Devlog #1

 (Content Warning: this post depicts sexual content.) 

Since this is the first devlog, it's a good opportunity to talk in more general terms about the concepts and inspiration for Succubus Stories, and the design principles, software, and technology behind it. For the first couple of devlog entries I'm going to focus more on that stuff than anything else. If you are more interested in what I'm working on and what I've accomplished in progress toward the next release, see the  issue tracker.

In this first entry, I really want to talk about what I want the game to be and the leading design principles of this project. I'll also talk a bit about where and how this project started and try to give an honest assessment of where it is right now. To understand basically anything about the game and its design though, I think it's important to know my guiding design philosophy and overall goals. 

Design Goals and Philosophy

At the absolute most generic, I want to create a game where players come for the lewd but are pleasantly surprised by the mechanics and story, and keep coming back for all of it. I want to create a compelling core loop that is fun, but doesn't get in the way of the lewd stuff, but also isn't dependent on it completely for player enjoyment. To accomplish this goal, I've codified several design principles to govern this project. 

The first is that I want the game to feature a robust, interesting sandbox, but with a tight, focused scope. To some players that may sound like it's at odds with itself, but in this case, a sandbox means simply supplying the player with a set of tools and mechanics and trying to stay out of the way and let them interact with the world on their own terms. I wanted to keep the scope itself limited--you play as a female succubus, only social skills are really explored, you play as a defined character in the third person, etc. These decisions are designed to limit the core experience to something that I feel I can design around; I want to nail a specific fantasy (and not necessarily just a sexual one) and keep the fat trimmed. If I have an idea and it doesn't relate to that central fantasy I set it aside, at least for now. 

That leads me naturally to the next design principle: everything in the game should be within two "degrees" of the central fantasy of a medieval succubus. The central fantasy, to me, is a succubus having sex for the specific purpose of consuming sexual fluids to survive. Every mechanic should be designed to have a focus on that concept and to enhance that central concept. For example, the light survival mechanics of hunger and lust spring directly from the core concept. Using the sexual fluids in alchemy does too. Collecting other ingredients for the purpose of alchemy is two degrees from the central fantasy. Going to the market to sell the potions the character makes is also two degrees out. 

This isn't to say that nothing beyond two degrees, as I've defined it here, has made it into the game or will make it into the game, but the guiding principle encourages me to treat things outside the scope with immense skepticism.

# The "Fantasy"

I use the term "fantasy" to describe the concept of this game. I use this term because I don't want players to necessarily have to identify with or roleplay as the main character, which is why the main character has many defined traits and the game is mostly written in third person. I also don't want to preclude players from roleplaying as her if that's fun or compelling for them. I want to capture a fantasy, not necessarily an immersive experience but also not something where the player is fully outside the experience without agency. I've honestly found this a difficult balance to nail perfectly. 

For example, how much personality can I give the player character without stepping on the toes of players who want to roleplay? If I give her too little personality then I risk her falling flat for players who prefer the game as more of a third person experience. I'll cover this more when I discuss the story later this month, but I do think it's worth mentioning this tension in regards to the general game design as well, since it has impacted almost every part of the development process. 

Encounters 

The adult game *Lillith’s Throne* inspired some aspects of the sexual encounter system’s design, but I wanted to narrow what I felt was an extremely open and flexible system into something that was purpose-built, focused, and simple. I wanted progression to inform what sort of actions were available and I wanted to limit the available actions per “type” of sex, but focus on expanding the random elements and descriptive flavor text of those actions to make scenes feel dynamic and keep them interesting.

In addition to a limited scope with actions based on progression, I also wanted to introduce a low-stress strategic element to keep encounters somewhat engaging even after players had seen them a lot, but without making them matter so much that players would be forced to perform actions they didn’t find interesting just to appease it. 

The performance system is meant to capture this design. It grades the player on several different metrics that I will for now keep secret. For most encounters, getting a high performance rating doesn't mean much. Some story-based encounters later in the game may have some ramifications for excessively good or bad performance, but overall the system is mostly there for players to experiment with and challenge themselves with if they want to. 

This has also impacted how the orgasm system works; you don’t know at exactly what point your partner will tire out, but you do know it will be after one of their orgasms. You want to ideally leave the encounter with low pleasure and therefore low lust, or at least less lust than you went into it, so you want to try to keep your orgasms somewhat on track with your partner’s to the extent you can. If you leave an encounter still pretty horny, well, it’s not the end of the world--there’s no shortage of people to have sex with, and you can always masturbate at home (or elsewhere, later in the game), but that costs time. 

Finally, coming up with lots and lots of descriptions for encounters proved difficult. I initially planned to hand-write them, and wanted to keep them pretty “vanilla” or at least realistic. I envisioned including an optional “hentai mode” where I could write some over-the-top, hentai-style cringe (no judgment). That didn’t really work out. Realistic descriptions are boring and it's hard to get excited about a textual representation of some dude jackhammering on a girl if she isn’t “eagerly shaking her hips” and all that stuff. That hentai stuff is pretty hot even though it’s unrealistic and may occasionally give you an internal cringe, and I think it provides way more fodder for writing a scene. Overall I'm both a bit proud of and totally embarrassed by the prose in encounters. I'm happy with how it turned out overall, though. 

Since I was going full-bore, unapologetic hentai smut I decided I might as well create a system for further randomizing scenes so that we could have tons of individual descriptors for each action, body part, adjective, and adverb. I also created a more over-the-top “ahegao” graphic for the protagonist's face when they orgasm to complete the feel.

Grinding

Succubus Stories includes some grinding for progression, and most of that grind happens in sexual encounters. This so far has been the most controversial part of the game's design--people have expressed that it's just too grindy. While I want the game to include a grind, I do agree that the initial release, v0.1.3, was too much. I toned it down in v0.1.4 and v0.1.5 to what I consider to be a much more reasonable degree, and added the option to skip most sexual encounters.

It was always possible to quickly get through encounters you didn't want to play by mashing the 1 key, but making skipping past what you don't want to play a more solidified and encouraged feature should help alleviate the grindiness. I also made encounters much shorter on average and partners who could orgasm more than three times are now quite rare. I think the sexual encounters are fun, but only if you're in the mood for one, not when you're just trying to do something else but need to meet some of your needs. I think making them skippable is the best solution.

Dev note: If you're wondering how I made the encounters skippable so fast (literally the next day after release I patched the feature in) it's because I had already built the necessary components to make the encounters skippable and just hadn't completed the system because I worried about it having a negative effect on the game, since most lewd games definitely don't let you, you know, skip the lewd. However, I realized that unlike a lot of the games that have inspired me, Succubus Stories actually requires you to do these encounters repeatedly instead of just letting you do them repeatedly.

Graphics

I’m not much of an artist, but I really wanted to include visuals, graphics, and icons in the game. I initially considered hiring an artist to create art, but I felt that I wanted to try my hand at making my own 3D art with something simple like Daz3D. I did so, and it was certainly a learning experience. I am okay with the result in large part, thought I'm not happy with it. I intend to eventually pay artists to provide alternate art packs that will be available for the eventual executable release of the game. Later on, I’ll provide support for custom art packs and some kind of mod support. (It’s important for me to mention that custom art pack and mod support will be among the last additions to the project, so don’t expect them soon, and that at this point these are planned features, not promised ones.)

Mechanics

When I envisioned a succubus game, two mechanics were always present in my mind: performing alchemy with sexual fluids and engaging in prostitution. I envisioned these mechanics as ways to both make money and accomplish other goals. Need to grease some palms? Seduce them with a “free” ride or give them a magic potion. Or use a potion to make yourself appeal more to them. I wanted to create problems and hopefully rely on these two systems to allow players to approach and solve them in different ways. I’ve since added a few additional wrinkles: things like social skills and bribery, but these core systems were always in play.

These mechanical ideas also fit nicely in a progression system. Certain characters you want to seduce may have certain desires. You can practice having different kinds of sex in different ways to earn new perks to please them. Or spend points to earn new traits. Or practice brewing potions to come up with a new recipeh that may help. Or try out and develop your social skills. Or earn and spend an exorbitant amount of money. In other words, giving the player new things to work toward seemed incredibly important.

Every large update will come with new stuff to chase as well as new content: new perks that grant new actions and activities, new traits, and new tiers of recipes to unlock.

Wrapping Up

This is getting long, so in the next devlog we’ll talk about the development of the story, characters, and setting of the game up to this point and the goals and philosophy that went into developing those parts. A future devlog may cover the technology and software that powers the game, but that's a ways off so we'll see. I'm sure I'll also need to discuss the current issues I'm grappling with and the work I'm doing.

Thanks for reading and thanks even more for believing in and supporting this project! Your support means a lot to me.

If you need to contact me, you can message me or comment here on Patreon or pop into our Discord to chat. In the meantime, I'm gonna keep my head down and work. Expect more info on my plans for v0.2.0 soon.