Devlog - Scope Creep Management

The society has been fleshed out on and next step was making one type of event for each location type, as mentioned at the end of the previous devlog.

Or was it?

One of the main features I had in mind was that effects in one event can affect the next event you pick.

Two types of changes proved extremely interesting, but also extremely problematic for keeping the initial scope sensible.

• Losing your clothes - it's a tradition that in a lewd game the protagonist will end up naked at some point. I wanted to have it just be a state she is in and then the next event will be modified based on it. Most commonly it would reorient the next event's main objective to getting a replacement outfit
• Traveling with someone - if you meet a friend, what stops you from inviting them along to the next area? It would add a lot of changes to the story and would lead to interesting developments. They may make the event easier/harder and you may gain unique insights.

After playing around with different event concepts I came upon a fairly obvious but troubling development.

If I had 1 event that can get you naked in the prototype set of 8 events and 1 event that lets you bring a friend along, that balloons the minimum required event variations to 3x the amount (rather, 22 because initiating events can't have variant of their own change) .

But, in the final game it wouldn't be a big issue since I would have enough events written that there will always be an available event for the given location, right?

Wrong.

Locations types would appear multiple times in the same run, and thus I would need to avoid repeating the same event during a single play-through since it would be weird to have characters appear at multiple places doing the same thing and reacting in the same way.

Getting all I wanted in the initial design was not viable, so one of these three had to be removed:

• Non-repeatable events - I would need to make some generic/boring events for each location that could repeat because they are independent of ALL big modifiers, and could fill in the situation where there is no available specific event.
• Big modifiers - if I leave out this variety, I could focus on making events simpler at the cost of having no real big game changing stats, which would severely limit the types of events I could write.
• Player Map Navigation - if I removed the map and didn't let the player choose where they would go next, then I could design a chain of events with random variants that I want. But this could lead to samey play-throughs and limit player choice greatly.

I went for removing the 3rd option, despite already having map navigation coded in.

I am currently in the process of writing the first event chain and it's turning into quite a beast. You could get lucky and avoid most of the drama/challenge, or you can get totally destroyed by your opposition. I guess that's how it works for these games, it's more interesting when you are less lucky xD

I am considering to give it to more people to test once I have the first event chain implemented, but it may take a few weeks.