Premature ejaculation

So the game is almost done, except for a few finishing touches and the two final scenes.

I decided to give it a full playthrough to get a good feel of the game and spot bugs. At first I just ignored all the side stories and ran straight through the main plot.

It was way too fast.

Then I went back and played every side quest and optional scene.

Still fast.

Of course I tend to go faster than other players because I know everything. But the speed still worries me.

I'm thinking about adding... stuff. I won't extend the main plot, but add more optional content, secrets, etc. Not much. On one hand, it'll give me the opportunity to add more of the things from my Bathroom Wall. On the other hand, it will delay the release of the game a bit. Not much.

Sorry about that!

Making progress!

My break ends today, tomorrow I'm getting back to work on this game, full speed, promise.

I decided I should make some sort of cheerful post because the last one was too depressing.

I have to say, one of the things that motivated me and inspired me the most to work on Polymorphous Perversity again was playing an awesome indie game. And the game I'm talking about is Richard Hofmeier's Cart Life. This game is just so unique and brilliant that I have to be careful not to be overhumbled and give up on whatever I'm working at. If you want to know what it's about before giving it a go, you can read a great review here.

The worst thing about working on a game is that you get tons of ideas to work on OTHER projects, and you have to be really persistent not abandon your present one and start a new one. I know many many people who've started quite a few games, but never finished one. Polymorphous Perversity will actually be my first long finished project, since all my other ones are either unfinished or were finished in a short time.

Yeah, I am finishing this. I decided to put down a list of what's left to be made:

• Mapping and coding the last dungeon/story bridge (it is already planned).
• Planning and designing the last scene (whatever requires planning often takes more time).
• Designing the really final scene (already planned).
• Planning and designing three intermediate parts of the game.
• Making opening and ending (already planned).
• Ripping sounds from porn films and adding them to game.
• Tons of small other things, but they are really small.

It's not much! I really have no idea how long it will take, though. If I had to guess, I'd say... end of March? Could be before, could be after. I'll chop off unnecessary fillers so I can finish this game sooner.

But then there's also beta-testing phase, and I expect it to last at least a month, because I'll need dozens of testers. So, sorry for not keeping my word about releasing the game at the end of January. I hope I'll make it worth it. At this point, I don't even know how ambitious this project is anymore, but even if it doesn't end up being an "insightful look into human sexuality", it's still going to be a fun game.

PS: There isn't really anything about the game or its theme that shocks me or disturbs me at this point. I can't tell the difference between being resistant and getting desensitized anymore.

It is ending

The world is ending, so I need to finish this game soon.

Sadly, I haven't been physically or mentally well, so I can't get myself to do much for the game at the moment.

This is not a hiatus, not a possible cancellation or anything like that, just a break I need to take. A short one, hopefully.

There isn't much left to do, though. And if I feel a bigger urge to finish the game sooner, I'll just skip some non-important stuff and get it over with. I'll release this game, I promise.

Staying on subject, I recently saw this poll that asked people what would they want to be doing when the world ended. Over 50% said they want to be having sex. I'm puzzled. Why do they have to wait for the world to end?

Death and sex are themes that pop up together more often that I expected.

Shout out to Michael Hutter for some amazing art I stumbled across googling for "death and sex".

Update on player participation

I talked about player participation once, and made a separate tab explaining how players can contribute to the game (make sure you read it!)

I'll say that the current level of participation is not as high as I wanted/expected, but that's ok. On the other hand, the impact that this participation is having on the game is big.

On a rough count, there are at least 7 scenes/events on the game that were directly inspired from things posted on the Bathroom Wall (like TD: I want to turn a man into a woman, and then into a statue.), not counting more general things that would be in the game anyway but were also referred to there, like BDSM and trannies.

I got a few photos of naked players by e-mail, and a few half-naked photos of friends who wanted a cameo, not counting pictures of unknowing friends.

There are a few direct quotes from people (friends, internet people) used in the game as well.

I got a few e-mails of people volunteering to testing, which is great, but nothing near the 100 testers I need. I have some ideas on how to get more testers, but I'll save them until I really need it.

My goal with this is adding another level of player interaction on the game. It is part of the game's concept. So, unless you're an unsexualized robot, please contribute!

Polymorphous Perversity should be complete within a couple of months.

Why so serious?

When I first had the idea of making Polymorphous Perversity, I wanted it to be a simple somewhat-surreal sex themed RPG. It is about sex, it contains sex, and it is aesthetically sexual.

The first place I ever posted the game was in a French RPG Maker community called Oniromancie. I asked permission from the moderator first - not many places would allow such game to be posted. Initial reactions were mostly "lol" and "wtf". But at some point, I got annoyed that people were laughing at my game so much. I didn't think it was a comedy game. And when I complained, someone said something like:

- You have a penis for a HUD. How can you expect anyone to take that game seriously?

To which I replied "I am taking it very seriously". But of course I always expected this game to be funny in parts. For some neurotic reason, sex tends to be taken as a funny subject. Modern comedy resorts to sex themes often because, in case you're not creative or witty enough, just saying something sexual will make your audience laugh.

I do not think I'm making a comedy game, though. A comedy game is one made for the purpose of drawing laughs from the players. Though my game has its funny bits and some deliberate jokes, it's not a comedy game, as it is not the main purpose of the game. People don't have to laugh to enjoy it. People may not even laugh at all, and taking it more seriously could even add to the experience. It's like Marvel Brothel: people lolled at it, but it was not a comedy game. It was a business simulator. Polymorphous Perversity is not a comedy game.

What offends me even more is saying it is not a "serious" game. I think it is, since I'm taking it seriously. In my opinion, a non-serious game is one that the developer makes without putting much thought and effort into it. He doesn't really care whether it'll be good, it'll be fun, it'll be balanced. He's more like "lol I can mak gams". And I've seen too many of those, which only makes me angrier at the comparison.

I will not fall into the trap of saying my game is super serious in the sense that it is a serious approach to sexual issues. It could be. Right now, I'm torn as to whether my approach is more scientific or more artistic (a blog on that later). But it is very serious as a game.

I believe that when someone sees a dick HUD on the screen and laughs at it, it's sort of what happens if you see a naked guy running on the street and you laugh. It's not just "funny". It's more like a defensive way to deal with uncomfortable stimuli. People deal with that kind of thing differently, and that's the whole point of the game. Not comedy.

I will not deny that I sometimes resort to little jokes here and there. I want to make the game enjoyable in more than one way. But there's seriousness behind every joke.

Save-do-regret-load

I've just stumbled upon an important design issue for this game: save points x save anywhere.

I always hated save points. RPG Maker 2003 lets you save anywhere by default. Still, lots of games made in RM2K3 have save points, which means they forbid you to save anywhere and force you to look for specific places to save. So, when you want to stop playing, you can't just quit and come back later... you have to look for a save point, which sometimes is not as near as you'd like.

It is worse when save points are badly placed. There are games with huge cutscenes before difficult battles that force you to rewatch the entire cutscene in case you die in that battle.

So, unless there are places in which the player may get stuck and you don't want him to be able to save there, I see no reason for not letting the players save anywhere.

BUT

Polymorphous Perversity is, in a way, a game about morals and choices. Will you pay the farmer to have sex with his daughter? Will you fist the tranny looking for treasure inside her? Well, some choices are important, some aren't. But in a game where you can save anywhere, it's very very easy to undo those choices. Just save-do-regret-load. I don't want this to happen. So, for the first time, I'm thinking about adding save points. But I still hate them, saving anywhere makes the game a lot friendlier.

What to do, what to do?

Player sexual involvement

One of the main questions I raise with this game is how much can a player get sexually involved with it. Or even, can someone get sexually involved with the game at all?

Well, I can anticipate a yes answer to the second question. But I'm writing this post to remove some weight out of this assertion.

In one of the comments on RockPaperShotgun's piece on Polymorphous Perversity, someone said it would be too pretentious to me, as a developer, to expect players to learn more about their sexuality by playing a game like this. Though I never made such claim (that one could learn about his sexuality playing Polyperv), it could be true depending on the weight you put on that.

For instance, if you go to the market, try a fruit you had never tried before (like this), and end up enjoying it, you'll have learned something about yourself, won't you? That's as far as my pretension goes.

For that matter, there are many things you can do in Polymorphous Perversity that have very little impact on the game itself. For instance, once you learn the masturbate skill, you can use it anywhere (literally, anywhere). Though it has an impact inside battles, it's purely aesthetical outside of them.

Still, I expect players to do it. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. But if they do it, it will be for purely sexual reasons.

Another example, based on things I've been reading about balloon fetish, I added some balloon stuff in the game. There is a balloon item that is somewhat difficult to obtain, and you can sell it for money. Or you can just pop it, which does nothing but visual and sound effects of a balloon popping. I expect some people will pop it. Maybe once, maybe twice, maybe more. Why would they do that?

There are really a lot of instances in the game where players can opt to do sexual stuff. Sometimes they have an impact on the story, or game mechanics, but most of the time they don't. Still, players will do those things, and it's safe to say, to me, that it's out of sexual reasons. They might do it without thinking, they might do it consciously, or maybe self-consciously. And then they may go "what the hell am I doing?", and that's the point where you can start... observing yourself.

I shouldn't be making a post about this, because it can bias player's behavior inside the game... like I was there watching, saying "told you so". But not many people have been reading this blog anyway, so... eh.