RPG [mminit] Lewdest Labyrinth

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

where there wasn't any actual sex or even loss of clothing on a female, just gameplay based around an attractive woman "not" getting into any actual sex-related situations... Then again, as mentioned, the game still has potential to become so much more, this is just some early build.

I realize it's not on the front page of the topic, so it's not expected for everyone to know this or something of course, but he actually has already shown penetrative acts;

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Also, mminit, if you feel like it, join the AGDG discord, it's pretty great and you should be able to find a lot of solid advice for your future builds (plus great freelancers if you need music, voice acting, writing, extra art or animation, etc.), I can give you an invite link if you'd want.

 

[Hentie]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Nice effort! here are my two cents as food for thought:

- I'm iffy on the heroine using LP as resource and on a 2 resource system (HP+LP). The heroine's character and game world theme (lewdest labyrinth + monster design) leans toward making the MC a sexual-defensive rather then sexual-aggressive, eg. Sex in combat is generally detrimental to MC, rather then a sexual-aggressive where sex in combat is positive (sex attack / battle fuck) or a double edged blade. In keeping with the minimalist theme, adding 1 more resource for a total of 3 would be reasonable. Currently there's a bit of inconsistency between heroine design and combat mechanic/design which interferes with player imagination, important especially in non-animated work. 3 resource can also allow just enough complexity to make things more interesting.

I'd suggest something like Endurance or Focus to fuel skills, regenerates a bit every turn initially. If you want to get fancy maybe add debuffs when it's low, and perhaps some of the more deadly sex attacks that can decrease focus. I'd def love to see grapple and restrains status on that note!

For the Lust point, maybe change it to arousal or some such, and have it be generally detrimental. Also make this a 2nd way to lose, example. when arousal is maxed out and enemy gets you to climax, lower the arousal cap (100 arousal -> climax -> back to 0 arousal but now caps at 80), when arousal cap hits 0 you lose from ahegao or something like that. you can add in skills that modify this aspect too and perhaps special lose scenes from ahegao. a tough boss battle where your arousal bar grows shorter and shorter as MC struggles makes for great scenarios!

The heroine could use more character too at that note as it's a bit bland currently, something to anchor her personality in the player's imagination, which is especially important in non-animated work. Though maybe it's the combat mechanic inconsistency that's giving me this impression.

Some examples for MC character, world theme and how it all ties into the combat mechanic/design:

RJ149951 - Sexual defensive - RPG - Ahriman's definitive master piece. http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread.php?t=26845&highlight=149951

RJ124341 - Sexual defensive - RPG - Another master piece, very stylish and tightly designed. Single MC combat. http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread.php?t=23622

RJ113419 - Sexual defensive - RPG - The famous dungeon and prisoners, one of my fav MC character design. The un-finished imprisonment on lose mechanic is wonderful and probably brought the mechanic onto the radar of many. http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread....2495;ランの聖杯

Evil goddess - Sexual aggressive - RPG - MC character in your face, though the tie in to the sex combat mechanic isn't too well designed, Well done on character and theme though. http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/search.php?searchid=6717850

RJ113831 - Sexual aggressive - Side scroller - A non-RPG and low dialogue example in how MC character and theme ties into combat mechanic. http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread.php?t=22164&highlight=erotic+eater

I also noticed that your art style leans toward a simpler cleaner style that's ripe for 2 frame pseudo animations. On another note, Author of rj138139 also uses a simple style and came up with an efficient method for low frame animation i think, as can be seen when eyes and face and body parts sometimes load in separately when my computer slows down, it's simple and definitely effective Maybe you can get some inspirations digging thru his resource files.
(http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread....2495;ランの聖杯)

How do you envision the heroine to be like? The dungeon and it's creature? Try to convey to us the fantasy and scenarios that does it for you, it'll help on the motivation too. Ahriman's Asagi is my go to example for bringing alive his vision and fantasy for the players.

I'm stopping myself here before it turns into an even bigger wall -.-

 

[szarala]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

I have to sheepishly say I -still- can't find the area with the flying jellyfish or the dullahan boss

 

[nanaya1234]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Just keep progressing. You'll find them eventually. You'll have to. Make sure you have the newest demo too.

 

[mminit]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

...

Revealing the tiles around the player is something I may be able to do, I'll look into doing that.

As for the loop you ended up in, I'm aware that it can happen if the player doesn't have taunt, as you said i'm hoping to alleviate this by adding more skills and mechanics to the battles. Currently you can use taunt to save yourself from that since it can never fail.

I was never the type that didn't like random encounters, I grew up playing RPGs full of them. Still, I knew there were people that hated them when I started making this game.

Welp, time to be "That guy", and throw in 2 cents from the opinion of a snobby entitled hentai-game lover.

...

Unfortunately I'm not an animator, maybe one day, but I'm wearing so many hats already as is.

I do plan on sticking with the game until the end, just that I don't plan for it to be huge/too complex since I need to take into consideration that I'm just one person. Given that, I don't think this game will live up to your standards.

Also, mminit, if you feel like it, join the AGDG discord, it's pretty great and you should be able to find a lot of solid advice for your future builds (plus great freelancers if you need music, voice acting, writing, extra art or animation, etc.), I can give you an invite link if you'd want.

I think I'm already in there, I just rarely ever get on discord. I'm not the most chatty person around lol.

Nice effort! here are my two cents as food for thought:

...

You've given me a lot to think about. I'll admit I went into this game just having fun with it so perhaps the immersion breaking stuff you're experiencing is my lack of planning, I didn't really consider the sexual aggressive/defensive thing, just that I wanted my game to have more lewd aspects in it's gameplay.

I've actually considered your idea of the LP bar growing/shrinking in size previously, but I haven't tested it out much. I'll look into it some more.

Some of the games you've listed have been on my list of stuff to play for a while, just haven't had the time to get around to it. I think It would be a good idea to do so in that it would help me understand what people expect from the genre better.

I have to sheepishly say I -still- can't find the area with the flying jellyfish or the dullahan boss

How far into the game have you explored? Did you beat the first boss and progressed past him? Maybe you ran into a bug that I don't know about that's preventing you from progressing?

If you haven't seen a single one yet then that means you haven't reached the second level/area, there are 6 maps that consist of the first area and on the final one the exit is at the north east part of the map. If you need further help post a screenshot of where you are.

Thanks for all the comments everyone.

 

[wootaru]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

so I came to a HUGE issue where I cannot Progress any further at all no matter what.

The random map placed a Tentacle grabby thing right before an exit when I walk pass it I get pulled in and shot back out a direction opposite from the exit.

I'm pretty much forced to start all over again to finish the Demo T_T

 

[dood]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

I have to sheepishly say I -still- can't find the area with the flying jellyfish or the dullahan boss

Does my save file not work? Also dullahan is not a boss. Its a regular enemy.

 

[mminit]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

so I came to a HUGE issue where I cannot Progress any further at all no matter what.

The random map placed a Tentacle grabby thing right before an exit when I walk pass it I get pulled in and shot back out a direction opposite from the exit.

I'm pretty much forced to start all over again to finish the Demo T_T

Hey wootaru, I'm sorry that happened. I've been trying to replicate what happened to you while debugging by putting a moving enemy right by a door and getting caught by it but it's not throwing me backwards, do you have a rough idea of which door it was?

I assume it was this area since that's the only place that I can think of where one would be by a door. If you're able to replicate the bug, or provide anymore info that would be great.

 

[szarala]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

I somehow missed the door in the northeast corner despite passing it multiple times.
I am bad.

 

[Slimeria]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Having played until the second boss, my major complaint is that the actual gameplay side of it is rather slow and tedious. Having too much lust is a big liability, but getting rid of it is very annoying. Even with good usage of stances and items, most of the gameplay echoes my least favorite aspects of older turn-based rpgs; dragging out every fight by needing to heal is one thing, but having to remove LP at the same time is just very frustrating to me. I thought the actual h-content would be pretty good, but unfortunately a static image for each enemy and for two traps is just not really worth slogging through this game for. I probably won't try it again in the future.

For constructive feedback though, something I feel like might make it a better experience for people who would like to give this game a go, maybe doing a little rebalancing so that you automatically heal to full and drop your lust (at least somewhat) after a fight would make it less of a chore, because a lot of times what happens is the first few turns of a fight you have to heal the damage from the previous fight before you can even begin the next one.

 

[mminit]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Having played until the second boss, my major complaint is that the actual gameplay side of it is rather slow and tedious. Having too much lust is a big liability, but getting rid of it is very annoying. Even with good usage of stances and items, most of the gameplay echoes my least favorite aspects of older turn-based rpgs; dragging out every fight by needing to heal is one thing, but having to remove LP at the same time is just very frustrating to me. I thought the actual h-content would be pretty good, but unfortunately a static image for each enemy and for two traps is just not really worth slogging through this game for. I probably won't try it again in the future.

For constructive feedback though, something I feel like might make it a better experience for people who would like to give this game a go, maybe doing a little rebalancing so that you automatically heal to full and drop your lust (at least somewhat) after a fight would make it less of a chore, because a lot of times what happens is the first few turns of a fight you have to heal the damage from the previous fight before you can even begin the next one.

Thanks for playing, your main criticism is something I'm aware of and I think would be alleviated with more LP based skills in the future. Right now the player only has two so I can see why you found it tedious being forced to use the same moves with no variation or benefits other than to get rid of it. Someone else also mentioned the battles being slow, so I'm looking into a speed up option.

I'm developing ways to heal/reduce LP outside of battle besides items, likely similar to how the wait action works.

 

[Ayra]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Visually, this game is nice. The drawings are pretty cute and the dungeon looks good. The heroine feels pretty spunky and fun; that's a pretty good accomplishment for her having no text and only a few frames! The music does its job.

I also definitively appreciate that you have a realistic goal with the game.

However, gameplay-wise... Ehhhhhh... Well, I know it's not final, but here goes anyway!

"Tedious" is the most accurate word I can use. The random battles feel like brainless waste of time, yet they take the vast majority of the playtime. Defensive Stance is king: the enemies later on (past the first boss) hit hard, but you still have to be sustainable. So basically, live in Defensive stance, with the occasional Lewd stance if you need LP for first aid. You have 0 other options to mitigate the damage taken by enemies.

Using the offensive stance is suicidal: it's nearly insta-death if the enemy randomly decide to use their multi-hit attacks. Even if they don't, you will need to spend some time to recover from all the damage you took, so you effectively take longer to kill enemies if you use the offensive stance for anything but the final attack.

You have multiple offense-increasing options: +Strength, -Defense on enemy, and +Lewd on enemies... But it takes time to apply those especially since they stack multiple times. Effectively, only worthwhile against bosses except for potentially the +strength (since the Uppercut deals damage too).

Then you have monsters like the stone tablets. They can triple-hit for about 21 damage even in Defense stance; it's suicidal to be in anything else. So even though they often do nothing, you can't really switch to offense in case they decide to do the multi-hit. If they sleep you, that's fine: you get the HP regen anyway from Defensive Stance... But the fight is going to take a long time. It won't be hard, you won't have to think your way through a solution: it's just going to be long and tedious, no matter if you go straight for attacking or debuff its defenses first. And when you have to fight one of them every few steps...

You sometime also get in situations where the enemies just decide to spam Lewd attacks... which means you have to keep spamming Taunt to compensate, so you get nowhere fast. Sure, you'll be able to sneak in some attacks, but again it's slow, tedious and brainless.

You also have nothing exciting to find or discover. There's no proper equipment to find, or skill books, or magical trinkets, or h-scenes. The most you get is a weapon that gives a minor attack boost and breaks in an handful of hits; it's not too thrilling. I was excited when I first got a sword, but that excitement died down pretty darn fast.

tl;dr: I like how the game looks and the concept of it. However, I don't enjoy how battles play out, and 95% of the playtime is spent in battles.

 

[Justicex88]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Just played it for the first time, but wow, this game is great! The art is stylish yet simple (in a good way!), and the mechanics all work together pretty well. The stance system in particular is straight-forward but elegant, and overall just excellently done. Eager to see more.

Basically what I was going to say in a nutshell - The MC has a very simple, yet elegant and lovable design! I really liked the demo and I'd love to see what else you have planned.
On a personal scale (and I believe other people have brought this up), I'd like to see enemies, err-, "Finish" if her LP hits 100. A new cut-in for that would be amazing.
I loved the traps as well and I'd love to see more incorporated in hidden tiles. Things coming up out of the ground with only very slight nuances to let you know they're there, etc. . .
TL;DR Will donate minimum 5$ when it's released, even if you put it up for sale. I look forward to your work!

 

[AnotherLurker]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

I realize it's not on the front page of the topic, so it's not expected for everyone to know this or something of course, but he actually has already shown penetrative acts;

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*DING DING DING DING*

Unfortunately I'm not an animator, maybe one day, but I'm wearing so many hats already as is.

I do plan on sticking with the game until the end, just that I don't plan for it to be huge/too complex since I need to take into consideration that I'm just one person. Given that, I don't think this game will live up to your standards.

Fuck what I said earlier, if you can make enemy attacks into struggle-able grapples with art like that (and maybe some really nice sounds), your game will easilly SURPASS my expectations!

Or, if you can't do struggle-able grapples, maybe an accumulative damage/move system where the longer the player is attacked by a sex-based enemy,
the art goes from slight groping to heavy groping to penetration to total sexual domination.. Or something of the sort.

 

[wootaru]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Hey wootaru, I'm sorry that happened. I've been trying to replicate what happened to you while debugging by putting a moving enemy right by a door and getting caught by it but it's not throwing me backwards, do you have a rough idea of which door it was?

I assume it was this area since that's the only place that I can think of where one would be by a door. If you're able to replicate the bug, or provide anymore info that would be great.

This is what happens, and it shoots me 2 spaces backwards so I get stuck in an infinite loop.

 

[Stiltzkinator]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

I'm developing ways to heal/reduce LP outside of battle besides items, likely similar to how the wait action works.

Thought - maybe have a stance that reduces LP? There's already a number of them, though, so perhaps fold it into one of the other stances, like normal or offensive, or alternatively, make it an upgrade that can be purchased with EXP (I.E, if it upgrades offensive stance, "Automatically Consume up to 20 Lust each turn to boost attack damage. The more lust available, the bigger the damage bonus"). As was mentioned before, on top of it being tedious to remove lust, Offense stance isn't as useful as Defensive or as situationally necessary as Lewd stance. Defense tends to be more important than offense in, and survival takes priority. I wouldn't say that Offensive stance is useless as is, since with plenty of stat boosts and HP, you can easily weather a few hits, but Defense rules combat in general.

That actually brings me to another related point - being offered the opportunity to improve lewd stance was great, and it would be very interesting to see more stance enhancements added in a similar way. For example, another way to make offense stance more useful would be to reduce the HP cost of offensive moves while in it, or to give weapons a chance (maybe 20%?) to be used without consuming durability. Lewd stance could be upgraded to passively increase the lust of the enemy a bit each turn, and to boost the effects of some lust based moves like First Aid and Taunt. The HP regen boost from Defensive stance could be separated out to provide more progression, though I'd hope to see it available early on still. Defense stance could also have an option to replace the default attack with a defend command, that further reduces damage, good against enemies that charge up for big attacks, or when you're seriously hurt and just need to last a few turns while you regenerate (and if you want to attack while in Defensive stance, there's still uppercut, kick, etc).

These are just suggestions, but further differentiating the stances adds a lot to the strategy of the game and gives the player better reason to use all of them. The stances become more like unique classes if they receive unique effects, and creates more interesting playstyles which also hopefully moves battles along a bit quicker (which would make this like the bastard child of the Etrian Odyssey series and FFXIII's paradigm system).

Again, just suggestions here, in case you need inspiration on what to add next. I really, really like what has been put into the game so far, and I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever is to follow as well.

 

[mminit]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Visually, this game is nice. The drawings are pretty cute and the dungeon looks good. The heroine feels pretty spunky and fun; that's a pretty good accomplishment for her having no text and only a few frames! The music does its job.

...

Yep, noted on tedious again. Looks like the combat still needs more work/balance. It's true that offensive stance can be dangerous, and I'm looking into adding skills/perks that will make it more useful. The environment does seem pretty barren right now and there isn't much of a reason to explore. I've been so focused on the combat that exploration hasn't gotten as much attention, I'll try to add more.

Basically what I was going to say in a nutshell - The MC has a very simple, yet elegant and lovable design! I really liked the demo and I'd love to see what else you have planned.
On a personal scale (and I believe other people have brought this up), I'd like to see enemies, err-, "Finish" if her LP hits 100. A new cut-in for that would be amazing.

...

Thank you, others have also expressed interest in a way for enemies to finish off the heroine so I'm considering it.

This is what happens, and it shoots me 2 spaces backwards so I get stuck in an infinite loop.

Oh I see, that's not a bug, that tile is supposed to knock you back two spaces. That area is blocked off unless you're wearing a protection item to block the tentacle, it's not a place you need to go for progression and leads to finding a power fruit and a passage to another part of the map.

Thought - maybe have a stance that reduces LP?

...

You have a lot of really good ideas!

I especially like the idea of offensive stance being able to consume LP, I've been looking for a way to make offensive stance more useful. Thanks, I'll try this out and see how it plays. That and lewd stance increasing enemy LP passively (would have to see if this is overpowered)

Seriously though, thanks! I don't have the luxury of dedicated playtesters or QA teams so your suggestions are very helpful!

 

[willaberhaben]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

About the combat:

If it would be faster (like a x2 speedup) that would already be a big advantage.

Also if you would autowin (perhaps disable/ enable in options in case you want to see the combat groping) against normal mobs once your level/attack/ defense get high enough it would also make it less cumbersome. Why fight 3 turns against an enemy that can't inflict more than 1 damage? why even start combat if i can 1hit them anyway?

I like the combat style but it only makes sense vs strong enemies where your choices matter between live and death. For small fries its taking too long for a foregone conclussion.

 

[alias34]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

Not gonna read all the points that have already been made, so if I say something thats already been said just see it as a reinforcement of the point. That said, I think the game has TONS of potential and I actually look forward to the next update, but it still has some rough edges design-wise (which is obvious since this is still a very early game) so please hear me out on my wall of text:

I think the game is really fun. I actually quite like the battle system, its very simple to undestand, the focus is actually on juggling your HP and LP bar by using the right stances and moves at the right time. Suprisingly innovative, and fitting with the games theme.
Battles are too slow though, I think the most simple fix would be to cut the "announcement" of each move and instead show both animation and ability at the same time. Just cut any unnecessary pause during battles and people won't get bored anymore. Having "Taunt" as the only way to quickly relieve LP is very counter-intuitive because it throws you into a loop, but you most likely already have plans for more moves anyways. Same as with that friggin' Dullahan who's way too overtuned lol.

The dungeon-crawling itself is fine. Its standard stuff that you either like or don't. I like it, and, as minor as it sounds, I like how you can turn around WHILE moving forward, makes it a little more fun and less sluggish to navigate the dungeons.
IMO you shouldn't be able to save everywhere, but instead at certain safe points, it takes way too much tension to be able to save literally anywhere. Try to get some tension into it but be careful not to get sadistic with the save-point placement.
Also, the obvious, I get that the game is mostly about teasing, but without any climax it feels pointless. I know penetration is in the works, but I think the game needs climaxes aswell.

I think the audio needs some fixing, the moans were so loud that I wasn't even sure if there's music in the game, since I had to turn the volume so low. The voice acting itself is nice, its not too overbearing but nice to hear something that I haven't heard in countless other japanese RPG maker games before.

2 mostly subjective things; I think the dungeons could use some more atmosphere. Its an odd thing to expect from a porn-game, but I think atmosphere is actually pretty important for both the game and the porn aspect. I actually want to feel like I'm in a dark dungeon full of twisted, perverse creatures, and right now it looks a little too cartoonish and unthreatening.
My other point is fairly subjective, but I feel like its kinda unnecessary, when being grabbed by the enemy, to have both the standing sprite AND the sexual action depicted right next to it, instead of just temporarily replacing the sprite with whats actually happening. Its kinda minor but to me it feels kind of disconnected, to the point where when it first happened I thought the monster was fantasizing about groping her instead of actually DOING it. This may be trivial, but I feel like it takes away from it a little, not because of the confusion, but because it feels less real on a subconscious level. I may be overexaggerating again though.

That said, all compliments still apply. Great gameplay that needs a little polish, very cute artstyle, very fun to play. I look forward to monitoring this project!

 

[Stiltzkinator]

Re: Lewdest Labyrinth - Dungeon Crawler

You have a lot of really good ideas!

Happy if it helped, I pretty much played through the game, which made me think of it as an erotic Etrian Odyssey, and then thought "Now what would this be if it were MORE like EO?"

On that note, one of the things that makes Etrian games so much more fun than many other dungeons crawlers that I've played is they way they integrate puzzles into the layouts of floors that really require some thought to get through. Not sure if you're familiar with that series, but the puzzles are usually gated by FOEs (ridiculously strong monsters that move around on the map), and if you get completely stuck, you can try to overpower the nearby FOE to make the puzzle easier. For this game, the moving enemies like slimes and jellyfish take the place of FOEs in function (though not nearly as punishing), and could similarly be used in conjunction with the floor layouts and traps to make some interesting puzzles.

Really, I think I've always wanted an erotic Etrian Odyssey, and this game is actually already delivering on that.