Halloween Pinup, Chimei
What is Sangreal?
Sometimes, my family or my friends that I’m not all that close to ask me what I’m doing with my life these days. When I say I’m working on a video game, most of them let their eye glaze over and don’t ask any further questions. But some of my family and most of my friends are gamers to one degree or another, and because I’m not prepared to tell them about Harem Collector, I usually talk about Sangreal.
So, what is Sangreal, other than a decoy to save my pride? Sangreal begins with you playing a prince or princess of the kingdom of Cerulia. It is your official debut on the eve of your fourteenth birthday, where you will finally take up your responsibilities as crown prince or princess. Your parents ask you to join them in an anteroom room the big ceremony, so they can share with you the secrets of the royal family… but as you wait for them to join you, the general of your father’s armies stages a coup, and you only escape with the help of your personal bodyguard and the court magician.
You escape through the castle, pausing only long enough to watch the execution of your father, mother and uncle at the hands of the usurper. Upon finding a secret passage out of the castle, the court magician chooses to head back inside, to find your character’s royal sibling who was not among those executed and so, must still be alive, somewhere, in hiding. Your bodyguard and you escape the castle and wait outside…but the court magician never returns. You and your protector leave, and find shelter with the Wandering Folk, a society of nomads that travel the kingdom while working as tinkers, merchants and adventurers. This is how you live for the next four years, and on your 18th birthday, your guardian finally allows you to guide your own destiny, swearing to stand by you and protect you always.
This is where your character is at the end of the introduction- accompanied only by a single ex-knight and in a far-flung province of your former kingdom, you guide your character’s own destiny as you choose to do… whatever. Overthrow the usurper and reclaim your kingdom? Well, maybe, if that’s what you want to do. But you can also seek to master magic, devote yourself to the church, become a merchant and live a life of luxury… whatever.
So, why am I telling you all this? Well, now that things are kind of settled and I’m being productive again, I want to spend a little more time on Sangreal, like maybe one day out of five. I’ll probably give it for free to backers while it develops, but my intention, I think, would be to distribute it on Steam, eventually.
Anyway, I hope you don’t mind that I’m still working on this little side project. Talk to you guys later!
Wither the Villains?
Spoilers below, you have been warned
Man, I’ve been bad about keeping up this blog lately, haven’t I? I’ll try to do better in the future.
Progress updates: Picked up a nasty cold on the weekend, which, combined with three appointments I’ve had to keep this week, has put a crimp on progress. I have found time to implement the Blacksmith’s relationship interactions, though, so it’s not a dead stop.
Now, on to the main topic- why is there no Big Bad in Harem Collector?
Villains are usually pretty important to video games, after all. They provide a call to action, a reason for the adventuring to begin, as well as a challenge to surmount. Extra Credits recently did a pair of really good videos about villains, which you can watch here and here, in which the EC crew deconstructs the roles that villains play in video games.
However, although individual quest lines have specific villains who will recur, like Borgan and Evanie the Sword-Saint, there isn’t really a Mr. Big setting the plot into motion. Or… is there?
Well, part of it is that I don’t think the Hero needs a villain to motive him to adventure. The Hero has a clear goal and the desire to attain it, plus he works as an adventurer and his primary means of getting income involves solving other people’s problems for money. The only purpose that a villain would serve is mechanical, a big boss to end the adventure with. And there will be one of those, I promise.
The Hero is referred to as such with more than a little irony. After all, said Hero has little problem with abducting women, murdering sentient beings, robbing people’s houses, having sex with women with at best dubious consent, and breaking his word in order to get what he wants. Depending on the player’s choices, the Hero is also plenty capable of brainwashing girls to turn them into mindless slave drones, plainly committing rape, and allowing women who are in his care to be gangraped in order to make a surprise attack.
Most video game heroes commit moral dubious actions- looting the homes of random people, killing scores if not hundreds in pursuit of some quest or another- while still being heralded as the “good guy”. The Hero’s personality was specifically designed to be a person who could commit the various terrible things a JRPG hero does- often without the player considering the moral ramifications of their actions. However, you could easily interpret the so-called “Hero” as a villain instead, and that Harem Collector serves as his origin story.
Regardless of how you choose to view the Hero, I’m pretty comfortable with Harem Collector not having a single, main antagonist. This game is more about the Hero’s rise to power than anything. But for the sequel… let’s just say I’m making a good main villain a priority.
Progress Highlights (And Mugs!)
So, between the public release last week and today, I massacred an entire quest. Just straight-up, no problems, no delays, set-em-up-knock-em-down blasted that shit into existence. I’m pretty proud of that, yeah. Woo!
For the next release, I am hoping to have not one, not two, but three quests for your gaming pleasure and all the associated scenes and stuff, but we’ll see how it goes. Just because I was able to rock this one quest into existence over the course of a weekend doesn’t mean I will necessarily be able to keep up that pace, but here’s hoping.
I really can’t think of anything else to rant about today- guess I’m just too eager to go and make more Harem Collector for you. So, sorry, I guess?
Something you should know about- we are holding a preorder drive for sweet Harem Collector mugs! If we receive 30 preorders by November 9th, I’ll be able to order up some sweet limited edition Harem Collector mugs, and that would be great. Check out the Bad Kitty Games main page and relevant forum thread for more details.
Harem Collector Public Release – October 2014
Man, it’s been awhile. Well, enjoy.
!!!IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT transfer a file where your game is save on the Middle Kingdom, Eastfort or Lumberhill maps!!!
Changes in this Version
Meline’s Love Quest is complete and implemented.
Lumberhill and Eastfort Military District have been made over.
Daily Dungeon maps have been given a small makeover.
The world map has been shifted and made over.
Chimei and Doll now has on-demand sex scenes.
The Stagger Skill now penalizes Evasion rather than Agility.
Sacred Ward now only affects Therese, but makes her immune to all magic
damage.
Therese has a new skill, Shining Strike, which is a Radiant-element
physical attack that simultaneously casts a healing spell on a random
party member.
Elaiya’s Assassin Strike has been renamed Headshot.
Kneecap’d has been replaced with a self buff that increases Elaiya’s hit
rate.
Kyrie’s Ice Armor does the same thing, but with a consolidated state
rather than a separate defense buff.
Meline has a new skill called Beckon Mana, which makes one target take
more damage from magic.
Probably numerous other changes I’ve completely forgotten.
Let’s Get Archetypal
First of all, the latest version of Harem Collector was emailed to backers this morning. If you are a backer and did not receive your email, please contact me ASAP. I probably have the wrong email for you. So relieved and happy to actually get a release out, btw. Looking forward to the public release next week.
Oh, and Spoiler Warning for Harem Collector. You’ve been warned.
Video games should always be about gameplay. If you want to tell an excellent story via a video game, you’re probably better off writing a novel or making a movie. This is why video game stories- even from games are lauded for their stories- tend to be very simple. The point is to provide an engaging, interactive element for the player, after all. This is why games tend to be a poor medium for a character study. This is what makes archetypes so important for storytelling in this medium.
Archetypes (or, if you pay more attention to the internets than English class, character tropes) are basically a short-hand for what a given character is or how they will act. Archetypes are useful to game designers because they are capable of delivering a large amount of information with a small amount of characterization, which is key in game design because very few games are character studies. I know this sounds lazy, but Japanese developers use them, western developers use them, and I’m going to tell you why you should use them.
For example, take Guardians of the Galaxy. Action movies are similar to video games in that studying the characters is not the point, so you need to deliver all the information necessary to describe the characters in a small amount of time. Fantasy novels are the same way- video games should focus on gameplay, action movies on engaging action and good dialogue, fantasy novels on the unique setting (usually). Anyway, by taking the core five characters of GotG, and describing them in 2-4 words, you’ll probably end up with something like this:
Peter Quill- Loveable Rogue
Gamora- Assassin with a Heart
Rocket- Jaded Veteran
Groot- Gentle Giant
Drax- Noble Savage
When the movie opens, we are introduced to Peter Quill by seeing him in action- on a hostile planet, searching for something, but while he does that while listening to a walkman and dancing around. He kicks the local predators out of the way without breaking stride. By the time those opening scenes are over and Quill heads for the planet Nova, we have a bead on his personality- he’s cut from the same cloth as Malcolm Reynolds, Han Solo, or even Bluto Blutarsky and Danny Ocean. Immediately, the audience starts associating attributes to Quill that they don’t necessarily have any evidence for, because of those archetypal connections. The character appears fuller and more complete, because you can draw on that archetype. Later, Quill is given better definition, and the specifics of his personality and how he defies his own archetype are introduced, but the movie’s authors have bought themselves breathing room while also making the experience more satisfying to the audience.
When designing a new character Harem Collector, I find it very useful to say “This character is like X except for Y”. For example, Therese is basically what TV Tropes would call a Lawful Stupid Knight Templar- she is a straightforward, hardcore agent for good who reviles sin and refuses to do evil. This provides a broad map for her character and her behaviour, until later when the differences show up. She talks to Larelle, and accepts her necromantic powers while condemning Larelle’s assault on Lumberhill. This way, you learn that Therese doesn’t believe evil is inherent, and her character gets a little more definition, but the playing audience never feels that Therese is less of a character until they learned that fact. Gargan is like a typical 80’s movie bully and rival, then you start the Virgin Gynocides and learn that he’s actually really dedicated to his job. Meline is a typical imouto character with a huge hard-on for her brother, then you do her Love Quest and (hopefully) pick up on the fact that her dedication to her brother is very much a result of her childhood and family life.
Archetypes are a valuable tool for the game designer, and in hentai specifically, archetypes have a secondary value in that they can be comforting. Hentai draws from a small pool of similar character archetypes (and western porn is an even smaller pool, but that’s kinda sorta a different thing entirely) because when you’re looking to enjoy some hentai, challenging characters will probably just distract you from your purpose. In this case, archetypes serve a useful function of putting the audience at ease, and tipping the audience off as to what this character will react to (and thus, reinforcing the fantasy that you’re a charmer who can romance the panties off anyone).
So don’t worry about your characters being “too typical” or “simple”. Design around archetypes to your heart’s content, and save your innovation for the stuff that’s really important- the gameplay.
By the way, Chibi needs to get some computer equipment repaired before she can work more on Harem Collector or Fairy Side, so starting today she’s doing commissions to raise money for the repairs. Her commissions start at $10 USD, and comes with the added benefit that your commission dollars also benefit Harem Collector’s development. You can see examples of her work here and here and here and here. Contact her at magicwhitelady AT hotmail DOT com for more information.
Oops, I Done Goofed
Oh shit, I almost forgot a blog post today.
Uh… the game is in for testing! Hooray!
I actually had a really good idea for a blog post, but unfortunately, with getting the game ready for testing week I totally forgot to update the blog.
So, uh, come back next week!
Release Dates
Sorry I’ve been incommunicado since last Wednesday. I’ve been busy and haven’t had a lot of time to work on the game.
Anyway, just wanted to announce that I’m deciding to roll out a new version of Harem Collector in the coming weeks.
Testing Week starts September 24th
Backer Release is October 1st
Public release is October 8th
I’m cutting Doll’s love quest and the elf village out for now, because Meline’s love quest ended up taking four times the amount of time I’d initially budgeted for it and I want to do a release sooner rather than later. Hopefully, following this release, I’ll be able to get on that two-month schedule I talked about holy shit last May.
The Internet is Dumb
Wow. The internet is dumb this week. I mean, the internet is dumb most of the time (while simultaneously being very smart in very specific ways) but this gamergate stuff is especially stupid.
Maybe next week or something I’m going to post the “official” Bad Kitty Games policy on gender politics. Right now, teh interntz r to dum.
Until then, please check out this awesome website. It’s full of cool, interesting historical and mythological women. On rare occasions, the author is a little too eager to reinterpret some figures to suit her agenda, but as a nifty stepping-off point for further female appreciation* you can’t go wrong.
* I realize that women don’t exist just to please me. Despite the efforts of the worst feminists, however, I am nonetheless pleased by them. I don’t make porn because I like looking at pictures of dicks all day, after all.