State of the Game - Seduced (Patreon)

Evening all, it's time for another monthly status update! And I'm glad to say that after a solid month's effort, the game's combat mechanics are now functional! As mentioned, this month I've focused on the ground combat and the 'seduction' encounters, and I've captured a video of the seduction mode below. Again, all GUI is extremely preliminary and will be redone before the first release:

Seduction Screencap Vid 

Both modes are fairly similar in that they involve individual combatants targeting other combatants, and for the moment do so based on their own random target selection (I plan to add future command types allowing you to specify a target to focus on). They do have some stat differences - for instance, in ground combat combatants have HP, generated by their Stamina, and get a damage bonus from their Initiative, while in seduction encounters they use Willpower, generated by Intelligence, and do bonus damage based on their Charisma. The key difference is the kinds of skills they have available to use. As I currently have things implemented, all combatants get at least three basic seduction techniques, such as 'dirty talk' or 'flash'. Some (but not all) traits however will provide additional options, which generally do more 'damage' and will often have an opposing trait that will receive even more damage - for instance, Tops and Bottoms both do bonus damage to each other. There's currently one trait that does AoE damage, and team healing will likely be a thing down the line as well. When I get around to overhauling the GUI design I'll be sure to include more markings of who has what stats and traits, to make skills and targets more easily selected.

So, what's next? I'm currently setting up a brief scene to follow up the seduction encounter, but after that it'll be on to the other major piece of functionality for the initial release - dynamic 'romance' scenes. If you've played games like Strive for Power or Lab Rats 2, they will function a bit like those with their action-based scenes, but I also plan on making it a bit more engaging and satisfying. I know I for one am rather frustrated when low-level characters can't even manage to finish a single round in some games, and my current plan is that it won't even be possible to have an unsatisfying conclusion without intentionally quitting halfway through. The exact mechanics will require some playtesting, but I will say that traits will again come into play - for now mostly in how effective certain actions are, but eventually in what sort of actions are available as well.

My current plan is to spend most of the month on this feature. After that the main functionality work will be relatively minor things - saving/loading, an options screen, other interface work etc. Then of course, the GUI overhaul which will hopefully make all of these screen captures look much more impressive. I won't set any schedules tonight, but things are getting closer to the first demo!

I'll see you again in a few weeks, til then, thanks again for all your support!