DEVLOG [#1] - CARNAL FATALITY (Patreon)

Hello! It's been a long ass time since I've written one of these things... Welcome to the beginning of the development log for my new game - CARNAL FATALITY.

Let's talk a bit about what led me to this point. Even ignoring that the past year has probably been the worst year of my entire life, I've still been trying to find a project to get the ball rolling on. The idea of doing a new game has come to mind multiple times, however, I wanted to avoid doing pixel art graphics... Which made the process of making a whole ass game a lot more daunting.

This began way back - around last December or January. While working on Amber Reich, I was playing around with the idea of doing some kind of "Interactive Comic", which would be half-game, half-comic, and would run as a program on your PC. Though, before long this transitioned into wanting to make a real game.

At first, I considered doing a long-form, story based RPG. Making art for a top-down RPG, especially if it was all hand drawn and painted, would be a tremendous amount of work however. The rough plot idea for this morphed into a sidescrolling Castlevania-inspired game, with a weapon system akin to Monster Hunter. Reason being, it's easier to create assets for a sidescroller. What bogged the idea down for me was that a lot of people are making "Metroidvanias" nowadays, and I wasn't sure what I could really add to that genre. This idea eventually turned into HEAT FROM BELOW, which you've seen a bit of on here.

The problem with HFB became apparent when I realized I was spending multiple days on each page, and I began thinking about how I could somehow streamline the process - or at least reuse work I've already done. I began thinking about making a visual novel, since with those, reusing art assets is quite literally the name of the game. I doodled around with that idea for a couple of months, but was having trouble getting anywhere with it in terms of raw inspiration.

At first, I was still messing with the idea of the game being set underground - an idea that originated with the RPG I had mentioned earlier - which is nearly a year old idea at this point. (And even then, that concept for me has roots even further back - well past the scope of this post) However, it eventually transitioned to being above ground, and moreso focused on ruins and exploration. (Something that would be... Hard to do in a VN.)

From the start, I was trying to think of ways to make it not feel like a generic VN. I wanted some kind of gameplay to it - hence exploration mechanics. (Though, I'm still not sure how these would've been implemented beyond a rudimentary map system.) Another idea was to make the game very trial and error based, sort of like an old Choose-your-own-Adventure novel...

That's when it hit me.

My friends had been begging me to check out Lethal Company since it came out on Steam. That's when it all clicked for me - the thought of making a horror game. The theming would mesh incredibly well with the sort of design I wanted to go for.

Inspirations from some of my favorite games - Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Yume Nikki, OFF, Sweet Home, Dead Space, and even a bit of Final Fantasy, started flooding my mind. In less than a couple days, I was able to combine all the rough ideas I've had floating around for the past few years into one coherent concept.

CARNAL FATALITY

Modern day - a fledgling group of urban explorers are tipped off about an old, abandoned ruin deep in a remote wooded area... However, not even the most seasoned of Urbex crews will touch this place - with rumors of missing persons and even hauntings preceding it.

In desperation to make a name for themselves online, and without heeding any warning, the group makes their way to the ruins. Unknown to them, are the dark, twisted, lustful horrors awaiting them...

The player takes control of Raine, a hobbyist photographer who carries his camcorder everywhere he goes. The goal of the game is to reunite with your friends, record evidence of the ruins, and survive the carnal horrors awaiting the unsuspecting team.

The game will take the form of a sort of Survival Horror Turn-Based RPG - though don't let that scare you (yet.) My aim is to make the game as digestible as possible, and focus very heavily on the lewder aspects. I don't want to spoil too much about what I have in mind, but I'll describe some basic concepts here.

For one, status information such as your condition (health) or mind (lust) aren't displayed as static numbers. This also goes for the monsters you'll be fighting off. Instead, this information is displayed as verbal indications, such as "Good" or "Wounded".

The monsters who inhabit the ruins desire one thing and one thing only - sexual slaves which will worship them as gods. They'll stop at nothing to either shatter your will - or kill you trying. As Raine loses his mind, the world around him will distort as his grasp on reality is warped by their almost demonic lust. This includes controlling your actions, and slowly infesting your mind with the desire to submit to your new masters...

Unlike Thirstchasm or Tailbound, this time around I want to focus solely on scenes for losing to the monsters - giving into them. I'm still brainstorming how to make this fun, and not lead to the game coming to a grinding halt every time you encounter an enemy just so you can see its sex scene, but I have a few good ideas.

Similarly to those two games though, Carnal Fatality is taking and expanding upon the original premises I had for those games. In Thirstchasm, the main character Jonas was meant to be an urban explorer, with the starting level being a series of tunnels which connected a greater facility... This idea didn't translate very well to the final game, and I think people were confused when I included him in Tailbound - which is a lot more contemporary aesthetically. Speaking of, Tailbound was also meant to have a darker, more Resident Evil vibe to the story and game - hence the original demo being a puzzle game. That idea came out pretty botched when I turned the game into an action-oriented Zelda clone...

I am once again building this game from the ground up using GameMaker Studio 2, similar to Tailbound and Moontide. This gives me a lot more flexibility for the visuals and gameplay, however it'll take some time to get the battle system and inventory mechanics in place.

One of the main things I'm using to my advantage with this is the ability to have two separate resolutions running simultaneously in the same game - you may have noticed that with the game's HUD or the subtle chromatic aberration effect. This also allows me to draw higher resolution artwork for the sex scenes, as well as dialogue scenes with the characters talking. (Which will look similar to a VN and Tailbound/Thirstchasm's character portraits.)

I decided that it'd be best to go with a pixel art style for the game, just due to how long it'd take to make hand-painted artwork for the entire game. Hopefully, with the past couple of years I've spent learning to paint backgrounds, the new pixel art looks better than what Tailbound had to offer.

Overall, I'm hoping to make the game look and sound like a classic SNES Square game... Think FF6, Seiken Densetsu III, Chrono Trigger, etc. This also goes for the game's soundtrack, which I hope to use SFC samples for... That's another thing I should mention, I'll be taking a crack at composing the OST myself this time due to all the problems I've had in tracking down a composer to work with.

I'm not going to guarantee that I'll be able to do it, but I'd like to at least give it a serious attempt. I have a bit of a background in music, and have dabbled in the idea of writing it off and on since I was 8 or 9 years old. (Even a few of my games have music done by me, but I won't say which ones...) If it turns out sounding like shit though, I'll either find a premade royalty free music pack, or I'll try (again) to hire someone to do it. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, that should be enough for an introductory post to the project. Thanks a ton for supporting me and the work I do, it genuinely means a lot to me. I plan to write a devlog like this at least bi-weekly, depending on how much work I'm able to get done... Next thing I'll be focusing on is probably the dialogue system, and maybe the inventory and gear system after that.

Thanks for reading!