What's new

ACT Patreon Abandoned [Zolvatory] Lost Case: Monster Girl Takeover


OP
Zolvatory

Zolvatory

Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2020
Messages
14
Reputation score
66
I'm in love with butterfly girl, the animation is very beautiful. That commandeering walk, the jazz hand wrist flick, the hand on her hip, and that subtle aggressive cockiness in her head tilt and expression just combines so well. Not going lie just that was enough for me to break down and become a patreon. Looking forward to development. Seeing as there is some arousal system, is it possible that the protagonist can be more active in the scenes? I mean like instead of it being the girl dominating him, that he would participate like maybe grabbing their hips, head, arms, etc.
Thank you so much for your support and thanks to our fairy for that as well, haha! Concerning your question, there will be next to nothing where he turns the tables on girls completely, that much can I say. Now for participating in it though, that will happen in some interactions for sure although it is of course a "bad idea" to do so and you would never consider it, right?
Also arousal will at the moment just be used for some gameplay mechanics and the decision making part in adult scenes. The value wont outright change a dialogue tree by itself is what i am meaning to say, but just make it more difficult to choose the "good" answer!

Already seen that one after writing my previous post actually, thanks:3
Also i really hope that your dialogue system with enemies during an h-scenes will be that exactly thing that most game lack.
It might your killer feature in some way if done right, huh. Cause most games that i`ve seen just throws a bunch of text on me without any interaction, like my character cant really change something or talk to enemy more in dialogue terms, its very boring, especially when game is a story-rich type. I understeand why its done in that way, its just easier in production, but its just boring, and interaction with different enemy at this stage completely dead, like "oh, another monster gril will fuck mc to death, wow".
Now! Talking about Dialogue trees, let me just continue here. They are absolutely a ton of work to do, so just as you do, I can also understand why people tend to make it very streamlined. It's taking a looot of my time at the moment to set them up and write them. Just know that we're trying our best to bring you a bit of a less pre-determined experienced. It's also important to maybe understand your favorite monster a little more thanks to being able to give answers at certain points. Not just that but as you can see, our main character is not just some faceless person, so seeing the possible answers might give you more of an idea what he is about as well.
 
Joined
May 7, 2018
Messages
7
Reputation score
1
Now! Talking about Dialogue trees, let me just continue here. They are absolutely a ton of work to do, so just as you do, I can also understand why people tend to make it very streamlined. It's taking a looot of my time at the moment to set them up and write them. Just know that we're trying our best to bring you a bit of a less pre-determined experienced. It's also important to maybe understand your favorite monster a little more thanks to being able to give answers at certain points. Not just that but as you can see, our main character is not just some faceless person, so seeing the possible answers might give you more of an idea what he is about as well.
Good to hear that you working hard on this!
Also here a couple of questions :
I suppose different choices also alter animations during h-scenes?
Is there be some gameplay features around lust of mc? changing of strings in dialogues or different scenes? Some seduction system maybe ?
Or its hard to say for now cuz its a shit ton of work ?:)
Maybe i just need to think about your game more in terms of Re;pure aria with more advanced h-scenes and dialogues. But without lust or seduction systems at all?
 

TheUnsaid

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 28, 2019
Messages
1,483
Reputation score
575
Please don't aim too high.
This is your first project, you guys aren't expecting financial return and the scope of the game is really big!

Circle Exelga just released a game recently and it only has 4 enemies. They're also an experienced dev with a good amount of games under their belt. I worry you guys are underestimating the development process a bit.

I won't deny you guys do have talent though. The more reverse rape monster girl designers out there the better in my opinion. These are the only games I actually enjoy sexually not just as games so I really don't want you guys to fail.

How about you guys get your foot in the door with a simple game that only has 1 enemy? To see if you guys work well together and if you can setup a good workflow between 3 people. I actually have experience in this regard and if you want to talk about it more in-depth I wouldn't mind. Just send me a PM and we can talk in more detail. Ah... My game's in my signature if you're curious about it.

____________________

EDIT: Another method if you're confident in this being your general financial model going forward would be to mimic FOBS somewhat. FOBS is a perpetually unfinished game that he just adds various content to from time to time. Since he does it at his own pace whenever he wants the expectations regarding the game aren't super high. It also doesn't have any dialogue or "story" per se. Just a gameplay environment where the player can run into various situations involving monster girls.

Libra Heart only started making MetroidVania's after their 5th game. They started with a Megaman type game, then did a Castlevania 1 style game and went on from there to make actual metroidvanias starting from their collaboration with Pixel Teishoku. I hope you consider making the game into a linear platform game where you select levels or something like that considering how much easier it would be to make.

I wish you the best of luck.
 
Last edited:
OP
Zolvatory

Zolvatory

Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2020
Messages
14
Reputation score
66
Good to hear that you working hard on this!
Also here a couple of questions :
I suppose different choices also alter animations during h-scenes?
Is there be some gameplay features around lust of mc? changing of strings in dialogues or different scenes? Some seduction system maybe ?
Or its hard to say for now cuz its a shit ton of work ?:)
Maybe i just need to think about your game more in terms of Re;pure aria with more advanced h-scenes and dialogues. But without lust or seduction systems at all?
It's also great to see you are so interested in it~
Different choices do alter animations sometimes and only barely. Making completely different animations for the same character would take a lot of time so it will most likely be a variation on one of the phases. The best example for this would most likely be something like this: You choose an answer that leads to the girl showing you her panties while she does the same movement as before.
That's something we can implement with some enemies for sure without it being crazy much more work for Veila. Other than that simple phase changes can also be the result of dialogues.

Currently there's nothing in terms of lust or seduction that basically changes strings of dialogues or leads to different scenes. It would just make it much more difficult on us. At the moment it really is up to the player to choose a detrimental option themselves (which will be made more easy to do based on arousal though.)

Please don't aim too high.
This is your first project, you guys aren't expecting financial return and the scope of the game is really big!

Circle Exelga just released a game recently and it only has 4 enemies. They're also an experienced dev with a good amount of games under their belt. I worry you guys are underestimating the development process a bit.

I won't deny you guys do have talent though. The more reverse rape monster girl designers out there the better in my opinion. These are the only games I actually enjoy sexually not just as games so I really don't want you guys to fail.

How about you guys get your foot in the door with a simple game that only has 1 enemy? To see if you guys work well together and if you can setup a good workflow between 3 people. I actually have experience in this regard and if you want to talk about it more in-depth I wouldn't mind. Just send me a PM and we can talk in more detail. Ah... My game's in my signature if you're curious about it.

____________________

EDIT: Another method if you're confident in this being your general financial model going forward would be to mimic FOBS somewhat. FOBS is a perpetually unfinished game that he just adds various content to from time to time. Since he does it at his own pace whenever he wants the expectations regarding the game aren't super high. It also doesn't have any dialogue or "story" per se. Just a gameplay environment where the player can run into various situations involving monster girls.

Libra Heart only started making MetroidVania's after their 5th game. They started with a Megaman type game, then did a Castlevania 1 style game and went on from there to make actual metroidvanias starting from their collaboration with Pixel Teishoku. I hope you consider making the game into a linear platform game where you select levels or something like that considering how much easier it would be to make.

I wish you the best of luck.
Heyo! So first of all thanks a lot for your concern. We get that it can seem quite scary with what we are planning to do and we feel like we considered our options rather well.
A few things I just wanna mention, so we are on the same page!
Veila, Masker and I all have worked on projects (like very small games and software) individually before. So we do have experience in what we can and cannot do at the time.
At the moment our biggest challenges are going to be: The dialogue system and boss-fights.
For the playable version that we want to publish as I said in an update post, we want to test most of our basic mechanics, including the dialogue system. Now in terms of programming, if things work and are made to be scaleable, it will be much easier on our programmer down the line to focus on other things. So everything that going down to 1 enemy would mostly do is not really reducing the amount of "hurdles", but the amount of time the project will take.
Now as mentioned as well, but i most likely should have made it more clear, we are planning on releasing game updates (publicly) as we go. We know how we would want the game to look like when it's finished, so it's also not like we are going to have endless amounts of content like FOBS might have.
As for things like boss fights that might be an issue, we can always scale them down and simplify the mechanics if we feel that we cannot do it as we imagine them.

We will send you a DM in a bit, so we can possibly go into more detail or if things are a bit more cleared up now, it's always nice to have contacts to a fellow dev!

Currently all I can say is that things are going rather well and we want people to be aware of a few things to not give any false expectations. It's important for us to be transparent, especially in this day and age when you see a lot of devs mess up:
We are obviously not going to be able to compete with the top of the genre (i.e.: Hollow Knight) or even be the best adult game out there. Of course that would be a dream, but not something we expect to be able to do at this point.
It's important to us that you ask questions and we will answer them to the best of our abilities to have clear communication with everyone interested. For everyone who is unsure of becoming a patron or not: please only do so once you really feel like you can and want to support us.
 
Joined
May 7, 2018
Messages
7
Reputation score
1
Currently there's nothing in terms of lust or seduction that basically changes strings of dialogues or leads to different scenes. It would just make it much more difficult on us. At the moment it
really is up to the player to choose a detrimental option themselves (which will be made more easy to do based on arousal though.)
So i see now, too hard to implement such things, indeed.
Well, although i have more questions to ask, it will be more wise just to wait an alpha and play it. Forums are just too slow to discuss something in detail, I've just will create a mess with a text and annoyance for you and others here:(
 

TheUnsaid

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 28, 2019
Messages
1,483
Reputation score
575
The best example for this would most likely be something like this: You choose an answer that leads to the girl showing you her panties while she does the same movement as before.
That's something we can implement with some enemies for sure without it being crazy much more work for Veila. Other than that simple phase changes can also be the result of dialogues.

Currently there's nothing in terms of lust or seduction that basically changes strings of dialogues or leads to different scenes. It would just make it much more difficult on us. At the moment it really is up to the player to choose a detrimental option themselves (which will be made more easy to do based on arousal though.)
Is there going to be an incentive to choose those options?

I think it'd feel pretty bad to play an adult game, then actively choose non-adult options because they are objectively the best decision.
 
OP
Zolvatory

Zolvatory

Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2020
Messages
14
Reputation score
66
So i see now, too hard to implement such things, indeed.
Well, although i have more questions to ask, it will be more wise just to wait an alpha and play it. Forums are just too slow to discuss something in detail, I've just will create a mess with a text and annoyance for you and others here:(
Don't worry about asking questions! It really makes us happy to see you being interested in the game. Of course I can't answer all the things you will probably throw at me, but if you feel uncomfortable in any way to ask more questions here, feel free to write a DM, I will be sure to try and answer it. You can also wait for the playable version obviously and in case you want to do that, that's fine too!

Is there going to be an incentive to choose those options?

I think it'd feel pretty bad to play an adult game, then actively choose non-adult options because they are objectively the best decision.
So for the demo itself there wont be a real incentive to choose them yet. We do plan on adding something later on, although we haven't quite settled on what it is. We don't want the player to lose a lot of their time by losing to an enemy and watching the scene (like being reset way too far back or something), but at the same time it is a game and should punish the player for losing somehow. A middle ground would be perfect for us between that. Being detrimental to you in some sense (like setting you back only a little), but good in another (possibly in a completionist way). I can't necessarily get too deep into it as I don't want to promise anything that might not be in there, but be assured it has been something we have been thinking about.
 
Joined
Jul 8, 2018
Messages
78
Reputation score
67
A bit tight on cash right now, but you'll definitely be getting another patron soon.
I like your team artist's style a lot and this project sounds like it's hitting all of the right nails for me.
Most reverse rape games lean toward recycling the same exact turn-based RPG combat system, probably because most of them run in RPGmaker-- so it's really refreshing to see a reverse rape ACT game; I think I actually prefer them, in fact.
Looking forward to your progress, best of luck!
 

Someone92

Demon Girl
Joined
Mar 27, 2010
Messages
714
Reputation score
178
mcidle.gif
<- That's our detective protagonist!
I'm a little surprised nobody else mentioned it but your male detective looks very feminine (V-cut top, slender, the skirt-like looking black shirt, tight trousers, stance). At first I thought it was one of the monster girls.

skill trees for more personalisation
To be honest, that sounds like a red flag. Customization is very hard to do right, as one way usually turns out be be vastly stronger / easier than the alternatives.
Better stick to create a slim, decent gameplay. Unholy Sanctuary did that really well.

But all attacks of the Monster Girls will increase your arousal upon hitting or getting blocked and that means you will get debuffed in certain ways! So evading attacks is important
If evading is strictly better than blocking, why bother adding a blocking mechanic?
As above, fewer, but more sophisticated mechanic usually results in a better gameplay than having more keys / "options".

While you are in these animated scenes you need to free yourself (which currently is mashing, but we might change it later on to make it more interesting)
The most clever mechanic to struggle free I've seen is periodically showing a symbol above, below, to the left or the the right of the animation, and you have to press the corresponding arrow key as fast as possible.
It does not distract much attention away from the animation as you do not need to recognize the symbol, only its position. It also gives you as developer a lot of control over how long an animation lasts.
You can even expand this mechanic, e.g. for certain monster girls or at certain arousal threshold: If the symbol is red instead of green you have to NOT press the arrow key; another color might indicate that you have to press the arrow key for the opposite direction.

Every demo and update we release will be completely free for everyone to play
Patreons should still get something, though.
E.g. whenever a new version is released the previous version becomes public.
 

super_slicer

Lord High Inquisitor
Staff member
H-Section Moderator
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Messages
12,609
Reputation score
30,782
Hahaha, yeah took me a good couple of days until I realized by reading responses to the thread that the MC wasn't female.
 

PervertionTota

Jungle Girl
Joined
Sep 2, 2013
Messages
75
Reputation score
6
The art are pretty good, i hope the content and animation sound great or greater to the actual art we got /o/

I think i take a closely look to this project
 
OP
Zolvatory

Zolvatory

Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2020
Messages
14
Reputation score
66
First of all, sorry for answering late this time around! We've been quite busy with our lives and working on the game! We've made progress and are most likely going to give a little status update on our patreon soon.

A bit tight on cash right now, but you'll definitely be getting another patron soon.
I like your team artist's style a lot and this project sounds like it's hitting all of the right nails for me.
Most reverse rape games lean toward recycling the same exact turn-based RPG combat system, probably because most of them run in RPGmaker-- so it's really refreshing to see a reverse rape ACT game; I think I actually prefer them, in fact.
Looking forward to your progress, best of luck!
Don't worry about it! Please take care of yourself first and see to it that you do not just scrape by through supporting us! As I stated multiple times before, it's important to us that you do not pledge if you do not feel good about it in any way.
And yeah, the genre consists of a lot of rpgmaker games, but there are some good action ones out there too! We wanted to fill that second slot a little more as we feel the same way as you do about it, haha! Thanks for the compliments on the art.


Hahaha, yeah took me a good couple of days until I realized by reading responses to the thread that the MC wasn't female.
I'm a little surprised nobody else mentioned it but your male detective looks very feminine (V-cut top, slender, the skirt-like looking black shirt, tight trousers, stance). At first I thought it was one of the monster girls.


To be honest, that sounds like a red flag. Customization is very hard to do right, as one way usually turns out be be vastly stronger / easier than the alternatives.
Better stick to create a slim, decent gameplay. Unholy Sanctuary did that really well.


If evading is strictly better than blocking, why bother adding a blocking mechanic?
As above, fewer, but more sophisticated mechanic usually results in a better gameplay than having more keys / "options".


The most clever mechanic to struggle free I've seen is periodically showing a symbol above, below, to the left or the the right of the animation, and you have to press the corresponding arrow key as fast as possible.
It does not distract much attention away from the animation as you do not need to recognize the symbol, only its position. It also gives you as developer a lot of control over how long an animation lasts.
You can even expand this mechanic, e.g. for certain monster girls or at certain arousal threshold: If the symbol is red instead of green you have to NOT press the arrow key; another color might indicate that you have to press the arrow key for the opposite direction.


Patreons should still get something, though.
E.g. whenever a new version is released the previous version becomes public.
Thanks for your feedback as well! I get that the main character looks a bit too feminine for some people, but it's the "pretty boy aesthetic" that we enjoy personally and barely find anything similar (as it's either faceless muscular people, ugly bastards, female protagonists, futa and so on).

Then there's the thing with skill trees. We just want to enable people to be able to change their playstyle around a bit and it's not yet set in stone how we go about it. As you mentioned our focus first and foremost should be making the game solid and that is also the reason why we do not add the skilltrees early on in our progress. We want to make the main gameplay good first of all and in terms of game design itself everything else comes second. But even if there is a vastly superior alternative in the choices (which I will try not to make happen), that does not mean that it would fit the playstyle the player enjoys and as long as everything is viable, it doesn't have to be the best around. There's a reason that for example in Fighting Games people pick low-tiers: because they enjoy the playstyle more!

Sorry for not being clear on this earlier, but evading wont always be a valid option. It's not like you have these great evasive maneuvers in the game. What I meant by saying it was that of course not getting hit by an attack is optimal, but you wont have something like a dodge roll available from the start anyway. That one is on me! Sorry.

Thanks for your input on the escape mechanic as well! Now here's a question...did you look into our notes? I'm getting quite suspicious, haha! It's one of the systems I actually wrote down quite some time ago to test out in the future! Even down to the special effects on the prompts. Great minds think alike, I guess!

And lastly for the Patreon part. We wanted to focus on giving our patrons quite a few things. In case you did not checked it out, there's access to voting, early access for the +18 Animations, concept art is being shown, there are timelapse videos of our artist and so on. We also do think of possibly expanding on it more in the future (although it totally depends on how much work extra that would be.)
The reason why we do not want to give people access to a build earlier than others - and I am fine to have my mind changed on it - is that feedback is crucial and important to us. If we give patrons an early version, receive feedback and bug reports that we then fix and later on make it public once these things already have been adressed, then we'll be getting the same reports over things we have already worked over. Our way to do it is to get as much relevant feedback/bug reports on our game as possible so we can get to working on things faster and better again.
If there is something you would really like to see us add to the patron rewards then be sure to bring it up!


The art are pretty good, i hope the content and animation sound great or greater to the actual art we got /o/

I think i take a closely look to this project
Thank you very much! We're trying our best to deliver things as good as we can!

Yet again sorry for taking so long with an answer this time around and thanks for voicing all your thoughts and concerns!
 

super_slicer

Lord High Inquisitor
Staff member
H-Section Moderator
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Messages
12,609
Reputation score
30,782
Oh, I wasn't mentioning it as a negative just as a 'hey, people might not know the MC is male if they haven't been paying close attention' kind of explanation. Long as there's no male sodomy I'm good XD
 

RockCat

Member
Joined
May 16, 2018
Messages
74
Reputation score
28
OOH i almost forgot about the game, gameplay looks nice for an early alpha and stuff. the ero anomation looks splendid and im a fan of it. Keep doing what you are doing!
 

Reyray

New member
Joined
Nov 29, 2018
Messages
8
Reputation score
9
Would like to mention that Zolvatory has released a on itch.io .
It's just an alpha and contains a singular enemy but the H-Scenes are incredibly high quality, and the movement from the character is pretty decent. Keep in mind that it's recommended to read their readme.txt for instructions with keybinds and other stuff. The enemy even has differing dialogue based on how many times you've met her.
 

IAmAKi

Well-known member
Joined
May 25, 2018
Messages
670
Reputation score
380
Would like to mention that Zolvatory has released a on itch.io .
It's just an alpha and contains a singular enemy but the H-Scenes are incredibly high quality, and the movement from the character is pretty decent. Keep in mind that it's recommended to read their readme.txt for instructions with keybinds and other stuff. The enemy even has differing dialogue based on how many times you've met her.
Damn dude thanks for bringing it up. Would have slipped by all of us if you didn't mention.
 

2-tall

Demon Girl
Joined
Jan 4, 2013
Messages
261
Reputation score
43
It would have. The patreon and the Twitter pages were untouched and I was looking at them this morning.
 
Top