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Viewing post in [RPG] GROVE: "Dark Places" (v0.308) comments
Quite the chunky comment here. Seems you've plenty of thoughts and plenty of experience with these kinds of games. Well... I might not touch on everything, but here's my response as co-creator.
I definitely know about games with seduction mechanics. But, to be honest, a lot of them boil down to just coin-flips or a simple calculation of charisma/charm/whatever-seduction-state against an enemy's... desire or resistance or whatnot. They certainly work, and they can get the point across that you are playing some sort of seducer... but I don't think they're often all that mechanically interesting and tend to resolve into a seducer playstyle just being mindlessly repeating 'tease' over and over. They can largely invalidate a more involved and thoughtful combat system.
That's what we've gone for with the grapple system in Grove. You can chose to present yourself to an enemy, lure them in close, and... either carefully manage your TP and enemy grapple turns to try and defeat 'em, or y'know, just have fun laying back and letting them do their thing. I might be biased towards my own game, but I think the resource management and turn-monitoring of 'grapple combat' is an ideal SUPPLEMENT to a combat mechanic, vs. a seduction mechanic that serves as a complete alternative. No it's not QUITE a seduction mechanic in that you can't just charm an enemy into a dazed stupor and then have your way with them... but given these early enemies are either corrupt monsters or nefarious bandits, and what we're doing with the story, it just wouldn't make sense for them to give you up after some lovemaking... and definitely doesn't make sense for them to be overwhelmed by YOUR sexual output.
But hey, that isn't to say that there might be enemies in the future that react differently. Some more sentient enemies. Some more shy enemies. We have plans to spice up the formula a little bit... so don't worry, we're not entirely ignoring this.
Now then, your thoughts on Game Overs. I'll start by saying that you're not the first person who has expressed a desire to see expanded scenes that happen post-defeat. We have some thoughts on this matter too, about 'failing forward' as some people like to call it. I can't say too much without spoiling future content, but... we are considering some more scenarios where maybe you'll have a chance to continue despite a defeat, or maybe end up in some kind of 'extended game over' where the game continues a little and you can enjoy a little more time with a certain fail state.
Maybe you were just put off by the way the bandits handle it, but I feel like what happens in that scenario is already a simple showcase of this kind of thing. You can get captured or defeated in combat, you end up imprisoned... and you can either enjoy the situation, let it unfold and culminate... or you can shake off your bonds and fight through the humiliation, reclaim your gear and keep going. I recognise that it's not particularly deep at this stage, but I also ask you to recognise the game is still very much in it's infancy, little more than a demo right now, a 'foundational' build.
And just to wrap things up with your thoughts on Game Overs in general... I'll be honest and say that I disagree with you. Starting with your thoughts on them being a limitation of creativity... whilst they don't go too far right now, the Game Overs in GROVE actually allow us to serve up small story hints at the nature of enemies and the corruption and the story of the world. Fail to the green slimes and you'll get an early look at the Slime Dragons and how people are being converted. Fail to the Bandit Leader and you'll get a glimpse that he's playing with dark powers that might be a little beyond his comprehension if not his control. Fail to the wriggly orange invaders in cyberspace, and you'll get a look at the corruptive latex and the conditioning that a certain purple eye is trying to impose on Grove. Yes, we could go further with these scenarios, but to go too far would be to spoil the reason to keep playing normally... it's our desire for the Game Overs to not only be sexy, but also tempt you into seeing what else might come along when you try again and defeat your foe.
So... whilst you are not the first person who's wanted to see extended scenarios instead of immediate failure and restarts, and that's something we do want to explore a little bit as devs... Game Overs aren't going away, because I do honestly believe they still serve both a narrative and a gameplay purpose. They raise the skill floor and ask you to rise to the challenge, they help us tell the story we want to tell with GROVE instead of derailing it completely, and... whilst maybe not for you personally, there's PLENTY of folks out there who enjoy a 'bad ending' and get sexual gratification from such a thing.
Now then, to address some of your smaller points. You talked about getting buffs or experience from having sex. I don't think we'll be doing anything different for enemies, as our grapple combat still serves as a means to defeat them. Buuuuuut... there might be some more scenarios where getting into sexual escapades gives you a reward, such as the corrupted underwear getting you early access to Fire Bolt, or perhaps nice little boons from NPCs you form sexual relationships with.
Corruption right now is very bare bones, I'll readily admit that. As for what we plan to do with it... you can consider it a metric that affects how Grove might react in scenarios and situations, instead of his more quiet and tame natural reaction. I can't say much more without spoiling it though.
And yes, we've already got a solution to making enemies disappear from the screen whilst they're grappling you, so it doesn't appear as though they're duplicating. We'll be implementing that in the next update.
Finally, to tackle your suggestions. Feral snakes? Uh... do you mean the orange 'invaders' in the cyberspace scene? If that's what you meant, I can say we'll be revisiting those guys and that whole digital scenario, don't worry.
You're not the first person who's wanted spider enemies, or more ferals in general. I can say that your suggestions are very much heard... and I ask you to look forward to what we're doing with v0.2 when it drops, in regards to this kind of stuff.
And yes, the monstrous tentacle enemy you fight in the first dream. Of course we'll be revisiting them and that whole scenario. I know it was 'barely used' but you gotta remember this is still VERY early on in the game.
And as for corrupting other NPCs and friends and partners... again, don't want to spoil things, but you're also not the first person to suggest such a thing, and it's something that we are looking at and considering. How exactly we'll implement it... you'll have to wait and see.
OK, I think that's everything. Thanks for taking the time to type up your big comment. I appreciate that our game could stir up such thoughts in you and you would chose to share such an impassioned response.
Hopefully my own can give some insight into the future of the game, and my stance as a creative.
Of course, I very much appreciate the fact that you seem to care enough about the game to give such a large and clearly passionate comment. And I'm happy to respond in kind.
Yes, there'll always be 'Game Overs' in this game, at some point after a fail state. It could be immediately, it could be after repeated failures, it could be after an extended playable scene. I know you referred to Skyrim's defeat mods, but that game has the benefit of being a wide-open sandbox, where a player can make their own end goal as much as the game provides one, and has systems in place that can support a near-endless play session. We have a more narrative-based game, a story we wanna tell and a rough path we wanna guide you down, so... we can't allow for too much divergence or that'll go totally out the window. Hopefully you understand what I mean by this and why I feel we NEED Game Overs.
It's a shame you don't seem to care for the grapple system because you find it difficult... but for what it's worth, may I just repeat from my previous comment that it's not intended to be a replacement for combat, but a supplement to it. Trying to 'main' grapple combat isn't really the design intent, and it'd be very difficult indeed. We think of it more as a 'back-up', a stance change, allowing you to switch gears and finish off a weakened enemy, at the risk of putting yourself in sexual danger.
But your suggestion of a quickload system, something to keep the game from going right back to the main menu, is something we've been thinking about. I don't know if it'll work within the framework of RPGMaker, but we're looking into it at least. Though... it's still a menu you have to navigate in order to get back to gameplay. Is being able to quickly resume from the Game Over screen as opposed to the title screen really that much better in your eyes? I know you want quick saves, save states, things like that... but unless you know of any other RPGMaker engine games that do such, we are limited by our software. This isn't something like Skyrim or an emulator engine, I'm afraid.
Yes, of course there's a way to succeed in the cyberspace! That wasn't meant to be an unwinnable state. Once you've activated all three memory cores, and the invaders and restrainer suit appear... you've just gotta escape back the way you came!
Regarding other party members, you may have guests briefly show up in your party to help, and we might even have periods where you briefly play as another character... Grove will remain the main character in a solo party most of the time, but we have some ideas to spice things up a little from time to time.
I appreciate you giving your suggestions on what an enhanced seduction mechanic might look like, and I am aware of games that give enemies certain tastes and kinks that can be used against them, or having lust systems that can confer buffs and bonuses and suchlike. I still don't know if we'll go down such a route, if that's something my dev partner wants to actually do with this game and Grove as a character, but... yeah, we do have ideas at least. Maybe something will come of it, but I really can't make any promises.
Same goes for all your suggestions about what to do with corruption based mechanics. They are very much appreciated, and we do consider most every idea people throw at us, buuuuut... we do have our own ideas about what we want to do with corruption, with seduction, with enhancing combat through different avenues and such. So there might be shades of what you and other folks have suggested, but ultimately we're going to follow our own ideas first. Again, I appreciate the well thought suggestions, but it's not like we don't have a clue what we wanna do ourselves.
Zombies and other such undead in sexual scenes... maybe. I wouldn't bet on it, at least in the sense of 'rotting undead corpses'. There might be zombies of another stripe in the game, something more magical maybe, but if you're specifically looking for something corpsy and grotesque, you'll probably be disappointed.
Once more, the suggestions are appreciated, but as long as you in turn can appreciate we do have our own ideas for the game and what we wanna do with it. To be honest... the more granular you or anyone gets with an idea, the less likely we are to adopt it. Not because we are spiting people's creativity, but more so that we want to put our own spins on mechanics and systems and other sexual games out there, rather than just copying things whole-hog. We'd rather look at what people want, or think is a good idea, in a general sense... and then apply our sensibilities and creativity to it and hopefully come up with something that surprises folks in a novel way.
Thanks again for the comment. Hopefully you can understand where I'm coming from with my various points and responses.