Demon Lands - Devlog 1 (Pixiv Fanbox)

Hey everyone! I am excited to finally announce a project I've been working on in private for a long time: an erotic shota RPG game focused on monster boys and bondage/milking peril. Depending on your reactions, this could be the first in a series of Devlogs, though this would certainly be the biggest since it encompasses months of work. ^^

I've never really mentioned it before on here, but making a game has always been a dream of mine, especially as I am much more of a programmer than an artist! I've been working on this one for several months, and a few hundred hours into development I feel ready to share its progress.

Bear in mind that anything you see here is a work in progress and subject to change. Many of these screenshots will have incomplete/uncoloured art serving as placeholders.

Setting

The setting for the world was heavily inspired by Yogurt Prince's work, as well as by a story called "Escape from Orgasm Hell" by an author called Snowslake.

The game takes place in a medieval fantasy world in which humans are in constant strife with magical, lewd creatures known as Demons. These Demons usually resemble monster boys and take many forms, but they all become more powerful when they consume human semen. The vast majority are evil presences, who kidnap and restrain humans to milk them for their seed and become stronger. The heroes who brave the Demon Lands to save citizens and fight these monsters are known as Paladins.

You play as a boy named (by default) Lucas, whose little brother was recently kidnapped by a Demon. Lucas wishes to join the Paladins and scour the Demon Lands, hoping to find and rescue his brother.

Along the way, you'll befriend other Paladin boys, save captured civilian boys, unlock new skills and items, and face dozens of lewd Demon creatures.

The game is a lot more story-driven than a traditional combat-focused RPG, with a colourful cast of other boy Paladins you meet along the way. It's designed to be shorter than most games in the genre, but with lewd scenes much more abundant and easier to access.

Most cutscenes and dialogue can be skipped, so there's lots of flexibility in how you enjoy the game. Some may wish to skip all the dialogue to unlock the lewd scenes as quickly as possible, while some may not want to watch the lewd scenes at all and would prefer to just enjoy the story and characters.

Gameplay

The game uses RPGMaker MV and thus has a lot of JRPG mechanics involved. However, there are quite a few changes I made to ensure it would be a unique experience.

Quests

Even though I love JRPG grind and battles, I wanted to try and make a game that got around the issue of "I don't care about grinding through mobs of enemies, just show me the lewd scenes!". On many forums, I saw that using cheat engines or completed save files was common because players can't be bothered to deal with the tedium some erotic games have.

With this in mind, I decided to make the game's progression tied to how many quests you completed, rather than grinding through enemies to level up. Each quest would have an XP reward and often a lewd scene or two involved, so you level up by experiencing the world, its characters, and its lewd scenes, rather than being in a battle screen for 90% of the game.

Like most RPGs, you have a main quest to follow but can take on extra side quests at your leisure. There's a quest log to keep track of this, and you can get new quests from talking to the other Paladins or accepting them from the notice board in the Paladin Outpost.

Here the player must make their way to the center of an Orc outpost without being detected by roaming guards. The goal is to defeat the Orc Chief in his tent to rescue a boy who was captured. The quest isn't long but rewards the player with a lewd scene of the captive boy, and a defeat scene if they lose against the Orc Chief.

This design of short and sweet quests that can be completed at any time is key to the game and its development, as it also allows me to update the game frequently and in fun bursts of inspiration ^^

Combat

Though I cut back massively on how much time you spend fighting, I still wanted combat in the game. You still want to feel like you're getting stronger, and the setting is about humans fighting Demons after all! I thought about what would make combat more entertaining, rather than tedious.

The first decision is that the fights in the game are each unique. Unlike most JRPGs, there are no "fodder battles" or random encounters. You fight each enemy only once. Each battle is like a unique puzzle, requiring a certain strategy or Relic set up to win as each enemy has a unique set of abilities.

If you lose in combat, each enemy has a lewd defeat scene where Lucas is defeated, often involving him being restrained and milked by the Demon. You still unlock this scene from winning, and you can recall them at any time from the main menu, so there is no reason to intentionally lose (unless you want to~)

To match the lack of repeated battles, I changed the default combat system a lot. A lot of inspiration was taken from Slay the Spire, one of my favourite games. On your turn, you spend "energy" (noted in the bottom right corner) on your actions. You can perform as many actions as you like during your turn so long as you have the energy to spend. Once you're out of energy, you choose to end your turn manually. More powerful actions require more energy to use, and you unlock more of them as you progress.

You can see what each enemy intends to do on their turn above their head. In the above example, the purple swirl and "1" means the enemy plans on applying 1 debuff to Lucas on its turn.

There is no accuracy, RNG, or attack/defense involved in damage calculations. This makes the combat a game of how to be the most effective on your turn given what the enemy is planning to do on theirs, as you can effectively plan exactly how many hits you'll need to defeat an enemy.

Some enemy attacks are designed around inflicting pain, but most are lewd such as sucking or groping. There's also often lewd dialogue and sound effects, which hopefully makes the fights feel fun instead of tedious even to those who don't enjoy combat.

Restraint is a common trope in fights, as most Demons are focused on binding prey to milk them. As Lucas becomes more bound, enemies gain access to more dangerous attacks, so it's important to think about when to attack and when to struggle against bondage.

Equipment

Another unique feature of the game is the equipment system, which has two notable parts.

First, you can customize your outfit by selecting both underwear and an outfit. This system is inspired by Shota x Monsters, one of my favourite games. Similarly, each outfit has 3 stages of damage. During combat, the outfit tears and reveals more of the underwear Lucas is wearing underneath.

At the moment I haven't decided how you acquire new outfits or underwear. I imagine the more basic ones can be purchased in shops, and the complex and "desirable" ones will be quest rewards. You can also choose to wear only underwear if you want to be that kind of Paladin~

The other unique feature is the Relic system. Relics are similar to Badges from Paper Mario. Rather than unlocking new skills to use in combat directly, your available skills and actions are determined by the Relics you have equipped.

Some Relics grant you passive effects like health regeneration. Others give you actions and skills to use in combat. In the image, the "Cleave" relic gives you access to the Cleave action in battle, which lets Lucas attack every enemy at once with slightly reduced damage.

The number of Relics you can equip is determined by your level. More powerful Relics cost more "Relic Points" (Shown above Lucas' health bar in the screenshot), and Lucas gains one additional Relic Point per level.

You can swap your Relics out at any time, so you're encouraged to play around with combos. Enemies often have specific Relics they are weak to by design. For example, an enemy with armour that reduces damage by a flat amount would be weak to a Relic which lets you attack the target for a large amount of damage at once. Having the wrong Relic set up for a monster might spell your doom, so it's good to be prepared ^^

Project Scope and Features

The game would consist of four "chapters", each of which represents a different continent in the Demon Lands, and which are mostly planned out already. Each chapter would have about 10-15 enemies (and associated defeat scenes), as well as 6-10 separate lewd scenes found through quests. These chapters may have to be released in installments, or possibly just slowly added over the years.

(Don't worry, it's shrunk down- no spoilers :P)

However, since the full game would likely take multiple years to complete, I wanted to work on an "Alpha Release", which would consist purely of a trimmed selection of content from the first chapter. This would be:

• 12 Lewd Scenes (About 3-6 images each with text dialogue and sound effects. These include the defeat scenes from enemies)

• 5 Characters with dialogue/personality/story presence (Including Lucas)

• 8 Enemies

• 3/4 side quests, and several of the first "story" quests to the point where Lucas is an established Paladin.

• A few pairs of underwear and outfits to equip

This Alpha release represents about a 1/5th of what I want the completed game to be, but it's what I've spent many months programming and making the content for. Everything listed is fully implemented and programmed, the lewd scenes even have all of the dialogue and sound effects done! It's just a matter of drawing the scenes, characters, and sprites.

The Alpha release would also be free, but likely just for Fanbox subscribers for a little while to iron out some bugs.

[Edited] The Future

Edited since the initial post. Since there was such an enourmously positive reaction, I will be switching my art focus to finishing the alpha as quickly as possible ^^ I will likely do a few more devlogs for the Fan tier and then previews/sketches of the lewd scenes for the Supporter tier.

Thank you so much for your support, I really hope that I can get the next post up and running quickly! ^^