Gamey game

So I've spent enough blogs talking about fetishes and sexual weirdnesses, but not enough talking about the game itself. Well, the game is full of sexual weirdnesses (and non-weirdnesses), but there's more than that.

Like I said in a previous blog, originally this game was supposed to be very simple and bland RPG with the focus on the content (sex). It was also supposed to be finished in two months (one can dream). But I quickly remembered a game should have more than a strong theme to be interesting. It is a game, so it needed to be gamey. Not everyone would be interested by ingame sexual weirdness, so I needed something to attract other players.

My decision was NOT to innovate in basic RPG aspects, and follow all the traditional formulas that have worked for classic games. So, apart from the theme, this is a very ordinary RPG in many ways. You can expect:

• Semi-linear story structure
• Side quests
• Dungeons
• Battles
• Boss battles
• Leveling-up
• Simple character customization
• Learning new skills
• Items and shops
• Treasure chests
• Random talking NPCs
• Minigames

Battles
One of the biggest difference to traditional RPGs refers to battles. Polymorphous Perversity uses RPG Maker 2003's default battle system (which is a replica of Final Fantasy's) in a modified version. There's only one character in your party, and your goal in battles is not to kill enemies, but to pleasure partners. There's a stamina measure that's similar to HP, and battles end when it reaches zero. Moves, apart from dealing stamina damage, cost a bit of stamina (and sometimes additional points called tricks, similar to MP). You can heal yourself, but partners rarely will. That means they slowly kill themselves as they attack you. Battles are often very easy, but the point is not just to reduce partner stamina to zero, but to give him as much pleasure as possible. Battles are scored in 4 factors:

1. Duration
2. Amount of pleasure given (each move raises it in specific values for different enemies)
3. Chain attacks (using the right sequence of moves, varying among different enemies)
4. Maximum damage delivered in a single attack (proportional to partner's maximum stamina)

At the end of each battle, this value is calculated and a score is given in a scale of F to A. The higher your score, the more experience points you get.

If you "die" (your stamina reaches zero before the partner's), the battle ends and you get no experience points, but you don't get a gameover. That is, you never really die in battles, there's no clear victory or defeat. The gameover comes from another condition. There is a meter at the top of the screen that says how horny you are. It grows with time. If you win a battle, it is lowered. If you lose, it is increased. If you fight a streak of battles, you'll probably begin each of them tired (low stamina), and your chances of winning is subsequently lower. If you keep dying, your horny meter will reach its maximum and then you'll actually die. That's your difficulty for ya.

Stats and level up
Once you get enough experience points, you gain a level. Each level you can raise one single stat. Each stat has a different function in battle.

Battles don't give you money. You can get money by item chests, or working. There are basically two jobs in the game: prostitute and miner. Mining is a completely non-sexual activity in the game. I tried making it a fun minigame on its own.



There is also a story, but I don't want to reveal much about it. You're a guy from the real world thrown into a bizarre sex-driven world, and you must find your way out, while understanding why you're there. It has to do with the Tale of a Flower.

I guess that's it. As for completion status, I have almost all the basic maps and scenes made, all systems working. Now I need to fill the final town, make the entire ending scene, and catch up with lots of minor details I left behind. I have no idea how long it will take, but I will finish it... promise.

Fetish Confessions

I keep getting told of more and more strange fetishes and paraphilias... bug chasing, vore, balloon fetish... I don't know if anyone shares this curiosity with me, but what I really like is not just knowing that there is such a big list of fetish possibilities, but I like trying to understand and putting myself inside the mind (or some other organ) of people with such tastes.

I found a really cool text that discusses unusual fetishes and tries to understand what goes inside the mind of people who have them. I didn't find the full text in any reliable website, so I made a google docs file for it, and you can read it here:

Fetish Confessions

by Sandy Brundage

There's one particular part that got my attention:

"When I admitted that I still cringe whenever a balloon pops, Mike laughed. "I'm sorry. I'm still phobic myself. That's where my whole fetish derived from, that fear."

"It's like your brain's way of processing fear. It makes sense when you think of how people get scared and turned-on at the same time, like at a horror movie."

Fetishes derived from fear is something new to me, but it makes a whole lot of sense, as far as their origins go. A balloon fetish is as strange as a balloon phobia, and it's really not that strange to think that they may have a common denominator, or maybe they're even the same thing. That reminds me of a very annoying (and shall I say, suspicious) psychological study that states homophobic men are secretly homosexual. Psychoanalytically speaking, the base origin of every perversion is the repression of libido in its form or goal. Well...I'll have to put some more thought to it.

As for how the game development goes, I've been setting myself on a discipline of working on the game every morning, no matter how much other stuff I have to do. Progress is slow, mostly because of the time I spend spriting. But it's going well. Thanks to everyone who's been sending me pictures.

Crushed

After a few months of open-mindedly researching sexual preferences, practices and tastes, I couldn't avoid the feeling of "I've seen it all", of being desensitized (like I mentioned on my previous blog). But I wasn't prepared for what I've just read on the Bathroom Wall.

Crush films: films depicting the crushing of animals (either small or large) used as fetishes, inducing sexual arousal.

... what?

After clicking some links, I found this story:

"the death of Bryan, 28, was related to his wife's habit of stomping rabbits and mice for sexual pleasure. (...) Stephanie did not deny that she drove over her husband, but in her own defence she released tapes to the police showing her stomping small mammals to death. (...) Such "crush" videos are sold to people who derive sexual pleasure from the sight of death, especially at the hands of a woman. (...) Stephanie contended that she was an unwilling participant in the videos, and had been beaten many times by her husband prior to his bizarre death. (...) As for her husband, his death under the wheels of his car was presumably a loving sex act between consenting adults."

... what?

Now I'll admit... I'm not a complete stranger to that idea. My game Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer was built on a very similar premise: love expressed through violence. Anyone with basic understanding of Freudian theories will acknowledge that sadism is a perversion of sexual gratification. In Beautiful Escape, Verge tortures the people he likes. His love affair is ultimately consumed in an act of violence. I knew I wasn't making that up, I believed that some people can derive sexual pleasure from that sort of stuff.

I'm very sensitive when it comes to animal violence (much more than with humans), and that's partially why this crush films thing scares me and crushes my open-mindedness a bit. But considering this Stephanie/Bryan story, it's probably safe to assume that the crushing fetish is animal-oriented only in the basis that it can't be easily fulfilled with people. But the crushing of people is probably... hotter.

I almost dismissed the entire thing as way too uncommon and rare to even consider it as something to be taken into account for the game. But then I remembered the popularity of Beautiful Escape, and how much people enjoyed it, even if such joy was sometimes hidden behind other feelings. Am I saying that there are many more sadists and "crushers" than it would seem at first glance? Yes, sort of. The whole idea of polymorphous perversity (the concept, not the game) is that human beings can take sexual gratification from all sorts of stimulation, though cultural and invididual factors shape practices and behavior to an extent.

What have I gotten myself into?

Unsexed

Electron Dance has just made an incredible article on Polymorphous Perversity. Check it out:

Not Safe For Work

I'll admit, I'm mildly surprised about Harbour Master's take on the game, which is how it is psychologically affecting myself, and how people who commented on the article seem to sympathize with it.

My update on that is that I'm feeling way too much desensitized about the theme right now, and that's not a good functioning state for me to work on the game. I gotta horn myself up somehow.

On a side note, I got an e-mail from this very cool guy named Pippin Barr saying he understands how the lack of feedback is making me post less here, but "shouting into the the internet void" is a valid option. I'll try that. Let's see if I can keep the blog more active.

On another side note, somewhere in the comments of the article I mentioned above, someone named a game called Sexy Beach, which is some sort of porn game. I've read about it, and it sounds terrible. Apparently very boring, if not for the very explicit and easy (yet conservative) digital sex.

I wonder... do people really like games like that?

I also wonder... are good graphics more sexually-heavy than bad graphics with stronger sexual-content? Am I unsexing my game by using such low resolution?

Questions, questions...