Pre-Release: What is Course of Temptation? (Patreon)

Course of Temptation is a text-based adult college life simulator with elements of interactive fiction.

You create a character, then guide that character through life. You can move to different locations and perform actions at those locations. Actions take time. You have to balance your character's needs as well as find time to handle school and work a job.

Why text?

The great advantage of text over other mediums is that it can be highly dynamic and reactive.

Generating a paragraph of text that encompasses a dozen different choices is much easier than, say, generating illustrations for every possible combination of choices. How your character has decided to dress that day, their relationship with an NPC, their location, their attitude, and so on can all be made to factor into an event with much less effort than any other medium. When things can be made that reactive, it makes the game feel very immersive.

Also, while erotic games with illustrations or graphics are pretty great, there's something to be said for having nothing standing between you and your own imagination. Eventually, I would like to commission some art to augment the experience in certain ways, but the game will always be best described as text-based.

The life simulation

My basic philosophy with this game is to create a simulation with just enough detail that complex behavior can emerge, but not so much that the player is overwhelmed. By tracking just a few key details, things that happen in the game can arise not out of total randomness, but for specific reasons.

For example, if your underwear is stolen while you're showering, it's because there was an NPC nearby who was actually into that sort of thing, who didn't like you or at least was indifferent, but was still sexually attracted to you. They've noticed you now and gained a little lust towards you, which will shape their attitude toward you and your future interactions. You might notice them eyeing you more in the hall, and they might even clumsily proposition you at the party on Friday. And that won't be a preprogrammed event chain, it'll just be a result of the simulation.

In other words, I don't want to just tell a narrative, I want to make something that will generate narratives of its own.

Also, while the simulation does track your need for food and sleep and so on, I don't want these needs to be difficult to engage with either, or for the time management aspect of the game to be too annoying. Needs don't have to add a lot of friction to the game, all they have to do is nudge the player to take actions that can lead to interesting events. Nobody likes a pointless grind!

Interactive fiction

The game is mostly, well, a game: a life simulator where you move from place to place, perform an action, and read a brief message about the results. It relies a lot on its procedural NPCs, looking at their inclinations to determine how they react to the situation.

But a game that's built entirely around procedural content can start to feel pretty dry and samey. It's best used in support of more handcrafted content. Which is what I try to do here! A lot of random event sets are in service of longer term plotlines that will play out over days or weeks. These involve longer passages of prose that play out more like traditional interactive fiction.

As part of this, not all NPCs are really procedural. Some are deliberately designed, or else picked out of the lineup and chosen, to fill specific narrative niches. They're characters in longer term stories, getting real characterization as the plot plays out. This is one of the big things I'll want to expand on more in updates.

Inspirations

Anybody who plays adult life simulator games will probably notice one big influence right off: that's Degrees of Lewdity by Vrelnir. If this is somehow the first you're hearing of it, look it up. I think it's brilliant. Others include Lilith's Throne, The Fixer, Third Crisis, Female Agent, and even mostly innocent life simulators like The Sims and I Was A Teenage Exocolonist.

That said, I am trying to do my own thing: A deep simulation, a population of procedural NPCs you can get to know, sometimes rather hefty interaction fiction sections, and a fairly grounded college setting with just enough wackiness to keep things interesting. Supernatural stuff, fantastical transformations, and government agencies are fun, but they aren't going to be my thing.

I'm just as voracious as any other player. I love games like this and I'm always looking for more. Eventually I realized I might have the ability to make one of my own, started tinkering, and here we are. In my opinion, there's just never enough of these games! I'm excited to be adding one more.