Hi! I’ve been lurking this forum for a little while and it got me interested in dipping my toes into kink writing for interactive narratives. I’m not much of a programmer but I trust my writing and art skills enough to pull off a basic project!
The basic idea for the game is you, trapped in a haunted hotel in Italy where your boyfriend has gone missing from your room. The hallways and rooms ordered in a nonsensical fashion, the way to progress is through puzzles and interactions with Very Strange monsters that seem to run this weird place. All of it is themed around weight gain.
Story wise, I wanted to give it a little depth through the introduction where you learn a bit more about the relationship between the protagonist (you) and his boyfriend. Basically it’s a good, strong and healthy relationship, you’ve been dating for a very long time, but there is a part of yourself that you no longer want to keep hidden. You want to broach your interest in either gaining, feeding or mutual gains (depending on how the intro goes).
You can play a short demo of just the introduction here: Haunted Hotel Chapter 1 Demo by CarnalCervidae
(Note: there’s an error message that shows up when you start the game. I don’t know what it means or how to fix it, but it doesn’t break anything. There’s also a small bit of text leftover from my own playtesting.)
I want to continue the game but I have VERY little experience with making games or interactive stories like this. The bulk of the game will be puzzles and character interactions. If anybody has tips, especially on how to design interesting puzzles, I would love to know!
Ideas I have for the game so far:
a hungry werewolf that chases you around a floor. You can hide from him successfully and proceed, but if you “fail” you can still proceed through Other Means.
some kind of puzzle built around a giant fur perpetually fattened by a horde of demons. Maybe you have to successfully make a new recipe, maybe if you fail you’re fattened yourself but manage to still escape. Maybe someone else can come up with another Idea.
Either way, I would love any kind of feedback on the game as it exists thus far. How do you like the intro, how do you feel about the characters? Are there any inconsistencies or things that don’t really make sense? Do you find it relatable or not, do you think it sets up a good tone and a good sense of conflict between the two characters?
Hi, i love your art and hopefully this as well. twine can take a bit to get used to, I recommend looking into the different formats and seeing which one works best for what you want to do. I have found that the default format Harlowe is very beginner friendly but very restrictive, so things like saving, certain visual elements, and a proper UI aren’t possible or can’t be implemented well with Harlowe. its a trap in twine I’ll admit I fell down several times
I enjoyed your little demo, it felt a good start for an interactive story but i enjoy your concept for the haunted hotel theme you have written. I think if you dont have that much experience with it, just a simple system with multiple rooms with RNG events with some options of choice in them could already be good for a start and maybe develop more if you feel like doing it. I do love all 3 types of content of gainer, feeder and mutual, so im glad you will include the 3 of them. My question is, you seem to want to bring it to a out of this world theme, with magic and demons, right? How far do you plan on taking it into those themes? The start of this story felt very down to earth but i would love to see big powers and big sizes and im curious to know if you will add more characters or just focus on the main 2 and the rest will only serve as props for the story. Will be waiting with much interest.
So I may be off the hooks here but the error message says you forgot to put a ) in a parentheses phrase on the 1st script. Source: Dev-C++ had a similar error message.
I kinda started writing for the game on a whim based on a loose prompt with a loose set of ideas, hence why I’ve got a lot of intro and very little gameplay beyond picking different routes. I think RNG is definitely something I might look into, though my first idea was floors structured around specific themes and a handful of puzzles before advancing to the next floor. RNG is definitely going to be a feature for that werewolf idea though. Entering a room you might randomly hear the wolf sniffing you out, so you have to hide, but your hiding spots would be different depending on the room you’re in for example.
Storywise I’m going at least a tiny bit into a psychological horror angle. I.E. the thing that “haunts” you as a protagonist in this hotel are manifestations of your own weight gain kink. It’s confronting the protagonist with their fears and insecurities, coming out the other end fully accepting it as an unignorable part of the self and being more confident and knowledgeable about broaching the subject to his parnter. I’d like a contrast between the extreme fantastical of the hotel versus the down to earth nature of the world outside of it. Characters you’d meet inside the hotel would probably mostly be manifestations of different aspects of this kink, and the weight gain trait you earn at the intro might serve to give you different ways of resolving character interactions.
I hope this at least gives a bit more insight for what I want to do with the game, cause I know it did for me. Thank you very much!
Dunno if you’re still working on this but I love where it’s going! In case you are continuing work, just wanted to let you know that after going to the soup restaurant there are 2 options to take your shirt off, one of which mentions that you didn’t go to the soup restaurant. Can’t wait to see what else you do!
It is very much on hold at the moment. I’m busy with regular life stuff, and I’m lightly exploring other game engines as well as getting into 3D modelling. I haven’t forgotten about the game concept, but I might not continue to work on it until the next summer break.
