Reworking the "struggle" mechanic (Patreon)

Certainly it is among the oldest of gameplay mechanics, both in normal and adult games: mash buttons to make something happen.

Specifically regarding adult games, it usually goes that once the main character is in a pinch, a meter will show up (it is being drained by the minute) and you must mash down those directional keys as fast as possible to fill it up.

It's simple, intuitive, easy to implement and it just works. But the potential for carpal tunnel is there, and as I grow older, my wrist and finger nerves are not liking this mechanic one bit LOL.

Therefore, since I needed to integrate the possibility of harvesting "essence" via ero scenes into the game somehow, and I wanted to revamp the basic struggle mechanic anyways, well I decided to cross two hurdles with one leap and go full on experimental with a new minigame: the struggle board!

It is much simpler than it appears at first glance: when Maya is grabbed, now the board appears and you assume control of tiny Maya there (she always starts at the center). You will move her with the same directional keys as before, and every step drains a little bit of stamina, but also adds to increase the struggle meter (the green bar wrapping around the board), and once the meter is fully wrapped around, Maya breaks free.

So if you noticed, for those of you who actually prefer to mash buttons, you will be able to achieve the same result as before by just moving around on the board. But for those who want the main goal which is to farm essence, then you will have to be more deliberate and strategic with her movements, due to the main feature of the board: spawning icons!

At set intervals, a group of icons will appear and disappear, and when Maya collect those, they have a positive/negative effect on her. The most important one for our objective here are the heart shaped, red icons: they are the ones that we need to collect in order to drain essence from the enemies during the animations!

Those icons are guaranteed to continuously spawn, therefore being a sure way of farming them, but it requires tactical movement on the board because because there are also other types of icons: negative icons which do damage and others which drains the meter, and positive icons that heal Maya's HP or SP, give a boost to the struggle, etc.

In conclusion, the key game design goal of the board is to present a decision/choice to players: do you mash the buttons to quickly release Maya from the grab, or do you purposefully stay much longer on the board to farm the essence, all the while the ero scene is playing out, doing damage and increasing Maya's lust, even at the risk of a final game-over? I think this new minigame can provide an interesting new layer for players to decide how they want to engage with the ero animations.

I know that it might look and sound way more complicated than it actually is, but regardless of that, once I release this new version I will want to hear the feedback from everyone here to see if it turned out to be a fun and engaging mechanic, or if it is more painful/cumbersome than I hoped for.

Either way, I do have much simpler alternative designs in mind, ready to go in case I have to scrap the board idea if it is poorly received by the players, so no worries there. It's just that I felt really motivated to try and create a more novel and experimental idea, so I guess it doesn't hurt to try it out!

I'll be releasing this upcoming version on the 31st of this month, so stay tuned!

Best Regards,
Mega