January Roadmap (continued) (Patreon)

Happy New Year all, just thought I'd drop an update on progress for January.

First off, I've found an artist who's doing outfits for the standalone. This is exciting as we're finally taking steps toward a standalone game with a unique model! The downside will be less outfits to choose from, but the new model will afford much better views of the player's arms even while her elbows are bound, and in general will have a more consistent art direction with unique graphics for most restraints.

Second, 3 out of 5 items from the January Roadmap are done: Rope Kraken change, Ancient Restraints stacking, and Keyboard controls for dialogue (you can also skip through dialogue using the skip hotkey).

That leaves the new tileset and the goddess reputation buffs/penalties. I don't have a preview of the new tileset yet, but I'll dump some theory on you I guess.

One of the things I've noticed during playtesting and feedback is that a lot of times one can reliably escape from most things an enemy puts on you. This doesn't mean restraints aren't dangerous, as escaping takes time and stamina. However, it makes earning the enmity of the goddesses considerably less frightening. Being cursed by the goddess of Rope should make you fear rope!

So the basic idea is this: For the restraint goddesses, having a positive rep will reward you by making her restraints easier to escape. Having a negative rep will make them harder. The current penalty will be shown in the UI.

That leaves the question of the four other goddesses (who are, for upcoming lore reasons, known as the goddesses of Creation). However, all of them are at least in some way associated with certain factions and concepts. Elementals apply obsidian restraints, so why not make them aligned with her as well? This also opens up the possibility for the shrines of the Creation goddesses to allow you to offer restraints as well, perhaps for a rep penalty rather than a bonus, to make offering restraints to the restraint goddesses more attractive given the lack of additional benefits. Alternatively I could make all goddesses have both a buff/restore feature (some ideas: rope buffs struggling, metal restores Charge, latex grants slime walking, leather grants fire resistance and gives a sort of passive version of Flame Blade).

A proposed set of restraint associations:
Restoration: Vine, Mithril, Holy Rope/Cuffs (holy cuffs dont exist yet)
Elements: Obsidian, Crystal
Conjuration: Binding dresses, magical restraints (an idea for a new restraint set that always comes with purple locks, used by witches and wizards)
Illusion: Comfy (ghost) restraints, Maid restraints, Shadow hands

That's all for now.