KickStarter Memoirs of a Battle Brothel - a NSFW Cyberpunk RPG

[Zombra]

Dev is switching gears, putting out feelers for a smaller indefinite-length income instead of a single big lucky score. Good luck, Tyranicon; I'd like to see this game some day.

UPDATE #1
An unironically serious NSFW game
November 11, 2019

Wow, it’s been an intense first few days. First off, I’d like to thank my backers for their support. I didn’t expect too much of a blowout for the launch since I’m approaching this with almost zero marketing, and I’m still somewhat of an unknown gamedev. I am still very optimistic that this Kickstarter will be funded, but in case it doesn’t, don’t worry, I don’t plan on shelving this project. For now, I'm setting up a Patreon page if you want to follow the project once this Kickstarter ends:

https://www.patreon.com/amemoryofeternity

I’m building a game nobody really asked for, in a genre that doesn’t really exist (serious narrative RPGs with adult content), so I’m expecting an uphill battle. And that’s great, I’d love to be a pioneer. If I succeed, then I’ll have done something really unique and wonderful (if just a little bit lurid).

Thanks all, and I hope you stay on for the ride.

 

[Mortmal]

I am shocked that with such a title and premise this looks like an actual game.

Frenchie shocked about porn? There's a first.

Course not, it's when there's gameplay in the porn that we are shocked.

 

[Tyranicon]

Dev is switching gears, putting out feelers for a smaller indefinite-length income instead of a single big lucky score. Good luck, Tyranicon; I'd like to see this game some day.

Thanks for support Zombra. Working towards having a playable demo soon-ish.

 

[Tyranicon]

Hi all,

Thanks again for following and supporting me. I just wanted to lay out a short-term road map for the development of Memoirs of A Battle Brothel as we approach 2020. My priority right now is building the community and gathering funds for development. Although development will go ahead regardless of the results of the Kickstarter or Patreon, funding will decide how much content will be in the game.


What if the Kickstarter fails?

I hope that many of my Kickstarter backers will continue to support me on Patreon, and I will likely return to Kickstarter with a second campaign after February. In the meantime, I will be building a demo for a vertical slice of the gameplay that will come out with the second crowdfunding attempt. Of course, my patrons will get a first crack at the demo before it’s publicly released, and they’ll get a chance to help me make up my mind about exactly what kind of content will be in the demo.

What if the Kickstarter succeeds?

Then development goes full steam ahead, although I will still release a demo around the same time. I will also replicate Patreon rewards for the corresponding tiers on Kickstarter.



What features are already heavily developed?

I am currently finishing up Singularity: Tactics Arena, which will provide a basis for several gameplay mechanics in Memoirs.



Classes

There are four main classes corresponding to the main RPG archetypes, each with two subclasses. Given the time and funds, I would like to add a third subclass to each of these.

• Shaper - ranged magic user with AOEs, elemental damage and summons
• Soldier - HP tank with good damage dealing abilities and auras
• Support - Healer with various abilities that buff allies
• Vigilante - Evasive tank with good single-target damage dealing abilities, traps and debuffs

Character progression

Character progression should be fairly familiar to anyone who played a BioWare or D&D-based RPG. Characters level through gaining experience, either through combat or social interactions. With every level, characters gain unique abilities, class features, or stat boosts. Soft cap is at level 20, and although players can level characters past 20, those levels will only receive stat bonuses.

Combat

Combat is on a turn-based grid format. The player team and enemies alternate taking turns, although a D&D-esque turn economy is in place: the more characters you have, the more turns you have, including summons and deployable robots.

World building

World-building in a sex game? Of course! The reason that Memoirs of a Battle Brothel is set in the Memory of Eternity franchise is to take advantage of all the lore and background that already exists there.

 

[Tyranicon]

Combat gif added to OP:

 

[Zombra]

Slowed down version for anyone who isn't a quick cut movie trailer lunatic

EDIT: Thank you flyingjohn, image updated.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Looks interesting.

 

[Tyranicon]

I'm excited to announce that as the other game I'm working on, Singularity: Tactics Arena is now 100% content complete, I will be diverting my attention to Memoirs, which means that development can get started in earnest. I'm currently tackling the game in a way that will produce a demo soon, hopefully released to my patrons in January, and everywhere else in February. A lot of mechanics will be lifted straight from my last game, including combat, character progression, classes etc. However, I still have a lot to do as Memoirs has a lot of unique mechanics you won't find anywhere else, such as upgrading and managing a brothel. The amount of funding I get will determine how deep these systems are, as well as what kind of content will be in the game.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, first off, I'm building the character generation screen.

The character builder is the first thing the player sees when starting a new game, and it is here they can customize their character's background, faction affiliations, appearance, etc.



Name and Surname:

No censorship. You can name your character John Wick with a Big Dick, or Qum D'umpe. Whatever. This isn't a multiplayer game.

Gender:

Currently there's only two types of genitalia in the game: penises and vaginas. Sorry, I don't really have any plans to include space orca dicks in the near future.

Background:

Arguably the most important part of character generation, this determines your history, amount of starting funds, stat bonuses, sometimes even an affiliation bonus. Some backgrounds make the early game easier depending on your play style:

• The scion of a noble house comes with a large amount of starting funds, allowing the player to quickly build up their guildhall/brothel.
• A former courtesan will have a large affiliation bonus with the Guild factions, meaning better missions and contracts, as well as access to Guild-restricted goods.
• A mercenary has large bonuses to combat and physical stats, allowing them to excel at combat and passing certain checks such as intimidation.
• And 5 other backgrounds!

Affiliations:

The faction that your character has ties with. Factions that like you will give you unique missions and sell faction-only gear. Be careful, most factions have at least one enemy, sometimes even more, so those wishing to start off as a blank slate can choose to have no affiliations whatsoever.

Classes:

The most important part of the player character's combat prowess, but thankfully, this can be changed later by meeting specific NPCs.

Appearance:

The player's pixelated avatar.

 

[Tyranicon]

Testing isometric mode, it's not just 2d anymore:

 

[GarfunkeL]

If I can make a suggestion, please please please minimize the amount of pointless walking required. I don't mind walking when there are vistas to enjoy and beautiful scenery to take in. But, even super-duper modded Skyrim can get stale after a while. For some reason, a lot of porn games suffer from this tedious filler syndrome of having the player move/walk/click pointless back and forth across backgrounds/levels/maps. It's even worse than filler combat! Age of Decadence got a lot of flak for teleporting the player from A to B but it's actually a good thing to do, especially if exploration is not a core part of the gameplay.

So please keep things tight and avoid pointless filler!

 

[Tyranicon]

If I can make a suggestion, please please please minimize the amount of pointless walking required. I don't mind walking when there are vistas to enjoy and beautiful scenery to take in. But, even super-duper modded Skyrim can get stale after a while. For some reason, a lot of porn games suffer from this tedious filler syndrome of having the player move/walk/click pointless back and forth across backgrounds/levels/maps. It's even worse than filler combat! Age of Decadence got a lot of flak for teleporting the player from A to B but it's actually a good thing to do, especially if exploration is not a core part of the gameplay.

So please keep things tight and avoid pointless filler!

Oh yeah there's a pretty liberal fast travel system. The amount of content is highly dependent on how much funding I get, but I would like to make exploration a core gameplay aspect, and the largest areas will be city hubs where the shops and other indoor areas branch out from.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You could consider what Darklands / Pirates did - instead of a town map where the player has to pointlessly walk back and forth, open doors, suffer loading times and so on, just have a single screen where you can click each vendor/NPC to immediately engage them.

 

[Tyranicon]

You could consider what Darklands / Pirates did - instead of a town map where the player has to pointlessly walk back and forth, open doors, suffer loading times and so on, just have a single screen where you can click each vendor/NPC to immediately engage them.

Definitely something to consider, I do intend to have a feature after some progression for the ability to summon merchants/NPCs rather than having to go to them.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You could consider what Darklands / Pirates did - instead of a town map where the player has to pointlessly walk back and forth, open doors, suffer loading times and so on, just have a single screen where you can click each vendor/NPC to immediately engage them.

Definitely something to consider, I do intend to have a feature after some progression for the ability to summon merchants/NPCs rather than having to go to them.

What, like a cell phone

 

[Tyranicon]

You could consider what Darklands / Pirates did - instead of a town map where the player has to pointlessly walk back and forth, open doors, suffer loading times and so on, just have a single screen where you can click each vendor/NPC to immediately engage them.

Definitely something to consider, I do intend to have a feature after some progression for the ability to summon merchants/NPCs rather than having to go to them.

What, like a cell phone

Exactly like a cell phone.

 

[Tyranicon]

Also:

Seamless Isometric/3D overhead/2D overhead

Hi everyone,

I'm currently tinkering around with a feature few games have: seamless transitions between isometric view, 3D overhead and 2D overhead. I’m only capable of doing this thanks to some genius-level code (shoutout to Dread Nyanak).

A few things to note: it’s not set in stone that the game will have this feature, any number of things can come up that’ll make 3D incompatible with what I’m building. Also, it is very likely that the combat will be locked to 2D.

I’m also not able to guarantee the same level of quality across all perspectives. My priority is getting isometric ready, then 3D overhead, then 2D overhead.

However, still really exciting stuff!

 

[Tyranicon]

Devlog: You’ve heard of dialogue trees, but what about sex trees?

We’re well on our way to a demo. The bulk of my dev time is split between four things: creating/editing assets, writing content, generating maps and nailing down gameplay systems. Of these, altering assets to fit the new 3D perspective is by far the most tedious, but also has the clearest indication of progress.

Another headache is creating maps suited for 3D and isometric, which means that the old school of map design I have been using is thrown out the window as there are now blind spots and other interesting quirks of 3D that don’t exist in 2D. But it’s rather fun to see maps come alive outside of a two-dimensional plane.

I’m currently finishing up about 10 maps for the demo area (1 guild hall, 1 underrail station, 1 city hub, the brothel levels themselves and several small stores/interior locations). The dialogue for the first two days is also finished, with various different interactions with characters based on the backgrounds or classes the player has chosen. Despite being a demo and early in the game, there are several skill checks based on the player’s Charisma, Perception, Technology or Athletics attributes.

But I’m sure some of that is relatively boring if you are more interested in the sexual aspects of the game. Sex in Memoirs plays out as an interactive, animated cutscene in which the player is presented with various options according to their tastes. It’s similar to something like The Last Sovereign in that it’s text heavy, but it’s also accompanied by visuals. At this point, I will be using a mixture of animated 2D sprites (like you would find in most VNs) along with high-quality pixel art-ish animations. I intend on choosing one style over the other, depending on player feedback.

Some other random facts about sex in Memoirs of a Battle Brothel:

• There is expected to be 9 companions in the game. Sex with these characters will be more detailed with unique animations and artwork (and will have more than one scenario each). Players can also have flings with other, minor characters but these scenes will be less detailed.
• Despite being courtesans, players will not have the option to have sex with most companions right away (thanks to some pesky guild bylaws regarding sex between co-workers). The player will need to build trust with characters before the option is unlocked.
• However, some companions will be more than glad to jump your bones as soon as you can find a stable surface.
• Sex has an effect on gameplay and narrative. Having sex with any particular character will change how others view you, for good or bad. Having sex with multiple characters in the same playthrough could result in any number of situations. Some characters will become jealous and possessive, others will feel betrayed, and some may even invite you and your other sex partners into their bed. Courtesans may be professionals, but they still have their own preferences.

 

[Tyranicon]

Just added a natural Day/Night cycle at about 20x real time (slower than the gif, which just demonstrates the time system in general). Players earn passive income every day through the running of the guild hall, and certain things are only available during nighttime/daytime.

 

[Tyranicon]

Demo sneak peek: screenshot dump

Just some screenshots from the Patreon demo to be released at the end of January, which will be available to my patrons at the $5 tier and above. Please consider supporting me so development can go quicker. Patreon link here: https://www.patreon.com/amemoryofeternity.

It's an Alpha demo, so it'll be rough around the edges, but I'm excited for feedback.

 

[Zombra]

Looks sexy! I love the 2.5D effects. That city screenshot looks super cool. I want to get on that dance floor in the bar scene.

Some of the dialogue is stilted - I would expect it to be smoother and less formal. Try reading it out loud and see if it sounds weird. I know you're doing it all yourself but this is an area where a second pair of eyes will help a lot. Hire an editor, and if you can't hire an editor, get a friend to "Hey can you read my screenplay?"

 

[Tyranicon]

Looks sexy! I love the 2.5D effects. That city screenshot looks super cool. I want to get on that dance floor in the bar scene.

Some of the dialogue is stilted - I would expect it to be smoother and less formal. Try reading it out loud and see if it sounds weird. I know you're doing it all yourself but this is an area where a second pair of eyes will help a lot. Hire an editor, and if you can't hire an editor, get a friend to "Hey can you read my screenplay?"

Thanks! I actually do have a few volunteer editors. They mostly help me with writing sex scenes, as that's something I'm unfamiliar with. I suspect some of the dialogue appears stilted outside of context because some characters are speaking in formal tones, aping upper class mannerisms somewhat like British Received Pronunciation.

I'm more than open to feedback on the dialogue and narrative though. Don't want things to get too cringe. It is a sex game after all.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I've been deliberating on whether or not to post in this thread since it was started. I have to say, the game is looking great... except for the sex stuff, which is ultimately what is going to stop me from playing it in the future. I know that simply makes me not your target audience, but I felt the need to say something because it's regrettable, as I am very drawn to to the setting, the gameplay, and even the aesthetic style you've got going on.

I wish you the best of luck, and hope your future games lack the NSFW aspect.

 

[Lithium Flower]

gay lmao

 

[Lithium Flower]

(not that there is anything wrong with that my sweet sweet Jinn-kun)

 

[Lyre Mors]

I just find porn games to be some of the cringiest shit conceived by human kind. It doesn't matter how good the gameplay is, I've tried and never could bring myself to play them (things like Rance, etc.).