Greetings Seekers! ๐
We've mentioned recently that the sex minigame mechanics are undergoing a redesign, and today, I'm going to share what exactly we are changing and why! Is this post too long? Check at the bottom for a summary! It's a slight spoiler for the next Nova's sex scene, so if you are team Nova you might opt to skip this post! ๐
Disclaimer: This post is loaded with heavy gifs. If you see a blank spot, give it a moment to load!
Where it all begun!
When starting the development, we knew we wanted playable sex scenes. We spent the longest time prototyping and playtesting until we developed an eromancy skills-based system, where players could manually push or pull and use other actions on top.
It would have been amazing if we could have more custom powers/skills. Still, the absurd cost of producing such actions for each individual scene was so high that we had to settle down for something more universal - where we got a bit flashy skills to activate when lovemaking:
๐ฝ Preview of powers VFX for Tutoria scene:
Based on your feedback, we improved some UI elements to make satisfaction levels more apparent when playing. We added custom keyboard settings and introduced an 'auto-mode' that made it easier for the players to not get carpal tunnel ๐
But but! After implementing the auto mode, we've got a lot of voices that players are using it a lot, and most of you, my lovely Seekers, look forward to enjoying the scene rather than turbo quack pressing all the buttons in a Mortal Kombat fashion to pass the level.
At the same time, we've gotten feedback that the skills are visually too intense and the voice acting is too repetitive or not intuitive enough.
And so we went back to the origins, and we looked again at what made Captain Popcorn's animations so good and run a couple of surveys and feedback sessions to make sure our idea was on point ๐ดโโ ๏ธ
And what were the results?
Given that the players are primarily interested in enjoying the scene, we decided to try new sex minigame mechanicsโmore of a 'choose your own adventure and rhythm' interactive video of sorts.
In other words: Before, sex scenes were a mechanic to challenge the player. Now they work as a reward throughout the story!
How does it work?
As a player, you won't need to use J and K keys to push or pull anymore ๐ฎ
It will be more similar to the auto mode, except that the animations are hand-crafted for better results! ๐
It's not a looped video; all animations are in the game engine, so it should work seamlessly and have a natural feel even if you move between in-animation branches! ๐ข
You can stay at the given intensity for as long as you want, so just relax and enjoy the view. ๐
For changing between the stages you can use your mouse cursor or keyboard keys. It should be one hand friendly ๐ช
It's more decision-based, where you can increase or decrease the intensity/speed or choose to perform special actions! Your waifu will react accordingly ๐ญ
No more endurance bar, no more time pressure, no score. You are done, when you are done (or when you think that your lady can't hold it anymore ๐)
We are planning to have unique animations based in previous story/choices/lore ๐บ๏ธ
We are planning to make it possible to replay the scene after finishing it (if you know what i mean) ๐ฆ
๐ฝ An example of the scene progression development draft:
๐ฝ Nova's next scene switching between stages preview in engine ๐๐๐
If you look at the animation above, you might see some artefacts or notice that the interface icons make no senseโand that is because they don'tโFOR NOW!. But the good news is that they are now being worked on! We are waiting for the voice acting, too ๐ค๐.
So what's next?
Once this scene is completed, we will run the last playtesting and build the next batch for you to play.
It's taking a hot while because it's the first scene of its kind, so it couldn't progress without technical challenges, but hopefully, we are on an excellent path to solving them ๐
The new system will be applied to only one scene so far, so we gather your opinion on it again! And if we all like it, we will rework the other scenes to match, previous and new ones to come! ๐ค
What about the eromancy skills?
We have a plan for them. But that will come in the next narrative design update ๐
TL;DR:
New sex mechanics based on choices instead of manual keyboard actions coming,
They will be applied to one scene just for now to test, other scenes remain unchanged,
Once this is finished - the Batch3 of the game will also be finished!
We are doing what we can to get it to you as asap as possible ๐ฅ
I'm sending to you all the warm hugs in this cold and stormy weather!
--Polly ๐