Desperate to escape abject boredom and drawn by humanity’s unique complexity, a corruptive shapeshifting anomaly decides to study it, then exploit it for its own pleasure.
Greetings! I'm here to announce a brand-new project I've been working on since August! To Feel a Pleasing Thing is a grayscale, character-driven point-and-click/visual novel hybrid about a bored shapeshifting anomaly that seeks to understand humanity and then exploit it for pleasure. It is also a prequel to my previous project, The Pretty Thing Behind the Glass.
In this post, I'll give an overview of the game and its mechanics, introduce the story and characters, and share concept art!
Story Concept & Genres
In this point-and-click/visual novel hybrid, we follow a strange anomaly that can corrupt anything it touches. It has been wandering for an unknown length of time, weighed down by abject boredom and a desire to feel something. Anything.
One day, it comes across a populated city and encounters its residents. Here, AV's growing curiosity towards humans gives it a new purpose: to study them, learn how they work, and ultimately exploit them to fulfil its desire.
This game is a character exploration of AV, focusing on its psyche and perception of the world and humanity.
Ever since I worked on "The Pretty Thing Behind the Glass," I wanted to write a standalone story about AV because I found its personality and worldview fascinating. An amoral character lacking humanity who aimed to exploit it rather than understand it was an interesting concept to me, and I wanted to do something with it. So here we are!
Its unique draw is that, unlike similar narratives in which the main non-human character seeks to assimilate into humanity to find belonging, the main character here does so to exploit humans for physical gratification.
The game will be a collection of seemingly disconnected short stories arranged out of chronological order after the first story. Why this structure? To reflect AV's lack of time perception! I love including mechanics that reflect the character :3
Some more details of the story:
- Takes place some years before AV was captured by the FIHRA (Facility for the Isolation & Research of Hazardous Anomalies).
- Focuses on AV's perception of the world and especially humans.
- Shows it studying human behaviour, learning social customs, and taking advantage of human psychology for its own gain.
- It also shows AV forming bonds with various people, as well as its increasing success in forming convincing relationships and manipulating human habits.
As for the setting, it's just a normal, mundane city in a normal, mundane world. This setting best conveys the "what's normal to us is alien to AV" concept.
Genres
- Grayscale visual novel
- Point-and-click adventure
- Psychological character exploration
- Body horror
- Mature content
Mechanics & Gameplay
The game will be a first-person point-and-click adventure with first-person visual novel sections (CGs will be third-person and coloured).
AV will only be controlled by the player in moments of indecision or aimlessness, as though it needs to be nudged towards an objective. This will usually happen at the beginning of stories. Character control also occurs when AV freely explores an environment or learns about various items.
I also have ideas for other mechanics:
- Inventory
- Important items
- Special words (maybe later renamed to "dictionary"): notable words and their associations
- Emotional response gauge (used when talking to humans; helps AV determine how humans react to its actions so it can adjust accordingly)
I'll draw more concepts someday, but I'm fixated on writing right now XD
Main Character
It is unknown exactly what AV is, where it originated, or how it came to be; however, its nature is clear: it is an apathetic, corrupting anomaly capable of corrupting anything it touches—living or non-living. AV can also create extendable tendrils that turn anything it touches into a glitching mess. If AV touches a living being, it takes over their body and mind, allowing it to control them.
The anomaly is characterised by constant boredom and apathy towards the world, as well as an inability to experience emotions or sensations other than pleasure and discomfort. When it discovers humans, AV manipulates them for bodily pleasure. It lures its victims with their greatest desires, preys on their deepest insecurities, and gives them the comfort they crave. Then, at their most intimate moment, the entity consumes them whole.
AV is a shapeshifter, but dislikes staying in one form for too long because of how much mass it must compress. Concentrating its mass also makes its body more sensitive. It soon becomes capable of mimicking human appearance. AV's true form is an ever-shifting, amorphous black blob of glitches with a white "mask" for a face. It also has white eyes that glow in the dark.
In contrast, its preferred human form (which it gets later in the game) is an attractive, curvaceous young woman with short blonde hair and blue eyes. It primarily wears revealing dresses with heels. Its eyes also glow white in the dark. AV aims to look as conventionally attractive as possible to entice its targets. It also limits its colour choices to make managing the form easier; the last thing AV wants is a feature changing because of a memory lapse.
In terms of personality, AV is apathetic towards the world and doesn't adhere to morals. Its amorality contributes to its "ends justify the means" mentality; AV is indifferent to its impact on people as long as it can derive pleasure from them. Despite this, it develops a strong curiosity about humans. However, AV's intense desire to avoid boredom, even for a moment, drives it to make rushed and ill-informed decisions that often backfire.
Finally, AV targets humans because of their high intelligence and emotional complexity. From its perspective, they are the first living beings capable of comprehensible speech, displaying complex emotions, and having intricate social systems. This complexity compels AV to study them and ultimately learn to exploit their weaknesses.
Writing this character is so much fun because portraying normal activities and objects as alien is delightfully challenging, and because AV's amorality leads to some... questionable scenarios O_O
Art Style & Aesthetic
The art style and visuals are low-contrast and monochromatic grey. Meanwhile, objects/people of interest are a super-saturated pink. Non-important objects are roughly drawn and lineless, while important objects are better drawn with linework. Other colours appear if they are deemed important. Finally, the GUI and UI constantly warp until they’re hovered over. Not sure how to achieve this in-game, but I'll figure it out!
This warping monochrome style represents how dull the world feels to AV; it's not literally how it sees the world. Important items and people are pink because AV's interest is piqued. Colours don't matter to the anomaly until they do.
Conclusion & What's Next
This game has been in development since August, and I'm super happy with my progress, especially with writing the stories! The outline for Story 1 is currently 4729 words (I can't imagine how long the script will be O_O) and has 26 scenes with three branching paths that later converge into one. I've also been gathering inspiration from movies, books and other visual novels! That'll be a topic for another day ;)
As for future updates, I've been posting updates every Friday on Bluesky and will continue to do so. In addition, I'll post end-of-month recaps here and on my personal blog (subscribe to receive monthly updates!). The first recap will combine August and September.
That's all, folks! Feel free to leave a comment to tell me what you think about my game! Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Let me know!
Have a good one <3
