8/16 Status Update

This week I decided the demo was fleshed out enough to give it to some initial playtesters. I got a lot of feedback, mostly positive, and a few noticeable problems. So now my focus is working through those problems to get the preview builds of the demo ready.

In the meantime, art production continues to hum away. All the character sprites for act 1 are finished along with the main character art. This includes genderbent versions of characters, something that's not in the demo because that starts in level 5 and the demo ends after 3. But rest assured it's there and there's a lot of it.

Is this the first time I've had a female to male transformation in one of my games? It might be, I can't think of any other times I've done it. Male seems like a bit of an exaggeration since Shah stays firmly a femboy, this is the manliest she'll get in this route. Functionally, this is more of a "Do you want Zaman/Azar to fuck a woman or a femboy?" sort of deal. There's not all that much completely exclusive genderbent content over variations of other Shah routes.

Making the TF content more important and more varied was a pretty hard challenge to pull off during the design, but I think I have something that will work. The process of putting together a plan that's actually achievable for this is pretty complex. And having something like a character be able to be replaced by a completely different design without just doubling the amount of art assets needed requires some careful planning. That's why I ended up having characters only able to genderbend on their POV. Not being able to mix together makes things much easier, although I'm sure some people will be disappointed by it. But in the end actually getting the game made is what's important.

An important piece of feedback I got from the playtesting is that the groping mechanics felt off. This is a lot of people's favorite part of the game so it's an important thing to get right. It's more complex than just copy-pasting what was in Netoria 1 though. The ability to play from the POV of the groper rather than the gropee introduces a number of challenges. Essentially the reward structure has to invert. Instead of the mechanics rewarding gropes, it should make them hard to do. This is going to take a lot of tuning and while I didn't get it right the first try, through iteration we'll get there.

There's also some characterization stuff that needs to be fixed up, particularly with Zaman. Speaking of Zaman...

Looks like he's is having a hard time resisting Vashti. But can you really blame him? I know everytime I've had a big breasted naked woman sit on my lap and start giving me a handjob, I've had a hard time saying no. Yes this happens all the time, no don't ask any follow up questions.

So that's where things stand, the demo is playable and mostly done, but needs a few tweaks and tuning before I give it out. But it's close. And after that I'll get more feedback, tweak some more, and start moving the game forward now that the foundation has been solidified.

That's all for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support.