Castle of Vice – Development Diary #21 (Boss Paths and Miasmic Seals)

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing great!

For Alpha 0.14, I’ll be implementing a couple of new features alongside a few other changes.

The first feature I’ll be talking about is the addition of Boss Fight paths during exploration. As some of you may know from my previous dev diaries, boss enemies are something I’ve wanted to add for a couple of months, and I have finally implemented them.

This is the path icon:

When you select a Boss Fight path, you will face a random human boss enemy. At the moment, only two are implemented, each with a unique combat style that will test your skills.

Of course, you may also defeat them by making them ejaculate, just like any other enemy. However, they will prove harder to arouse, since they always have an erotic trait called “Bloodlust Above Desire,” which does the following:

“He would prefer to see Annelise defeated rather than nude. He gains half as much arousal from any source.”

Because of it, bosses are basically immune to the arousal gained from “Tempting Body.” As for “Female Pheromones,” I decided to give this state a small buff to help against these bosses as well as regular enemies:

Arousal gain: Increased from 1 to 2.
Time required to trigger: Increased from 2 to 3 seconds.

In summary, if you want to defeat bosses through arousal, it will be much easier once you have corrupted Annelise to higher attitude levels and acquired more erotic traits.

One important thing to note is that Boss Fight paths are rare. Their chances of appearing will depend on how deep you are in the castle and how long it has been since your last boss fight. However, one thing is certain: you will not be able to fight more than 2 boss enemies in a single run. Once you have fought your second boss enemy, Boss Fight paths will stop appearing.

Moving on, let’s talk about the next feature, since it is directly connected to the reward you receive for defeating bosses: Miasmic Seals.

A few times in the past, I’ve seen comments here and there about implementing a system that would allow players to make a piece of equipment permanent. Honestly, I feel that making an item completely permanent would affect the difficulty too much. However, adding something that helps you keep an item for at least one additional run sounds like a fair way to reduce some of the randomness of the reward system.

With this idea in mind, I started doing some research and thinking about mechanics I’ve seen in other games. Eventually, this led me to create the Miasmic Seal system.

Here is how it works:

When you defeat a boss, you receive a Miasmic Seal and will be prompted to select one of your pieces of equipment to apply it to. Once applied, a seal with the number 1 will appear on that piece of equipment.

Like this:

If you later defeat another boss, you may apply the new Miasmic Seal to a piece of equipment that already has one. Doing so will increase its number to 4.

The number represents how many defeats the equipment can survive. The next time Annelise is defeated and returns to the safe room, the game will check the number on the seal. If it is higher than 0, it will be reduced by 1, and you will keep the equipment for your next run. If it has already reached 0, the equipment will be removed as usual.

Simply put, you are giving lives to your equipment. Once those lives are exhausted, the item will be lost until you receive it as a reward again.

Moreover, Miasmic Seals can also be applied to Cursed Items, in case you want to keep them longer and make use of them for Ero XP farming.

Those are the two new features I wanted to talk about. I’m really excited to add them and see what you think of the gameplay loop once you get the chance to test them.

If there is anything you would like some clarification on, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.

As for the other changes, besides the buff to “Female Pheromones,” the rest are fairly minor and technical. These include a couple of changes to how the cursor detects enemies and bars for greater precision, as well as some code changes intended to make buttons and the Energy system less prone to becoming unresponsive. Hopefully, the overall game experience will feel smoother with these changes.

And that is all for this post. Update 0.14 will be available this Friday, October 2nd.

Thanks for reading, and have a good week!