ACT [八角家] Mission Mermaiden - Hasumi and the Deep Sea Sisters / ミッションマーメイデン -ハスミと深海の姉妹- (RJ268920)

[A Lost Cat]

I think I have a hot take, and don't get me wrong I love the animations and the kink content, but everyone is focused on the idea that the game is somehow only mediocre gameplay-wise because of the difficulty being weird due to the status ailments being both most of the difficulty and pretty optional. However, and bare with me here, but I don't think the game is fun anyways. I mean how hentai game platformers have you played that feel JUST like this? Simple enemies with little ai, few mechanical synergy between sets of enemies or with the level design, long boring levels that look the same no matter where you are in level. A lot of action platformers and metroidvanias feel exactly like this, but in most of those there's some saving grace about the design, whether it be the skills are fun to use or the enemies are a little better designed, or using Sinisistar as an example, the levels are bite sized.

Going back to the difficulty thing, even if status ailments were harder to remove and easier to get, is making it harder to button mash out of a grapple really the gameplay tweak you want to see in 2020? I also think porting the transformation mechanic from the last game did nothing for the gameplay. Just spitballing, but maybe you could have had an enemy that activated when you transformed put in places that were more difficult so you'd have to decide whether you needed to transform for the health, or if you could choose to risk it to not transform in that area, as an example of something that would make you think (at least a little) about how you wanted to approach a room.

I feel bad in criticizing it for something lots of other games do but the developer seems competent and it feels like a squandered opportunity. (Not ahriman levels of disappointing, but still.)

Ya know, i have similar feelings myself, though different. I agree on the animation and kink content... earlier on.

Honestly, i personally don't care about how easy the game is, it's an H-game, and the H is just as important as the game, and good enough of one can make up for the other (to an extent, arguably)

-=[ Game ]=-
The game part of this one is decent, it has that janky platformer feel of lots of much crappier games, but enough of the jankiness mitigated by not filling the entire game with instant death drops like those that have this jankiness have tended to do, and also by having the movement closer to mega man rather than something with more momentum to have to fight with.

The extra height from the attack giving you a pseudo-assy double-jump is annoying to have to keep doing. The early open levels, tricked me into thinking i'd have room to move, but as soon as we went indoors, it became a hallway the whole time. Speaking of indoors, it was frustrating to navigate the indoor facility maps, because like you say, so much of it looks the same. The attacks have a nice range to them, which helps too. Transformation felt like it wasn't utilized well, and honestly, i just played the whole game without it.

As for the mechanics, buttonmash is simple, but effective, it plays to panicking or just "get me out of this quickly, it isn't what i wanted to get grabbed by, and my boner is awaiting the point two screens ahead i'm going for" I can't say the extended effects from the debuffs is a good advancement of said mechanics, but i can't really call them a bad one either. I absolutely hate QTEs myself, easy or hard.

The difficulty kindof falls into the "you pick how hard you want it", so there's less to argue over here, outside of the mechanics of buttonmashing. You want it harder, go put more debuffs on, call it a challenge mode or something. I died a few times from just overzealously trying to speedrun some of the later stages hoping to find something to please my kinks.

-=[ H ]=-

The kinks at first were right up my alley. Hell yes, grabbed and fondled, hypnotizing to like it (quick/short corruption), tentacles, goop! but for me personally, they went downhill later, and what i thought had potential, was underutilized. The suit only covered her up more, and made her masturbate, the latter of which i like, the former would be okay if it were more of a skintight latex bodysuit, but it has weird armor bits that kindof distracted. The hypno visor i was hoping would do something more, the chairs i hoped would do more, and the yuri stuff seemed like it needed another advancement from what it did. I loved the plant, but it needed a third form in which she got fully nude to enjoy.

I think i got more enjoyment from the earlier demos than the full game, because it became a long samey maze with my fetishes left outside. I got some goop inside, but nothing made use of it at that point.


TL;DR: I got all excited early on, kindof disappointed where it ended up. This is true in both the game as a whole, and watching the development.

 

[IShallRemainNameless]

They've set up a survey for people to give feedback on the game. Here's a translation of it in case anyone wants to offer some feedback (the first half doesn't require any typing, so you can fill it in even if you don't know Japanese)

Spoiler: Survey

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Question 1: How was the difficulty of the game?
1-Too Easy 3- Just Right 5- Too Hard

Question 2: Which Struggle system did you use most often?
1- Mashing left-right
2- Holding down Z (auto-resist)
3- Both about equally

Question 3: Which three enemies were your favorite?
-Pictures are included, you can figure it out I'm sure

Question 4: What parts of the game did you especially like?

Question 5: What parts of the game did you think were lacking?

Question 6: In general (not in relation to the game), what kind of situations/expressions/enemies would you like to see in your games?

Question 7: Any other thoughts about the game

 

[Nepushiro]

please share savefiles

My 100% save and translations for the ailments are on post #832

 

[Jerrian]

My 100% save and translations for the ailments are on post #832

Heya, your file is just 1kb and the folder seems empty, can you reupload it please? Thx in advance ;-)

 

[Nepushiro]

Heya, your file is just 1kb and the folder seems empty, can you reupload it please? Thx in advance ;-)

Here's the 100% save

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Here's a mega link for it. The file I uploaded before looks fine to me but this is for the people where it didn't work
The Files that should be in there are Savecore.json and Savedata1.json
Which you put into C:\Users\(Yourname)\AppData\LocalLow\Hakkaku\MissionMermaiden

 

[savedata]

I search for H games when I want to fap, I always find it weird when people expect an actually deep and entertaining gameplay on top of good H from H games. Aren't you people asking far too much from H devs? They're making a super niche genre, 90% of the people that want such things would never look at a H-game to start with. Making a good game with gameplay that feels fun is difficult even for veterans in the industry working with several other people, while most H games are indies, and then they still have to obviously do a good work with the H since otherwise it shouldn't even be categorized as such, and then they still have to mix the H within the gameplay, which can be very hard to do without either the H ruining the gameplay or the gameplay ruining the H. I honestly think that games like this are just perfect H game design, it plays well enough and offers some difficulty in the hardest setting, and doesn't get in the way of the H if you don't want it hard either.

 

[MoxieTouch]

Ah, the eternal struggle between gameplay and porn. I hear you loud and clear.

Game design-wise, it's hard to think of a gameplay loop that incorporates porn in it. If there is porn currently onscreen, there is usually no gameplay. Vice versa. Although, games should try and interject porn into gameplay, even if it's hard. That's progress, and progress leads to more satisfying experiences.

On the topic of why gameplay matters, while we come for the porn, we also come for the interactivity. If the interactivity(gameplay) is not satisfying, then the experience as a whole suffers. The player becomes more frustrated than aroused. Some mechanics may not have been used more effectively, such as what A lost Cat said that

Transformation felt like it wasn't utilized well, and honestly, i just played the whole game without it.

And other mechanics that were not satisfying / frustrating.

I got all excited early on, kindof disappointed where it ended up. This is true in both the game as a whole, and watching the development.

Gameplay matters because the entire experience depends on it. If the hentai is good but the game isn't, then people would just go to the gallery and not play at all. At which point, why make a game?
(Which is also why people ask for 100% save files all the time. They don't want to play the game. >.>)

 

[Renestrae]

Sorry for the overly long post, I guess I just really like debating H-game design today.

I search for H games when I want to fap, I always find it weird when people expect an actually deep and entertaining gameplay on top of good H from H games. Aren't you people asking far too much from H devs? They're making a super niche genre, 90% of the people that want such things would never look at a H-game to start with. Making a good game with gameplay that feels fun is difficult even for veterans in the industry working with several other people, while most H games are indies, and then they still have to obviously do a good work with the H since otherwise it shouldn't even be categorized as such, and then they still have to mix the H within the gameplay, which can be very hard to do without either the H ruining the gameplay or the gameplay ruining the H. I honestly think that games like this are just perfect H game design, it plays well enough and offers some difficulty in the hardest setting, and doesn't get in the way of the H if you don't want it hard either.

I disagree wholeheartedly. I think if a game is designed well, integrating porn into gameplay seamlessly, it links the two without either one getting in the way of the other. You as a player wouldn't notice it really. Of course I don't know what you played so far or what your preferences are, so I can't point out how a game you like does that, but I think there are examples of games out there where this is more or less achieved, I'll post some below. I also think the prequel to this was one example of it actually being done decently well.

Ah, the eternal struggle between gameplay and porn. I hear you loud and clear.

Game design-wise, it's hard to think of a gameplay loop that incorporates porn in it. If there is porn currently onscreen, there is usually no gameplay. Vice versa. Although, games should try and interject porn into gameplay, even if it's hard. That's progress, and progress leads to more satisfying experiences.

On the topic of why gameplay matters, while we come for the porn, we also come for the interactivity. If the interactivity(gameplay) is not satisfying, then the experience as a whole suffers. The player becomes more frustrated than aroused. Some mechanics may not have been used more effectively, such as what A lost Cat said that

And other mechanics that were not satisfying / frustrating.


Gameplay matters because the entire experience depends on it. If the hentai is good but the game isn't, then people would just go to the gallery and not play at all. At which point, why make a game?
(Which is also why people ask for 100% save files all the time. They don't want to play the game. >.>)

I agree with most of what MoxieTouch said, but I disagree with the part where they say a core gameplay loop that integrates porn is hard to come up with conceptually. In a general sense I could maybe agree, but since we are on ULMF, we're just talking about the subset of games that is shared here, right? And of those the majority has a focus on non-con fantasy / BDSM if I'm not mistaken (in this specific case mostly with involuntary hypnosis). And since almost all RPGs/action games already feature combat -> voilà! We combine that to get in-combat H.
So how do we use that to integrate porn and gameplay? We display varying stages of undress/restraint/hypnosis, and make a gameplay system of fighting off these states. The enemy wants to put them on and then attempts molestation/rape. Again, generally, looked at from outside, this is a large amount of work. You have to create the different assets for every one of those states, potentially even for combinations. Sure. But a lot of games already have most of that. Hell, the prequel to this had it. So it's more about how you use the assets, the relative work difference between one implementation and another is not that much (relatively).

I think it's better shown with some examples. Again, I don't really know if these suggestions are games that you will be into personally, but I feel they all have at least an aspect of good game design that can be appreciated generally:

• Enokifu's games, especially Girl in the Red Slave Collar ["Akakubi Arena"]. It has a totally unique dice-based combat system takes most of the tactical decisions and moves them pre-battle, which frees the player somewhat during the action itself. The player is then only really tasked to react to QTE struggle mechanics (but it's reaction based, not just straight up mashing), or special attacks. Subliminally this all plays into the "damsel in distress" theme in that game, the MC is young and barely trained so you can't always choose the perfect move for the situation. The constant reactions needed to enemy moves makes it feel like you're constantly fighting them off. That's design working with the porn theme imo.
• Ahriman's The Moral Sword of Asagi is pretty legendary, at least partly because of the way it handled this whole dilemma. You can always see your three (or four) party members and they are almost constantly getting stripped, tied up and absolutely railed. The setting is pretty ridiculous and doesn't take itself all that seriously, but the gameplay loop of trying to keep every one of the party members in the fight while having animations of them getting dominated by the enemy is pretty cool. The game also kind of solved the whole issue of "losing to see scenes" by not having a permanent failure state. After a loss scene the MC just eventually frees herself and has to seek out all her party members one by one on the map to free them from their predicament and then you continue as if nothing happened. Creative problemsolving/design imo.
• Unko morimori maru's games basically have the same formula as Asagi, but instead with just one party member. This wouldn't work as a one-to-one translation of course, one party member gets locked into bondage like in Asagi - you're done. No one to save you. So there are some differences in the design that make it possible: Instead of party members being locked into bondage to get fucked as an "out of the fight" state, the MC gets various status effects that don't mean the end by themself, they just impair her in a certain way (slow her down / dissolve her clothes / lock out her spells etc) and then she gets slowly whittled down by the sex (and normal) attacks while weakened. This has a lot of similarities to the first Hasumi game.

Now let's come back to this game a little. In an action game, being restrained inevitably halts your progress and makes you unable to fight. This makes in-combat H exponentially harder. Status effects like in the games above, so bondage or hypnosis devices, would probably require entirely custom animations for every single one, or an extremely elaborate modular equip system, which both increase the required workload by a ton. In general I just really disagree with the choice to change the genre to action platformer for this game. While I do think you could potentially make a good h-game where the h is limited to scenes/animations separate from gameplay, I think the more you do mix the two, the easier it becomes to make a good h-game that doesn't devolve into a gallery hunt. And the action genre makes it so much harder to achieve that game-to-h union.

 

[MoxieTouch]

Spoiler

I agree with most of what MoxieTouch said, but I disagree with the part where they say a core gameplay loop that integrates porn is hard to come up with conceptually. In a general sense I could maybe agree, but since we are on ULMF, we're just talking about the subset of games that is shared here, right? And of those the majority has a focus on non-con fantasy / BDSM if I'm not mistaken (in this specific case mostly with involuntary hypnosis). And since almost all RPGs/action games already feature combat -> voilà! We combine that to get in-combat H.
So how do we use that to integrate porn and gameplay? We display varying stages of undress/restraint/hypnosis, and make a gameplay system of fighting off these states. The enemy wants to put them on and then attempts molestation/rape. Again, generally, looked at from outside, this is a large amount of work. You have to create the different assets for every one of those states, potentially even for combinations. Sure. But a lot of games already have most of that. Hell, the prequel to this had it. So it's more about how you use the assets, the relative work difference between one implementation and another is not that much (relatively).

I think it's better shown with some examples. Again, I don't really know if these suggestions are games that you will be into personally, but I feel they all have at least an aspect of good game design that can be appreciated generally:

• Enokifu's games, especially Girl in the Red Slave Collar ["Akakubi Arena"]. It has a totally unique dice-based combat system takes most of the tactical decisions and moves them pre-battle, which frees the player somewhat during the action itself. The player is then only really tasked to react to QTE struggle mechanics (but it's reaction based, not just straight up mashing), or special attacks. Subliminally this all plays into the "damsel in distress" theme in that game, the MC is young and barely trained so you can't always choose the perfect move for the situation. The constant reactions needed to enemy moves makes it feel like you're constantly fighting them off. That's design working with the porn theme imo.
• Ahriman's The Moral Sword of Asagi is pretty legendary, at least partly because of the way it handled this whole dilemma. You can always see your three (or four) party members and they are almost constantly getting stripped, tied up and absolutely railed. The setting is pretty ridiculous and doesn't take itself all that seriously, but the gameplay loop of trying to keep every one of the party members in the fight while having animations of them getting dominated by the enemy is pretty cool. The game also kind of solved the whole issue of "losing to see scenes" by not having a permanent failure state. After a loss scene the MC just eventually frees herself and has to seek out all her party members one by one on the map to free them from their predicament and then you continue as if nothing happened. Creative problemsolving/design imo.
• Unko morimori maru's games basically have the same formula as Asagi, but instead with just one party member. This wouldn't work as a one-to-one translation of course, one party member gets locked into bondage like in Asagi - you're done. No one to save you. So there are some differences in the design that make it possible: Instead of party members being locked into bondage to get fucked as an "out of the fight" state, the MC gets various status effects that don't mean the end by themself, they just impair her in a certain way (slow her down / dissolve her clothes / lock out her spells etc) and then she gets slowly whittled down by the sex (and normal) attacks while weakened. This has a lot of similarities to the first Hasumi game.

Well-thought response, Rene.

In my original post, I fail to mention that the gameplay-porn dilemma is more prevalent in Action games than any other genre, which was what my original post referred to. I kind of selectively forgot that turn-based games and other genres exist since I mostly frolic in the ACT. My bad.

Regardless, you've actually already explored the problem in Action games so I won't go into too much detail.

Now let's come back to this game a little. In an action game, being restrained inevitably halts your progress and makes you unable to fight. This makes in-combat H exponentially harder. Status effects like in the games above, so bondage or hypnosis devices, would probably require entirely custom animations for every single one, or an extremely elaborate modular equip system, which both increase the required workload by a ton. In general I just really disagree with the choice to change the genre to action platformer for this game. While I do think you could potentially make a good h-game where the h is limited to scenes/animations separate from gameplay, I think the more you do mix the two, the easier it becomes to make a good h-game that doesn't devolve into a gallery hunt. And the action genre makes it so much harder to achieve that game-to-h union.

Agreed.

Game design-wise, it's hard to [for action games to] think of a gameplay loop that incorporates porn in it. If there is porn currently onscreen, there is usually no gameplay.

Iirc, Anon42 also had this problem, which is why Crisis Point Extinction has a diagetic gallery in the game, as well as sex scenes being able to heal you overtime.

Spoiler: Shameless plug

As someone making a game, I can confirm the animation problem. It is frustrating having an idea and not implement it because the work to put it has little payoff.

To put into context, if you animate traditionally, you'd need AT LEAST three hours to implement one new clothing. For one pose. This includes mocking the design, polishing said design, moving it into the game engine, etc.
Now, what if you have 6 enemies? 20?
That's at least 60 hours to implement this clothing animation to all enemies, for one clothing.

If you have 2, 3, 4 more clothing, then that's 120, 180, and 240 hours just to add 4 clothings, which is insane.

All this work for what? For the player to play with one clothing and ignore the rest. Those three other clothing is 180 hours spent on being ignored. 180 hours that could've been spent on adding more creatures or more gameplay mechanics.

Which is why most ACT games opt for the "rip to nude," because instead of 240 hours for different clothings, it'd just be the nude animations for 60 hours. Like me :3

Also, replace clothing with status effects and it's the same story.

Back to this game, at least this isn't traditionally (sprite) animated. It's

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, meaning it's just a matter of clicking and dragging the clothing textures into a skeleton. You only need to worry about one animation, then you can slap the clothing texture and call it a day. Personally, I prefer sprite animations since they have more nuance, but that's just me.

 

[super_slicer]

Spoiler: Shameless plug

As someone making a game, I can confirm the animation problem. It is frustrating having an idea and not implement it because the work to put it has little payoff.

To put into context, if you animate traditionally, you'd need AT LEAST three hours to implement one new clothing. For one pose. This includes mocking the design, polishing said design, moving it into the game engine, etc.
Now, what if you have 6 enemies? 20?
That's at least 60 hours to implement this clothing animation to all enemies, for one clothing.

If you have 2, 3, 4 more clothing, then that's 120, 180, and 240 hours just to add 4 clothings, which is insane.

All this work for what? For the player to play with one clothing and ignore the rest. Those three other clothing is 180 hours spent on being ignored. 180 hours that could've been spent on adding more creatures or more gameplay mechanics.

Which is why most ACT games opt for the "rip to nude," because instead of 240 hours for different clothings, it'd just be the nude animations for 60 hours. Like me :3

Also, replace clothing with status effects and it's the same story.

Can't you just do clothing as an alpha-layer?

 

[MoxieTouch]

Can't you just do clothing as an alpha-layer?

For

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/spine-based animation, yes. You can just animate the bone, add the clothing on top, and be done with it. Not pretty in motion imo, but it's fast to make.

However, for sprite-based animations, you need to draw the clothing every frame. Even if the clothing is an alpha layer, you'd still need to draw a crap ton of them, hence why they take so long.

 

[Renestrae]

Personally, I prefer sprite animations since they have more nuance, but that's just me.

It's definitely not just you. In my experience, spine-based animation always looks cheap. You get what you pay for I guess.
I mean, it really depends on how finely rigged the characters are, but developers want to rig only the minimum (of course, minimizes work), which sadly leads to weird interpolated deformation (warping) in the "crumple zones". Also, clothes don't deform the same as skin but use the same skeleton, which amplifies this effect.

I guess this is true for all facets of life, "hand-made" is an indicator of quality.

 

[Sorpl3x]

It's definitely not just you. In my experience, spine-based animation always looks cheap. You get what you pay for I guess.
I mean, it really depends on how finely rigged the characters are, but developers want to rig only the minimum (of course, minimizes work), which sadly leads to weird interpolated deformation (warping) in the "crumple zones". Also, clothes don't deform the same as skin but use the same skeleton, which amplifies this effect.

I guess this is true for all facets of life, "hand-made" is an indicator of quality.

I usually prefer sprite based, as it generally is more pleasing to look at, but once in a while there are some great looking gems like "Night of Revenge" that look really fucking good thanks to the work and care put in.

 

[qwerxzvcasdf]

Joining in on the gameplay/difficulty/porn discussion. The reason many are invested in this comes back to the fetish/scenario construction, i.e. girl against XYZ, the struggle to not get their ass defeated and raped. And for that scenario to come to fruition, there needs to be actual "danger" and not trivialized gameplay where the MC essentially has consent (lol) in getting hentai-ed. And yes, that balance is quite apparently very hard.

An action game I think gets this right is Castle Evil (https://ulmf.org/threads/ebisenwaakusu-kyassuruebiru-castleevil-rj214678.11323/) - a metroidvania that starts out quite balanced, but defeat is likely & expected (you get worn down over time if you don't constantly port back to base to heal) and its generally easy to get back to where you were via teleporters so its not frustrating. And the initial spritesex triggers doesn't even require a full defeat.

Wings of Roldea (https://ulmf.org/threads/waterspoon-roorudiano-wings-of-roldea-rj215684.10253/) is a 2D top down action-based game that is actually quite difficult if you're not playing super cautiously, and you can easily overextend and put the MC into difficult situations in lengthy dungeons, e.g. low stamina & can't run away & then surrounded by enemies that beat you down and prevent stamina regain, but that you still have to hope of fighting out of by mashing that attack button and sometimes you do survive (yah!) but sometimes you dont and get spritesexed (also yah!)

 

[SenG]

Does anyone know what does the arrow that interchange in between hasumi and her transformed version meant in the gallery? I clicked on it and all it did was to disable but i dont see anything different..

 

[Boxtie]

If you talk directly to some hentai/fetish game developers, they also have some desires to make the gameplay itself enjoyable and not just for the eye candy ero-stuff.

The problem right now is that the current "struggle" mechanic we have is either based on button mashing, playing Simon Says with button commands on screen or RNG.

Button mashing isn't for everyone and it's either too easy or too hard.
Some players may find difficulty mashing buttons due to conditions or injury.

Any kind of "press buttons on screen" (or "quick time event") mechanic is a little hard to implement without some sort of tunnel-vision problem where your eyes are focused on the key commands and not the girl struggling for her life, which is where your eyes should be.

RNG is just cheap.
You escape or not whenever the game decides it wants to let you escape, which is kinda cheap.

 

[SenG]

Alright! I finished the whole game plus the True Ending, It's pretty sweet. Especially on Abyssal Difficulty, The only differences are the boss's health and attack damage. It's so high, you could get one shot. CG's and Gallery Are Pretty Lit But the Changing from Hasumi to her Suit Form is quite a hassle so you have to press the middle arrows to cancel out any transformation sequences.

This game is less of a gallery and more of a platformer, In my opinion. Though its rather tough if you play with the controller, less fluidness to play and resist mode isn't even that strong.

Could you explain more on the middle arrows thing? pressing on it doesn't seem like it does anything to me

 

[HK51]

Cheat Engine table: gauges of hp, energy, orgasm, escape; stats; items; equipment unlocks; status ailments unlocks; high-score for Saki event; blue base plant stage.

 

[Stiltzkinator]

If you talk directly to some hentai/fetish game developers, they also have some desires to make the gameplay itself enjoyable and not just for the eye candy ero-stuff.

The problem right now is that the current "struggle" mechanic we have is either based on button mashing, playing Simon Says with button commands on screen or RNG.

Button mashing isn't for everyone and it's either too easy or too hard.
Some players may find difficulty mashing buttons due to conditions or injury.

Any kind of "press buttons on screen" (or "quick time event") mechanic is a little hard to implement without some sort of tunnel-vision problem where your eyes are focused on the key commands and not the girl struggling for her life, which is where your eyes should be.

RNG is just cheap.
You escape or not whenever the game decides it wants to let you escape, which is kinda cheap.

All of this. Bondage as a mechanic, and honestly H stuff in general, flies in the face of a lot of basic game design, so it's hard to incorporate it into a game in a way that makes sense. This is true whether it's an action game or an RPG or whatever. The important thing to actually try to make some sort of sense of all of that is to provide incentive to take risks, which is something Mermaiden doesn't do too much of overall (there's a bit of it, here and there, like the energy-restoring chairs).

The game still works okay because it's pretty fast-paced overall, and there can be a bit of disconnect between watching a grapple in the gallery and seeing it happen 'dynamically' during gameplay, but there's certainly plenty of ways to make it more engaging in terms of better combining the fetish content with the core gameplay. It's sort of a tricky thing to pull off because there's so few examples of it being done well, but I hope Mizuku gives it some consideration.

 

[Asaladye]

Sorry if this seems like a silly question, but how does one pass the final stage of the second world?