Post by wurbleburp in Finally on Steam too! comments

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Hey, been following this project for a while now, and I've got to say, I'm quite impressed at the progress that's been made (my procrastinating ass could NEVER)

I had a few questions, as well as (potentially) a little input - both as an aspiring indie dev and consumer of video games

I'm a big fan of a lot of the mechanics this game has going for it in it's current state (e.g. the distinct stages before & after claiming an altar, sexual "economy", necromancy, etc.), however some others need refinement (unit movement, attack animations, etc.)

I noticed a little bit of a trend (buggy unit control, lack of a "Real-time Strategy" tag) and I had a question: What games inspired the gameplay aspects of this project, and did you know that you would be making an RTS game when you started?

(also, shot in the dark, been having difficulty applying myself to game development recently - any chance I could get a look under the hood sometime? ~~you can totes ignore this part btw no pressure~~)

Malerouille11 days ago(+1)

Helloooo, thanks for your message!

I was inspired mostly by my experience with Age of Empires games and some nice tower defense I played, but I was not trying to replicate anything beside the controls. I knew the gameplay would be weird and I just wanted to push it as far as I could to make it original and fun. Hopefully I'll get enough feedback from the players to complete the game to fit their needs and polish the experience!

The idea is 100% inspired by the legends of satanic orgies and inquisition stories. I always wanted to make a game where you protect an orgy summoning a demon against waves of fanatics. And I slowly leaned toward the RTS genre cause my attempts with first person prototypes were boring and crap.

Working alone it's quite difficult to polish and balance everything so I'll gather all the feedback I can to improve the game bit by bit. Then if you wanna try game development, I never ever try to make a 3D RTS all by yourself: it's hard and tedious, players are extremely picky, you need a ton of content for limited hours of gameplay, it isn't trendy at all most people want to turn off their brain NSFW wise. I'm kind of a masochistic idiot I guess X'D

As for the under-the-hood all I can share the tools I used. Basically Unity a lot with a top down oriented plugin (https://topdown-engine-docs.moremountains.com/index.html). But I had to customise it heavily to fit my needs.

wurbleburp10 days ago(+1)

Ooh, age of empires - I've heard a lot about the franchise but haven't played any yet, will have to add them to my ever-expanding list of games I need to play :p

I can definitely see how the concept would somewhat force you in an RTS direction, and I commend you for seeing the idea through regardless. I generally have a bit of an opposite approach in that I always try to iron out a gameplay concept first, and then layer appropriate visuals/story on top afterwards (Unforeseen consequence of having Aphantasia, I guess).

As far as balancing goes, don't worry too much about the numbers - that stuff is primarily for multiplayer games. Just make sure to keep it organized in such a way that you can make a backend for adjusting difficulty in the future. A super easy way to fine-tune the difficulty is to add a Postal 2 amount of difficulties (search "Postal 2 difficulties" if you're unfamiliar) and have people decide on a sweetspot for themselves.

The one aspect of balance that I would be mindful about is randomization. Don't randomize features unnecessarily, as being rewarded for spamming "Restart level" isn't a particularly engaging feature (I'm looking at you, roaming enemies and pillories/stocks).

Aside from that, here are a couple of suggestions for you, as far as the current state of the game goes, in no particular order:

1) Try researching/messing around with Foreswing vs Backswing, as well as Hitscan vs Projectiles - Understanding more about these mechanics and their implementation helps a ton.

Playing some Battle Cats can give you a good understanding of the importance of Foreswing vs Backswing, and Starcraft 2 helped me learn some of the niche differences between projectile types and hitscan.

2) Try refining the Sex mechanic to feel more intentional/deliberate - maybe through tying it to either control groups or unit actions? An easy implementation might be to have a hotkey with 3 cases: (1, 2, and >2 units selected)

3) Having waves continue after you finish an altar seems unnecessarily stressful, especially for lower difficulties. Maybe consider an approach closer to the Sky Shield mission in Starcraft, where reinforcements are sent to each encampment after an altar is cleared.

4) Include a "Sniffling" CG for some story characters, to bridge the gap from uncontrollably sobbing to cheekily smirking

This one is more of a suggestion than advice, but:

5) Some roguelite/metaprogression might be nice, too. For instance, maybe a set of perks that could give m/m, m/f, and f/f relations different bonuses

Maybe a perk with a downside of monogamous sexual relations might be interesting too

Feel free to take whatever you want from this autistic rambling of mine, and I hope I managed to inspire - even if it's the teeniest little bit!

itch.io

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