is there a way to edit the save to give myself the lucky charm to see the last scene without having to redo the entire game possibly? really like this and im so looking forward to the next addition
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I got question dont know whether this will count as spoiler or not. Will there be a route or bad end that involve mezz and scratch being fucked together within one cg. it might be a long shot but i really like the slut khazeem fight bad end and how i wish we get the cg describing their fate in the Gutter
This is a long shot and a bit of an odd question, but have you made any art in the past under a different name? When I saw Scratch I felt like something in the back recesses of my mind activated, he just felt so familiar. I feel like I've seen your art style or at least something that looks similar to that somewhere and I'm losing my mind trying to remember lol. Anyway these games are phenomenal and I'm super looking forward to seeing more of your stuff!
Sorry for the late reply. Sometimes Itch grabs posts as spam for arbitrary reasons, and I don't get a notification or anything, it's just down to whenever I check next.
To your questions: I'm over on FA as Bitshift. Used to do pony stuff. Still dig it, just want to do my own IP for now.
And thanks, glad you're enjoying them!
Yup, the suit and cologne are both needed at various points (although technically you can avoid using the cologne, it's just...very tedious.) As for variety, I agree, but this is the work of one person, with limited abilities. More weapons or enemies means more art assets, which means a considerable amount of additional time. Adding new mechanics isn't AS hard or time-intensive, but it does still take time, not just to develop but to bugtest and balance. I've surmised, so far correctly, that most people would rather that time be put into more scenes and horny content; for a game like this, being hot is always the priority. Even the gameplay is there primarily to enhance the horny, because imho having some actual interactivity and agency is more fun that just clicking forward in a visual novel. I also don't want to make things TOO complex, because I want to keep the game fairly accessible. That said, again I agree, it could absolutely use some more variation, and maybe I'll be able to work more in as I go. But even my attempt to get just TWO completely distinct enemies into this one didn't turn out, with the second (the "clients" or customers, the dobermans) ending up as just NPCs for now.
This is also a function of what I'm doing fight-wise. If this was just an ordinary RPG fight system, and if you lose, sexy scene, that would be very simple to implement, and to add bad guys to. But instead, I have elaborate systems built into the fights themselves to do the sexy stuff IN the fight, not just after. This means that every significantly new enemy has to be fit into that system (or have a new one made for them, which is even worse.) In other words, there IS a fair bit of complexity to the fights, it's just been build around a few enemies, simple basic mechanics, and more complex sex mechanics. It's like character creation in an RPG: I have limited points, and I put them in scenes and battle sex mechanics, which makes things a little weak elsewhere. Hopefully still fun though.
If the art takes the most time you could get someone else do the art so you can focus on like coding and stuff not sure how making games works but if it helps you get the game out faster you could get more games out faster to make more money which would easily make up for the cost of hiring someone. Or you could do it the other way around if you really like making the art
Was definitely worth the money. The longer plot line, challenges, and variety of scenes were awesome. This is a shorter review than what I did for CS but really you have a new long time fan here and I'm excited for the future. Fun, hot, great soundtrack.
Not sure the next time I will be able to play and get to the Credits- as I've said a few times now I really enjoy the Soundtracks, are you able to share the musical artist (s) information somewhere (for CS and GT)? I would like to follow them as well if possible.
Hello , just to say your work is really impressive I plan to buy the 2nd chapter of the game, mezz is really adorable, it motivated me to start drawing again, (for the moment it's not that yet but as soon as I can I would like to do it a mezz fan art ;p). excellent work I don't know what else to say =^-^= ( sry for my english i am french )
Aw thanks, really appreciate it! I've improved a lot since I started, but I still have a LONG way to go on my art, so to know that it's motivating others is...very flattering. Also the reach of this game, goodness; I've got people from all over! Hope it comes across clear enough for a non-native speaker. Also, I know everyone says this, but people who apologize for their English usually have better grammar than native speakers :D. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said anything; certainly better than my French.
Glad you're enjoying the games, and would love to see the fan art when it happens (we even have a thread for it here).
If it's not a bother, I was hoping to posit a few questions to you.
First, will there be any backstory about Mezz revealed in later developments? Even with NSFW games, I still appreciate learning about each character.
Second, is "Mezz" a pun on "mesmerize," or merely a coincidental name choice?
Finally, will there be any moments where Mezz wants to do something sexual without being hypnotized first? I know the main selling point is hypnosis, I'm not judging; I'm simply curious due to wanting to know more about his original personality.
Overall, the game looks interesting, and I look forward to seeing what you do in the future. Also, Mezz is adorable.
No bother at all, love it when people are thinking a little more about the games beyond the immediate.
There will definitely be story and setting development, and some degree of seeing who he is as he interacts with things, but I hadn't planned an elaborate back-story, no. Mezz is a fairly simple character, and that's partially on-purpose, as the player avatar. But in general it's more about where things go, rather than where they came from when it comes to him.
No, but I love that it works out that way. I think it's actually that long ago in the depths of time there was this artist called Muzz I kinda liked, and when I was trying to come up with a name some synapses deep in my memory crossed and mis-fired and my brain spit out "Mezz." No other relation though, it's not actually connected in any way. I just like the sound.
As for non-hypnosis sex, definitely with Scratch eventually (sorry, spoilers, but come on :D). Possibly in one other situation as well, given the way you worded that, but that won't be for a loooong time.
And thanks, I agree. Just imagine the way the little ears bounce when he's takin' it :D.
Also, while we're talking the game and references, there's still one in there no one has caught. One of the graffiti. Too obscure I think, but let me know if you catch it.
I came across some graffiti outside Mahir's place, which appears to reference to John Dowland. I was able to understand the rough gist of the Latin phrase, but I do not know much about music history, so I had to do some research on that.
If that is not the reference you were referring to, then is it the graffiti that says, "It's hard to draw a sexy rabbit" or however it's worded? I could not find the definitive answer, but some research has lead to claims that it originated from Jazz Jackrabbit, although I am unsure in what way; one source claims it was a weird easter egg in one of the games' credits.
On the note of backstory and personality, I really appreciated the dialogue in the garden. The fact Mezz seems so surprised by real trees and grass shows how physically scarred their world is, and also shows a subtle emotional side to the normally cocky Mezz, even if he immediately goes back to being cocky afterward.
Oh ho, got the Dowland too! Very good. You may wish to keep an eye on that going forward too. But yeah, I was thinking of the Jazz one. It's a "complaint" by the game's animator in the Instructions section. I'm curious what this "research" entailed though; it sounds like some others have made the connection? Nicely done though.
And thanks, I definitely will continue to have stuff like that; not huge exposition dumps but just little hints of "Here's how this character reacts, given who he is and the setting." Glad you enjoyed that.
I found an OpenForum thread from 2002 that was, from what I can tell, a guessing game about video game quotes. The text is slightly hard to read, coupled with me being dyslexic, but I was still able to find a reference to the quote. I searched up Jazz Jackrabbit screenshots and videos, and one stream recording of the game made the same claim about this quote. I couldn't see it in the credits, but again, that could be due to my dyslexia acting up; I can sometimes skip entire paragraphs, which is why I try to remember to double-check everything I read.
I'm sorry for suddenly jumping back into our conversation, but I had another weird and sort of morbid question.
I won't specify where it's said, as I don't want to accidentally spoil too much for other players, but there's a piece of dialogue that says Mezz "trimmed down the ranks" of the gangsters. Is Mezz a no-kill kind of hero, and this dialogue implies he simply hurts enemies to the point of being out of commission? Or does he sometimes hit hard enough to kill? Even what amounts to a well-crafted stick can cause catastrophic damage if swung with enough velocity and into the right areas of the body.
I know this sounds extremely morbid, but I always am curious if combatant (especially armed) heroes follow a no-kill rule or not.
Side note, does Dragon's Breath cause physical damage to hyenas after long-term abuse? I know it's already shown to cause mental disturbance (not even counting suggestibility in other species), but I can't stop thinking about how a drug like that would ruin a person's body over time.
I've intentionally left it vague. It's mostly video-game logic: you can bring a giant buster sword down on someone and bring their HP down to zero, but they're not dead, just "defeated", whatever that means. Making it explicit that he's murdering every single one of the enemies seemed like the wrong tone, and doesn't quite fit his character. To be clear though, Mezz isn't Spiderman/Batman, he's perfectly fine with killing (though you should probably picture it as a more cartoony killing, rather than him drenched in blood or something). It's just that he's somewhat of a stealth character, so he USUALLY favors knockouts; he sees killing as sloppy and unimpressive, but not off the table. You don't live your whole life in the ruined city and not kill. Even Scratch probably has a few notches (though I'm not definitively specifying there). But Diezel and Khazeem for example are 100% dead in the appropriate endings, and it's at least somewhat Mezz's fault.
Now, does all this mean that that bit of narration about "trimming the ranks" means he ended them all, or just crippled them for a while? Whichever you prefer, though I think my intention was more toward the latter; again, he prefers not to kill because it's sloppy, and doesn't fit as well with the "hero" identity/delusion he's crafted for himself. He is, like all good people, trying to live up to a somewhat unattainable ideal. But he's not unrealistically hard-line about it.
As for Dragon's Breath's potential for physical damage, the answer is that it's never been fully determined. Anyone who's not a hyena either ends up a sex slave (which tends to have a fairly...unimpressive career length) or ends up wandering off before training is complete and dying because their sex obsession and empty-headedness leads to the neglect of basic self-preservation: starving, tumbling off a high ledge, picking fights they shouldn't, etc. Anyone who IS a hyena goes crazy with violence and paranoia, and is murdered by other enterprising entrepreneurs before any physical signs of damage manifest. In the few cases where slaves/"Entertainment" have survived several years in their new roles however, no clear evidence of physical harm from the drug has manifested. But keep in mind that for "fresh meat" the drug is only used as an ensnarement and training tool for conditioning, then discontinued once the new assets are ready, so there's no continual abuse that might lead to further damage. Mahir only uses the clicker in the end.
ALSO: Was thinking over my comments on Mezz's name and realized I'm forgetting my own...lore? Dev lore? Originally I was going for a musical theme in naming for the first game, though I gave up on it pretty quick ("Diezel" is a brand of amplifier for example). "Mezz" is a reference to Mezzo, as in Mezzo Forte. "Medium". Get it? Cause he's short?
I actually was kind of curious if there were more music references hidden around, as there was the Dowland graffiti, not to mention the title "Serenade." I completely missed the name references for the characters, since I don't really know much about music at all, let alone brands or types of instruments.
I get what you mean about ambiguity on enemies' fates, and I appreciate that it's not just a concrete "kills everybody or nobody" dynamic. Aaaand because I'm deranged, when you said "more cartoony killing," I envisioned Mezz replacing one of Mahir's cigarettes with a stick of dynamite.
Ho boy, getting into esoteric Jazz lore a moment here: No actually, not Dean Dodrill. He did the excellent opening animation on Jazz 2, which still gives me chills to this day, but like the music (where the new tracks on 2 were done by the amazing Alexander Brandon, later to be of Unreal and Deus Ex tracker fame, but the first game's score was by Robert A. Allen), animation and styling for the characters in general was done by Nick Stadler on Jazz 1. Kind of a sad story: he went to school for animation, hoping to work on big movies and shows, and took the gig with Epic as a stepping stone, a quick stop to gain experience on his resume. Finished up, they offered to let keep him on, but he was set on going on to "real" work in entertainment. Aaaand then Toy Story happened, and suddenly no one would hire new animators if they couldn't do this new 3d thing. As a side bar, that MIGHT also be why so many games, especially edutainment titles in the late 90s had such lush 2d animation: There was a whole crop of traditionally trained animators that couldn't get jobs in the industry anymore, but the gaming world was thrilled to have them, as multimedia and CD ROM was just becoming a thing, and it would be eons before PCs could do decent real-time 3d.
He ended up doing illustration work for an LGBT magazine for a while (I believe he was gay himself) and then just kinda faded from public view. In hindsight, ouch, should have stuck with Epic, though I'm sure that would have had its own issues.
Heh, but yeah, lot of fun stuff in that game. Very jank in places, but beautiful art and music.
Ah, that's a good question, pondering the actual character. There's three layers: 1. How he sees himself. 2. What he actually is. 3. What the hypnosis makes him. He sees himself as 90% top, way too cool to bottom unless he was doing someone a favor. In reality, he's probably closer to 70 sub, 30 dom (That smugness isn't ALL self-delusion). But the hypnosis switches off that 30 (and massively amplifies the 70), making him 100% long-eared sex toy.
had an absent thought, what would the remaining flavors of mind control even be? just asking because theres really not many er existant flavors so to speak... and for some reason i cant really see mez being a hypnotized dom top or a stepford so i thought i would ask incase theres a dev roadmap someplace.
No, for a variety of reasons I kind of have to do it myself. Cost was one early on, though that becomes less of an issue as the game picks up. There's still the issue of trustworthiness and branding though. For a game like this, the art IS the game to a large extent. Unfortunately, artists have a tendency to be...flighty, and that's dangerous in a situation like this. What happens when I hire someone to do art for a game, and they bail for whatever reason before it's finished? What happens if they finish one, but then can't stick around for the next? What happens when they realize "Wait, art is the hard part, why am I working for someone else? I could just make my OWN game and keep 100% of the profits!" And I mean good for them, but that doesn't do me any favors. I also need someone who's not just ok with, but enthusiastic about the kinks being explored. When that's one person, that's pretty easy. When two have to agree, much harder. So I'd need someone who was:
-Willing to work for...something, but not a lot
-Insanely, unreasonably devoted to the project
-Perfect mind-meld with me on kink
-Had a style that matched what I was looking for
-Was very hard-working and reliable
Kind of a hard list to hit. These worries aren't theoretical either: I've seen MANY projects stutter and die because of struggles in this area. Until you become a big company that can ensure reliability through substantial pay, the only really safe bet is to do it yourself.
And even all that aside, I enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of working on it myself. Even if the skill level is modest, it is improving, and is already far more than I thought I'd get to (though still far less than I want).
There's not alot I can prove to you that I can do all that but I am willing accept every terms you stated, basically you don't have to pay me anything at all. If you still remember the mail at the furaffinity a while ago, my offer is still up. This would be an honor if I can help whatever I can.
edit:grammar