I'm back from my vacation!

It's been a while hasn't it? Apologies for such sparse updates, a lot of you were probably wondering about the progress of the development. No worries, we've been working hard this month and got a lot of things to share! Speaking of which, in retrospect, the previous devlogs feel quite dry to me. So now to spice it up a little, I'd love to go a bit deeper into the development process, plans for the future and also ask you friends for some input!

Gameplay changes

So a few weeks ago we did ask you guys for suggestions on the combat system and the gameplay in general. And quite a few of those ideas have ended up being adopted into the game or are currently sitting in the development backlog.

Block/Parry

"In terms of combat having an ability to block/parry could provide a much needed skill test to keep people more engaged rather than just dodging damage providing a risk reward play-style rather than just hit and run. These are my suggestions but I enjoy the game as-is and look forward to more content from you in the future :3 "

"I’ve always wanted to personally experiment with a 2d fighting style where a character isn’t strong enough to fight directly, and instead uses a system of dodging and parrying to knock over enemies “judo” ish. I wonder if that could apply here having her dodge around an enemy and use openings. "

     Don't mind the lack of a blocking animation :") Also as you can see I added a health bar above the enemies, that design is just a placeholder for now tho.

Multiple people have suggested a block/parry mechanic which I thought would be a great fit for the game! A fairly lightweight feature that still presents lots of gameplay opportunities. Now to incentivize actually using the parries, I feel like we could add strong attacks to the game, which would be greatly more damaging, but too slow to perform while the enemy is active. Only gameplay problem we got to tackle now though, is that it's still quite easy to get by with just the regular attacks, without needing to parry.

Stamina rework

"Either way, this game could definitely be a lot of fun if it made the combat system a lot more broad instead of mashing the attack button until they die (or letting yourself die to see a sex scene). Also, PLEASE don't make attacks stamina based, make them animation based! It's cooler to look at and less to worry about compared to waiting for a stamina bar to fill up so you can punch again"

In the beginning I thought stamina would make gameplay more nuanced, but since it was implemented in such a surface-level way, it ended up being annoying mostly lol. Only problem that raises is that player can easily stun-lock enemies, but I guess that can be fixed by increasing the knockback, so that the enemies eventually get pushed out of range. If you got other suggestions I'd be happy to hear!

Now that attacks don't take stamina, I made the dashes a lot more energy expensive instead. They are now represented by just four circles, dash stamina recovery time takes significantly longer and doesn't regenerate while player is floating in air. Purpose for that is to prevent the players from passively dashing through the level without any resistance from the enemies, and also to make the player more strategic about the stamina usage, which really wasn't an issue in the previous versions.

Skills/Level ups

Not being able to dash through the level ignoring the enemies is cool and all, but what would be the incentive for actually fighting them? (apart from getting defeated of course😎). Some kind of reward would be great. Naturally, skill trees is something that a lot of people would like to see and indeed that would make the game a lot more playable, however a full-on tree with unique skills wouldn't only add a ton of workload but would also present many game design challenges. I think the best option would be what dark souls did, where you gain souls on defeating an enemy, and then getting the option to spend those souls on leveling up upon reaching a checkpoint, upgrading one of the stats (health/stamina/damage in our case). Not to say unique skills isn't something that can be added, but will definitely have to wait.

Just like in dark souls, I'm thinking the enemies should respawn when you reach checkpoints, to give player ability to grind the EXP. 

Area selection

Speaking of which, having to start a new game to see all the changes, or just revisit the enemies is frustrating as hell. I guess its bearable now that the whole game can be completed in 20 minutes, but as more content is added this is going to get progressively more annoying. So we'll finally add an area selection menu whenever possible.

Platforming

Combat isn't the only area we are looking to improve, the platforming aspect of the game is something we have been also working on. Nella has made those moving surf platforms and I'm working on scaffolds and ladders. More interesting obstacles coming soon! Additionally, as a few of you suggested, making some puzzles would be great.

As I was writing the post I got a bit distracted and made this missile thing. Now that I think about it, perhaps we could make some shaman enemy in the future?

Binding display

Although you could rebind the controls to whatever you like, they wouldn't display the active binding in game. Now I've changed it so it dynamically inserts the assigned action key. Not sure whether I should consider it a bug or a feature, but when you switch languages on your keyboard it will change in game as well lol

Horny zone

New portraits

I wasn't really satisfied with the updated player UI from the previous version, and the feedback was mixed as well lol. So now I redesigned it once again, with portraits that dynamically change depending on the outfit and the state player is in (Sex/Horny/Stunned/Normal).  Each one of those states also has a cumshot version. This idea I got from a game called "Night of Revenge", after the enemy creampies the player, the portrait also gets cum stains on it, and remains that way until player reaches a checkpoint. Having a post-sex player sprite would also be great, but that's something we can add in the future.

I figured the same portrait layout can also be used for bosses.

New sex scene

Even though Raki is currently in the process of moving, he's still cooking up a new seggz scene with the bunny enemy.

Sex rework

Its been a long while since the sex mechanic was updated, the way it looks right now is pretty much the way it looked in the first builds of the game. Needless to say, it feels very bare-boned, and I'd love to give it a big overhaul. People suggested adding a struggling mechanic to the game, or some kind of sex minigame. For reference, I like the way it was implemented in a game called "Eris Dysnomia". 

After the player falls over, enemy goes for a grab attack after which a struggling animation plays out, after which the player can either escape or go for sex. Another cool thing about it is the way small dialogue windows pop up. A system like that is something we could definitely implement in the near future.  

Another way we could rework the system is by letting the player control the intensity of the sex animation, which would fill up a meter by end of which the enemy would cum.

General

New public build

A lot of you guys were wondering when the new public build was going to get released, as you see, we got a lot of things getting an overhaul. So before it goes public we'd like to first of all polish up the things we got at hand, and secondly add more content to the game including both sex scenes and levels. With that, I'm thinking we'll release a new public build sometime in late September. Thanks for your patience 🙏

That should be about it for all the major updates, I left out some of the cool things, but you will just have to experience them in game >:) Once again, I apologize for all the delays but we'll do everything possible to make it worth it. Have a great day guys!

cred: @__fl4nfan