Super Hunk Hotel - Dev Diary 001 (Patreon)

Hey guys

Heck yeah, we got a name! (kinda, it's still a WIP for now)

I've been trying to put some more work in this project every now and then (so development actually goes somewhere) and I feel I got enough things to show and talk about to warrant a little dev diary. I'm counting this one as entry 001 and that last one as entry 000, either way you'll be able to find all of them through the "Super Hunk Hotel" tag down there.

Alright, let's have some fun

The Plot

I want SHH to have a simple premise that allows you to just pop it in and play without any worries, but also have some story going on in the background providing objectives for the player

I haven't developed anything related to the story at all, but so far the plot is about an incubus (you) that inherits a small property and is tasked into developing it into a successful hotel/inn/lodging in order to gather as much life energy as possible

In this universe, incubi are formless demons made of a tar-like substance. They feed off of life energy to grow stronger and develop powers such as shapeshifting and mind control.

Again, I still haven't quite decided where this is plot is going so everything might still change drastically. But I think it's an adequate start for the gameplay I want.

Speaking of gameplay

The Gameplay

There are two main gameplay loops that intertwine in SHH.

The first one is all about managing your hotel, building new rooms to accommodate more guests, building facilities such as restaurants for guests to dine in, saunas and hotsprings for them to relax, themed lounging areas to attract guests with particular tastes and profiles, stables/zoos that allow you to capture monsters, etc.

The second gameplay loop is all about the social aspects of your incubus life. It's all about interacting with your guests personally to try to satisfy their needs in order to maximize your monetary and sexual gains. For this part the main focus is in the game's "battle system" that has you interacting with the guest in order to be able to take them to bed, maximize their happiness in order to profit as much as possible from them, or if they are being too rowdy, make them leave your property as smoothly as possible.

Of course to get to one of the outcomes from the dialogue battle you'll have a variety of interactions, all affected by the guest's current mood, disposition towards you, their traits and preferences, arousal levels and etc. I've developed the system quite a bit already, but I'd like to get something way more concrete before showing it off properly so I'll leave it to a future dev diary

What I am gonna show you is

The Pixel Art

Alright, this one already got totally spoiled since it's the very first thing in this page but let's talk about it anyway.

I've been playing a bit more with the concepts behind character creation since it's one of the main points of the game, and I feel that I'm starting to get somewhere.

So far what I have planned is for each character to be composed by: A species (which defines which head and tail variations your model will use), a body type (FIT or FAT), a color scheme (palettes consisting of 3 set colors for the body and head, plus a separate eye color) and face/body markings and patterns

Up there in the image for this post you'll be able to see how I've started by making the bear head along with a bunch of body markings (and to be honest I don't know which one I'd go for, the bear head with or without the neck fluff), and then proceeded to try my hand at some other species (dragon, ram, horse)

You'll also see that I've started preparing the 8-direction sprites for the characters. Those take a really long time to make, but I think they make a huge difference ingame so they are probably worth it. They also make for a fun spinning gif:

In the end I'm feeling quite confident about the art aspects of this project. It seems pretty clear that if I keep dumping time into it I'll get some cool stuff, and that time was gonna end up being spent anyway so we might as well not waste too much of it.

The Development Milestones

And speaking of time, another important aspect of this project is what and how things are gonna get made.

The main thing that I want to develop first is the dialogue battle system. It's one of the main focus of the game so it's important that it gets a lot of attention and that it's fun to play.

After that is in a somewhat finished state (or at least finished enough that I can put a demo out for you guys to experience it) it's time to tackle the other main part of the game: The character creation and customization (both for the player and for NPCs that need to be generated)

Those two parts are already gonna take quite a few months (even after I'm done with my master's degree) so we can leave everything else in the background for now

Alright, I've just realized that I've spent like an hour and a half just writing this post so it should be more than enough for now. If I forgot any vital parts they can wait until dev diary 002

I hope you guys like reading about me rambling about a project like this. I really feel that sharing this stuff helps me be constantly working on it, and hopefully not just drop it like I do with everything I try to make.

Comments are always super welcome, I really like hearing what you guys have to say about all of this, be it on the public comments or in PMs. It really is useful to have an outside perspective to point out how things can be improved

Anyway, see ya next time!