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Did you really think the IRS wouldn't notice?

Everyone's going to hate me for this.

Now that we have contracts it might be a good idea to turn ways of gaining money into ways of losing money, for example it's common for MMORPGs to feature a casino with prizes which are typically special cosmetic items that cannot be obtained any other way. This is for late game players who are quite wealthy and don't really have anything to spend that wealth on, giving them a hole to dump money into with the consolation that they'll get some of it back as tokens which they can exchange for those prizes. Of course for this to function in that role Cazino Paradize would need to be updated so that the games can't be cheated through skill or save scumming, so players actually have to lose money (lots of money) to get those prizes.

Likewise the stock market should fluctuate much less (<5% per day), stocks should stay fairly high in value (>$1000/share) so playing the stock market is a fairly rich person's game, and there should be a limit on how long the player can own a particular stock so they can't just buy low and sit on it until the numbers turn green, there's actually a possibility of losing money. The in-game lore justification for this is that Anon isn't trading stocks, he's shorting them.

The point of these changes is to give players a reason to engage with the contracts mechanic, I'm personally guilty of using the slot machine as a money printer and dumping my ill-gotten millions into a stock that's under $10 and taking out 10-20x as much which of course completely undermines the game's plot and theme.

I haven't played for a while and just started the new version today and the feature that elevated this game for me was NPC active participation, the "take the lead" option in the blowjob and cowgirl scenes, so good. It changes the dynamic from you're having sex with a robot girl, to a robot girl is having sex with you and that subtle change in context is everything.

Malerouille is this meant to be a management sim or a tower defense game? You're doing a bit of both and I think you're going to have to sacrifice one for the other in order to proceed with adding depth to the game's mechanics. Tower defense is a strategy game and to facilitate the player being strategic they need to have very precise control, they need to be very sure of the outcome of their actions. Consequently these games tend to be highly abstract in order to reduce the cognitive load on the player, to let them focus on winning the game through strategy. Hence why in most tower defense games allies are either automatic turrets that you don't control you just place them, or just fodder you constantly stream into a meat grinder. In either case you don't give them orders or personally interact with them, you haven't got the time, you need to focus on what the enemy's doing how to counter it. Whereas in a management sim the focus is on the characters and dealing with their individuality, think Rimworld, you still have to fend off enemies but being raided is only 10% of the experience. 90% of your time is spent keeping your colonists fed, happy, healthy, entertained, choosing what to research and craft, deciding who to assign to what task, etc. Obviously Daggan isn't Rimworld but I think what's unique about Daggan is that you can breed your allies which could be really interesting to explore and I think it ought to be explored because breeding them makes the player immediately invested in them as characters. This isn't just cannon fodder #7 this is my son and that's my daughter and this is my wife and as the mayor of the town it behooves me to pay close attention to the local gene pool and to assess passing travelers for useful traits to add to it. In summary I want you to ask yourself this: Is this a game about fighting or fucking? Because you can have both but you need to pick your priority.

I know Anon is a placeholder for anonymous, not the character's actual name, but in lieu of a name I'll be using it as one.

I really like the world-building and how it's subtly communicated through Anon's behavior and interactions with other characters, this game could easily have had a non-characterized protagonist that the player has full control of, instead the player shares decision making with Anon which I think does a better job of putting the player in Anon's shoes, because just as Anon is struggling with his mental health the player is struggling with Anon's personality. This co-pilot arrangement has the potential to be incredibly frustrating but from what I've seen so far it's handled very well, Anon does/says things that in his situation I would have handled differently but this isn't my story, it's his story, and it works because I can empathize with him. He doesn't just do stupid things because the plot demands it rather his behavior is very much in line with how that demographic thinks and behaves, and it's clearly a consequence of his circumstances and upbringing.

I know people like this, hell I am like this to some extent, I'm much better off than Anon but my mother also tried to OD herself, I used to live in share housing and even with the three of us paying our share we were struggling to pay rent and I remember having long conversations with my friends (granted it was mostly complaining) about how were we ever going to save up a deposit to buy our own homes?

Which segues neatly into my suggestions:

Perhaps Anon starts the game with some amount of student loan debt?
Mechanically this  doesn't come into effect until the player has X amount of money in their account (i.e. they're making a decent amount of money) at which point the 0% interest student loan debt suddenly starts accruing interest (because bureaucratic bullshit) which actually puts the player in a position that's worse off than when they started. Now this isn't really a game that benefits from having difficulty that ramps up throughout the course of the game, the player wants to feel that they're making progress and that this progress benefits them, not that it's actively working against them (i.e. the Skyrim character level problem). But there's also the problem of making the game easy enough to be accessible to new players, but not so easy that once the player learns how to play they are suddenly able to curb-stomp every obstacle from that point on. So prior to the the player reaching the X amount threshold they're in a early game grace period, then once they reach that threshold the game starts proper and becomes properly difficult to challenge someone who actually knows what they're doing.

Perhaps Anon has flatmates?
Easy excuse to introduce more characters and story threads and these are characters that Jun can potentially interact with without her illegality being an issue, good flatmates have an incentive to keep each other around, especially if they can negotiate Jun being part of the arrangement which will of course comes out of Anon's wallet.

Perhaps Anon wants to save up a deposit and get a mortgage?
This gives the player a goal to work towards besides buying parts for Jun and it's another drain on Anon's finances, and if Anon's only choice is an apartment he not only has the mortgage and bills to pay but also rates and body corporate as well, so it actually works out to be more expensive than renting, excluding the fact that by paying a mortgage Anon is accruing equity and as the mortgage goes down so too does the amount of interest, assuming the interest rate is stable.

Possible Win Condition: Financial Independence
Once Anon owns his own place outright there's another threshold whereby if the player accumulates enough wealth it's assumed that Anon has enough money to setup a diversified share portfolio and live off the dividends with Jun for the rest of his life.

I'll give it a go.

Cog #1875 on Discord

I'm dissecting Strive for Power 1 from a game design perspective to go over what worked and why it worked, to facilitate a more informed discussion of the new developments appearing in the demo.

As I see it Strive for Power was a hybrid management/adventure/gacha game whereby each of these three elements facilitated the others and thus created a very compelling gameplay loop. At the beginning of each day you would (usually) have more money with which to buy slaves/items/upgrades and possibly some potentials to investigate and issues to resolve, naturally compelling but not forcing the player to engage with the management aspect of the game.

After doing a bit of managing a player's usual second priority will be visiting the slave market which brings us to the gacha aspect of the game as with each day a new slave is available to review/purchase in each of the game's four slave trading markets and every few days or I think every day after a request is completed new requests become available. This is an interesting spin on the gacha concept because you're not just receiving whatever result the game gives you but instead you're assessing slaves for their suitability for completing current and future requests and making purchasing decisions based on their potential suitability which covers a wide range of factors. Again the player isn't forced to engage with this but for those who do there's a lot of fun to be had figuring out which slave to buy to complete which request so as to achieve the maximum profit with the minimal effort/expense. 

Finally there's the adventuring aspect of the game which is facilitated by the management (buying items, training skills, improving stats) and gacha (finding slaves with good stats and traits) aspects of the game so naturally after doing everything that can be done in the towns the player will want to go forth with their now more capable cohorts to defeat opponents, gain money/items/reputation and acquire captives which is itself a sort of gacha like mechanic because the player has a limited number of ropes and prison cells.

After getting back to the mansion you inspect your captives, sort your loot, maybe do some final interactions/intercourse to finish of the day then click the new day button which begins the whole cycle anew. And alongside this to keep the core gameplay loop from becoming repetitive there's the main quest and side quests to complete which themselves tie into the unlocking of various spells and facilities. Now I can't speak for everyone but what I'm personally looking forward to most in the new game is more main/side quests to complete, more characters to meet and well more power to strive for :)

In the demo I noticed a trend towards increased complexity which in some ways is very excited about (fighters guild! cooking! crafting!) and in some I'm a bit unsure of (time mechanics?) but of course it's still very early days yet.