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Website Launch and Harem Collector February Release!

Check out our website and get the latest version of Harem Collector!

The hard work of weeks and weeks finally pays off!

New Stuff in February Version of Harem Collector

-The Southport Docks can now be entered (though there isn’t a lot there yet) and there is a new quest waiting for you at the Southport Adventurer’s Guild.
-The Northmarket Slums have been redesigned.
-There are now at least 20 Dark Seeds in the game and a corresponding Dark Seed reward.
-There are two alchemists in the Westcastle Alchemist Guild for you to invest in and reap the rewards from. Note: The related quest “Hero Baker and the Philosopher’s Stone” cannot be completed yet!
-A, S and D can now be used to set your speed directly, without using the shift key.
-The CTRL key can now be used to auto-forward text.
-There is a new random sex scene that features Randi, which will trigger if you complete a quest in the Eastfort area.
-Serade and Gargan now have CGS for their scenes!
 -The Carriage Hire was re-added to the Northmarket Wealthy District
-You can now sell armour! And use the Harem/Followers menu without crashing the game!
-Menu healing has been re-enabled, and you can only use menu skills from people in your active party!
-Luck and Agility buffs and debuffs now also affect your evasion, hit rate, critical chance and critical evade!
-A mysterious new place, the Village of Huntervale, can now be visited!
-Raina will now be present in your manor after the Journeyman party, and can fight alongside you and be gifted! (Note: In order to have her in your party, you cannot use a save made after the Journeyman ceremony).
 

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Free Civ V!

Hey everyone, I’d just to share that dedicated fan Capi Duffman had generously donated a copy of Sid Meier’s Civilization V for a little contest this weekend, open to backers only. So, if you happen to donate, this weekend ONLY, you’ll have a chance to win! That’s on top of all the usual perks of being a donor! Much excite!

Link’s on the right!

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Alpha Protocol

As I’ve mentioned before one of the perks of doing this is that I get recommended a wide variety of games, anime, and whatever else else that fans of Harem Collector tell me are good. Well, for today let me tell you about one of my favourite games- Alpha Protocol, which is available on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Alpha Protocol is a spy thriller RPG set in the modern day. You play as Mike Thorton, a recent recruit by the titular shadowy government agency to be it’s newest agent. Alpha Protocol, the organization that is, is completely secret in the US intelligence community- they operate without a budget, with no oversight, and thus, without being a political liability to the US. They get what they need by trading secrets on the black market, and are a completely deniable asset for doing really shady stuff like high-profile assassinations, sabotaging America’s economic rivals, that sort of thing.

As Mike, you undergo training and orientation, and then get sent to Saudi Arabia under orders to find and then assassinate Shiekh Al-Shaheed, the leader of a terrorist organization known as Al-Samad who is suspected of masterminding a missile attack on an American jetliner a few weeks earlier. When you find Al-Shaheed, however, he claims that he was given the high-tech guided missile used by it’s American manufacturer for the express purpose of carrying out terror attacks.

Al-Shaheed’s words prove true when, shortly after contacting his Alpha Protocol handler, Mike barely escapes a trio of guided missiles sent to destroy his position. Immediately after, Mike is labelled as a rogue agent by Alpha Protocol, and sets out on his own to investigate what’s going on and clear his name.

Now, AP isn’t a great game, strictly speaking. It has more than it’s fair share of technical problems and design flaws, and will never be counted as influential. But it’s a fun game with awesome ideas and a lot of potential that got shafted by timing.

So, what went wrong? Well, allegedly the AI is terrible… but hey, I don’t play FPSes so I wouldn’t know. The games freezes on occasion- not often, but you’re going to experience it at least once a playthrough- but hey, at least this only happens shortly after the game autosaves. The game’s design is flawed, and suffers from a similar problem to Deus Ex: Human Revolution- namely that, a stealth character is only viable until you have to fight a boss. Being a gadgeteer has similar problems, and ultimately plays mostly like a mix between the combat and stealth classes anyway, only using gadgets to make up in the shortfall in skill points.

However, what the game gets right is amazing.

First of all, the game actually responds to your choices in a way that even Bioware games don’t do as well. You’re occasionally asked whether or not you want to execute an enemy or let them go in exchange for extorting help from them, and your choices in this regard come up constantly. Your choice of specialty comes up a lot- for example, after being told that there are a lot of elite guards in the next mission, a stealth operative will be told “Not that it will be a problem for you”, and a gadgeteer character does all their own hacking rather than relying on their handlers to do it for them. The game will even know and respond when you’re trying to do a pacifist playthrough, or manage to ghost your way through missions without being spotted.

Hell, it’s entirely possible to go through the game and kill literally every other significant character other than Mike. Or, win the respect of your enemies, the admiration of your allies, and finish the game on good terms with everyone (despite having blown up the enemy base and whatnot). A little like Dragon Age, there are only four or so actual endings, but about 2-3 options for little ending blurbs for every other character in the game, so it’s going to take a lot of playing to see every possibility.

Your allies and enemies are pretty interesting and flexible as well. Through the game, you will meet up and potentially recruit the aid of a sexy photojournalist, the leader of a Taipei triad, a Russian industrialist, a trigger-happy German mercenary, an extremely well-funded private intelligence organization, the president of Taiwan, and an aging security expert who was once a rogue agent from Alpha Protocol himself. All these people can be allies or enemies, depending on your actions, and all are deeper and more interesting than what I’ve listed here (except maybe the German, she was never the best characterized and I got the impression that they game’s producers decided somewhat last minute that they wanted a fourth love interest in the game and so implemented her).

As an example of what I mean, take the previously mentioned Shiekh Al-Shaheed and his organization, Al-Samad. At first they seem to be pretty basic expies of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, but it becomes clear over time that Al-Samad is a mainly secular, politically-motivated organization that is being manipulated by an American weapons firm. Al-Shaheed is an asshole, but he wants to escape the grip of said weapons firm and is willing to help you. So after first meeting him, you have the choice of executing him outright or hearing out what he has to say. Your options then become a) kill him anyway, b) use him for information and then kill him, c) part ways and never speak to him again, or d) become mutually-respectful allies, in which case he’ll help you out on the final chapter of the game. I haven’t played many modern military shooter or spy stealth games, but to go so deeply into a Middle Eastern terrorist organization’s motives and the personality of it’s leader was something new and fresh to me when this game came out in 2009.

The real star of the show is the social system, however. Every time Mike gets to respond, he can pick between three or four “styles” of response. These were referred to in development as the “three JB’s”- you can pick from a James Bond-esque suave option, a Jason Bourne-style professional and to-the-point option, or a Jack Bauer-type angry, threatening and no-bullshit option. Unlike, say, Mass Effect, the game outright says that Mike Thorton is an expert manipulator and can switch from style to style freely depending on what he wants the other person to see. And there are advantages to either one- for example, that ex-Alpha Protocol aging security expert I mentioned before? He’s too genre-savvy to fight you directly… unless you piss him off enough that he wants to settle things personally. Or, alternately, you can earn his respect to the point where in the endgame, you can appeal to his sense of honour ask him if keeping his word to a bunch of shady industrialists is really worthwhile. Doing so with a high enough relationship means that that NPC will help you out in the final battle. Every relationship is tracked separately, and while some NPCs are more useful than others, you never know until you’ve played through the game.

And of course, there the fourth option- you can also choose a background that gives you additional conversation options. You can choose to be a Recruit, which starts you off with a little less skill points, in exchange for “inexperienced” conversation options that either involve fresh ideas, or at least lets you impress your allies by saying “I know I’m new at this, but… *extremely good logical deduction here*”. Once you’ve played through the game once, you also get the option of being a Veteran, which not only gives you bonus skill points, but also gives you a conversation option that reflects a grizzled old campaigner, with the experience necessary to stay one step ahead of his enemies.

The game even gets Social Justice Points ™. One of the more interesting characters, who is also one of my favourite NPCs and an extremely effective villain, just kind of happens to be gay. You won’t know unless another NPC tells you, or you deduce from his love of classical statuary (dude has a lot of marble statues of naked athletes in his home), but he remains a cold, calculating, and ruthlessly terrifying man… who happens to <3 the cock in his spare time.

Now, the reason why you’ve probably never heard of this game, is because it got delayed. Alpha Protocol was originally previewed way back in 2008, and had it come out in a timely fashion, it would have compared favourably to other shooter RPGs like Mass Effect and Bioshock. But the game got stuck in development hell and didn’t see a firm release date until 2009, which still wouldn’t have been that bad, AP would have to competed against Fallout 3 in the shooter RPG category but that wasn’t necessarily terrible. But instead, it was delayed further to June 2010, which was it’s death knell. You see, five months before, in January, Mass Effect 2 was released and it was pretty effectively a game-changer. Alpha Protocol stills played like an early Xbox 360 game, and simply couldn’t compete.

Anyway, I’ve fanboyed long enough. If you’re interested in anything I said and can overlook some flaws in a game with truly unique storytelling and a few really innovative mechanics, try and look up  Alpha Protocol.

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The Monster Girl Situation

So, I frequently get questions about what monster girls will make it into Harem Collector. I often respond with “maybe” or “wait and see” but here’s the thing- I’m not interested in the vast, vast majority of monster girls, from the encyclopedia or elsewhere. But hey, some of them are nice, and I’ve already said that there will be a slime girl at point.

There are many problems with implementing monster girls, though- they need to exist as 3DCG mods, and I need to find or commission a sprite to match. Because of this, I’m not going to be going the extra mile to put a given monster girl in the game unless I feel very motivated. Very little of this applies to Fairy Side, though, MagicWhiteLady might have her own priorities.

So, let’s run down- I’ll list off the primary monster girl varieties and tell you the chances that they’re going to appear in a Harem Collector game. If I don’t mention one here, the answer is probably “I don’t care one way or another, so my apathy probably means no”. If there’s something specific you’d like to inquire about, stick it in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

Alraune, Mandragora, etc: I don’t plan to. I don’t have anything against alraune but if I’m going to put a plant-girl-type in the game, it’s probably going to be a dryad and pass on the predatory aspect of the alraune.

Interestingly, the Monster Girl Encyclopedia wiki describes the alraune’s  disposition as “voluptuous”. I’m not certain if it’s “voluptuous” or “disposition” that’s the problem, but one those words doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Arache, Driders, etc.: I have a theory: Anyone who thinks that spider/girl hybrids are hot were actually born on Antarctica and have never seen an actual spider. Like, god damn. They’re literally the single most alien, horrific things ever  and some guys want to put their dicks in one, as long as it has tits. I mean, look:

Every time I see this, I throw up in my mouth a little.

Cancer: Ugh, no. A girl shaped like a tumour? Forget it, I mean, how insensi-

Oh. OH. It’s a crab.

…No.

Centaurs: Hmm, maybe. One of my earliest video game crushes was May from Shining Force 2. The question then becomes, would the girl’s pussy be in an anatomically correct position for a girl, or a horse? Probably the former, but I might change my mind. So, there will probably be a female centaur at some point, but not in the first installment of the series. Also, the chances of a centaur being in Project Norn are high.

Classic Elementals: Elementals were in the “no” zone for awhile. Slyphs and Nereids are covered by the Monster Girl Encyclopedia already, so there’s not much to say there except that they can be hot. It’s also not hard to think of a sexy fire elemental without it being a salamander or dragon or whatever.

The problem arises because you need the complete set. I want to put a set of classic sexy elementals in Harem Collector. However, the question is how to do a cute earth elemental, without being lazy doing the “plants = earth” thing. Dirt and rocks, however, aren’t terribly sexy. Or even feminine.

The solution I came up with? Gems and precious stones. Observe:

Pic courtesy of MagicWhiteLady. Hopefully that makes up for the earlier disturbing spider pic.

Demons: The Monster Girl Encyclopedia lists a number of different demon girls, with varying degrees of sexiness. If you read the lore in-game, there will obviously be demon girls of several varieties. Some of the demons are dudes though- and I know that’s mostly been what’s in the game so far. But there will be demon girls, and even in the first installment, too.

Dragons: Dragons will play a large role in Harem Collector, but I don’t know how likely they are to show up as sexy girl dragons. If I feel like it, one or two might show up in later installments of the series, but it’s not a priority.

Dryads: The chances of a Dryad showing up at some point in Harem Collector and Project Norn both are very high. I don’t have any plans at the moment, but I like Dryads, they’re sexy tree ladies, and that’s awesome.

Dullahan: I don’t see the appeal in having sex with a headless girl. So, no. Which is too bad, I can’t imagine it would that hard to implement in 3DCG given the number of guro mods.

Fairies: As you can tell from Fairy Side, the fae are going to play a big role in the setting. In terms of actual small pixie-type creatures, my main problem is the limited possibilities. Your basically have the pixie giving the Hero’s dick a full-body massage sort of thing, or bukkake.

Gazebo: YES. HELL YES. There will a gazebo girl at some point, and it’ll be AWESOME.

Ghost: I’ve said there will be a ghost girl in the game at some point, and that point is soon.

Goblin: I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to do concerning goblins. I’m definitely going to stick to my policy of no loli and nothing that can be construed as loli, and that might reduce the appeal for some guys. So, this one is a “maybe”.

Golem: Depending on what part of “golem” is important to you, there may already be something in the works to satisfy you. There will be “artificially creature girls that you can also fuck” but I don’t know about anything more true to the actual golem legend, or the Monster Girl Encyclopedia version.

Harpy: They might appear as monsters, but probably not as harem girls. Those bird legs and wings instead of arms kind of weird me out.

Kitsune: Very likely. I don’t have any plans as of yet, but they’ll probably appear in part 2.

Lamia, Snake-girls, etc:  Even as I was about to say “not likely”, Nekochan is standing over my shoulder talking about how awesome Bleu was in the Breath of Fire series. She’s nagged me into including stuff before, so I won’t say “never”.

Like-Like: It might be funny to have this girl, who is just a naked girl with a mouthful of weird teeth and the disturbing shade of pink skin, that just hangs around in a dungeon nomming on shields all day. Maybe she can block a door, and you have to give her a shield to proceed, and if you didn’t bring one extra, oops, sorry Therese.

Matango: Not as such… The chances are high that a fuckable Mycon Queen will appear in a later game, but not for the first Harem Collector game.

Mimics: The concept of opening a treasure chest with a girl inside and having sex with her amuses me (You received “Sexy Time”!), but that’s probably not the same thing.

Modrons, Drelb, Thought-Eaters, Wolf-in-Sheep’s-Clothing, etc.: Noah Moshing’s recipe for comedy: Take one (1) obscure D&D monster. Turn into cute girl as parody of the whole monster girl encyclopedia thing. Serve while hot.
Ogre: Ogres in HC are already pretty standard Ogres. It might be fun to have female ogres actualy be sexy later, but I don’t think the Hero will actually fuck one.

Orcs: The whole orc thing has been gone over in Harem Collector, so, no..

Owlbear: I promise you there will be an owlbear girl, but only because it’ll be funny.

Slimes: You just skipped down here after reading the title, didn’t you?

Trolls: Trolls will probably make it in, just so I can make fun of Homestuck more.

Vampires: Kind of in a weird place right now, actually. MagicWhiteLady and I both want to use vampires in our games, but we’ve yet to sit down and actually figure out what canon vampirism is. So, yes, it will happen, in what form though? Read and find out. 

Were-[blank]: [Redacted]

Yuki-Onna: Very high. Very, very likely to happen. It might not be a legitimate “ghost” but more “cute ice fairy or spirit or something” though.

Zombies: Yuck.

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Cheevos

I have a confession to make: I love Achievements. Oh, you can call them “Trophies” or “Challenges” or what have you, but the basic idea is the same: A means of tracking your in-game accomplishments that you can show your friends or merely admire on your own. And while many people don’t live achievements, the truth is they’re far more ubiquitous than most people admit. Take, for example, Sengoku Rance.

“But wait, No Moshing,” you might say if you were my convenient strawman, “Isn’t Sengoku Rance a hentai game with dubcon and weird stuff? There’s no way that Sengoku Rance would see an Xbox release!” While that is true, feast your eyes:

 Sengoku Rance uses a scoring system to determine what unlocked extras you get to use in subsequent playthroughs. You start with a certain amount of points for the difficulty you’re on, and lose one point for every turn you take. Clearing characters’ relationship sideplots grants two extra points per, and there are five other achievements that add to your score- Beat Orochi, Beat the Youkai King, have sex with 300 women, find 6 treasures, and have an army of 30k troops or more.
 On top of that, the system info page also demonstrates how far you are along in the game’s story mode.

That’s, basically a whole bunch of achievements with an in-game mechanic attached. On an Xbox it’d look like:

Beat Youkai King (10G)
Fuck 300 women (10G)

…and so on. Why am I explaining this? Because when I say that I’d like to introduce achievements to Harem Collector that you don’t immediately think of that annoying “Boop” sound from Xbox 360 games and want to strangle me.

I don’t know if I will, though- achievements are the sort of thing that work best when front-ended onto a game and adding them a quarter of the way through development like this will probably lead to bugs and problems. So here’s a preview/tease about what achievements would be in the game if I could.

Dawson’s Dream: Collect all 100 Dark Seeds
This one is fairly self-explanatory- collecting all the Dark Seeds in the game woul be quite a feat, and earn you a little recognition as well as the reward for the 100th Seed.

Middle Kingdom Champion: Defeat Evanie the Sword-Saint with only the Hero
While Evanie will show up later in the game, soloing her the first time you meet her would offer up this achievement.

One Man Army: Defeat the Orc Chieftain, Zombie Bard, and Leon the Steel-Hearted with only the Hero.
Later on, there might be more names to add to this list, but the basic idea is to reward the player for soloing the non-optional “Leader”-type  bosses with the Hero. If this list becomes too large, it could easily be pared down to “Leader-type bosses who actually represent military leaders”, dropping stuff like the Zombie Bard.
Who is Leon the Steel-Hearted? He’s the only other “Leader-type” boss I have planned for right now, and will be the final boss of the Eastfort questline.

OSHA Compliant: Complete The Virgin Gynocides without knocking Borgen unconscious.
One those cool “alternate path” sort of things, if you convince Borgen to give you both keys without dropping a [REDACTED] on him. Not that that is possible in the January Update, because I still have to add that alternate path, but it should be ready for February.

Taste the Rainbow: Deal every kind of elemental damage in one combat without using scrolls.
This is *almost* possible in the current build of the game- the only thing you’d be missing is an item which exists but I haven’t set to drop anywhere.

Results May Vary: Do something terrible and get away with it.
This achievement would unlock in a number of different ways- for lowering the pay of the kids at the cannery during Cannery Can-Can, raping the maid during Ain’t No Party Like A Search Party, drugging Yamamaya with catnip, and other things like that. It’d basically be a 0-point “shame on you” sort of thing.

Switch Hitter: Have sex with a man.
There are currently two opportunities in the hero for the Hero to get a taste of vitamin D, and there probably will be more- I find the idea of such an aggressively heterosexual man constantly ending up in situations where he has to “Take one for the team” to be pretty funny. This achievement would simply recognize the fact that your Hero has a little more… variety of experience than is canon.

There’d also be less interesting ones for plot completion, and more interesting ones for secret bosses and such, but this gives you a basic idea of what I had in mind.

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Release Schedule

First of all, I just wanted to reiterate that I now have a twitter feed if you want to track the game’s progress on a daily basis. Following the feed will get you a sneak preview on what’s coming up in the future, as well as give you that special voyeuristic thrill that a blog just can’t deliver. Also, I’m finding so far that updating the twitter feed while I work is really helping stay focused and be productive, so that’s always a good thing.

Okay, so that said, I figured I’d take this week to go over a sort of “release schedule”, or the closest thing that passes for one in this neighborhood.

February 2014
Bad Kitty Games Website: That’s right, we’re going to have our own website for Harem Collector and side projects. It’s probably not going to be hugely awesome, but I will be relocating the blog to it. Also: one download link that everyone will be able to use! Just a head’s up though- we will be running ads on the site, but solely to pay for the site itself. I’m going to aim for something very low-key.

One Year Anniversary Update: Harem Collector turns one year old this Valentine’s Day! Don’t worry, Pedobear approves. So there will be a brand new update in February with all sort of cool new stuff for you to see and explore and put your virtual penis into.

April 2014

Didi’s Debut: For the first time since last August, a totally new character will be joining the Harem Collector… harem. This will be in addition to a slew of new content that will come with every update from now on!

May 2014
Dungeon Assault No Mercy Edition: Just in time for the one-year anniversary of Dungeon Assault, a ground-up redesign of the RPG Maker roguelike made by yours truly. If the original Dungeon Assault was a proof-of-concept, this is the finished product.  New features will include:

  • Over fifty unlockable characters
  • A 50+ floor dungeon to explore
  • Identifiable items to experiment with
  • The ability to move between floors
  • A home base town where you can rest and resupply between excursions
  • Achievements
  • More and more of that sweet retro roguelike style

Backers of Harem Collector will be invited to beta test Dungeon Assault: No Mercy starting in March.

June 2014
Production Begins on Project Norn:   My next evenings-and-weekends project will be Project Norn, an h-game RPG inspired by the SMT: Persona games. You will play an average college student who, on the summer solstice, discovers that the well behind his apartment building is capable of transporting him to a bizarre otherworldly city inhabited by demons, spirits, gods and monsters. Many of the city’s denizens bear a strange resemblance to people you encounter in the normal world, and a mythic connection allows you to make your allies on one side of the well stronger by forming bonds with their counterparts on this side.
Discover mythic and arcane secrets while also having to navigate the world of classes, part time jobs, dating, and, of course, getting the rent in on time. And yes, this will be another hentai game.

August 2014
Elves!: The elven village in Harem Collector will finally be implemented in August if not June. My plans for new content after April are hazy-yet-flexible, but August is my deadline for elves.

February 2015
(Hopefully) Final Version of Harem Collector: Now, don’t get me wrong, Harem Collector will be done when it’s done, but I’m hoping to end ongoing development of Harem Collector by it’s two-year birthday. There will be ongoing tweaks and rebalances, but I want all core content out by this time.

So, that’s it. All of this is subject to change- the nice thing about self-publishing with very little overhead is that I can change my own deadlines at need- but as a rough guide to how the next year will play out, it’ll do.

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Classism, Part 2

Okay, first of all, I just want to say that Guided Fate Paradox looks like an awesome game. I haven’t played it myself, but Nekochan has been glued to it and it’s actually fun to watch and looks really good. Unfortunately for me, I’m embroiled in a speedrun of Kingdoms of Amalur on hard at the moment, which is taking forever- god damn that game is big. But once that is done, I’m totally hooking up with some cosplay angels.
So, in continuation of last week’s rant: What I want the characters to do, with some special previews this time!
Buffers and Healers
I fold these two roles together, because just healing is kind of boring and uninteresting, and doesn’t give that character anything to when people are full up.
Hero
As I’ve said elsewhere before, the Hero is supposed to kind of suck. His primary job is to make everyone else in the party better, without being very good on his own- synergy with the other characters is what I’m shooting for here. That being said, he’s also not going to big weaknesses either.
Strengths: The Hero has four upgradable abilities that you can grow at your pace. Also, he gets to have sex with a bunch of women.
Weaknesses: Not having any particular strengths.
Future Plans: The hero is going to an additional mode- if you remember the test character Viel it’s, going to work in a similar way- that will allow him to double as a tank with some damage capability, letting the player switch up his role for more variety.
Felix/Healbot
Felix is an early game crutch healer who will eventually start giving diminishing returns.I’ve talked about Felix at length before…. Fun Fact: Nekochan hates Felix and thinks anyone who uses him is a pussy. I don’t agree with her, but he wasn’t originally intended to be in the game….
Strengths: He heals you. No, really, that’s it.
Weaknesses: His stats are supposed to be the lowest over time out of everyone in the game, but right now that’s a little academic because the game only supports up to level 15 or so.
 Future Plans: When I actually go and start plugging in stat lines rather than relying on RPG Maker’s automatic settings, I’m going to have Felix’s stats begin to plateau around level 20.
 Diadira (Didi)
Didi is a cosplaying pop star that the Hero sees in concert and decides he absolutely has to at least fuck. She’ll be implemented by next spring, if not earlier. She’ll be roughly a “bard” type, but hopefully suck a whole lot less that most bards.
Strengths: She is all about buffing the team. If she does any healing, it’ll be an incidental kind of thing. For example, by dropping a buff that gives the team regeneration. Her buffs are going to be tremendously powerful, affecting multiple parameters, but…
Weaknesses: …She has to sing to grant them. Singing takes up all her actions, and basically having her on the team means that when you fire up a song buff, you’re fighting with a super-powered three-man team and one meat shield that doesn’t grab aggro. The songs will be temporary, and Didi will get freed up when the song is over. To give her something of a secondary role, she’ll probably have a high Magic stat so she can make decent use out of scrolls and bombs.
Controllers
Meline
One of the more controversial-yet-popular characters, your little specializes in dealing with magical threats and spellcasters.
Strengths: Meline has a huge supply of Mana, which lets her keep casting and resist effects that sap Mana. Her biggest skill right now is Heretical Censure, which prevents enemy spellcasting and opens the enemy party up to elemental damage. She also casts fire-elemental prayers, which slows enemy healing, and radiance-elemental prayers that apply a huge to-hit penalty to enemies.
Weaknesses: She has low initiative and even lower attack.
Future Plans: I’m actually not 100% certain about this one. Her next few skills will have to focus on her ability to screw with regular enemies and not just spellcasters to help round things out, or more skills like Censure that primarily affect spellcasters but aren’t completely useless against normal bad guys.
Larelle
You know, I’ve always been a little disappointed at Larelle’s lukewarm reception. I really like her as a character and I think she plays really well. Plus, she can resurrect dead party members as zombies, and I think that’s awesome. 
Strengths: For a spellcaster, she’s pretty robust and has decent attack power. Plus, her necrotic-elemental magic kills enemy attack power, and she cast Terrible Curse to inflict an HP-drain effect that mirrors Censure’s elemental damage bonus. Also, she can raise your fellow party members as zombies!
Weaknesses: As a spellcaster, she’s supposed to pale in comparison to other primary spellcasters like Meline and Kyrie, with lower Mana and Magic power.
Future Plans: Already in the pipeline is a buff to the Zombie status that increases their threat, making them halfway decent temporary tanks. Other than that, I’m thinking of giving her a second spell element like the other casters. Kyrie would be acid and cold, Meline would be radiant and fire, Chimei would be thunder and lightning (very very frightening!), Larelle would be necrotic and psychic maybe, and force would be provided by tomes.
Chimei
Chimei is a sort of druidy nature mage type who casts very powerful evocations that use lightning and thunder. For various reasons, she’s probably the most  OP spellcaster right now, and evocations in general as well as the lightning element are going to have to be nerfed. Also, she speaks exclusively in Japanese, which is a gag I never get tired of.
Strengths: Chimei actually has really high Luck and Resist ratings, helping her resist status effects and magic damage. She also has Defense debuffs, and lightning-element magic is overpowered as hell.
Weaknesses: Because evocations require Mana and Momentum, Chimei has to make use of basic attacks and her Transfer Essence skill to generate Momentum to use her evocations. This locks her into a two-turn rhythm, where she stores energy and then casts a spell.
Future Plans: First of all, Chimei isn’t learning English anytime soon. However, be assured that nothing she says is of consequence to the plot- the Hero just ignores her most of the time. Easily 90% of her dialogue comes from TVTropes’ list of Stock Japanese Phrases anyway, and if you can’t tell from the French dwarves and the elf-latin I really like hiding little gags and bonuses behind language barriers. As for actual gameplay changes, evocation spells currently target two or four random enemies- which can be rough if you’re fighting big groups of dudes, but against a single foe they basically just multiply your damage as each strike hits the same poor guy. I wanted evocations to feel very different from spells and prayers, and that just isn’t going to work. Also, the way the lightning element works is going to have to change as well.
(Elf Ranger)
This character, who is thus far unnamed, is an elf who acts as a physical controller. Armed with a bow, by using techniques that take the form of special archery techniques and stealing some of the better ideas off of Hawkeye and Green Arrow. If I realigned the spellcasters’ elements as mentioned above, I might add evocations to this character to give her a secondary role with poison spells, but I guess that could just as easily be done with poison-tipped arrows.
I don’t really have a strengths/weaknesses workup for this character, but she’s the least developed, although she should be in the game by this summer. I’ll talk about her story and personality instead.
Basically, when you start on the elf village questline, you find out very early on that the elven princess has a huge fetish for humans and their rounded ears, but she is (at first) forbidden from having sex with the Hero. However, nothing stops her from ordering her bodyguard and handmaiden to have sex with the Hero while she watches. Said handmaiden, the ranger, is forced by her mistress to join the Hero’s harem and help him save the elven people so the princess can have sex with him, since he needs to become the saviour of the elf people before the king will allow the princess to lay him.
The ranger herself isn’t all that interested in the Hero, and only fucks him begrudgingly to please her princess, who the ranger kinda has a thing for. She has a low opinion of humans in general, but is forced to work with one and eventually even comes to accept him and then fall in love with him.
Anyway, I hope all that was interesting for you. Reply with your game balance insight/opinions. Oh, and in case you missed it, last week I enable anonymous comments so feel free to comment with your privacy intact/give me the verbal lambasting you feel I deserve/link all the rickrolls and goatse pics your desire.
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Classism Part 1

So I spent most of Monday working on Fairy Side for MagicWhiteLady. Because we haven’t been able to get together to collab on dialogue and such, MWL is doing all of the game text as I type. But I was able to refine some of MWL’s ideas and made sure that, if nothing else, it’s a thing you can play through. The structure is there, and MWL is bringing the fun.

Also: I changed up my avatar. Wooser likes meat, girls, and money, and so do I. But don’t worry, I still fight for the greater good, Tau-chan has just been moved to my wallpaper. Exciting stuff.

Maybe I should actually talk about my game?

Okay, so I’ve been putting more thought into game balance lately and I’m personally wondering what characters people use, who gets teamed up with whom, stuff like that. I want to have the gameplay be pretty deep… or at least as deep as RPG Maker can get. Even if I can’t hit “deep”, “challenging but rewarding” would be a great secondary. So your feedback is important in this regard. Also, it might go into skills that appear on these characters in the future.

I also want to avoid nerfing the characters if I can. I’d rather maker under-used characters better than take away something that is already good.

So, here is sort of how I envisioned how each character would work.

Damagers

Elaiya 
Pretty basic, glass cannon physical damage.
Strengths: She shoots for high damage, lets off the occasional burst fire. As for her other skills, Stealth keeps the heat off for awhile, Kneecapping will (next update) deal some damage with an evasion penalty for high-evasion enemies, Assassin’s Strike lets you gamble on an insta-death move.
Weaknesses: Enemy tanks with cover and lots of HP kind of ruin her day, since they can soak up multiple Barrage shots. Enemy damagers with multi-target abilities as well.
Future Plans: Right now my rough plan is for her Love Quest to result in an upgraded three-hit Barrage. The individual damage of her pistols will probably come down as I start running numbers and figure out what works for weak damage, and her crit rate will probably get nerfed. Maybe in favour of an “Aiming” self-buff that cancels Stealth but gives more crits.

Yamamaya
Yamamaya is a bit more complicated. She should bring to the table less (but still good) damage compared to Elaiya, but in a more robust package. Add in some racial immunities, and she can Rage if the player decides they’ve figured out the enemy boss and she can safely bash away without input.
Strengths: Racial immunities to most “mind”-type effects, highest Health on a damager. Her Techniques gives her some more options- Shockwave causes Thunder element damage and can deafen, while Strong Attack gives her a good go-to attack power when you don’t want her to Rage.
Weaknesses: She also hates enemy tanks, but slightly less than Elaiya because multi-targeting is less important to Yamamaya’s style. Turning on Rage can quickly bite you in the ass if the battle turns south on the player.
Future Plans: Strong Attack will probably get some kind of -Hit, +Damage change in the future and become a “Wild Swing” type ability just to be more flavourful and interesting. In general, I want her to be the “safe” damager with less risk, but less reward.

Kyrie
Kyrie is an uncomplicated nuker mage. She also adds a bit more enemy control- her acid spells cause -Defense and her ice spells will cause -Evasion and -Hit in time. But her power is limited because I want restoring Mana to be pretty expensive in this game.
Strengths: Lots of damage, multi-target spells, some debuffs. Also, Ice Armor stacks with other defense buffs. She can also take some damage to self-buff her Magic.
Weaknesses: Reliance on Mana, almost as weak as Elaiya, and nothing really spammable for mid-dungeon fights.
Future Plans: Getting her in the harem, for one. Despite being one of the first characters designed for the game, she remains elusive. Also, she will get some kind of “acid snow” multi-target ultima-type spell for obscene damage + obscene Mana cost.

Gargan
For the more discerning, cerebral player, Gargan provides good damage and can also do secondary tanking.
Strengths: Fairly sturdy. Uses Cape Stun and eventually Throw to inflict the Stun effect, and on the following turn can Stun Break* for extra damage and to ignore defense. Coup de Grace allows late-game Gargan to set up an insta-kill on a stunned enemy… if he has enough Momentum. Finally, Counter lets him/her secondary tank while still inflicting damage.
Weaknesses:You actually have to plan and be careful to use Gargan most efficiently. Even still, an enemy immune to Stun (mechanicals, catgirls, etc) will shut him/her right down into a less-efficient tank.
Future Plans: Get him/her in the party after a quest to cure his/her curse with mixed results. Also, decide on a pronoun for him/her and a way to make him/her cool with being a her that doesn’t cause my social justice-oriented friends to riot.

Overall: The Damagers are the least problematic characters in the game- Yamamaya and Elaiya  are frequently stated to be top picks and Kyrie and Gargan bring new play styles to the table without being too difficult to understand. They just need tweaks and fixes to get them *just right*.

Tanks

Therese
Being the first additional party member, the tutorial sections pretty much explain how Therese works- Primary tank with secondary healing.
Strengths: Rough and tumble fighter who also heals. Highest Resist of all the tanks, and will be able to self-buff to stretch it even further. Can also use +Defense Prayers, and Stagger gives her a slightly boosted attack with an Agility debuff.
Weaknesses: Martyrdom lacks any of the bell and whistles of the other tank abilities- it just draws threat without benefiting Therese.
Future Plans: Her Lay on Hands is meant to be early game healing, she will eventually get the basic one-target healing Prayer at the same time primary healers get multi-target healing.

Doll
Doll is actually an old idea I had back in elementary school for a Final Fantasy class- low damage, but covers and auto-regens.
Strengths: Has innate Health regeneration. Defender of Life buffs her Health Regen while she draws threat. Vine Armour lets her self-buff Defense (and stacks with other Defense buffs), Regeneration lets her offer some low-grade heals, and somebody Shake It Off might do something useful.
Weaknesses: Lowest Attack of all the tanks. Regeneration is less useful in the face of high-damage enemies and is better for low-risk battles you can drag out to benefit from the most healing.
Future Plans: Nothing concrete at the moment, except adding something to Vine Armour to spice it up a little (like Ice Armour also granting Cold Resistance).

Raina
Raina is a pretty basic spear-and-board fighter, but has enough interesting twists. Mirrors her brother a little- Gargan is a primary damager, secondary tank who applies a debuffs and then takes it away for bonus damage, while Raina is a primary tank, secondary damager who applies a self-buff then takes it away for bonus damage. If you’re interested in how she works, go check out Fairy Side later today- Conall is functionally identical, except for a slightly different stat priorities.
Strengths: Highest Defense in the game. Has two options for threat-generating self-buffs- Phalanx, which generates threat and buffs Defense, and Deflect, which generates threat and buffs Resist. She can then Shield Bash to attack with her Defense stat before leaving her Phalanx/Deflect state.  Shield Rush is functionally similar, except costs more Momentum and has a chance of Knockdown. She can also use Pommel Strike for a boosted attack with chance of Knockdown that doesn’t cause her to leave Phalanx/Deflect.
Weaknesses: Lowest Resist of all the tanks and lacks any healing ability.
Future Plans: Get her in the party and eventually the harem. Raina is slightly more complicated in this regard- she’s going to hang around the manor and join in all the fun adventuring, but won’t join the harem until you can make her love the Hero enough to accept his philandering.

Originally this post was going to cover all the classes, but after seeing how long it is, this is going two-parter. See you next week!

*I just noticed while writing this post that Stun Break does not work as intended, using Gargan’s Magic stat instead of Attack. Will be fixed in next version.

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The Fix is In

Links:
A bunch of bug fixes, but relatively light on new content.
Also: I had to change the skill and class tables, so if you transfer a save over things are going to be weird. However, there is a demon in your bedroom who will happily change everything and make it all copacetic in case you would prefer that Yamamaya wasn’t a paladin or whatever.
Also also: Mega was trolling me. Literally- the upload completion bar started going down at a certain point, and then I said “fuck it”.