Demon Dreams ( Source Code release! 2015-9-27 )

[VintageBass]

To me the animation looks looser now instead of the stiffness, and it looks like that the breasts are moving side to side, as in they move from <= to => in a straight line, at least that's how I'm seeing it. And I'm just looking at the top of the breasts, the bounce is there, but would it be possible to go for more of an arch?

And what happened to the character creator in the SWF spoiler? It's replaced with the teaser in there?

Also Pateron... Why don't I have any money? I wanna support... Well once I get off my lazy behind, get a job and start earning, do expect to see my name on the list (mostly on the cheap end because I do agree with ya on some people REALLY giving out that money for games like this).

[Bad Idea]

To me the animation looks looser now instead of the stiffness, and it looks like that the breasts are moving side to side, as in they move from <= to => in a straight line, at least that's how I'm seeing it. And I'm just looking at the top of the breasts, the bounce is there, but would it be possible to go for more of an arch?

Hrmm? Tops of the breasts? *watches again* Ooooh. I see it! I'll get on that.

And what happened to the character creator in the SWF spoiler? It's replaced with the teaser in there?

My bad. The file was still there, just the forum code in the OP no longer pointed to it. I fixed it. I need to remember this for next time. Deleting a file changes the order of the files, which makes the forum markup stop working.

Also Pateron... Why don't I have any money? I wanna support... Well once I get off my lazy behind, get a job and start earning, do expect to see my name on the list (mostly on the cheap end because I do agree with ya on some people REALLY giving out that money for games like this).

Hey, any amount helps, but honestly the best thing you can do is spread the word. ( Just remember to only spread it in places where NSFW links are allowed.)

And no, I really don't understand how pricing works in the video game industry these days. It's insane what succeeds and what doesn't.

[Bad Idea]

So... I've been trying to embrace the philosophy of Fail Faster on this project. And my first pass at the seduction mechanic fell apart completely. Luckily I realized this before spending more than about a day on building it out. Since there's a lot of game designers around these parts, I thought it might be fun to do sort of a little mini-post-mortem about the idea I had to axe, what on earth I was thinking when I came up with it, and at what point I realized it just wasn't working.

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Plan A was (and might very well still be) to make the main game loop vaguely like Pokemon. By that, I don't mean you'd be capturing girls and using them to beat up and capture more new girls, I just mean that it'd be a turn-based combat system with situational multipliers that are easy to grasp and make a huge difference on your performance, so you're constantly thinking about how to best leverage your handfull of options on every single turn, because any one move could change the outcome.

So we have a game verb (Seduction,) and a rough idea of how we want the mechanics to look. (You use Smoky Eyes! It's super effective!)

Where it fell apart was in the affordances.

The plan was to use Myers-Briggs Personality Types to model each sleeping human whose dreams you invade. This would give you 16 basic "types" of opponents, each of whom is "weak against" four types of move and "strong against" four types of move. So if your target is ISTJ, and you use a move that's ideal against an ISFJ, you'd do 3x as much damage as if you used a move optimized for ENTP.

So it's an affordance based on real-world psychology that maps reasonably well to a simple combat system with roughly as many moving parts as arguably the most well-recieved JRPG of all time. So what went wrong? Well, it's pretty simple.

Just what the hell does an ISTJ attack look like, anyway!?

I racked my brains trying to come up with a list of seduction moves that could be easily mapped to the personality types. And other than the Sensing/iNtuitive axis (S responds well to physical touch, N responds well to mental stimulation,) I couldn't come up with anything that makes the slightest bit of sense. Do Extraverts like hooking up with other Extraverts because they're not as confusing as Intraverts? Or are Intraverts just generally less likely o question whatever you throw at them... at least overtly? Should cultural gender roles inform some of this? If the characters happen to be into BDSM, would that affect their I/E preference? Or is all of this way too subjective and personal and dependent on context and life experiences to be the basis for a rock-paper-scissors style mini-game?

Worse, if I put "Thinker" or "Builder"or "Engineer" on the screen, clearly labeled as the NPC's personality, how's the average player supposed to know what that word actually means? The only way it works is to start the game with a tutorial about the Myers-Briggs classification system, and that's doing the exact opposite of what good affordances are FOR. Instead of presenting information (what beats what) in a way that's intuitive and obvious, (water beats fire,) I'm creating a lot of extra homework the player needs to grind through before he or she can even understand what an INTP is and why it matters. I already knew what Myers-Briggs was before I started on this project, and even so, every time I read one of those four-letter acronyms, my brain still just interprets it as jumble of random consonants unless I take the time to look it up.

And ultimately, it's not sexy.

It's not really fun, either. Because it's not intuitive.

When I first started this project, I challenged myself to come up with a game that explores themes of seduction, manipulation, and sexual self-discovery in a way that doesn't feel rapey or dissonant. And that led me to an awesome high-level concept: that yes, Wet Dreams are the work of Succubi, but they are also a necessary and beneficial part of life for humans. It led me to the idea of Incubi not as parasites but as symbiotes, damned well earning that one night's taste of life-force in exchange for a night of passion that is literally life-changing if you can figure out what they're into and show it to them.

I still believe in that theme and I love imagining how far I could take it. And I still want to do a simple turn-based battle system that gives the player incentive to really think about each attack.

But this Myers-Briggs-based system was not the ideal way to marry that theme to that style of gameplay.

Back to the drawing board.

I hope some of you found this post interesting. Those of you game designers reading this, or even just folks with a background in psychology, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

[9911MU51C]

I love the sounds of this! I love psychology and dream things, as I've tried more times than I can count to lucid dream and I love that you actually are doing psychology themes rather than just "this gurl got gud butt. dis gurl make lotz of cum hapen."

Looking forward to this game

[Bad Idea]

I love the sounds of this! I love psychology and dream things, as I've tried more times than I can count to lucid dream and I love that you actually are doing psychology themes rather than just "this gurl got gud butt. dis gurl make lotz of cum hapen."

Looking forward to this game

Glad you liked it. The themes so far are seduction and the myth of the succubus reconciled with modern understanding of wet dreams. The Meyers-Briggs-meets-pokemon combat system was just my first attempt to model gameplay that supports those themes. Where it fell apart was I couldn't think of a way to make it intuitive. If you have any thoughts on how to fix that, maybe Plan A could be revived? Otherwise the final game likely won't use this much psychology, or at least won't expose it to the player this explicitly.

[BlueLight]

Okay so could you please write out the states of the game for me so i can help you.
I don't mean for your combat, but take for instances "Select girl, enter dreams, looks around, start combat, gain money if win, lose fucks if lose." Just a general idea of how generally the game would work if you figured out all the small stuff.

[Bad Idea]

Right now the states are title screen, some options, character customization, map screen (which includes shops as well as specific dreams you can enter... at the moment there's just one for a "random" dream.)

You enter a dream, you see one random human who matches the options you picked in the "which types of sex do you want to be exposed to" menu that is fast becoming a staple of these games. The dreamer has "Arousal" and "Stress" bars which both start off empty. If you can get the arousal bar completely full, the dreamer orgasms and you gain Essence... basically XP which you can use to become a more powerful incubus/succubus.

Where it becomes a bit like pokemon is that not all your choices during the seduction phase are created equal. There are best and worst moves for each dreamer, and using a more optimal moves greatly affects your chances for success. I don't have a damage formula yet but I'll probably start with a random number and modify it with multipliers.

What seperates this from games like Meet N Fuck, is the inherent nonlinearity of seduction. It is possible to do a lot of little things wrong, and still win. She could be anxious, nervous, and have an ambivilent, awkward, or concerned look on her face right up until you finally trigger the move that pushes her over the edge. Or, at the other extreme, you could be five levels higher than her, and know her weaknesses so well that you can push her over the edge fully clothed with just a knowing glance and a slow caress on the cheek. Most encounters will be a guessing game the first time you meet that character, won through luck and hopefully intuition. Of course, that's only possible if the moves I'm presenting for the player to choose from are actually intuitive, given what the player is told (or can learn) about the dreamer.

At the moment, I'm playing with the idea of a system that is broken down into three broad categories of moves:
Talk
Touch
Sex

Talk barely does anything, either arousal or stress, so you can experiment with the dialogue options in here to find out what she's into. She may deny it. She may say what she thinks you want to hear. The effects on the arousal and stress bars always show her true feelings.

Touch is a decently powerful move, and can do decently bad things to her stress bar if you try something she's not into or that makes her feel threatened. Mostly you'll use this to get her arousal bar up to the 2/3 point, whereupon Touhc becomes less effective, and you can start using...

Sex. The less aroused she is when you try this on her, the more stressful it is, regardless of whether she finds it arousing or not. If the arousal bar is more than 2/3 full, these moves can be used the same as Touch... just as long as she's into it, only even more arousal can come from it.

When arousal hits 100%, the dreamer has one of the most intense orgasms of his or her life, and awakens with a newfound understanding of their sexuality. If Stress hits 100%, they awaken early and go "euuuggh, what a weird dream."

I had some ideas for disguises ( so they think you're someone they know, even though you look nothing like that person, ) magic ( to cheat, for example by forcing arousal or reducing stress, ) and manipulating the dream itself, but for now I just want to stick with getting the seduction system working, and above all, easy for players to understand without necessarily handing them all the answers.

[BlueLight]

Read most but not all of the post.
Maybe you should go full on pokemon clone.
Have fetish types like pokemon types and attacks based on these fetishes. That should in general be a general concept people can get behind. Then for these attacks, start with light stuff then slowly get to more out rageous as as they get stronger.
For instance a lvl 1 tentacle fetish attack might be a tentacle slithering on her skin; alvl chikan would having someone with one finger moving up and down her exposed skin.

[VintageBass]

Have fetish types like pokemon types and attacks based on these fetishes. That should in general be a general concept people can get behind. Then for these attacks, start with light stuff then slowly get to more outrageous as as they get stronger.

I'm also with this idea, although I was thinking of more or less like have each stuff be based on an element, although that's what the types are... and being a big Pokemon fan I am, how did I mess that up? Actually, what I was thinking of is more tying the characteristic of each personality to an element, like what makes up fire, what makes up water, what makes up dark, stuff like that. If you could make a list of what each element/type could represent and then match each personality to said type, then you have a basis to go off of for attacks.

As for attacks, yeah start off weak and then go into more crazier and stronger stuff down the line. It's not like having a strong move is going to be possible on the first go-around.

[BlueLight]

I disagree with the strait up element stuff since now you have to figure what attack goes with what element.
For stance hand cuffing we can easily say is dark element, but what about hand cuffing with fuzzz pink cuffs?
Well it's bondage so darkness but it's not really that dark and more tongue and cheek.... so light; but the other hand cuff was darkness.

Also if you had water it's like required that water sports be added.nnow who of you would want that?

[VintageBass]

... Hmmm, really should re-think that.

[Bad Idea]

Haha! See? It's not as easy as you'd think! We know what we want the player to be able to do in the game, and we know roughly what we want the gameplay to look like, but making the two work together is a challenge.

I don't want to go full-on pokemon clone because other people are already doing that. If I were going to go that route (see what I did there,) I'd probably just use something like Lightning Warrior Raidy's conceit of having the enemies being girls, "attacks" being actual attacks, and "defeating" an enemy meaning they suffer a wardrobe malfunction and their clothes explode off for no real reason other than it's a hentai game.

But that's not the game I'm making. I'm trying for something a little bit deeper, here. There's a reason you're doing all this rampant seduction in the dream world and not in the human world.

Fact is, we totally do things in dreams all the time that we wouldn't do in real life. By definition, it's a safe place to explore impossible ideas. It's like imagination or play, except much of what happens is out of your hands. You don't really decide what to do so much as react.

I mentioned pokemon only as a point of reference for the depth of the "combat." I really do want a single encounter to be that easy, if you know what you're doing. I also want a move to backfire that spectacularly if you choose poorly. A one-hit K.O. is totally fine, as is making them orgasm despite almost entirely scaring them away. I'll show you why:

To pick a random example, if somebody's dreaming about failing a college exam, and suddenly you enter the dream, bend them over, and start reaming them on the teacher's desk in front of the entire class, in a dream they could find that incredibly hot. Confusing and weird, but incredibly hot. That could happen.

A person might also fantasize about this in real life. Maybe because they saw it in a movie or read a fanfic on the internet or something. That could also happen.

But if a demon emerged from a portal into the actual classroom? Everyone would panic. The teacher and the other students would try to stop you. Security would come. It would make the news. The mortal world would be forever changed. People would start carrying weapons and covering each other at all times. etc. Even if you got away with it, you wouldn't be able to feel proud of the consequences, for demon society or the human victim. Luddonarrative Dissonance takes center stage, and your only options are to say to the player "yes, this is totally a game where you control a sick, horrible rapist, have fun," or else to use "porn logic" and completely abstract away everything that could even potentially be considered a negative consequence of sex, so that we can focus on the fun things.

I'm hoping to find a third way, here. I think I'm much of the way there, conceptually, I only need to figure out a way of presenting options to the player that make intuitive sesne.

Maybe the only way it works is if you can see into the dreamer's mind to the point of automatically knowing what they're into, or even what they're thinking that round. But then that kills all of the spontaneity and mystery that makes seduction so much fun.

Maybe I could just have the game take careful notes for you, showing you what the effect of various moves were on this particular dreamer the last time you tried it, and have that info persist across multiple encounters. If all the dreamers were truly random, then you wouldn't even be able to use a wiki or the like to look up the correct technique, you'd always need to discover it yourself. Going down the list of moves at the start of every encounter could get tedious after a while though, which is why I was hoping to find a more intuitive way of giving the player hints.

Keep talking. You're disagreeing with each other and arguing, and that's a good thing. It means we're trying original ideas here instead of going with the obvious.

[Anonymouse]

So this is a random idea of the top of my head and probably crap. Have you played Game Dev Tycoon? In it, you create games, and the first decision you make about the game is the setting and the type. Different combinations work differently and appeal to different audiences. So for example if you mix "Hospital" and "Simulation" it's a good mix whereas "Hospital" and "RPG" would be a poor mix.

Basically, I was thinking that you could incorporate a general scenario that you choose at the beginning of the "battle", for example "School". School would appeal more to younger women (I mean 18-25, not "young girls") and less to older women. And then the different moves you could do would be impacted by the scenario. For example if you were to do something revolving around exposition, the school setting would provide a bonus but the bedroom setting would make it ineffective.

Since you control the dream, and since dreams can be set basically anywhere, it makes sense that you could control the setting to some degree. Also you could have the ability to change setting mid dream, but it would replace using a move that turn.

Edit: Okay I'm in brainstorm mode here, coming up with more ideas (more, not better ). I was thinking about the turn based aspect and trying to understand how the dreamer would fight back. I mean, if it is turn based, what is the dreamer trying to do in their turn?

• Control the dream to make it less sexual? - Why, what is their motivation for this?
• Increase stress - Motivation is even less clear here

Which got me thinking about having a third party involved. The dreamer is passive, simply dreaming whatever is put into their head. You and some other entity are fighting to control the dream, to influence the dreamer in the way that you desire. For example, if you are a succubus/incubus, maybe you are trying to corrupt the dreams of an innocent person, whilst some puritan angel or something is trying to keep them pure. Note that "corrupt" doesn't have to be in a negative way, you could have a positive connotation where the "pure" side is wrong, making people repress feelings that you are trying to open their eyes to.

And on a related note, perhaps you could have a couple of "taster rounds" before the main battle, where you suggest something subtly in a dream on the first night, then again on the second, and then have the main battle on the third night. The purpose of the first two nights is to gauge player response to certain scenarios, and also to influence them. (ie: Night one, suggest buying a porno, then during the day they do and it happens to contain bondage, so during night 3 their response to bondage actions is more positive)

[BlueLight]

I poke this project in the ass. Anything new to report?

[Bad Idea]

The project squirms coyly.

In response to Anonymouse: The dreamer isn't "trying" to do anything. I mean, if you start something they're not into, they'll try to stop you, but all that really amounts to is them waking up if they hate the dream enough.

Think of it like a fighting game, except instead of two health bars, you have two progress bars. You want the lust bar to fill up and you don't want the stress bar to fill up. It's exactly the same mechanics as a fighting game or a combat-oriented RPG. The only difference is what the bars are intended to signify. And the fact that you're trying to fill your own bar rather than deplete the enemy's bar.

Stress is exactly what it sounds like. The dreamer wants to have a nice dream and a good time. If you do stuff they're not into, it squicks them out and eventually they wake up.

I think for the first build, I'll just focus on delivering on the combat system, and just tell and show the player how this individual dreamer seems to be reacting to the things they've done so far. If you use a move they really don't like, they'll just tell you to stop it in a tone that seems legit. I mean, that's common sense, right? Sometimes it's the most obvious solutions that are the hardest to think of.

[Bad Idea]

I updated the Patreon page with a better description of what the project is trying to do, and in the process I think I have reached a better mental picture of the type of game this wants to be, gameplay-wise.

See, you're playing as a Succubus or Incubus, but you're not evil. By inspiring wet dreams, you bring mortals to terms with their own sexuality. That's the core theme, everything else about the game should either support idea that or else compliment it with some sort of twist.

It's not about the psychology of these fictional people. Well, it is. But a lot of that psychology is actually happening below the surface. You won't be manipulating their psychology as such. You'll be manipulating their perceptions and discovering what's there.

I want this to be a game about improvisation and taking hints, not careful study and memorization. The kind of game where you can dive blindly into an encounter with a complete stranger, make a few low-cost mistakes, learn what makes them tick, seal the deal with a few decisive moves, and pour whatever moves you want over the top as a victory lap.

Going forward, it means I can focus less on abstract theoretical systems like personality types, and more on gameplay systems that drop hints, convery tone, and give the player more intuitive ways of discovering what works and what doesn't.

Does this sound like a good change?

(Animation-wise, things are finally coming together. More details in the OP.)

[Bad Idea]

DISCLAIMER: This game is a work of fiction that contains casual references to some elements of modern psychology. It is presented as an artistic experience, not a scientific one. Wherever a conflict existed between gameplay and realism, the developers of this game selected in favor of gameplay. This software is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, illness, or psychological disorder. To learn more about the legitimate science behind the sixteen personality types, please visit myersbriggs.org. It turns out Meyers-Briggs has been discredited for over 20 years. Where we fall on the scale varies from day to day and depending on our mood. The "types" form a Bell Curve on average, indicating that most people don't strongly identify with either extreme on any axis. If MBTI were real, you'd expect to see the opposite of a bell curve, with most people on one side of the scale or the other. Oh well, it's still useful as a creative writing prompt, since the dreamer you interact with is only with you for a short while, and the MBTI describes an indiviual's reactions to stimuli in one instance, if not their 'actual' overall personality.

Okay, so, for the uninitiated, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator describes sixteen basic personality types. The idea is that other people aren't as random or arbitrary as they can sometimes appear. The theory describes human perception and judgement along four axes, each having two extremes. We're all capable of using both extremes of all four axes, but we usually have a preferred mode of operation. I'm absolutely butchering their ideas here, so if you want to learn more, go to myersbriggs.org.

In Demon Dreams, you play as a Succubus or Incubus in a world in which these supernatural creatures are the cause of wet dreams, and wet dreams are a normal, even necessary part of human sexuality. The player's goal in Demon Dreams is to deduce or intuit the sexual needs of various strangers, seduce them, and bring them to orgasm, all from inside that individual's dreams. Mechanically, this is accomplished by saying and doing various things to the dreamers, seeing how they react, and adjusting your sexual technique accordingly.

This document mainly deals with the Excitement Phase of the Human Sexual Response Cycle. The game assumes that, by default, there is at least some initial attraction between the dreamer and the form the player's demon has chosen, as this attraction is what allows the player's demon to connect to the dream in the first place.

Translating the ideas of Meyers and Briggs into a framework for a turn-based, stat-based, RPG-style gameplay experience was challenging. At the moment, this is the interpretation of the four axes I'm using:

Energy Flow - Governs the extent to which they focus on the outer world or their inner world.
Extraverted - Focuses on external needs and desires. Speaks directly.
Introverted - Focuses on internal needs and desires. Aware of their own feelings.

Information Collection - Governs what type of stimulus they pay the most attention to. Do they trust their eyes or their gut?
Sensing - More responsive to physical gestures.
Intuitive - More response to emotional gestures.

Decision Making - Governs, what they need in order to make a decision. Basically, what type of victory condition you're going for.
Thinking - Needs good reasons to choose something. Arousal Achieved when you've impressed them.
Feeling - Needs to feel good about a decision. Arousal Achieved when they trust you.

"Lifestyle" - Governs how they make decisions, how quickly they decide, and how firm those decisions are once they've chosen. (I hate this term. It's so vague. I would have called this "Decision Resolution" or something.)
Judging - Likes to plan in advance and make concrete decisions. Likes to feel that things are "decided." Tough to get them to change their minds.
Perceiving - Likes to keep their options open. Can change their mind up until the last minute. Flexible and spontaneous.

Giving each NPC a random combination of these traits in-code was trivially easy. The more challenging part was imagining interactions the player could perform at any point during the "arousal" phase that both correlated with the Meyers-Briggs system and also would make some intuitive sense to players unfamiliar with it. I came up with the following moves, each of which includes a bit of flavor text to hopefully act as a hint by providing context:

Talk
Tease - More erotic for Extraverted dreamers.
"Some people *can* take a joke, actually."

Tempt - More erotic for Introverted dreamers.
"Purple Prose. Make them imagine it first."

Flirt - More erotic for Sensing dreamers.
"Sometimes it's not what you say, it's how you say it."

Compliment - More erotic for Intuitive dreamers.
"A little respect can go a long way."

Offer - More erotic for Thinking dreamers.
"It's only polite to ask first."

Small Talk - More erotic for Feeling dreamers.
"Be patient. It takes time to build trust."

Touch
Grope - More erotic for Extraverted dreamers.
"I'm not made of glass, you know. I won't break."

Massage - More erotic for Introverted dreamers.
"You're so *tense…* Just relax…"

Caress - More erotic for Sensing dreamers.
"It's so light and feathery… the kind of caress a person could get lost in."

Embrace - More erotic for Intuitive dreamers.
"This feels so right… I don't want to be anywhere else but in your arms."

Grind - More erotic for Thinking dreamers.
"You know you want it. Just take some."

Hold Hand - More erotic for Feeling dreamers.
"Sweet. Reassuring. And surprisingly sexy."

Reactions
Judging will tell you immediately if you say or do the wrong thing. Keep using a move they've already told you is no good, and the penalty doubles every time. Moves earlier in the encounter are more effective than later.

Perceiving can be hard to read. They will frequently say something like "maybe," or give vague answers to specific questions. Moves later on in the encounter are more effective.

This is just the current draft. This system has changed many times and it will likely continue to do so as I continue to develop the core gameplay. It's not exactly "pokemon but with Meyers-Briggs types instead of elements," but it's at least starting to look like a game actually about seduction.

What do you all think? What works, what doesn't? What makes no sense or sounds stupid?

[FutaHorse]

I think this is a genius idea for a flash. I LOVE the creative part giving the player control. Keep it up <3

[Bad Idea]

I think this is a genius idea for a flash. I LOVE the creative part giving the player control. Keep it up <3

Thanks. But I don't quite understand what you love about it. Which part is the creative part? What control are you seeing me give the player? I can think of more than one way to interpret what you said, so I want to make sure I know what you're talking about.

Either way, glad you like what you're seeing.

[Bad Idea]

Finally got things structured in a way that feels functional! It turns out "random content" just isn't the same for text as it is for graphics. This is going to require a lot more writing on my part and spelling things out through dialogue, not the mechanics.

For the first draft, I'm afraid there won't be very much variety in the types of things NPCs can say to your incubus or succubus character, beyond one instance of each of the 16 types. This is because the process of each NPC's seduction is its own story, with its own main character, and that character has his or her own narrative "arc." You wouldn't mix and match chapters out of two different books, and likewise you can't scramble parts of your scenarios.

Instead, the current plan is to write one "script" of dialogue each of the 16 archetypes would say, including some variations for different stages of the sex scene, but always staying true to one core idea of that character's preconceptions, internal conflict, moment of personal discovery, their enjoyment of their new experience, and subsequent sexual explortation.

This also implies adding new phase to the encounter, and a new progress bar: After the dreamer orgasms, they start trying to make your Demon come.

So. Currently, the plan is to write out sixteen groups of sentences, each in a specific writing voice, that describe the character's reaction in each of these phases:

Avoidance - Sentence displayed when the Dreamer first realizes that you want sex and reacts, expressing in some subtle way the hangups, mores and social pressures that have prevented them from engaging in these types of acts previously IRL.

Compromise - A list of sentences cycled through while the Dreamer struggles to reconcile the sex (which they now realize is basically going to happen,) with their preconcieved values and expectations. (Remember, this is only a dream, they're attracted to you to begin with, and the biological function of wet dreams is sexual self-discovery. Incubi and Succubi are the heroes in this game's world.)

Accomodation - This sentence is displayed the moment their desires overwhelm their hangups. This marks the transition from the Arousal phase of sex to the Plateau phase. They don't need to be "convinced" beyond this point, they need to be satisfied.

Collaboration - A list of sentences cycled through while the Dreamer struggles to process the pleasures and emotions the player is arousing in them. At the end of this phase, there's some sort of random orgasm quote displayed, but orgasm doesn't get its own phase at this point because those quotes *are* mostly interchangable, I think. Orgasm completely clears the "stress" bar.

Competition - Satsified (if not satiated,) the Dreamer now reciprocates, exploring the Demon's body and trying to bring the player's Demon off. You can keep pleasuring them during this phase if you want, trying to rack up more orgasms before your own orgasm completes the spell and converts the energy from all the orgasms into some sort of tangible reward in the form of resources.

It's no mistake that the names of these phases correspond to the five TKI Conflict Modes. Although, again, I'm a hack writer, not a psychologist, and TKI is only referenced as a creative writing prompt.

The actual choices you can make during the sex gameplay are still being worked out. If I do a good job on this, each Dreamer's personality will read as true and internally-consistent, and each choice you can make during sex will sound like something that might be more or less appealing to that particular dreamer.

I will probably be scrapping most of the MBTI-based "talk" and "touch" moves described in the previous post, since under this new story-driven design, the Meyers-Briggs statistics aren't actually shown to the player, and the old moves were kinda arbitrary and didn't really make much sense anyway. Now the MBTI stuff is just quietly lurking under the hood, informing the writing choices we make when we're fleshing out the full text of the sixteen archetypes and the player's constantly-cycling move pool. (After all, you can't just use the same move over and over again, as any good lover knows. You need to mix it up a bit.)

It's been quite a process, but the gameplay's more focused now than it's ever been. This was one of those inspirations that you can't really plan or research or build up to, it just suddenly comes to you once you've spent enough time thinking about it off and on.

I'll post some examples once I have them written up. I'll probably be posting even more examples over at the you-know-what page. Not all of them, of course. Gotta save some of the content for the actual game.