Seven Kings [Free Demo]

[zer_0]

Re: Seven Kings

alright, the list of promising hentai game makers is increasing.

can't wait to play your game, it looks really good, and your promises got me really interested so keep up the good work

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings

alright, the list of promising hentai game makers is increasing.

can't wait to play your game, it looks really good, and your promises got me really interested so keep up the good work

Thanks! It will be very short, but should leave you wanting more!

 

[Noble 6]

Re: Seven Kings

People have already likened it to a female FOBS with art similar to Selvaria's Quest, so I'm interested.
Although I should mention that not everyone who is interested will pay for a patreon. Fuck, I need a job.
I hope the demo comes along well. Lord knows we've reached the h-game drought where everything promising doesn't come out for at least three more months and possibly a few years for some.

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings

People have already likened it to a female FOBS with art similar to Selvaria's Quest, so I'm interested.
Although I should mention that not everyone who is interested will pay for a patreon. Fuck, I need a job.
I hope the demo comes along well. Lord knows we've reached the h-game drought where everything promising doesn't come out for at least three more months and possibly a few years for some.

Well yeah I know not everyone is willing to be a patron, but the very short demo coming out tomorrow essentially cost me almost $1000 USD, just for the art (not counting my own time), so asking for $1 isn't much lol.

 

[CountMoxi]

Re: Seven Kings

Looking at the patreon, it seems the demo has been delayed by about 3 days. It seems like the Tileset artist had some computer trouble and a lot of their files got corrupted so they have to redo most of it. It always sucks when stuff like this happens, but everything else seems to be good to go for the demo so hopefully the delay won't be too long!

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings

Looking at the patreon, it seems the demo has been delayed by about 3 days. It seems like the Tileset artist had some computer trouble and a lot of their files got corrupted so they have to redo most of it. It always sucks when stuff like this happens, but everything else seems to be good to go for the demo so hopefully the delay won't be too long!

You have no idea how much this bothers me. The very first thing I announce and it's met with a delay. Hopefully at least people know everything I've worked on is actually good to go, literally the only thing needed is the tileset. But still, grrrrrr!

 

[CountMoxi]

Re: Seven Kings

You have no idea how much this bothers me. The very first thing I announce and it's met with a delay. Hopefully at least people know everything I've worked on is actually good to go, literally the only thing needed is the tileset. But still, grrrrrr!

Yeah I've been there with projects myself, it can be super irritating, especially when you can't do anything about it personally but at least it's only 3 days and not something like the artist left or anything like that so it'll be fine. Plus, as fans of pixel action games, I think we've all got used to waiting for quality games by now haha still waiting for that Noaika update xD

 

[Hagya]

Re: Seven Kings

I know this feeling of wanting to show a game I've work hard on too. But I've learnt that it's not a good idea to be impatient as the first impression on the game is really important. I didn't quite understood why you announced the release of the demo several days before it was supposed to be out. In my case, it's often when I have a playable demo that the best ideas comes into my mind.
I really think you should hold your frustration in. You don't have to make your artist feel bad like this. And it's clearly a unprofessional behaviour.

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings

Oh not at all we're on good terms, in fact the tileset might be done today actually. Reason I decided to announce a few days in advance was just to get some early feedback to the patreon page itself and the game.

This thread was great at that actually, letting me know what I should focus on first and what things I could improve.

 

[Hentie]

Re: Seven Kings

A gif from the person's patreon. Reminds me of FOBS so I'm definitely interested.

I can definitely see references to Zell23 FOBS' Mummy rape animation in that, which is a good thing since I like Zell23 sprite animations Looking forward to the demo.

Mummy animation for reference:

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings

Yeah i really liked that animation so I told him to use it as reference.

Btw i got the tileset, just whipping up the map and we'll be set tomorrow!

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: Seven Kings

Regarding 'lose to get hentai', it's one of those tricky things that varies by both the kind of game, and what different individuals want from it. I'd say go for what works for you, and that as long as the overall quality is good I'm sure you'll have an audience.

Just for the sake of discussing the subject a bit though, and offering some insight to why some do prefer the 'lose to get hentai' style, personally, I'd probably say my favourite kind of format is the kind you get in either games similar to Princess Sacrifice, Maiden Snow, or perhaps Seeds of Evil. In these examples hentai still comes from "losing" to various degrees, either from mishaps and significant failures during combat or in defeat, but a key feature is that it neither requires nor triggers a game over. You get messed up, put a notch on your stats, and try again/escape your captors. There's no loading screen, checkpoints or resets. It's something that happened to your character and is intended to feel significant. Sort of similar to DarkSouls, of all things, I guess.

It is certainly a bit of an awkward trade off though, between getting immersed and invested in the character and the dire deeds that inevitably will happen to them eventually, and then the fact that to maintain that immersion you need to continue roleplaying it straight, and will quite likely miss a good portion of the H-content on the first run. I very much enjoy the struggle itself, and find it a very important aspect, but can ironically also sometimes get disappointed upon success. Depending on the difficulty and overall design of the game, it can be a very tricky balance to strike. Very few get it right in my opinion, and there's a huge amount of games out there where all the h-content is solely locked behind a full game over followed by reverting to a checkpoint or loading screen. It often devolves to a rather fake feeling (and tedious) process of deliberately blundering into h-scenes, only to load back and undo it because you have to.

So I still know exactly where you're coming from when you say you can't stand "lose to get hentai", even as a big fan of it, when done right. From what I can gather, the above examples don't really seem to be the kind of thing this game is aiming for regardless, but h-content not triggering or directly contributing to game overs still seems a shared concept.

Depends exactly how you define "lose", but I could imagine a castlevania-esque game described like this, having a dungeon for each castle that the heroine might get thrown into and then escape (after dickings) rather than reverting to checkpoint. Depends perhaps on how large each level is intended to be, whether that would be practical or not. It would also obviously imply that at least one defeat is required per level to avoid missing a bit of content, so dunno how compatible that is with the design principles (unless the dungeon content is only regular monsters and other H-anims also found outside it?). Just food for thought I guess.

Anyway, wishing you well with the project. Hope it's all smooth sailing looking forwards.

 

[CountMoxi]

Re: Seven Kings

Regarding 'lose to get hentai', it's one of those tricky things that varies by both the kind of game, and what different individuals want from it. I'd say go for what works for you, and that as long as the overall quality is good I'm sure you'll have an audience.

Just for the sake of discussing the subject a bit though, and offering some insight to why some do prefer the 'lose to get hentai' style, personally, I'd probably say my favourite kind of format is the kind you get in either games similar to Princess Sacrifice, Maiden Snow, or perhaps Seeds of Evil. In these examples hentai still comes from "losing" to various degrees, either from mishaps and significant failures during combat or in defeat, but a key feature is that it neither requires nor triggers a game over. You get messed up, put a notch on your stats, and try again/escape your captors. There's no loading screen, checkpoints or resets. It's something that happened to your character and is intended to feel significant. Sort of similar to DarkSouls, of all things, I guess.

It is certainly a bit of an awkward trade off though, between getting immersed and invested in the character and the dire deeds that inevitably will happen to them eventually, and then the fact that to maintain that immersion you need to continue roleplaying it straight, and will quite likely miss a good portion of the H-content on the first run. I very much enjoy the struggle itself, and find it a very important aspect, but can ironically also sometimes get disappointed upon success. Depending on the difficulty and overall design of the game, it can be a very tricky balance to strike. Very few get it right in my opinion, and there's a huge amount of games out there where all the h-content is solely locked behind a full game over followed by reverting to a checkpoint or loading screen. It often devolves to a rather fake feeling (and tedious) process of deliberately blundering into h-scenes, only to load back and undo it because you have to.

So I still know exactly where you're coming from when you say you can't stand "lose to get hentai", even as a big fan of it, when done right. From what I can gather, the above examples don't really seem to be the kind of thing this game is aiming for regardless, but h-content not triggering or directly contributing to game overs still seems a shared concept.

Depends exactly how you define "lose", but I could imagine a castlevania-esque game described like this, having a dungeon for each castle that the heroine might get thrown into and then escape (after dickings) rather than reverting to checkpoint. Depends perhaps on how large each level is intended to be, whether that would be practical or not. It would also obviously imply that at least one defeat is required per level to avoid missing a bit of content, so dunno how compatible that is with the design principles (unless the dungeon content is only regular monsters and other H-anims also found outside it?). Just food for thought I guess.

Anyway, wishing you well with the project. Hope it's all smooth sailing looking forwards.

Hmm, that's an interesting way of looking at it. I've never been too big a fan of GOR, but I guess when it's done well it's not really GOR since there's technically no game over. A good example would be Moral Sword Asagi. Even though a scene plays out when you lose, it then cuts t the heroine getting back on their feet afterwards and freeing their friends from being sex slaves. While it does leave to some missed scenes, it gives everything the player does a natural progression and makes for a really concrete experience.

I think it's a bit harder to do in a platformer opposed to an RPG, but I think your dungeon idea is a good start. Unbreaker ( an H side scroller beat 'em up) had a simpler approach but I think it worked well. In that game, when you lost the heroine was placed in certain bondage gear depending on the level. When the player tried to move forward, they were held back from the shackles until they broke free from them with enough perseverance. It gave every action weight and made everything feel cohesive rather than just see another game where the hero meets her end and it kicks you back to the main screen.

While I do think the player will miss a few scenes like this, it's positives make the experience better and facilitate replays to see how else things could have gone.

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings

The way I see 'lose to get hentai' is that it feels a lot like a fetish, it's a fetish where the player likes to struggle with an enemy and lose, to then get sexually aroused.

I believe it should be treated just like any other minor fetish (such as futa, etc) and therefore not have the entire combat system governed by it, unless the game revolves around mainly that one fetish.

The plan is to make the game fun as hell to actually play regardless of its H content. The tricky part is that one of the things that makes combat fun is that there's an actual punishment for being bad. If i were to simply allow the user to just get back up and continue playing forever and ever, that would completely trivialize the map design, the traps, the enemies, and the game will just turn like any other hentai game where the gameplay is literally:
* move around
* see new enemy
* go afk
* see fuck animation
* depending on game, you either lose, or you struggle.

To be honest I also believe it's a cheap way of adding sex, and people do it like that just because everyone else does too. THAT SAID, im open to adding sex sequences if the player dies for instance, like if you were to die from combat, you go on the ground, enemies try to get to you, and the player gets a sex anim based on who touched her first. But this would mean you no longer get to smash some buttons around to struggle, so I dont know if it would even fulfill the fetish

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings [Free Demo]

Public build is finally out guys! Check it out at

You must be registered to see the links

 

[piepiepie]

Re: Seven Kings [Free Demo]

*Disclaimer* This post may sound like a personal attack at the developer, but it is in no way meant to hurt their feelings. This should be taken as constructive criticism.


Just played the "Demo" and I am severely disappointed. This "Demo" didn't showcase anything that hasn't been displayed in this thread.

This "Demo" contains:
-Controls/tutorial
-The ability to interact with 1 NPC and 1 enemy
-The gif that was on the Patreon page
-And at the end of the demo a dialogue option that leads straight to the developers Pateron page

There was an option for combat, but sadly it wasn't implemented yet. I believe that this "Demo" was rushed. There should have been more time put into showcasing what this game is all about.
Nothing from this "Demo" showcased the dream or vision of what this game is going to be like. I was expecting to get some form of platforming gameplay, but there was none.
Maybe I was expecting too much from this "Demo", but I warn those to wait a few months before they start throwing money at this game.

 

[unholynur]

Re: Seven Kings

The way I see 'lose to get hentai' is that it feels a lot like a fetish, it's a fetish where the player likes to struggle with an enemy and lose, to then get sexually aroused.

As someone who likes that kind of hentai, i would say there's more to it than that. Honestly though, discussing the topic could and probably would make some very lengthy discussion. Probably something that should just have it's own topic, instead of hijacking yours. Figure it's best to not drag it out too much, unless you're genuinely wanting to know my reasoning. But I'd leave that up to you.

I will address two related points though.

The plan is to make the game fun as hell to actually play regardless of its H content. The tricky part is that one of the things that makes combat fun is that there's an actual punishment for being bad. If i were to simply allow the user to just get back up and continue playing forever and ever, that would completely trivialize the map design, the traps, the enemies, and the game will just turn like any other hentai game where the gameplay is literally:
* move around
* see new enemy
* go afk
* see fuck animation
* depending on game, you either lose, or you struggle.

You could always make it so sex animations slowly drain the players health. Plenty of games in the genre do that. You'll quickly end up losing if you watch too many animations too quickly. There are plenty of ways to make getting sexed have penalties if you wanted it to affect gameplay too. Here's an example. Give the player a non regenerating stamina bar. Sorta a separate health bar for the hentai side of things. Each time the player gets downed and raped the stamina bar decreases. Lower stamina lowers the players base stats. So the more times the players gets fucked, the less damage they do, or the slower they move, etc. Eventually after being fucked enough you won't be able to realistically beat the game. It'll be too hard to progress. You can then make mechanics to recover stamina, items, events. etc.

And about the gameplay. I might be a special case here, but when it comes to hentai platformers i don't play them like that, at least if it's an actual good game underneath. If it looks like a well put together game I'll go through on my first playthrough actually trying. My hope when playing like this is that the game will be challenging enough that I'll slip up and make mistakes. If i do mess up and get downed the enemy that did it gets one animation loop before struggling out and continuing. My hope is by the end of the game I'll have slipped up enough to see each animation once. And if i didn't see them all and actually like the gameplay, I'll go through again giving myself handicaps. "This playthrough i wont do X move or combo." I remember doing this in the past with Kurovadis. No upgrade runs or no rolling to avoid hits, stuff like that.

To be honest I also believe it's a cheap way of adding sex, and people do it like that just because everyone else does too. THAT SAID, im open to adding sex sequences if the player dies for instance, like if you were to die from combat, you go on the ground, enemies try to get to you, and the player gets a sex anim based on who touched her first. But this would mean you no longer get to smash some buttons around to struggle, so I dont know if it would even fulfill the fetish

That sounds great to me. Definitely go ahead and do that. And like i said above about the loss stuff in general, i think there's more to it than that. That would fulfill it for me.

Now then, with that out of the way, the demo. Definitely a lot of the same sentiment as piepiepie. It was a decent showcase of how the dialogue and town interactions would work. Very nice touch showing the charm option there. So we'll be able to influence choices with our stats, good, thumbs up. I was also expecting some platforming and combat gameplay though. Without the core of the game being there we really can't get a good idea about how it will play. I would highly recommend releasing another public demo in the future once the game is more developed.

Bare minimum I'd say: -A single town with a few side quests or random events.
-A decent length platforming section with a boss at the end. The first king would probably be best (obviously not where he would be in the full game) so we can see how boss battles play out.
-A few enemies and a trap to showcase those mechanics.

I would definitely wanna see something closer to that before I'd think about supporting the game.

 

[Ericridge]

Re: Seven Kings [Free Demo]

Played the demo and reached the end after like one minute then deleted it.

Got no opinion of it other than decent hentai gif and that's it.

Reminds me of the old useless demo games that plagued the video games like 14 years ago.

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: Seven Kings

After writing this post (about "lose to get hentai"), I somewhat feel like we're each discussing apples and oranges, but calling them fruit. Same concept, but handled very differently in different games. Some games featuring it being my all time favourites, whilst others go in the recycling bin before completion. I've only been discussing this stuff to help explain where the appeal is for some, rather than trying to pressure any design decisions or such. So based on that and what Unholynur said about not derailing your thread, I'm going to put some of what I already wrote in a spoiler and get back to the game itself more. Don't feel compelled to spend time responding to it directly.

Spoiler

The way I see 'lose to get hentai' is that it feels a lot like a fetish, it's a fetish where the player likes to struggle with an enemy and lose, to then get sexually aroused.

That seems like a fair statement. I'd add that it's also about that immersion aspect, and a scene that feels more natural and real, but that relies on a mix of design rather than just 'LTGH' alone. Whilst I'm happy to fight against a game getting almost no hentai whatsoever for potentially hours, riding the tension, because I find it makes the final fall all the more impactful feeling and exciting, I understand that's very obviously not for everyone, and very easy to argue as being a fetish.

The plan is to make the game fun as hell to actually play regardless of its H content. The tricky part is that one of the things that makes combat fun is that there's an actual punishment for being bad. If i were to simply allow the user to just get back up and continue playing forever and ever, that would completely trivialize the map design, the traps, the enemies, and the game will just turn like any other hentai game where the gameplay is literally:
* move around
* see new enemy
* go afk
* see fuck animation
* depending on game, you either lose, or you struggle.

This bit is a part where we're thinking of it from different angles though. Like Unholynur described, ever going afk or throwing a fight to see H content is the absolute opposite of where the appeal is supposed to come from. Any game that I end up doing that on, is one I've already given up on being any good. Gameplay being both fun and challenging is crucial too, and by no means an opposite concept. I've put literally over 50 hours into Maiden Snow, despite it having what could reasonably be described as only 2 paper doll style animations. Going afk to see it would be a near worthless experience. It's all about how you got into that situation, and the consequences that come after, that makes it exciting. The primary punishment in that example, is that every sex act has lasting gameplay influencing effects on your character (along with getting dropped in a random location naked having lost some gear).

... im open to adding sex sequences if the player dies for instance, like if you were to die from combat, you go on the ground, enemies try to get to you, and the player gets a sex anim based on who touched her first. But this would mean you no longer get to smash some buttons around to struggle, so I dont know if it would even fulfill the fetish

That makes perfect sense to me, and I'd kinda assumed would be the case to some degree anyway. No harm in being able to enjoy the existing animations before reloading/respawning. Beats just giving a plain "you died" screen. It wouldn't be the same thing as I've been talking about nah, but it's such a simple feature that can be enjoyed by all, so why not.

Played the demo. Super short and simple, but that's fine far as I'm concerned. The only time a demo is "too early" in my eyes is when it actually misrepresents or under sells features in progress, such as combat. If it's not ready, then it's not ready. The hint towards the charm feature is a nice one. RPG elements often add some nice depth to these kinds of games.

This does lead to something I've been wondering though, which is just how actually is hentai regarding combat intended to play out? So far we've seen a scene where a demon merely touches the hero and starts humping immediately, but I'm assuming that's obviously not intended to be how it actually plays out. Are we expecting Kurovadis style knockdowns, or grab attacks, something else perhaps? Any thoughts or plans for mechanics that defend against it?

 

[Keehu]

Re: Seven Kings

After writing this post (about "lose to get hentai"), I somewhat feel like we're each discussing apples and oranges, but calling them fruit. Same concept, but handled very differently in different games. Some games featuring it being my all time favourites, whilst others go in the recycling bin before completion. I've only been discussing this stuff to help explain where the appeal is for some, rather than trying to pressure any design decisions or such. So based on that and what Unholynur said about not derailing your thread, I'm going to put some of what I already wrote in a spoiler and get back to the game itself more. Don't feel compelled to spend time responding to it directly.

Spoiler

That seems like a fair statement. I'd add that it's also about that immersion aspect, and a scene that feels more natural and real, but that relies on a mix of design rather than just 'LTGH' alone. Whilst I'm happy to fight against a game getting almost no hentai whatsoever for potentially hours, riding the tension, because I find it makes the final fall all the more impactful feeling and exciting, I understand that's very obviously not for everyone, and very easy to argue as being a fetish.


This bit is a part where we're thinking of it from different angles though. Like Unholynur described, ever going afk or throwing a fight to see H content is the absolute opposite of where the appeal is supposed to come from. Any game that I end up doing that on, is one I've already given up on being any good. Gameplay being both fun and challenging is crucial too, and by no means an opposite concept. I've put literally over 50 hours into Maiden Snow, despite it having what could reasonably be described as only 2 paper doll style animations. Going afk to see it would be a near worthless experience. It's all about how you got into that situation, and the consequences that come after, that makes it exciting. The primary punishment in that example, is that every sex act has lasting gameplay influencing effects on your character (along with getting dropped in a random location naked having lost some gear).

That makes perfect sense to me, and I'd kinda assumed would be the case to some degree anyway. No harm in being able to enjoy the existing animations before reloading/respawning. Beats just giving a plain "you died" screen. It wouldn't be the same thing as I've been talking about nah, but it's such a simple feature that can be enjoyed by all, so why not.

Played the demo. Super short and simple, but that's fine far as I'm concerned. The only time a demo is "too early" in my eyes is when it actually misrepresents or under sells features in progress, such as combat. If it's not ready, then it's not ready. The hint towards the charm feature is a nice one. RPG elements often add some nice depth to these kinds of games.

This does lead to something I've been wondering though, which is just how actually is hentai regarding combat intended to play out? So far we've seen a scene where a demon merely touches the hero and starts humping immediately, but I'm assuming that's obviously not intended to be how it actually plays out. Are we expecting Kurovadis style knockdowns, or grab attacks, something else perhaps? Any thoughts or plans for mechanics that defend against it?

As of this moment, my plan when it comes to combat is to add a sex scene to the boss, but no sex scene to normal enemies, at least when it comes to initial development and the reason is money.

A full stage will most likely require about 6-8 enemies, a sex animation alone will cost around $350 for each enemy, which is why I want the combat to focus on fun instead of the hentai.

The combat will be a hell of a lot like Castlevania and I'm serious about that, attacking, ducking, jumping, backsteps, enemy patterns, all that good stuff is going to be implemented, the hentai will simply be added once the gameplay is super tight and the pledge amount allows me to, but the great thing about releasing a patron so early is that anything can be changed/improved based on feedback, nothing stops me from giving every enemy a sex animation.

My train of thought is:

If I develop with hentai in mind, gameplay will suffer, updates will be slow (to wait to get money for the art)

If I develop with combat in mind, gameplay will be solid, updates will still be slow, but the player will be able to play an actual fun game, hopefully increasing pledges over time.

Now on to lose-to-get-hentai, I can totally see it being an excellent way to get users aroused, but like you said, it isn't really about the sex animation, it's about how the player got into a sticky situation, and what sort of consequences will occur because of it. I agree with this 100%, which is why i designed the town gameplay with this in mind, it is here where the player will experience unique and dangerous situations but with dialogue and choices so that the player is really mentally involved in it.

There's a lot of tools I can use to arouse the player in the town, dialogues, random events, choices, etc, but in combat, the amount is quite limited, and given that the combat is skill-based, I foresee casual players dying quite often, and you can only see a sex animation for so long until you hate it and it becomes monotonous.

Thanks for your awesome feedback man! I don't really care if the thread is derailed as long as it's active lol.