WIP - Game Design Secrets, Pregnancy Mechanics, and Old 3D Animations

For this week's WIP post I wanted to talk a bit about some of the game design "secrets" I've used throughout the game so far. I don't have any WIP artwork, so I'll show Aoyagi's finished scene and talk about the pregnancy mechanic and plans for it at the end. I'll also show some old 3D animations from a previous project that ties into what I talk about in the pregnancy section. Feel free to just scroll down if you're just here for that.

Setting the Stage -

One of the most important aspects of game design is setting up what to expect from a game as quickly as possible. Some games do a fantastic job of this. A great example is Doom 2016. It starts giving a lore dump, then you just destroy the screen and start shooting stuff. This sets up immediately that the story doesn't matter, that's not what the game is about. The game is about killing demons and blowing stuff up, and it gets you there as quickly as possible.

In Waifu Wonderland, I always wanted the game to be more focused on unlocking scenes as quickly as possible, and not having much of a focus on story. Which is why I did a similar thing to what Doom did. I start an exposition dump that people tend to expect at the start of an adult game, then interrupt it with Ayako sucking you off. This shows that the scenes are the focus, won't be too hard to get, and that the story is secondary.

Immediately after, there's just enough context to setup the idea of the game, then you go talk to Kaori and Shiori who will be the actual tutorial. You can only choose one and the other two are locked out. I did this to show that choices will matter sometimes. It's not a linear game with one way of doing things, it is an open sandbox where decide what happens. Which is what the game is. There is no mandatory story. It's a playground where you get to choose what you want to do.

Show, Don't Tell -

So you choose your starter and immediately get put into a quick and easy battle, and are given another scene. I could have gone through with an in-depth tutorial on the battle system and showed controls and everything, but this is bad game design. It's a trap a LOT of games fall into, both adult and otherwise. When there's too much text and a lot of different things being explained all at once, a player is going to lose interest and stop absorbing the information at some point. It's always better to show the player what to do, rather than tell them. So you're just thrown into a battle to show how it works. Then there's a limited info dump on base mechanics of the game. Unfortunately not everything can be shown to the player, so there still had to be a bit of a dump. I did my best to keep it short and to the point, and then added optional in-depth explanations on your bookshelf in your room for those that did want more info.

I did that for two reasons. For one, exploring a game and discovering things is what most people find fun about games. That's what separates games from media like TV shows or movies. It's not a passive experience, you're in control. So I wanted to leave as much as possible for the player to discover on their own. But of course not everyone likes things super open, so I added in some hints and direction in the optional content.

The last little bit of hidden tutorial I snuck into the intro, is that scenes are repeatable. Whoever you choose at the start, they say to come back anytime. Showing that once you unlock a character's scenes, they'll be repeatable if you find them again. It also gives the player a little bit of direction. If they aren't sure what else to do when they're given full control, they can go to their starter to get another scene. They're also given a guaranteed way to gain exp.

Hints, Not Guides -

From here, you're free to do what you want. I still added in some hints to give some direction and some little choices to help show how the game works. First, I'll talk about the little hints.

You start in your house and can go and talk to Ayako. She'll tell you to get a job and will explain that the convenience store is always hiring. This gives a hint on how to make money and can give a direction for what to do. It also shows the player that talking to people can help give hints and give them information about what to do. Before we move on, let's talk about Seika.

If you fully explore the house you'll run into Seika. Up until now, you were let into seduction mode and just handed the win. However, Seika wont let you into seduction mode. But I give a hint on how to unlock seduction mode with her. Saying that she may let you in if you bring her a gift. This shows the player that not everyone is going to be easy. Some characters will requires some effort to get into seduction mode, and you may need to do something like have an specific item. Once you bring her an item, she's also extremely difficult. She's intentionally the hardest character in the game. Showing that there's a wide range of difficulty in the game, and that not everyone is going to let you win.

Anyway, so at this point you leave the house. Right outside is Angela. She's put there so that you immediately have someone to talk to give more hidden tutorial and show how the game works a bit more. If you talk to her, she has a bit of a story. She's lost and you can try to help her. There's little hints about her larger story sprinkled in. If you played A Perfect Ten, it should be very obvious, but otherwise the hints wont me noticed until her story is done. If you beat her, you get a scene and then she wanders off. Angela shows players that characters can have story attached to them, can move around the world, and that some scenes aren't immediately repeatable. She's also there to again throw another scene at you. Further showing that the game has scenes available quickly and you will never be having to spend hours without seeing some action.

You left the house to go to the convenience store, but it didn't say exactly where it was. This was also intentional. Giving a hint on where to go, without telling the player exactly where it is, means the player will now have to explore. This kind of thing only works if the game or area is fairly small. If the area is too big, it will lead to frustration and the player quitting. WW is fairly small with only a few areas right now, and you can get to all of them in just a few minutes. There's plenty to do along the way to get distracted as well, especially with the random skanks wandering around.

Multiple Paths Are Important -

Let's say you explore a bit and find the convenience store. Right next to the convenience store is the NPC that unlocks collectables. This is completely intentional. The idea is that the player will go to the convenience store and unlock the job, then use their stamina working. Once they're out of stamina, they can go home, but more than likely, they'll want to explore the area at some point. So they should eventually talk to the collectables NPC and start that quest. Showing the player that some NPCs will have quests and that there's multiple ways of making money. This is to give the player multiple ways of progressing. If they don't want to just grind at the job, they can explore and find money instead.

Now let's loop back to Seika. She gave another little secret hint to give the player direction. When talking to her it says that she may like a gift. This implants the idea that there's a way to buy a gift. Which implants the idea that there should be a shop somewhere. The commercial district is the place with the shops, so as long as the player is exploring, they should find the shop. This shop is also a hidden tutorial. It has the gifts for Seika, but also has other items. It shows the player that there's clothes in the game that can increase your stats and make the game easier. There's also other items for the player to buy, showing that there's more than just gifts and clothes. This includes the computer, which gives access to the two hidden jobs, data entry and freelance work.

For a while, these were a little too hidden and relied on the player buying the computer on a whim. This wasn't good game design. So in the university area, I added an NPC that talks about how they can work from home on their computer. Giving another little hint about what to do without outright telling the player.

The "Problem" -

There's a lot of other examples I could go into about how I included hidden tutorials, but the idea should be properly conveyed at this point. Instead, I'll talk about the problem with this approach.

This type of game design relies on the player being willing to explore and engage with the game world. If the player expects a more linear style of game, and/or is skipping all of the dialogue at the start, it's going to be very confusing and frustrating experience. They're not going to talk to anyone and will get frustrated and quit playing very quickly. This is the kind of thing that's impossible to control and where a lot of game design philosophies diverge.

I'm of the opinion that if the player doesn't want an exploration based sandbox game where they're in control and decide what to do, then giving a big in-depth tutorial that fully explains everything directly and tells the player exactly what to do all the time isn't going to change that. All that's going to do is alienate the players who do want an exploration based sandbox game where they decide what to do and lead to a lot of people on both sides just getting annoyed at how boring and hand-holding the game is and how long the tutorial is and then just skipping it. In that instance, it's going to lead to player frustration and annoyance from everyone. Many devs don't share that design philosophy though. Which is why you see so many games with these huge tutorials that hold your hand for hours, have those huge info dumps, and have built-in guides that tell you exactly what to do. I always see this as bad game design.

I'd rather make the experience enjoyable for the people who are likely to enjoy this type of game, not try to cater to an audience who likely wont enjoy the the game either way.

The biggest real problem with this, is more of a problem with the adult game world as a whole. Adult games are the most samey genre out there. A good 90% of them are a visual novel using 3D (likely DAZ, sometimes Honey Select or Koikatsu) with either a college theme or "family" theme. A distant third type is the harem theme. They usually have very basic animation too. The "sandbox" games are rarely actual sandboxes either. They generally let you choose one of a few different storylines, but don't really give much actual freedom. Of course there are some outliers, but overall, people are not used to seeing anything outside of this formula. WW is so far outside of this that it's caused a lot of confusion. Which has been sad to see. I was hoping something different would be a breath of fresh air for the community, but it hasn't been received as well as I had hoped. It's so different that people seem very skeptical of supporting it.

However, that doesn't mean there isn't an audience for it out there. Afterall, someone is reading this. I'm thinking that it will better be able to find it's audience once it releases on Steam. Mainly because of it's reception on Itch. It's gotten by far the best reception and highest number of plays/downloads from Itch. I'm thinking that it's because the other sites are so heavily steeped in those 3D games that that's just the audience that goes to those sites. To reach the audience that's more likely to play an exploration based sandbox game is just not there. Which is why I'm doing my best to get the game onto Steam as quickly as possible.

Pregnancy -

Alright, hopefully all of that helped to explain a bit about game design and how the game works. Now on to talking about the pregnancy mechanic!

One thing I'm not sure I've really said before, is that I absolutely love pregnancy based games. Haramase Simulator was one of my favorites for a long time, and this project was heavily inspired by it. At one point I even reverse engineered the game and was going to continue developing it on my own. But since it uses stolen CG, it's not really possible to setup a patreon or anything for and it can't be put up on storefronts or anything. One of the project ideas I had before doing WW was actually "Haramase Simulator 3D". Which would have been a game built from the ground up using the same idea as the original Haramase Simulator, except using established characters and animations created in Blender. I started trying to make some animations, but my PC is just not strong enough to make animations in Blender. It's almost impossible to animate because I can't preview the animation. If I try to preview the animation in Blender, it goes at about 1/3 of the speed, and it's sometimes an inconsistent speed to, making it impossible to create the right timing. The only way to test the timing is to render out the animation and watch it, then try to figure out where the problem keys are. To top it off, Blender tends to crash when I try rendering out animations. So instead of being able to render out a quick video to try and see the test animation, I would have to render it out frame by frame then compile all the frames together in a video editor. All while having to keep an eye on it and restart it where it crashed, which was usually every 3-4 frames. It took months to put together even a couple of very basic looping animations that honestly weren't as good as I could have done. Then I still needed to do cumshots for them too. Unfortunately, it just couldn't be done.

I ended up releasing one of the animations (of Urbosa), which you can find here on my twitter - https://x.com/exer_art/status/1758635974354170215

It's... fine. But I definitely could do better and it took me roughly 3 months to get it there.

I did one more of Scarlet that I haven't released that you can find attached. Here's a screenshot from it.

This one isn't actually finished. This was just where I gave up trying and stopped working on the project. I was hoping that by having Scarlet on top and pressed against the MC it would help to lessen the load on my PC and not have to deal with jiggle physics. I also tried to keep movement quick and fairly basic so that if I still couldn't preview it would be a lot easier to preview. But yeah, even hiding everything except the base models I still couldn't preview at full speed and while it was faster because of the quicker movement and everything, it still took over a month to get to where it was at. So I had to give up on the project. This is also why I still only do 3D renders over on my Twitter. I would love to do animations, but my PC just can't handle it. If I'm ever able to upgrade my PC, I'll definitely be going back to at least making animations. But yeah, because of that I decided to give up on the project and move onto another idea. The gameplay loop just wouldn't have been interesting enough to stand on it's own without animations and on top of that programming side would be too heavy to be able to include enough characters to make up for the lack of animation either. So I dropped it and moved onto another idea.

All of this to say, I had to include pregnancy in some way. Since WW is such a different concept than most other adult games, I've been doing my best to keep it from being centered on any specific fetish. I don't want to alienate too many people by heavily focusing on one fetish, since if I did, it would shrink the potential audience to just people who both like that specific fetish and also like anime artwork and also like RPGs and also like exploration based sandbox games. It's already fairly limiting being an exploration based sandbox RPG, and I don't want to limit it anymore. So I'm doing my best to keep fetish content to a minimum and making sure it's completely avoidable as well.

That Ain't Waifu Wonderland -

Okay, now that that rant is out of the way, let's actually talk about Waifu Wonderland!

I've mentioned before that pregnancy is initially only going to be included for Aoyagi, Shizuka, and then a third character who will be part of the pregnancy storyline. I was planning on making this a unique schoolgirl type of character. A gyaru type who is just there because she's able to get paid for having the baby. However I've considered making this one of the random schoolgirls. Just using the gyaru random schoolgirl instead and adding in a pregnant version. The current plan is to do this and use it at a placeholder for now and then go back and make it a unique character later on if I can. I'll probably flip the character artwork so you know it's the unique schoolgirl from the storyline and then have you be able to find her in a specific apartment after you've unlocked her in the story. I may give her a modified hairstyle or a unique color scheme to make it at least a little more unique to the storyline. That's one of the many things that just depends on how much support the game gets in the coming months.

Anyway, these three are all that's currently planned to have pregnancy, but I'll be running a poll to decide if more characters can be impregnated. That's going to be the next poll. It will still be limited who can get pregnant though. Characters with a story wont be able to be impregnated (unless it's part of the storyline). Characters like Angela, Mirai, Ms. Hartley, and the characters from the lab storyline wont be able to get pregnant. This is for two big reasons. The first is probably obvious, they're a story character. Having them randomly be able to get pregnant would disrupt the story. The other is that the coding side would be a nightmare. Having to create pregnancy scenarios for every part of the story and create triggers to block continuing the story until the pregnancy is over as well as just having to implement the pregnancy itself would just take a lot of time and testing. It would be a nightmare and likely takes weeks to be able implement a single character. I was originally planning on having the starters be able to get pregnant as a bonus for unlocking their final scene after unlocking the mansion, but decided against it for now. I may still add in pregnancy for them later, but with game only planned to include the apartment tier for now, it would just be too early to be able to include pregnancy. Oh yeah, I also wouldn't include pregnancy for Shiori either way. There's little hints as to why in her dialogue.

Depending on the results of the poll, I would consider including it for some of the story characters at the end of their story. I'm not sure about the MMC characters, because it wouldn't make much sense (you'll see why as the story unfolds), but other characters could. Like Angela, the lab scientist, and the mother/daughter that will have a story in the apartments.

But to start, if the poll shows people want it, I would include it for some of the side characters. Namely Alicia, Akari's daughter, Sakura, and Madison. I would possibly include it for the static random characters as well. Like the goth random skank you can find in the apartments. That really just depends on how the polls goes. If it ends up winning by a landslide, I'll include them. If it's borderline, I'll keep it to just the side characters. Either way, I wouldn't include it for characters where it wouldn't make any sense. Like Rinko always makes you wear a condom and is also on birth control. She's way too into her job to risk getting pregnant, even if she did, she would quietly get rid of it before anyone noticed so it wouldn't affect her job. So she would never get pregnant. The working girls would also never get pregnant because it's their job to have sex, they would never let it happen. Then Akari also wouldn't get pregnant because she got her tubes tied after having her daughter, so she can't get pregnant. That's one I could probably retcon later if the pregnancy mechanic is popular enough though. At least at first, I wouldn't include it for the monster/demon girls like Freya or Almiranda either. It just wouldn't make any sense because of how the lab storyline unfolds. It would also just be a lot of work to code pregnancy and create pregnant variations for another 5 characters, and I'd like to include all of the pregnant characters in the same update if I can. I could figure out a reason for it to work if the pregnancy mechanic is popular enough, but at least for the first round of pregnancy, I don't plan on including them. I'll mention all of this in the poll as well.

How Pregnancy Scenes Will Be Implemented -

I've already talked a bit about how pregnancy will work, but this is how the scenes will look. I had initially wanted the scenes to be unique, but decided against it. It would just be way too much of a time investment. Instead, it'll be pregnant variations of the normal scene. Here's an example.

Here's Aoyagi's normal scene. Since she's a professional breeder, I thought that a mating press made the most sense. So you bang her and cum inside.

 She throws her head back as she cums and you cum inside of her.

Now here's the pregnant version.

 The same but with a bit of a pregnant belly.

Other scenes will have the belly be a little more obvious, but this pose doesn't show it off too much. This is largely because Aoyagi is probably the least avoidable character with pregnancy planned to be included right now. Like mentioned earlier, I don't want to alienate anyone with any kind of specific fetish content right now. That's why I'm having the poll. Pregnancy seems to be a pretty popular thing these days, but until I know that's what people want, I don't want to make it a super obvious and major mechanic. Just more of a little side thing as a way to make a little extra money and for people who are into it.

Pregnancy Coming Soon -

And that's it for now. Pregnancy will be coming in v0.2, I hope you look forward to it! In a few days the poll to decide if more characters can get pregnant will be coming, so be sure to vote! I hope you enjoyed the insights into game design, the 3D animations, and preview of Aoyagi's scene!