KickStarter Memoirs of a Battle Brothel - a NSFW Cyberpunk RPG

[Lithium Flower]

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.).

Don't worry, we'll work on that )))))))))))))))))

 

[Tyranicon]

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.

Thanks! That's cool, you do you, I just wanted to make something different and interesting for me.

Also, it'd be hilarious if it started getting coverage because, c'mon, it's battle hookers.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Tyranicon To be serious for a second, I am actually kind of disappointed as to how cagey you are being about the types of sexual content present in the game. Of course my initial questions were more than a little ridiculous, but they did carry a serious point: porn, much like RPGs, is a very diverse genre and specific information needs to be provided about each individual game in order for people to understand whether or not it is for them. Veterans of turn-based CRPGs may slit their wrists before they would ever play an RTWP game, after all. For porn, reactions are much more visceral. For many, vanilla-focused games are too boring and simultaneously some kinks can utterly repulse people who are not into them.

When I look at the kickstarter campaign for Subverse, I can quickly identify its main focus: rough consensual sex with even rougher xeno stuff on the side. When I look at the sales pitch for Sanguine Rose, I can (correctly) guess that its a game that explores both maledom and femaledom power dynamics. When I look at some more decadent titles that may or may not be fronts for some some sort of Southeast Asian money laundering operation, its usually unapologetically about thirteen different varieties of rape or whatever.

I have no idea what the erotic component of your game is about and thus no idea whether or not it would interest me personally.

Not trying to come off as hostile here - I for one think there is a massive untapped potential in the market of pornographic games (imagine the sorts of hot shit we would get if one of the massive mainstream companies would grow some balls and use its resources to produce a AAA fuccgaem) and you at the very least have my moral support in developing this field. I just feel like a lot of people on this website get annoyed when the next indie CRPG gets pitched with extremely vague promises and I feel similarly annoyed that the pitch for the erotic component of this game has likewise been very vague.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Also, it'd be hilarious if it started getting coverage because, c'mon, it's battle hookers.

Have you contacted Lewdgamer, made posts on /r/lewdgames or even loverslab? There are a ton of places to promote this kind of game. Its not going to be triple AAA coverage unless you make it big on crowdfunding and then its going to be mostly fodder for a "porn game gets x hundred thousands on kickstarter, boy them nerds are massive pervs OwO" types of headlines, but you are going to be exposing your future product to an - to put it lightly - enthusiastic demographic.

 

[corruption_dawn]

This is the game I want to find. What is the basic design of an economical building?

 

[Tyranicon]

Tyranicon To be serious for a second, I am actually kind of disappointed as to how cagey you are being about the types of sexual content present in the game. Of course my initial questions were more than a little ridiculous, but they did carry a serious point: porn, much like RPGs, is a very diverse genre and specific information needs to be provided about each individual game in order for people to understand whether or not it is for them. Veterans of turn-based CRPGs may slit their wrists before they would ever play an RTWP game, after all. For porn, reactions are much more visceral. For many, vanilla-focused games are too boring and simultaneously some kinks can utterly repulse people who are not into them.

When I look at the kickstarter campaign for Subverse, I can quickly identify its main focus: rough consensual sex with even rougher xeno stuff on the side. When I look at the sales pitch for Sanguine Rose, I can (correctly) guess that its a game that explores both maledom and femaledom power dynamics. When I look at some more decadent titles that may or may not be fronts for some some sort of Southeast Asian money laundering operation, its usually unapologetically about thirteen different varieties of rape or whatever.

I have no idea what the erotic component of your game is about and thus no idea whether or not it would interest me personally.

Not trying to come off as hostile here - I for one think there is a massive untapped potential in the market of pornographic games (imagine the sorts of hot shit we would get if one of the massive mainstream companies would grow some balls and use its resources to produce a AAA fuccgaem) and you at the very least have my moral support in developing this field. I just feel like a lot of people on this website get annoyed when the next indie CRPG gets pitched with extremely vague promises and I feel similarly annoyed that the pitch for the erotic component of this game has likewise been very vague.

No problem man, it's posts like this that help me narrow my approach and get a better understanding of what I'm dealing here. I suppose I have been cagey about the sexual content in the game, perhaps non-informative is a better word. I will go back to the campaign promise I made when I first started dev for the game: it's a RPG with sex, not a sex game with tacked on RPG elements. I'm banking on the speculation that there is a demand for games with more mature elements, as otherwise this type of experiment essentially alienates both my potential audiences: people looking for sex games don't want to have to actually play a game before they get to the good stuff, and RPG players won't be caught dead playing something labeled a sex game.

I would say Memoirs is more grounded than most people would expect, it's a narrative-first, character-driven game. It's setting is cyberpunk and gritty. That means that sex and the sex trade in general will have a lot of psuedo posthumanist tropes common in cyberpunk (augmentation, AI, cybersex, etc). You won't find the exaggerated proportions or popular fetishes of sex games, because sex in the game operates much like it does in real life: some people have their kinks and some don't. Of course, we're dealing mostly with prostitutes, so expect more than usual. The first optional encounter is with an augmented human and you get to explore some of her built-in gadgets. The second is just a regular flesh-and-blood human, and it gets no kinkier than a bj behind a car.

If I have to say, it would probably be more on the vanilla side, because that's the audience I'm targeting. People who would want something like Cloud Meadow or other [insert fetish game] already have that, and I'm not really looking to compete directly with them.

But, describing it is ultimately futile. The demo's coming soon and everybody can see for themselves.

As for marketing it, yup I have regular handles on some places (LewdGamer requires a demo before I can submit something I believe), but marketing's never been more strong suit.

 

[Jinn]

If I have to say, it would probably be more on the vanilla side, because that's the audience I'm targeting.

With all due respect, depending on how vanilla it really is, is it wise to label it as a NSFW game in the first place? If you're not really targeting hardcore porn game enthusiast, why not just target the larger non-porn gaming market instead. Take The Witcher 3 for example. There is a ton of adult content and nudity in it, but it's definitely not considered, nor advertised, as a NSFW or Adult Entertainment game.

Hard to say as an observer without knowing just how vanilla "vanilla" actually is.

 

[Tyranicon]

If I have to say, it would probably be more on the vanilla side, because that's the audience I'm targeting.

With all due respect, depending on how vanilla it really is, is it wise to label it as a NSFW game in the first place? If you're not really targeting hardcore porn game enthusiast, why not just target the larger non-porn gaming market instead. Take The Witcher 3 for example. There is a ton of adult content and nudity in it, but it's definitely not considered, nor advertised, as a NSFW or Adult Entertainment game.

Hard to say as an observer without knowing just how vanilla "vanilla" actually is.

Yeah... there's definitely on-screen penetration. Hard not to put a NSFW/18+ tag on that wherever you are.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Firstly I want to throw out that I am not some sort of marketing genius but rather just a fellow coomer who perhaps is more interested in this particular industry than most. Take everything I say with a grain of salt. That being said:

No problem man, it's posts like this that help me narrow my approach and get a better understanding of what I'm dealing here. I suppose I have been cagey about the sexual content in the game, perhaps non-informative is a better word. I will go back to the campaign promise I made when I first started dev for the game: it's a RPG with sex, not a sex game with tacked on RPG elements. I'm banking on the speculation that there is a demand for games with more mature elements, as otherwise this type of experiment essentially alienates both my potential audiences: people looking for sex games don't want to have to actually play a game before they get to the good stuff, and RPG players won't be caught dead playing something labeled a sex game.

Describing it as an RPG first is a good strategy but doesn't necessitate minimizing the erotic aspect in the marketing. I am going to be very vulgar for a second: you are making a product that is designed to capture people's erotic imagination and have them fondle their genitals to orgasm. You are also trying want this product to be otherwise mechanically complex and intellectually engaging, and in a way that hopefully consolidates the roleplaying elements with the dank porn. That is your niche - why shy away from that? Own it. If you were trying to play it safe and thus avoid alienating people like Jinn you wouldn't have set out to make a game with erotic elements in the first place, so surely you are aware that you are blazing a different trail here. Your enthusiasm for the game comes across in the highly informative posts you have written about its mechanics and I think it would project confidence to see the same amount of enthusiasm for the "dark side" of the game, so to speak. I'm not telling you to get obnoxious about it (in a way that a teenager would describe their first sexual encounter or something) but hopefully there is as much to say about the wide variety of intriguing and alluring women you can romance and bed in this game, their personalities, their kinks, what you can do to them and what they can do to you as there is about the game's RPG system.

Thanks for being more informative in this post, though! I guess my main point here is that I find it intuitively true that most people tend to buy into a product's vision when they see its developer demonstrating enthusiasm for it, and that I don't think you should sacrifice it for the sake of trying to straddle a fence between two hypothetical audiences that wouldn't play your game anyway.

I would say Memoirs is more grounded than most people would expect, it's a narrative-first, character-driven game. It's setting is cyberpunk and gritty. That means that sex and the sex trade in general will have a lot of psuedo posthumanist tropes common in cyberpunk (augmentation, AI, cybersex, etc). You won't find the exaggerated proportions or popular fetishes of sex games, because sex in the game operates much like it does in real life: some people have their kinks and some don't. Of course, we're dealing mostly with prostitutes, so expect more than usual. The first optional encounter is with an augmented human and you get to explore some of her built-in gadgets. The second is just a regular flesh-and-blood human, and it gets no kinkier than a bj behind a car.

See, now you are getting to the unique, highly marketable shit! There are not a lot of harem-style cyberpunk porn games out there. You could think that cyberpunk themes would come into play during this game's sex scenes implicitly by the fact that the game takes place in a cyberpunk setting, but there are plenty of games that just use their settings for background flavor and don't capitalize on them. By providing information like this you are helping your potential audience understand what kind of fantasy they will be getting out of this game.

With all due respect, depending on how vanilla it really is, is it wise to label it as a NSFW game in the first place? If you're not really targeting hardcore porn game enthusiast, why not just target the larger non-porn gaming market instead. Take The Witcher 3 for example. There is a ton of adult content and nudity in it, but it's definitely not considered, nor advertised, as a NSFW or Adult Entertainment game.

Hard to say as an observer without knowing just how vanilla "vanilla" actually is.

Of course this question is Tyranicon's to answer, but IMO - yes, it should be labeled an NSFW game. There is a massive difference between games that feature explicit hardcore sex to hopefully make the player pee white and games with softcore erotic components like W3. The former is analogous to porn, the latter to your typical HBO tv show with a sex scene quota.

There are some excellently written full-length porn films (though most of them were produced decades ago) like Barbara Broadcast, yet it would be highly suspect if BB was advertised as a comedy rather than the porno film that it is.

 

[Tyranicon]

Firstly I want to throw out that I am not some sort of marketing genius but rather just a fellow coomer who perhaps is more interested in this particular industry than most. Take everything I say with a grain of salt. That being said:

No problem man, it's posts like this that help me narrow my approach and get a better understanding of what I'm dealing here. I suppose I have been cagey about the sexual content in the game, perhaps non-informative is a better word. I will go back to the campaign promise I made when I first started dev for the game: it's a RPG with sex, not a sex game with tacked on RPG elements. I'm banking on the speculation that there is a demand for games with more mature elements, as otherwise this type of experiment essentially alienates both my potential audiences: people looking for sex games don't want to have to actually play a game before they get to the good stuff, and RPG players won't be caught dead playing something labeled a sex game.

Describing it as an RPG first is a good strategy but doesn't necessitate minimizing the erotic aspect in the marketing. I am going to be very vulgar for a second: you are making a product that is designed to capture people's erotic imagination and have them fondle their genitals to orgasm. You are also trying want this product to be otherwise mechanically complex and intellectually engaging, and in a way that hopefully consolidates the roleplaying elements with the dank porn. That is your niche - why shy away from that? Own it. If you were trying to play it safe and thus avoid alienating people like Jinn you wouldn't have set out to make a game with erotic elements in the first place, so surely you are aware that you are blazing a different trail here. Your enthusiasm for the game comes across in the highly informative posts you have written about its mechanics and I think it would project confidence to see the same amount of enthusiasm for the "dark side" of the game, so to speak. I'm not telling you to get obnoxious about it (in a way that a teenager would describe their first sexual encounter or something) but hopefully there is as much to say about the wide variety of intriguing and alluring women you can romance and bed in this game, their personalities, their kinks, what you can do to them and what they can do to you as there is about the game's RPG system.

Thanks for being more informative in this post, though! I guess my main point here is that I find it intuitively true that most people tend to buy into a product's vision when they see its developer demonstrating enthusiasm for it, and that I don't think you should sacrifice it for the sake of trying to straddle a fence between two hypothetical audiences that wouldn't play your game anyway.

I would say Memoirs is more grounded than most people would expect, it's a narrative-first, character-driven game. It's setting is cyberpunk and gritty. That means that sex and the sex trade in general will have a lot of psuedo posthumanist tropes common in cyberpunk (augmentation, AI, cybersex, etc). You won't find the exaggerated proportions or popular fetishes of sex games, because sex in the game operates much like it does in real life: some people have their kinks and some don't. Of course, we're dealing mostly with prostitutes, so expect more than usual. The first optional encounter is with an augmented human and you get to explore some of her built-in gadgets. The second is just a regular flesh-and-blood human, and it gets no kinkier than a bj behind a car.

See, now you are getting to the unique, highly marketable shit! There are not a lot of harem-style cyberpunk porn games out there. You could think that cyberpunk themes would come into play during this game's sex scenes implicitly by the fact that the game takes place in a cyberpunk setting, but there are plenty of games that just use their settings for background flavor and don't capitalize on them. By providing information like this you are helping your potential audience understand what kind of fantasy they will be getting out of this game.

With all due respect, depending on how vanilla it really is, is it wise to label it as a NSFW game in the first place? If you're not really targeting hardcore porn game enthusiast, why not just target the larger non-porn gaming market instead. Take The Witcher 3 for example. There is a ton of adult content and nudity in it, but it's definitely not considered, nor advertised, as a NSFW or Adult Entertainment game.

Hard to say as an observer without knowing just how vanilla "vanilla" actually is.

Of course this question is Tyranicon's to answer, but IMO - yes, it should be labeled an NSFW game. There is a massive difference between games that feature explicit hardcore sex to hopefully make the player pee white and games with softcore erotic components like W3. The former is analogous to porn, the latter to your typical HBO tv show with a sex scene quota.

There are some excellently written full-length porn films (though most of them were produced decades ago) like Barbara Broadcast, yet it would be highly suspect if BB was advertised as a comedy rather than the porno film that it is.

Do you write for a living? You write like someone who writes for a living.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Don't try to romance me now, you sly rogue

Nah, not nearly good enough, although perhaps I might be with enough practice one day. I actually contemplated a little erotica on the side for fun (in earnest, that is - I posted NSFW stuff on this forum but it was always meant to be completely ludicrous/humorous), but the obscenity laws in my country make it kind of scary to write anything maledom related to I kind of have a personal and very resentful dog in this race.

 

[Jinn]

There is a massive difference between games that feature explicit hardcore sex to hopefully make the player pee white and games with softcore erotic components like W3. The former is analogous to porn, the latter to your typical HBO tv show with a sex scene quota.

Well, that's why I was asking him what "vanilla" meant. If it's explicitly intended for the audience to masturbate to, then of course NSFW or porn-game would apply here. Full-on penetration, juices flowing, etc. - again, yes, of course. "Vanilla" sexual content doesn't really convey that to me, but maybe it's just Vanilla in the realm of what's already hardcore?

I haven't read through this thread thoroughly, but in the list of features I saw "adult content." So I guess that means the above?

Either way, all I was implying is that if the adult stuff is mainly a result of a "mature" setting, rather than the setting being a result of pornographic impetus, logically you would be limiting your own market viability by placing yourself in a pigeonhole.

 

[Lithium Flower]

There is a massive difference between games that feature explicit hardcore sex to hopefully make the player pee white and games with softcore erotic components like W3. The former is analogous to porn, the latter to your typical HBO tv show with a sex scene quota.

Well, that's why I was asking him what "vanilla" meant. If it's explicitly intended for the audience to masturbate to, then of course NSFW or porn-game would apply here. Full-on penetration, juices flowing, etc. - again, yes, of course. "Vanilla" sexual content doesn't really convey that to me, but maybe it's just Vanilla in the realm of what's already hardcore?

I haven't read through this thread thoroughly, but in the list of features I saw "adult content." So I guess that means the above?

Vanilla =/= softcore. Vanilla refers to a kind of Overton window of pron - content that probably won't repulse most people. Your standard oral/vaginal/anal/footplay hijinks, but probably not scat or uterine prolapses or rapetorture. Obviously there are people who are repulsed by the very thought of anal and those who think watersports are not that much different from facials, which is why the Overton window is IMO an apt analogy - its a broad, somewhat arbitrary, and constantly shifting category of STUFF.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Lithium Flower check out the following sites where you can post anonymously:
https://mcstories.com/index.html
https://www.literotica.com/stories/index.php
https://chyoa.com/
Writing porn is one way of sharpening your pencil.

Tyranicon the pinkette lady in that screenshot looks crosseyed for some reason. Also, if your sex scenes are going to include both text and graphics, please make sure that they match. It's really annoying when the scene is described in one way but the art shows something different. Lot of porn games are guilty of this because the devs can't be bothered to make more renders or pay an artist to draw more, but they get carried away while writing the scene anyway.

 

[Tyranicon]

Hi everyone! I'm glad to announce that the early PC demo is now available to Patreon backers at the Guild Member level and above. This is a demo from a very early stage in development, so please forgive a little bit of roughness and the occasional/frequent bug (especially as I have implemented a few last minute changes).

I will also be releasing a short guide to demo after release. The demo has an average playtime of about 30 minutes, but it is relatively dense with many options available to the player, and some things could be missed.

Some things that I will be working on for the next iteration of the demo:

• Dynamic lighting
  
• A better combat sprite for the player character
  
• Guild house management elements
  
• Blood Pits (combat arenas)
  
• Faction missions
  
• Ability to summon companions to your room (after certain requirements are met)
  
• And of course, more content

 

[Zombra]

Messed around with the demo a bit. What I see so far very promising. The 2D/3D camera controls are SUPER COOL. Lots of character classes and backgrounds to choose from during character creation. Lots of factions!, like 8 of them, with faction rep mechanics, and in the early story the factions are talked about a lot. It's clear the player will have some decisions to make. Also each party member has a Trust level. Who knows if the dynamics will be deep and complex but the foundation is there. In general I find JRPGs dull nowadays but this has the potential to be a good, sophisticated game. I'm impressed so far. Text definitely needs more proofreaders

 

[Tyranicon]

Added dynamic lighting:

 

[Van-d-all]

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

Maybe that's because how easy it is to put together promotional images nowadays.

 

[Tyranicon]

Changelog for upcoming patron demo. Public demo will drop at the same time.


Changes:

+ The ability to build facilities and staff rooms for the Saint Gorfu guild hall:

Facilities:

• Strip club
• Blood pit (combat arena)
• Diner
• Privacy booths (gloryholes, yup they're in the game)

Staff rooms:

• Security office
• Admin office
• Janitor's room
• Break room

+ Additional story content (the first series of quests are the only mandatory ones in the game).

+ Three new recruitable companions (although party selection is currently locked)

+ New sex scenes

+ Salary now implemented

+ Quality of life and graphics updates:

• Dynamic shadows and lighting
• Fog upgrade
• Hitbox upgrade
• Movement upgrade
• NPC movement upgrade
• Skill trees implemented (but still under dev)
• Faster loading
• Bug fixes
• A series of optimizations that will make the game run better despite running dynamic lighting

+ More! (which I probably forgot)

 

[laclongquan]

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.).

Jinn is not alone nor even minority in this representation of audience. There is absolutely a big (number and ratio) of audience who want to play (or read) games (or novels) about main character who is chemically neutered. The MC is not going to notice the difference in sex, behave like an extreme monk committed to extreme celibacy, etc and etc...

Even quite familiar with the phenomenon, I am still astonished whenever I meet a specimen. ("What the actual fuck!" is my exclaimation, gladly and untiringly given).

Just think of them as a niche audience. They are simply just not your targeted (and paying) audience. Ignore them and move on.

 

[Tyranicon]

New patron demo is up, public demo will be out shortly on Itch.io (and Steam, after it passes review).

 

[Tyranicon]

Public demo on Itch.io: https://amemoryofeternity.itch.io/memoirs-of-a-battle-brothel

Steam version coming soon.

 

[Dayyālu]

I like your approach and thus (despite me not being big on the genre) this was worth a try.

However, the entire game is impossible glitchy and buggy, all pixel models are corrupted, combat is impossible to run and most commands react weirdly. Is this a corruption problem on my part or more people reported it?

Also, a basic suggestion for chargen: as immersive as it is, I'd prefer to see the bonuses of my picks without having to select, going back, pick other option, get back again, etc.etc, a clear view on the select screen on bonuses would streamline the experience immensely.

 

[Tyranicon]

I like your approach and thus (despite me not being big on the genre) this was worth a try.

However, the entire game is impossible glitchy and buggy, all pixel models are corrupted, combat is impossible to run and most commands react weirdly. Is this a corruption problem on my part or more people reported it?

Also, a basic suggestion for chargen: as immersive as it is, I'd prefer to see the bonuses of my picks without having to select, going back, pick other option, get back again, etc.etc, a clear view on the select screen on bonuses would streamline the experience immensely.

Hmm, that is new. Are you on the public version? I haven't tested that version as much since it is a truncated version of the one patrons get... maybe something got messed up in the uploading process. The patron version has been out a month and I haven't gotten any reports like that.

Could you give an example or screenshot of what you mean by pixel model corruption?

 

[Dayyālu]

Could you give an example or screenshot of what you mean by pixel model corruption?

Here. Maybe it's my rig, who knows.