NTR Gameplay Decisions (Urgent) (Patreon)

Hi there beWildernauts! How we feelin’ after our fun releases yesterday? Good stuff, right? Anyway, that’s not why we’re here today. This post has been a long time coming and has become quite urgent so please bear with us as we jump in!

TL:DR - Come chat with us about the gameplay on the special temp Discord channel.

Heads Up Bold fans! We’ve posted this post to all backers including the bold tier because we take feedback seriously and want you guys to have your say too. However, you will likely come across very minor spoiler art from NTR content by participating so please do be away of that.

So, we’ve been giving player players time to have a good go of NTR’s v0.1, all the way down to the Brave tier before we decided to kick off a larger discussion on the finer points of it. Other posts that have had a higher priority, such as Wallpaper reward related posts have pushed this one back further in the month than we would have liked but it is starting to get to be on troublesomely late side, so we’ve got to move now. Here’s the issue…

We’ve been getting feedback already on the Restaurant Runner gameplay, some good but a preponderance of it has been negative. People are telling us works but not fluidly, and it’s not for them… We understand why, and we’ve been working on it between bigger ticket items in the last few months. We’re not overly happy with how it is right now, and we want to make it work all the better. Our gut reaction is to finish what we started and push it the extra distance until it runs smoothly. We’ve got it all in place, it just needs balancing and rounding out of the edges… we know we can do it given time and elbow grease! 

However… this is not the major issue. The heart of today’s matter is the role of the gameplay overall. We can spend all the time and effort in the world to make it an awesome mini-game in its own right, but if people are not interested in the concept to begin with, it is ultimately detrimental to the development of the game. As much as we like it, it is silly to waste development time on something the vast majority of people are going to simulate over anyway. So, the point of this post is to explore this further before we hit NTR v0.2 and potentially develop more unnecessarily. Sound good?

We’ve got two main options to explore today and yet leave the door open for other potential ideas based on what we accomplish here. We’ll detail both a little further down the page, but the overview is this: Would y’all prefer we fix up the existing gameplay concept and demo, or rework it into something new? We’ve not come empty handed either, we’ve an alternate system in mind that is different entirely to the current set up, see the “Option 2” section below for more on that (and a very simple demo), but first let’s look more at “Option 1”, the Restaurant Runner game.

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Option 1 – Restaurant Runner Mini Game

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Option 1 is to carry on with what we have, improve where necessary and polish it up something fine. We’ve already got 80% done, it’s as usual the last 20% that has caused the rub. That’s the implementation though… as we said, some people are not liking a mini-game at all in the middle of the game. The Mini-game is the driving force in paying off the debt Noe carries around, and also benefits the other girls, and therefore drives the unlocking of story scenes, so it is important. Let’s take a second to remind ourselves of what it looks like shall we?

The goal is to guide your selected waitresses around the floor to take orders, deliver food and clean up tables… all for that important tip money! You know, basically being a waitress! The gameplay is designed to actually make NTR more of a game, to encourage the player to so more than click’n’read and to make choices about who to send out and when, as things like stress can worsen your girl’s performance and lower your tips. You also aim to keep your reputation high so you can lure in more potential tippers each day too! All-in-all it’s an action-orientated player experience

So what are the pros and cons of this approach?

Pro:

· Action-orientated gameplay means you have more of a role in how things turn out, it’s up to you to earn you money and you rewards. It actually makes NTR a game over just a visual novel.

· Movement and visuals are more appealing, more room for player input and skill

· Modular based gameplay like this means less stress on development of asset. Noe’s animations are already made and work, she can be used as many times as needed and it’s still fresh. We don’t need to spend time each update adding more art once we have them and that means more time for scene content!

· We’re already well into development and have a working version already in game!

Cons:

· Takes player input while running, can’t set-and-forget much more likely to be simulated and therefore defeats the whole point of being there.

· More prone to bugs and harder to balance.

· Heavier on art assets to have a Minimal Working Version, inflates game size and download times, as well as in game loading times.

So, what do we think? Do the pros outweigh the cons or is it not viable to you as it stands? Give it a good think, but before you make up your mind, let’s take a look at an alternative in Option 2

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Option 2 – Restaurant Management Selection Board.

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Option 2 is quite different. Different enough we’ve had Spook whip up a demo to show it in action, albeit a very simplistic one. He spent the weekend on it and reused the assets we have already so not to take away any needed art or writing resources from the ongoing AoH v0.8 development, which is still our prime focus of this month. The UI would be redesigned if this when forward. We’ll take you through it now, but you can grab it and give it a try yourself.

Find it here: Simple Demo  

As the name suggests, this is option is a more simplistic management style gameplay, each day you take your team of girls and set them to their tasks for the day. After that you will be informed of the outcomes as a procedural generated short VN scene, and then a summary board to lay it all out in style!

The point of this gameplay is to both achieve the same driving of Noe to earn her way out of debt, but in a more narrative fashion that imitates the day-to-day of her struggle to run the business right and fighting Sal. It’s not about player input or skill in movement, but instead managing and balancing your personnel / resources with good decision making. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Here we have the selection screen (reused from the current gameplay). At the start of each workday, Noe will choose her and her staffs’ jobs for the day. In the current demo we basically just have Noe goes to work or she goes home, working earns money and stress, while taking the day off relieves stress (also in the demo, Kriem never shows up for work). In this potential gameplay system, should it become fully developed, Noe could potentially assign her girls (or and herself) to help wait tables, cook in the kitchen, clean or even do things like run the social media accounts for the shop or spy on Sal across the street… he’ll likely be doing things himself to hinder you!

Once you set you day in motion, the game can pull on your Noe’s stats, the restaurant rep and other factors like stress to define the outcomes of the day, and then generate events from a pool of happenings for each girl as a very simple VN scene like above. These scenes will see money earned and stress / rep changes, as well as give us a nice picture of our girl at work. After that it moves to the summary of the day!

So here we have the summary screen, again pulled from the current one we have. Here we see the laid out results after we’ve seen the narrative version of the outcomes… in case you where distracted the first time around! Once you’ve taken it all on board and figured out your next moves it’s on to the next day! Like with our current set up, if you’ve unlocked an evening story scene it’ll play right after this board!

So, what are the pros and cons of this one?

Pros:

· Much more narrative experience, focused on the theme of the game and has the potential for more sexy content as part of the game flow (flirting with customers, feuding with Sal, etc).

· Smoother and more fluid ‘gameplay’ that tracks faster than Option 1, also easier to balance and expand on.

· Potential for more expansive elements, like stats for Kriem/Frankie/Kelsey that tailor each (and Noe) to particular tasks based on their personalities. (We’ll save discussion on this for later, if this option gets picked up, lest we over complicate things right now)

· Lower assets requirements for a Minimal Working Version, and so lower overall file size / download times / load times

Cons:

· More of the same, with little input besides decision making at the start of each day, it is more VN content. Not really ‘gameplay’. Much more prone to dreaded ‘Grind’ feel…

· Requires reoccurring updates to keep interesting. Each update will need new scenes made here to keep things for getting stale, and while these are much quicker to make than full story scenes, they do eat into our CG count each time.

· Lacks movement and eye-catching visuals

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So there we have it… our two potential systems. What do we think? Have a play of both (via NTR v0.1 and the linked demo above) and let us know your thoughts and feelings. Since this page is not the best for a prolonged back and forth, we’ve set up a backers only space on our Discord server (direct link to new channel) just for this discussion on this topic. Come join us and talk this whole thing out! Also leave us your vote below on which option we should work more on, or if we should take Option 3, something completely different, like a memory game challenge / match 3 / different management system.

Oh yeah, and a big-ass thank you for reading all of this and helping us, we appreciate the hand and we love you for it!

Be a proud player and beWilder!