Building Sutton #2 - Game Design

I wanted to keep Stuck in Sutton simple, After all, it was my first game. A lot of developers seem to get overwhelmed by how big their projects become. There are definitely mechanics I could've included such as a more in depth clothing system, but that would've been a lot of work for what I feel is very little gain.

My other focus was to make a game that I'd want to play. I feel a lot of people in the adult game scene get wrapped around incorporating fetishes they don't enjoy under the assumption it'll attract players. Whilst that may be true, I feel it's really demotivating trying to write about things you don't actually care about.

Character creation was something I wanted to have depth and not just be about appearance. I felt the tattoo gimmick gave players options in varying their playstyle. I also did my best to make sure characters would respond to your appearance, as I feel this makes the game more immersive, such as having characters talk about your pubic hair.

My intention with Stuck in Sutton was to give players the freedom to do what they want. I wanted to make the MC as much of a blank slate as reasonably possible. Who she is is up to you. If you want to be a lot lizard? Go ahead. A drug dealer? No problem. A lesbian stripper who prays to God every day? Sure, why not?

Another reason for this level of freedom was to make sure the game was flexible. It's nearly impossible to get a 'non-sister' ending without doing some sort of sex work/crime. Rather than try and force the player to do something in a linear fashion, I wanted to try and enforce this via game mechanics.

The stats in the game were put to add a management element to the game. As much as I wanted players to have freedom, I also wanted the world to react to you. Sure, you can do high risk activities such as drug dealing or prostitution, but it will cause your character to stress out and attract the attention of the law. Lower risk activities would net you less money, but were 'safer'. I also felt this gave players bit of a reason to explore and find ways to manage stress.

In hindsight, I do wish I had set up attributes a bit differently. I feel all of them should've been on a scale of 100 rather than 50/60 beauty, 100 Stress/Notoriety, and 200 Sluttiness, as it makes the game a bit confusing.

The core gameplay loop of SiS typically involves working for money and managing your stats. Of course, you can deviate from that by following various plotlines, but I still wanted to mix up the core gameplay. That's why I did my best to throw in some elements of randomness, from random events to different outcomes during work.  Despite this, I do still feel some playstyles can get a bit repetitive due to how I set up Energy. Originally, the player was only going to have 5 energy rather than 8, but I found that it wouldn't allow players to make enough money. It might have been better to separate days into time periods (morning, afternoon, night etc).

The ticking clock of 7 days was something I implemented for a couple of reasons. One, it puts pressure on the player to manage their decisions, and two, it forced me to scale my game. It can be very easy to get caught up with 'feature bloat' if one is not careful when making a game.

Another thing I wanted to keep in mind is that Stuck in Sutton is an adult game. Sex is one of Stuck in Sutton's big hooks so I wanted to make sure there was plenty of it no matter what a player does. Of course, I also wanted to make things avoidable for people who may have certain preferences. Truth be told, I'm happy with the options players for a variety of situations and love interests, and I think just about anyone who'd play this game would find something they could enjoy.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how Stuck in Sutton plays. There are certainly things I'd keep in mind for my next game, but that's the nature of game development.