Friday 24 January 2014

Game Announcement: Erin's Rescue

So, due to the lack of time on my part, it's taken me a little bit of time to get this post up. I also intend to start doing some game reviews in the near future, but meantime, I have some exciting news. After several years of being a phantom in the wings of the AIF community, I have deided to make a game of my own. The platform will be ADRIFT 5, primarily because despite my longings, I am not a coder and likely never will be. However, looking over the engine and playtesting what I have built so far, I am comfortable that the engine will more than adequately serve my needs as a developer, at least for now. A small demo should be available for people to play within a month or two, but I will keep updating this post as new things develop; for all I know at this juncture, I might have the entire game finished by then, or I might not have made nearly as much progress as I would like.

When the demo goes up, I will share a download link here, so that everyone who is interested can give it a try. If you download and play the game, please send any feedback you might have to scionoferos2014@gmail.com. If you choose to send feedback, whether it is praise or criticism, PLEASE PROVIDE DETAIL. It will make it much easier for me to learn if I have more to work with than "Great game", or "Dude, you suck". If you liked the game, tell me what features, scenes, etc you liked the most, and why. If you didn't, please tell me specifically what you didn't like, for example, "Badly handled transitions between areas", "Lots of bugs, including...", "I didn't like the writing style/pacing..." You get the idea.

An early warning to all potential players: This is a game first, and a piece of erotic fiction second. There will be many difficult challenges, and the sex that occurs in game will make sense as part of the overarching story. Also, there are only three sexual partners possible in the game (three major ones, that is... lots of minor ones hidden away as easter eggs for the dutiful player, and to help whet their appetite for the real encounters), each of whom is VASTLY different from the others physically, and each of whom also has multiple possible ways by which you might possibly engage with them. However, you CANNOT encounter all three partners sexually within the same game; depending upon the path you choose, one or more encounters will be closed off to you by the time it is possible to start having sexual encounters with the primary NPCs.

Sexual themes encountered within the game are many and varied, but you will almost always experience certain things as a result of natural progression along a specific story path; it is VERY unlikely that a player will encounter anything in a sex scene that they weren't actively pursuing (there is exactly one glaring exception to this rule, but it too makes sense within the context of that story arc, and you will have plenty of warning available to you, to enable you to avoid this scene).

The basic premise of the story is as follows... I will post the full introductory scene to the game when I get the chance to finish the re-write I am currently doing on it. Basically, you are a recent high school graduate, valedictorian of your class, and as a reward for your academic excellence, your parents have decided to give you a trip to Ireland. However, you propose making it a family vacation, and so your mother, your father, and your sister come along. While you are there, you meet a girl who becomes a romantic interest for you... until one day, in the wilds of Ulster after an afternoon hike, you wake from your nap beneath an ash tree to discover that both your sister and your girlfriend (both of whom fell asleep on either side of you) are missing. It's up to you to find them...

Be on the lookout for the demo of Erin's Rescue by ScionOfEros, link to be placed below when the demo is available, and another for when the full game is available to be downloaded.

7 comments:

  1. Let me know if you ever need help with Adrift 5, I'd be happy to help. Good luck on your work, the game sounds ambitious!

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  2. Sounds interesting. I'm so comfortable with I7 now that I find Adrift 5 pretty difficult to use.

    One of my big weaknesses was that my first few games were way too ambitious and I did almost no planning. That's something I'm really trying to fix. I hope you're putting a lot more thought into this than I did. Even a small CYOA game can run up 50,000 words which is a not insignificant amount of work. Fully interactive games with story arcs and multiple potential partners are easily longer than a full novel. Not only do you have to edit it, you have to bug test it as well.

    I'm not trying to scare you. Just an ounce of planning goes a long way.

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  3. Also providing transcripts to the author is often more helpful than notes. especially if the player just types in comments as they are playing in context.

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  4. My concern with making such an ambitious project your first game is that you'll be making a lot of design decisions without a lot of experience to guide you. If those decisions turn out to be wrong, or you realise later that there was a better choice, you're going to be stuck with them for a long time. Peril in Pleasantville is a good example of what I'm talking about.

    Also, if you're after detailed feedback, you might want to consider recruiting a corps of testers rather than relying just on community comments.

    Best of luck.

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  5. The premises are very impressive, you are trying to do a game in which the majority of people can find something interesting, the only thing you haven't promised is a incredible graphic (but a good game can do without).
    Seems ambitious for a first game, but maybe your years of playing have prepared you for this.
    I can only wish you the best luck.

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  6. I strongly concur with the comment that you recruit beta testers and go through multiple-rounds of beta testing before you release the game publicly. It has been a while since I beta-tested an AIF, but I might be able to help you.

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