Final goal reached! Vote on the next game idea. (Patreon)

Holy crap, we smashed that final goal. We hit it a while ago and I'm still in shock. I honestly can't believe how much support I've gotten over the years I've been doing this. Y’all are the fucking best.

In celebration, I want to use some Patreon funds to hire on a small team that will help me develop a new game. I will probably be doing all the programming, but art, writing, and (hopefully) some animation will be done by the team. This way, I can continue to focus my main efforts on Secret Horse Files 3.

The problem is, I have three game ideas that I'm equally excited about. They're codenamed SHF:Ink, SHF:Tales, and SHF:Factory. So let's put it to a vote! If you want to share your thoughts, please put them in the comments. I'll be considering the number of votes as well as points raised in the comments to decide which idea to work on. This poll is open to everyone :3

// Basic info

Builds will be available to higher tier patrons first, but public releases will only be one or two builds behind- much faster than SHF3 or Love Collector. I want the codebase to be public at some point.

Mobile support- My goal is to design the game for mobile browsers, and MAYBE have an Android app. Of course there'll be a desktop app and browser version as well.

Furry/Anthro content- Whichever game is chosen, I’ll probably eventually hire artists/writers to make an anthro furry spinoff. If you’re into anthro- I don't know when it'll happen, so don’t let this influence your decision. Just be aware that this is in the plans.

// A quick note on practicality

Since working on SHF3 by itself can sometimes be overwhelming, I'm wary of biting off more than I can chew with this project. Here's the reasoning- Content for the games will be fully delegated to the team. The games' core mechanics are either simple to program, or already exist in the game engine I'd be using... unlike SHF3 where I've had to invent basically everything from scratch. I'm hoping these factors prove to be a better formula for making faster content. 

So I want to be super clear. My promise is to TRY to make the game you guys choose. My success depends on my own skill and time, my ability to run and delegate to a team, and the quality of the initial game concept. A lot of unknown variables in there. If you're considering becoming a Patron now because you're excited about one of these concepts, I'd advise caution- crowdfunded indie games have a reputation for crashing and burning. Maybe wait it out until you see some progress.

That being said, this whole plan is based on me taking what I've learned from Love Collector and SHF3 and trying to correct my initial mistakes. I have confidence in each of these concepts. So, you know, use your own judgment. :3

On to the games!

// SHF:Ink - Text-based game + engine. 

This is the most different from my current stuff. It's a narrative-focused text game engine. Interactive, but NOT rpg combat-oriented. The game engine I make would be open source, and meant to be used by other writers looking to make games.

The current story concept:

Themes: body modification, gender bending, dubious consent, prostitution, and general fetish content. 

Premise: You are a hybrid species -- half changeling and half a species of your choice. Also, you’re broke. Your form is unstable, so you must try to learn to control your form as you find work to make your way in the world. Emphasis on initial character customization and later body modification. 

Gameplay: Sexual encounters are required to level up your skills, but can also lead to body-changing effects. You perform (sex) work to earn money, spend money on sexy skill training sessions, and travel to new areas to find better work/training. I'm also thinking there'd be options for extracurricular friend-making activities. The locations would probably start with the obvious ones in mlp canon, and expand to more exotic places.

Your character would have a physical body that changes, adding or removing body parts, enlargening them or adding fetishy traits to them as you go on. You also have mental characteristics- how much you like certain sex acts or characters, and how hard/easy it is for you to seduce, be seduced by, or resist other characters. 

About the engine:

The main focus is the encounters- the sex scenes. A scene would probably progress through one or several sex positions/acts, depending on the stamina of you and your partner. What acts you can do, how good you are at them, and what your partner likes will depend on your skills and what kind of body you have at the moment. Your character might want to do these acts, or be forced into them, depending on your willpower and other traits. Being seduced, coaxed into new acts, and coerced into encounters would be part of this.

You progress through the encounter with dialogue or action options that either switch up the sex position, or add some flavor to the current position. The idea is that sex scenes are highly modular and meant to be played out multiple times without getting repetitive.

There’s a map with the main destinations where the player can stay for one "round" of game time. A round is like a few days or a week. You choose where to spend that time working/relaxing, and you run into encounters based on that. There's a set of varied encounters at each location, which expand and evolve as your character progresses. Also, random encounters during travel. 

Inspired by great games like TiTS/CoCs, Flexible Survival, and others, but with some key differences. Encounters in TiTS/CoCs are usually a fight, followed by a prewritten scene with some modular changes based on your character’s anatomy. Encounters in Flexible Survival are these really cool traditional rpg fights that I just don’t have the patience for (no hate though). The difference with SHF:Ink being that this concept uses narrative actions rather than outright rpg mechanics. This is more interactive fiction with gameplay elements and lots of in-scene modularity. 

// SHF:Tales - Short stories with interactive animated scenes.

This is basically an animated visual novel. It's similar to a lot of old Flash pony games, made in HTML5. The engine I build would eventually be made open source, once it's in a good spot. I'd want it to be approachable to artists and animators with minimal code experience. 

I'd be reaching out to other artists to draw the art for this, and probably do a lot the animations myself.

Themes: range from vanilla to extreme kinks, since short stories could be made by different artists, and wouldn't necessarily be connected. 

Gameplay: I did a basic test with this format a while ago. You can check it out here:

dailevy.space/shf5/v001

Drag the Play button at the bottom to change the speed/intensity of the animation.

So a short story would have a linear set of scenes like the one above, where you progress through different positions and sex acts. You might have a couple of minor stats that get tracked between scenes, but for the most part, this is a linear narrative experience. All the short stories would be accessible from the main menu.

// SHF:Factory - A lewd factory builder.

This one's the weirdest and most difficult code-wise. It will take longer to get to a playable state than the other two, as SHF3 will still take priority. 

Themes: bondage, milking machines, fluid piping, inflation, and breeding (oviposition, preg).

Premise: build and run a changeling love factory. Ponies/creatures are milked for love juices. Those fluids can then be piped into other ponies’ bodies for refining and mixing, be used to impregnate each other to birth changeling workers and body-modifying parasites, or used to fuel more powerful milking machines. 

The newly-industrialized changeling hive needs love at ever-increasing rates, and for some reason, this is the best way to produce it.

Gameplay: 2d, side-facing, simple factory builder. You place machines, place ponies in the machines, hook up fluid pipes to them, set up a breeding room, etc. My current idea for this is that you'd have multiple "rooms" which have a group of ponies/machines inside. Each room is kind of a closed system, and you link up the fluid pipes and machines between the ponies in that room. As you collect more love and breed more workers, you purchase more rooms and expand.

The plan would be to allow saving progress. Of course, there'd be a sandbox mode for those who don't want to bother with progression.

// Final thoughts

Ink will be the fastest to produce content for, since it's all text, but it'll take some time for me to get the engine ready for writers. Just because it’s text doesn’t mean it’s not complicated. It's guaranteed to be mobile-friendly though.

Tales will be faster to program since it's linear. And once it’s working, there won’t be much to add to the code. It can have multiple artists working on multiple stories at once. Still, animation and sound work are a lot slower than writing. 

Both will allow for the exploration of a wide range of fetishes. 

Factory will be the slowest programming-wise, and it'll take the most involvement from me. But since there'll be a lot on-screen at once, the art and animations will be simpler than Tales, and far simpler than SHF3. The scope of content will be smaller than Ink. My hope is to hire someone for scripting that'll ease the top-level game design/balance work.

So, what do y’all think? :3

edit: adding an FAQ ->

FAQ

Will you make all three?

Maybe! I won't 100% commit to making all three right now, because I don't know what will come up between now and when I finish the first winner. However, the immediate feedback I'm getting from y'all is that you'd be interested in seeing 2 or 3 of the options. So here's what I can say- if it's in the cards for me when I finish the first game, I'll run another poll and bring back the 2 losers of this one. 

I want to help you make the game!

Yo, that's awesome. I'm pretty new to building a team and managing a project, so bear with me while I figure out what the heck I'm doing. After the poll concludes, I'll post some info about the scope and plans for the game, and I'll make a post specifically about hiring team members. 

Note that I might not need to hire people right away! I'll need to scaffold out the project's code and then start filling team positions to complete needed content. 

Right now, I don't know who I'll hire, how many team members there will be, and what capacity they'll serve in the project. So if you're interested, stay tuned as I figure this out! It fills me with joy seeing people interested in helping out. <3