Playtesting #2 outcomes

In this round, the game was completed 13 times - to unlock each ending, and then another one to reach level 100 and unlock all rooms and items.

The economics turned out to be a little bit disbalanced in a way that much extra currency was accumulated; the prices were adjusted accordingly.

The most outstanding issue is that male-oriented story lines are rather boring, since not much items or activities are purchased while playing. The only upside is that one can accumulate much currency during these completions (4 in total) to easily spend in other story lines, or to purchase wigs which constitute large portion of all items.

In the first attempt to tackle this, these male-oriented lines are reduced in length;1 room is removed.

transformed into 

I am also considering merging these two pairs of story lines into one in case this won't help.

Newly available items and activities are highlighted in shops.

Likewise, shops with newly available entries are highlighted too.

Total game completion % is now displayed. To complete a game, one needs to open all endings, complete all rooms, obtain all items, and reach level 100.

Notifications will be shown on likes / dislikes by other characters; this is useful for secondary likes / dislikes since no dialog is shown in this case.

A new 'recovery' activity was added, which allows to skip an amount of days that is required to complete all current recoveries, effectively recovering from all and allowing to undergo another surgery / medication right away.

Unlike other activities, this one is not discountable and does not produce a voucher.

Day counter is now automatically increased at the rate of 1 day / minute, up to 7 days. That is to add some dynamic when nothing happens on the screen. However, I'm still not sure if this is needed, so this can be removed / changed later on.

Items and activities can now be purchased without confirmation with CTRL+Click combination.

Other changes include:

• Update of item properties.
• Ease of requirements for dating.
• Improvement of UI.

Next, I plan to do another playtesting session to see if economics works fine.

Playtesting #1 outcomes

The game was completed 6 times during the first round of playtesting, many gaps had been found and many improvements have been made as the result.

Playtesting was mainly focused on in-game mechanics and progression, as most of dialogs and art is yet to be completed.

After the first game completion, it became apparent that it would take too much time to complete once - more than 5 hours. This felt too much, given that there's not that much content in the game. As the result, leveling up and money accumulation speed was increased threefold. A single measured game completion should now take around 2-3 hours.

Another big change was replacement of body-changing "potions" with "vouchers", which have the same effect, but look and feel a bit more realistic in-game. These vouchers will become available during the game after the respective body modification is made. The vouchers will not be transferred into the new game; this allows avoid certain weird cases, when e.g. at the very start of the game Ryo may look feminine - which does not align well with the story / dialogs that follow. Also, when there is no need to pay for surgeries from the very beginning, the game progression become less engaging.

The final game idea - that is, ability to gather all possible vouchers and be able to change how Ryo looks is preserved. 

Each surgery taken will now reduce it's price by 50% for this and all next game completions.

Vouchers now also have a label to help distinguish them.

Activities that have respective vouchers are now marked to prevent spending extra money.

All items, on the other hand, will still be transferred to the next game. Items that enable actions (e.g. dildo) will not be usable until the respective point in game is reached.

Ending tooltips now show either required level, or body requirements if the respective level was reached.

 

Unavailable and already purchased items can now be visually distinguished in the shops.

Rooms now have a rich tooltip showing general interests / expectations, warnings, issues, and some stats.

Last selected items are now highlighted in item list. Likewise, vouchers that correspond to current body features are highlighted too.

Top and bottom nudity is now distinguished by gender - e.g. a naked male body will not satisfy desires to see named female body in female line rooms, and vice versa.

Other changes include:

• personas (impression) requirements have been relaxed, e.g. hair has now less effect on it;
• wigs availability distribution was improved; wigs prices were reduced;
• various icons were updated to better reflect rooms expectations, items owned, etc;
• a number of various other small gameplay improvements.