Playtesting #3 outcomes

The main gameplay changes made after the third playtesting are the following:

• Content unlock progression was shifted to lower levels, since after multiple restarts it became apparent that it is quite boring to play up to ~40th level with little to no content. The rooms are now spread a bit more even across the levels.
• Male story lines were once more reduced so that it took even less time to complete (as there is little content in these lines).
• Prices were once more adjusted to approximately match total gain during full game completion. 

Rooms before the change:

Rooms after the change:

A playthough data was collected in order to find out whether assumptions made for various game constants were correct. Those appeared to be ok.

Newly-available items (as well as the respective shops) are now marked with a small "new" label.

It is now possible to reset the game progress, either current (and keep progress from previous completions), or the whole game progress.

Failed performances will now decrease room completion progress; i.e. to complete the room, difference between successfull and failed completions should be greater than some specific number (dependent on room level). This was added to prevent room completion by "spamming" and getting lucky.

Finishing the game now requires a certain relevant rooms to be completed.

Two major items I am going to work next are stats and help / tutorial screens.

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.

Closing the wandering loop

The latest changes were all about completing the game and starting a new one.

When not available, endings will either show which level is needed:

Or, when the target level is achieved, the full list of requirements will be shown. Failed requirements (those that cannot be satisfied anymore without starting a new game) are highlighted using bold font.

   

Available endings will be clickable.

Upon confirmation, the respective story (yet to be written) along with the participants (yet to be drawn), will be displayed.

Upon ending the game, the start screen will be shown allowing to start a new game. All purchased items, along with currency and unlocked potions will be available after the first in-game dialog.

All game dialogs and events were reviewed, and few were updated so that dialogs still were relevant during each new game, given that potions can unlock body modifications earlier than it was designed for the first game completion.

Now, the major items left to complete the game development are:

• dialogs - need to write / review all
• clothes - need to draw all missing
• endings - need to complete stories and draw characters
• play-testing - need to completed to verify the game mechanics and economics are sound

Currently I am working on auto-play functionality that would help me play-test the game.

Home design updates, emotions

Home screen was redesigned a little bit, which includes placing Home Activities block before Wardrobe.

Non-usable icons (which are shown for informational purposes only) now have a striped background and a pale header. Also, items which unlock various body-related activities are now shown too in the "Other" section - to make it clear which items are currently owned.

At he same time, "stronger" activities will now hide "weaker" ones (e.g. "strong" cream for shoulders will hide "mild" one) to make the UI a bit cleaner.

Action and desire icons for the same entries will now differ depending on Ryo's body, a well as which room he is in.

Finally, Ryo now can express emotions:

- in dialogs:

- right after surgeries or completion of procedures.

- or just when practicing before the mirror 

UI updates, auto-save and additional settings

Navigation icons have been added.

Timeslot text counter has been replaced with squares.

Auto-save functionality has been added. The game state is saved upon purchasing item or activity, session completion, or finishing a dialog.

Also, it is now possible to disable auto-save, as well as skip start screen.

A button for manual save has been added too.

Other updates include adding a test room for debugging, handling breast scar desires, and fixing pubic hair desire match calculation - desires related to pubic hair will now not be satisfied if pubic hair is not visible because of the clothes.

Escape penalty, restrictions and rich tooltips

Some amount of reputation will now be deducted when Ryo escapes the room. This amount depends on current number of desires not satisfied, and can be 0 in same cases.

 

Rooms of certain lines will now be blocked if Ryo's appearance is not appropriate for these rooms. For example, if Ryo has big breasts, he won't be allowed to enter a room where visitors expect to see guy performing.

 

Similarly, some actions will not be available if genders of participants are not as expected in a room. For example, anal sex as a shemale will not be available in "straight male performance" rooms.

To be able to interact during performance with others, Ryo should first invite someone. To invite, Ryo should be liked by that someone (e.g. for having certain appearance).

Session was redesigned a little - continue button was replaced with a click area within actions; also, the round (timeslot) counter was added.

Actions and desires tooltips where added.

Items and activities tooltips were extended with additional info where applicable.

Finally, I started to track how many clothes and cloth elements I still need to draw. Roughly it is: 38 /  164 (23%)