Build Your Own Sextrap Dungeon

No, we're not talking about BDSM studios.  This is more gamer-y stuff.

(But not this particular gamer-y stuff, which jumped to the top of the list when I did a google search on "Sextrap Dungeon".  I should have expected it really.  "Sextrap Dungeon" is the sort of term that rolls off the tongue nicely, so it's inevitable someone else would have already grabbed it.)

Yesterday I was talking about MachiaVillain, a cute little indie game where you build a murder mansion.  They added succubi, so the perverted little black cells in my brain immediately conjured up a little murder bordello, where the 'guests' get to go out with a bang at the hands (and other parts) of sexy succubi.  It did make me wonder if that concept could work as a nice little hentai game.

The 'build-your-own-Deathtrap-Dungeon' genre has been around in videogames for a while.  Dungeon Keeper was the famous one, and there have been a couple of spiritual successors in recent years in Dungeons and War for the Overworld.

Dungeon Keeper 2's succubus - Dark Mistress.  Likes torturing people.

My main bugbear with these games is they're often bait'n'switches.  You start off laying down traps to squish invading adventuring parties, but then the game usually morphs into a typical RTS around level 3 or 4, and the rest of it is mostly spent doing the usual RTS-y things of harvesting resources, recruiting new units, and then battling opposing dungeon keepers until the map is clear.

This may be down to the realities of what works as basic game design.  Building up a force to take out a rival puts the player in an active role and is easy to grok and calibrate challenge.  Building a dungeon to squish adventurers puts the player in a more passive role and is harder to grok and calibrate challenge.  Dungeon masters with human players have an incentive to keep things 'fair'.  If they constantly kill the party with an inescapable deathtrap in the first room, well pretty soon they're not going to have any players show up to their games.  A human player trying to keep AI heroes from plundering their goodies doesn't have to worry about that.  Kill 'em all in the first room works, but will make for a dull gameplay loop if too easy to pull off.

My thinking is you'd want to allow as much freedom for fiendish design and creativity, but also some sort of challenge element to keep the player from getting bored.  Generally, I think you'd want some kind of additional reward for the player to incentivize building long and elaborate deathtrap dungeons for the heroes to get lost in rather than throwing everything at them in the first room.  How to do that seems tricky, and probably why games like Dungeon Keeper switch to standard RTS gameplay once the initial concept wears out its welcome, as that's a tried and trusted means of maintaining player interest.

Dungeons 3.  I'm pretty sure this game has a succubus, but could I find a decent pic of one, could I bollocks!  (She also likes torturing people)

MachiaVillain sort of has this with bonuses awarded for killing victims according to horror movie rules - kill them when they're alone, kill the virgin last, etc.  But most of the time you just zerg rush the victims as soon as they enter the murder mansion anyway.

So far, I've mostly been talking about regular games, where my real interest is in more... ahem... perverted fare.  The advantage with more perverted fare is it opens up... ahem... rewards that can't be offered in regular boring mainstream games.  After all, where's the fun in filling a deathtrap dungeon with delectable demonesses if you can't catch a peek of them... ahem... dispatching those dastardly dogooders.

This then also opens up further possible gameplay options than just dropping a mountain on the heroes' heads in the first room.  If we have succubi, we need to keep them happy.  Happy horny succubi make lovely porn movies (obviously we edit out the part where the barbarian stud dries up like beef jerky).  Sulky sad succubi rip their victims' hearts out and throw entrails at the camera.

War for the Overworld's succubus.  Bit spiky.  Likes torturing people.

This now implies a rudimentary management sim.  You have a dungeon.  You have various sexy (and deadly) sirens.  You maybe have a black market distributor specialising in... certain types of films.  The player now has aims and goals beyond just bumping off the marauding heroes in as efficient a way as possible.  Maybe there's an audience score that gives gold bonuses.  Maybe the monster girls have certain restrictions - more powerful ones will only take up residence in lower levels.

This creates tension in that you'll want to lure heroes powerful enough to penetrate the dungeon deep enough to reach the more exotic succubi, but not powerful enough to beat them up.  Maybe part of the gameplay will be figuring out ways to weaken the more powerful heroes without breaking them completely, so that your succubus doesn't get bored with too-easily 'dominated' prey.

I can see there being potential here.

However, there is one awkward question - is all this as fun (and as sexy) as the player trying to battle through the dungeon themselves while fending off (and occasionally frequently 'losing' to) various amorous monster girls?

I did blog about a 'hentai Dungeon Keeper' a few years back - Pretty Warrior May Cry.  That was more of a ryona game.  It did have a rather lovely succubus-type unit, but most of the rest of the game was focused on watching orcs, dogs, slimes, even a dragon!, do various unmentionable things to the female adventurers stupid enough to set foot in your dungeon.  Ryona isn't my thing, but it has an audience and meshes well with the Dungeon Keeper concept.

Pretty Warrior May Cry's succubus.  In the middle of torturing... hey, wait a minute.

Would a similar thing appeal to the same sort of audience that enjoyed Monster Girl Quest?  I suspect players would rather the succubi were doing all the sexy snu-snu stuff (minus any angry heart-ripping) to them.  Although this can easily be fixed in-lore with some sort of magical maguffin that allows the player to bodysurf in to experience their succubi's delectable skills firsthand without those awkward 'dried fish' consequences.

You could probably even cater to both audiences by allowing them to mix'n'match which monsters they want to populate their 'sextrap dungeon' with.

Anyway, enough idle musings.  I think something like this could work and hopefully I've given some ideas for anyone wanting to make a succubus/monster girl hentai game that isn't just another RPGMaker clone.

Yes, I'd like to make something like this myself, but I suspect it would be rather difficult to do well, and certainly far beyond my current skill set.  Hence me posting a bunch of ideas here.  If you think you can make it work, feel free to go for it!

Hentai Game Look - Succubus Nests

This is a Look rather than a Review because it’s for games I bought but didn’t get into for one reason or another.  This isn’t necessarily the game’s fault, which is why I don’t feel comfortable describing these as reviews for products I’ve only really skimmed the surface of.

Succubus Nests suckered me with the trial.  And the title.

Admittedly I probably suckered myself by making a hasty purchase without fully checking it out.  Either way it didn’t end up being the game I thought it would be.

The protagonists are three “magical” girls with specialities in gun, sword and magic cards respectively.  They’re trying to fight off the malign influence of a succubus and purify locations on an island.

When it comes to porn games my preference is for male player characters being sexually dominated by hot monster girls.  I’m also okay with the player character being female so long as the hot, sexy monster girls get plenty of opportunity to do their thang.  What doesn’t work for me is seeing hapless female player characters getting stripped and buggered by ugly male demons and non-anthro critters.

(As an aside, I should make it clear I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people making their porn games follow these lines.  Fantasy is fantasy.  Be extremely wary of the people that try to argue otherwise, even if the target of their ire is something you personally find distasteful.  Give them that and they’ll come back for something you enjoy.  Sadly, given recent news, opposing these censorious, holier-than-thou types is more important than ever.)

Back to Succubus Nests.  The gameplay involves selecting a one- or two-person party and sending them off to purify an area.  There’s a screen focused on each party member where you can observe them walking, fighting, or having sexy snu-snu done to them without their consent.  The girls handle the encounters fairly autonomously.  The only player input is to order them to escape or fire off their special attacks.  At the start the girls flatten their opponents without much problem.  As they progress deeper into the area being purified their stamina drops and they become more susceptible to their opponents’ attacks.  At first it’s restraint, but if you don’t yank them out of there it becomes molestation followed by full-blown rape until the hapless lasses end up catatonic.

My guess is there is a strategy to figure out for when to hit certain “nests” and which of the three girls to bring on the mission (they have strengths and weaknesses vs. different monsters).  I never played long enough to figure it out and I found the fact that most of the game runs autonomously a little annoying.

Bondage in the woods with your friendly neighbourhood spider-woman

The most common encounter in the trial version are Arachne spider women that try and bind up the player in silk.  This, the title and the presence of a succubus in the cut scene made me think this was going to be a girl vs monster girl game.  Sadly, this isn’t the case.  In the full game the only monster girls I saw were the arachne and a futa succubus.  The other encounters consisted of ugly male demons and non-anthro critters such as maggots, slimes, scorpions, electric jellyfish and even dogs.  Standard ryona (female characters having their clothes ripped off before being abused) fare in other words.

This mission did not go well.

With the little windows onto the action, Succubus Nests reminded me of Pretty Warrior May Cry – another game featuring unmentionable things done to pretty female warriors.  That game had interesting enough mechanics and enough OTT humour to hold my attention even if most of the sexual content wasn’t to my taste.  Succubus Nests fell short for me.

I can’t really say if it’s a good or a bad game, only that it didn’t appeal to me personally.

(As I said with Pretty Warrior May Cry - would really love to see a sexy monster girl version with similar animated sex scenes.)

Hero (Monster Girl Quest 3D) - It's the constraints and realistic expectations, stupid!

So after comprehensively stomping all over someone’s puppy I should try and say something positive about the whole 3D Monster Girl Quest (probable) trainwreck.

To be fair, the dude seems pretty good at modelling.  The new Alice model looks pretty good.

But again there’s the time and expectation issue.  How long did it take to make?  What are the range of facial expressions?  What movement animation does she have?  Is she just going to sit there and wag her tail a little, because if that’s the case what is the point of using 3D over Kenkou Cross’s already expressive artwork? 

And remember, there are another 150 monster girls to go after this...

It’s constraints and realistic expectations.  Small game companies and indie developers make very good games because they’re fully aware of their limitations and work within those constraints.

A good example of using 3D graphics to good effect is Pretty Warrior May Cry.  It’s an eroge Dungeon Keeper.  Obviously they didn’t have the budget or team to make full eroge Dungeon Keeper that wouldn’t suck to play, so they abstracted the gameplay to what they could do and stuffed the eroge elements into 3D H-scenes showing exactly how their minions slow down the marauding heroes.  (The lilith animation is available in the trial).

The original MGQ does the same thing.  It’s a RPG with exploration and branching paths replaced with a linear Visual Novel.  This frees them up to concentrate on other things like the story and puzzle(ish) battles (and of course the sexy bad ends).  Violated Hero constrains the player to a Dungeon Master-style Grid.  Desire Dungeon does the same but makes the map a straight line and throws in a chest/loot mechanic.  All the RPG-Maker clones already have most of the RPG mechanics provided by the game maker they’re using.

Hero, Monster Girl Quest 3D, has no constraints.  It’s trying to build everything from the ground up.  In the original MGQ the Succubus Village is abstracted away to a few background pics.  Hero built the town in 3D.  Cool.  But what are they going to do for the Plansect Village, the Harpy Town, the Slime Cave, the cities, the underwater segments, the Demon Lord Castle...?  We’re in George Broussard and Duke Nukem Forever territory here.

No abstraction = too much work = vapourware (or seriously shitty end product that leaves players feeling like someone took a dump in their mouth after eating a foul homemade vindaloo)

Where 3D could really shine is if combined with the combat and Bad Ends.  A Monster Girl Quest with the sex battles/Bad Ends depicted in a similar way to the animations in Pretty Warrior May Cry could work really well.  Aside from the obvious being-ridden-by-a-succubus scenes, various different struggle scenes as Luka is dragged deeper into a slime girl, plant girl or similar enemy would add a lot more to the game than the simple bound/unbound pictures that are used now.  I think a game like this would pick up a lot of interest and have no problems getting indie funding (although it might mean going through offbeatr and smaller dlsites).  It's the difference between going for a niche audience that will definitely come, or jumping for a mainstream audience and falling flat on your face when they don't show.

Again the marketing adage applies: Don't bother trying to appease people that aren't interested in your product anyway.

More Hentai Game Badness: Pretty Warrior May Cry

Pretty Warrior May Cry is a game I stumbled on in the dlsite store while looking for the link to the Violated Hero game I reviewed last week. It already comes with an English translation and there are two versions. The Enhanced Edition has more scenes (but not more monster types) and a custom scenario editor, but personally I think the original 3D graphics are better than the 2D-ised graphics of the enhanced version.

Rather than a parody of the Capcom classic Devil May Cry as the name suggests, Pretty Warrior May Cry is a fun (and filthy) little Dungeon Keeper clone. If you can remember that far back, you’ll remember Dungeon Keeper was an old PC game with a great concept—you’re the bad guy building a Deathtrap Dungeon to fend off hordes of invading heroes. My enthusiasm for the original waned after the first couple of levels when it strayed from that concept and morphed into a Real Time Strategy clickfest (a genre I don’t have much truck with unless it involves mowing down enemies in a buggy to Emperor’s "Thus Spake The Nightspirit"). Pretty Warrior May Cry sticks closer to the original idea. You play an evil (persecuted) wizard on the run. The goal is to dig out a labyrinth to hide in and populate it with monsters to slow down and take out those pesky pursuing heroes.

Of course, as it’s a hentai game, your monsters are going to do more than just attack the heroes…

An effective way to keep a marauding knight "occupied"

Whenever a monster comes across a hero of the opposite sex it will attempt to rape them, triggering a sex scene in the right hand panel. You have a faithful little demonic eye creature-thing that allows you to toggle between various molested heroes.

Sadly, aside from some corrupted and converted heroines, Lilith above is the only actual monster girl in the game. The rest of the game is hardcore ryona, which means using your monsters to inflict as much rape, degredation and abuse onto the hapless female wizard and swordswoman characters as possible (and even poor Lilith, if you leave her in a room with a giant). And I mean a lot of abuse. We’re talking tentacles, devil dogs and even girls being held down and buggered up the ass by enormous dragons in some extremely graphic scenes.

That kind of stuff isn’t really my cup of tea, but the actual game is well put together and surprisingly playable. My main disappointment was the lack of female monsters. There isn’t really anything past the Liliths you start with.

Trust me. The other ways of taking out the female warriors are far worse...

It’s always a difficult choice for any kind of ‘kink’ erotic game. Do you throw in lots of different kinks to attract different audiences and risk pleasing no one, or focus on one particular kink to guarantee an audience? In this case the developers, 7th dream, have set their sights on the ryona crowd. Succubus fans need only bother with the trial version.

I like the concept though. I would love to see a similar game done with more of a monster girl focus. Given the success of Monster Girl Quest, there might even be a big enough audience to make it worth doing. If 7th Dream are out there listening, or maybe other developers, I might have a few ideas I can contribute… ;)