What engine should I use?

[Carnal Druid]

First of all: Hello
I’m standing on the crossroads of a very important decision. *cue epic music*

Basically, I’m deciding in what direction I want my game to go and I could need some advice.
Currently I’m in the very early planning stages: I’m basically writing notes on paper xD

The Question is now what Engine should I use.

The Game I’m proposing is a bit of a twist on the Brothel Simulation Games (of which there are…a lot). It takes place in a Hotel where the player is the manager. He hires stuff, builds new rooms, entertains guests etc. and porn happens. This would be the main managing part of the game, Inspired by movies such as 4 Rooms, Grand Budapest Hotel, The Shining and shows like Twin Peaks (but with porn). And then there is part where you get gold, materials, etc.: a dungeon beneath the Hotel, where you have to battle monsters (preferably sexy ones).

There are now two courses of action I could take:

I myself am a writer, I can map and pixel decently and I have a bit of experience with the RPG Maker series (mainly XP because I like the art style the most).
So the easy thing to do would be make the game on RPG Maker (MV, or whatever the newest one is), say fuck it to random events and basically write out every character and have a more linear story. When I have a decent amount of game to present to the public try to get the attention of an artist who could draw the portraits of characters and monsters and the CGs for the sexy scenes.

Or I could do the intelligent thing and make the whole thing on Renpy. There the game could be much more dynamic, random shit could happen, etc. On the other hand the combat part would be much more difficult to program (I’m not really a programmer). Problem is, when I do it on this engine, I need an artist from the get-go as basically everything on the screen would have to be drawn from scratch. And I really can’t pay an artist right now.

Yeah, so that’s that: The easy route or the intelligent route..?

As this would be my first project (that I present to the public) the best course of action would probably be to make a game on an engine that I am familiar with and cut down on my own expectation on what I can accomplish --> don’t overreach…

But I would really like to hear your opinions!

[kvier]

You could extend RPGMaker by programming in Ruby(XP,VX,VX ace) or Javascript(MV). Not that you'll want to, but it's an option. They also do actually provide enough rope to do dynamic events. The least invasive option would be to use common events and randomly pick specific ones appropriately.

(e.g. look under the hood for indivi's Lust Doll)

That said: I'd get a simple proof-of-concept written first. It'll give you a sense of what'll be easy or hard and some information to make a decision.