continue to pass porn ID laws, which are effectively laws attempting to intimidate people out of consuming explicit material in any way, since if they do, their name goes in a database, which will obviously be used for blackmail and coercion in the future, either by the government, hackers, or both. Buy porn, give your government ID, a year later there's a hack, billboards go up in your city with a bunch of the id photos, including yours: "THESE PEOPLE ENJOY [socially unacceptable kind of porn]. DO YOU KNOW THEM?"
We'll see what effect this has on Itch. A number of states are also attempting to ban the use of VPNS to access explicit sites (and will likely succeed, in the sense of passing the law). If they didn't, VPNs would obviously make short work of their surveillance attempts. It's unclear how any of this will work, but if it sticks we are rapidly moving toward a totally de-anonymized internet where, as we've seen elsewhere, you can then be penalized, jailed, debanked etc for saying things the government doesn't like. So we've moved a bit beyond just porn censorship: we're now looking at the potential for TOTAL censorship on the net, enforced by jail time. Meanwhile, Chat Control (all tech companies forced to de-encrypt and monitor all communications of their users) has been resurrected in the EU after Germany killed the first proposal, and will be up for yet another round of negotiations and deal-making.
This is another reason I'm trying to get the game out as soon as I reasonably can. But no, to answer your question, no plan to change pricing at this point.
I see! My question was more focused regarding how the whole thing affects your project, and you did make a good job clarifying it. Any game, regardless of genre, takes time, effort and dedication to make, and I appreciate that above all else. I'm sure these issues are a stress that you did not sign up for, but I assure you there'll always be people to support a good dev who cares for what they publish. I gotta admit, you've done a lot of good progress with such haste even being a lone dev, which is on its own very impressive.
I won't keep on this thread as to not pollute the update page any further, but consider this a token of appreciation!