Malevolent Planet 2D - The Overplanning
Hey! Thanks to all of you who voted on my Monday poll.
I'll preface this post by saying that I did manage to finish 2 animations this week, and I have also designed what will be the new android UI which I think will make the game a lot more enjoyable to play on Android. I'm going to implement this UI next week and send it the build to any who'd like to check it out on Android for me to get feedback.
On a broader level, based on the results of the poll, here's what I've concluded about what makes a game a good game (by NSFW standards and not only):
It's easy to play. Many Ren'py games and RPGMaker games are simple, easy to play. They're not as prone to bugs as Unity, they offer enough features for anyone to make their own visual novel or 2D game that's more focused on art which a NSFW game needs to be popular. Unity gives you a lot of power, but this comes at a cost if you're not already a very experienced Unity dev.
It's relatively fun & engaging. The game should have enough content to keep your attention as a player, but not "overflow' you with content, there has to be some kind of pacing/teasing involved to balance the SFW (such as dialogue text) to NSFW content (such as CGs, animations, nudity).
It has to provide enough content for every kind of popular niche/fetish, and that content has to be good. If it's a game that has a broad format such as 2D games often have, it should kind of target the most popular themes. The most popular theme is of course Corruption, and games that apply this theme are pretty successful in general. Secondary are niches like BDSM, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Clothing-related content, etc.
It has to be relatively bug-free. Here's where the confusion starts. Our game isn't exactly filled with bugs, but I've come to realize that plenty of things that I don't consider bugs are actually bugs from the perspective of a player, such as quest indicators that show you the wrong way to go, lack of clarity where you're supposed to go sometimes, etc.
It has to provide an incentive in terms of content that would make players support the creators of that game. Some games don't need to provide much incentive, they're that good (or people like them so much that the best incentive for them is for the creator to keep making content). Many other games, even very good ones, need to provide some kind of incentive that would only be available in a Patron build for example. This is a difficult point to understand, especially for me who doesn't really like the idea of "locking" content very much.
I could write more, but I think it's better to get into what we can actually do for our game based on the above:
First of all, eliminate confusing elements such as quest indicators that show you the wrong way, generic dialogues that aren't very helpful (such as "This area isn't accessible right now") where instead of seeing that dialogue line, we should see something more useful such as (if you try to enter the Sanitation Room when you're not supposed to) "I shouldn't take a shower right now, Alberto is waiting for me in the Gym upstairs."
Remake the current public build to better present what's good about our game so people can make the choice if they want to support me which would allow me to dedicate way more time to development. It should present different areas in the game through a linear format such as a dialogue that moves you from place to place and allows you to briefly interact with scenes from those areas so as a "public player" you get the idea what the game is about and if it's interesting you might want to play it as well.
Improve my workflow so I can work on content faster, quicker, and better. I've made some progress on this and I'll talk about it on Monday if I don't forget, but basically I might be able to write and test content much quicker than before because the difficult part was testing and not the writing or the production of the content, Unity isn't like Ren'py where you can make a change and reload your game to see that change exactly where you are in the game.
Increase support for Android. By improving the controls on Android, the game should be accessible to more players because many people nowadays play on mobile.
Keep the community engaged so I can get a sense of what kind of content people might want to see and there's none of or enough of, that's why I've been working on an alien scene with plans to add more, followed by more freeroaming content around the ship and static illustrations.
Maybe check other animation tools that might help me make 2D animations with less headache than I have right now doing it with Unity's built in tools.
So our next week's bulletpoints will be related to my above observations. Since we have some content already ready for a release this month (lacking the dialogues and game flow to get us to them), that means we're at a good stage to improve things as much as we can.
Thanks for reading this and I wish you a great weekend!
