Esoteric ♥ Erotica - release 10.0

[EsoCat]

"Esoteric Erotica" is an adult game with a submissive female protagonist, focussed on Lovecraftian style mysticism and executed in a custom engine I have developed myself.

This is an update to the original thread.

Hi there!
A while ago (06.2017) I decided I want to make a game. Specifically an urban fantasy/erotic interactive fiction game. I'm hoping for Patreon to become a motivator. To help me stay focused on expanding it and eventually finishing the game. Additionally, I hope it will allow me to pay any game development expenses.

So what's the game about?
I think explaining the game from two angles would be best. First, let's talk about the urban fantasy aspect and later we'll go over the sex.

The game puts you into the role of a mage. A mage in a very Lovecraftian sense, as the setting is heavily inspired by the Mythos, just modernised and scaled down. There's no combat. Instead, the game will heavily rely on social interactions, intrigue, "puzzles" and magic. Magic in this game does not focus on throwing fireballs or conjuring spirits. Right now it presents four schools of magic to the player (Oculomancy, Oneiromancy, Necromancy and Xenomancy), all of which will have various uses within the game. The aim is to create a lore rich world for the player to interact with and one that offers adequate, satisfying choices. This is something I find incredibly important as a fan of P&P games and the more classic cRPG titles.

As far as the sex goes, the game puts you in the shoes of a woman with a submissive streak*. The primary focus goes towards consensual BDSM relationships with a leaning towards older, more mature and experienced characters. A lonely widower with a troubled past, a stern and motherly dominatrix librarian, a polite and gentle tentacle horror, the choice of relationships aims to offer breadth and cater to different interests. Character customisation is very broad, so you will be able to cater the game towards your preferences and what you find appealing.

*) Note: not a statement of any sort, it's just what appeals to me on a personal level.

And what about the engine?
I already finished writing a custom engine for the game. It's written in C# using the Microsoft .NET libraries. But it also uses a custom developed scripting language based on finite state automata. It's very data driven and expandable. The scripting language is used to generate HTML code on the fly, that in turn is used to display the game text to the player. It has full support for HTML5 and CSS3* thanks to the .NET libraries used.

*) Note: this is not a browser game.

The extendability also means mod support/custom user content. Though the engine is closed, the game itself will be open source. You will be able to do what you want with it. Including building your own game, if that would be your fancy. Very few things are hard coded. So going as far as making it a completely different genre is within the realm of possibility. All of the game mechanics are implemented using the scripting language.

Current Public Build
Download Link: MEGA
I insist it's very important that you read Instructions.txt and follow it, or else the game will not run.
The game requires Windows 7 or later and installed .NET libraries.
Safety:
Esoteric.exe on VirusTotal
EsotericInstaler.exe on VirusTotal
Whole archive on VirusTotal

 

[Rfpnj]

Interesting, but need more content to get a better idea of things.

 

[EsoCat]

Interesting, but need more content to get a better idea of things.

Yes, that's our next goal with this. Since the engine is fairly complete we'll be focusing on expanding the content now.

 

[karunama]

A list of pairings and fetishes planned in the original post would be great. I can't speak for everyone else, but I don't click links if I don't know what I'm in for.

 

[EsoCat]

A list of pairings and fetishes planned in the original post would be great. I can't speak for everyone else, but I don't click links if I don't know what I'm in for.

Fair enough.
Updating.

 

[asestado]

Ok I will say what I feel that has potential and what I find incredibly annoying:

Things that find annoying:

-Choosing what words will be used to refer to x: Really it's the first time that I find in a game that asks you what words to use, just using the most common ones would do. When I saw that it existed in this game I was like "lol".
-The character creation is eternal: Ok this is the same as the one above, choosing 3 adjetives for each part of the body is... painful to say the least, as a player I hated that part so much.
-It seems that the game will take track of your hygiene, which I think that is incredibly annoying too, any action that must be repeated over and over is boring, I don't know if the game has an option to take hygiene off?.

Things that I find potential in:

-That your character may be manipulated by magic or other things
-That you can decide what your character likes the most

 

[EsoCat]

-It seems that the game will take track of your hygiene, which I think that is incredibly annoying too, any action that must be repeated over and over is boring, I don't know if the game has an option to take hygiene off?.

-That your character may be manipulated by magic or other things

Ok. I'll respond to these two + the word selections.

If you don't like the realistic approach to anal you can just turn it off in the options menu and you won't have to worry about it.

And as for having your character manipulated by magic.
Depends what you mean here.
There will be no transformation themes in the game, nor mind controlled sex.
If you're hoping for that, I'm sorry, you won't find it here.

Concerning the words. Later versions of the game will let you choose from multiple character presets that load all the adjectives together, if you don't care for the customisation.
However the adjective selection will remain part of the game. The reason is pretty simple: I prefer it that way because I like to tweak my characters on about that level.
EDIT: Oh, right, forgot to mention you can just save and import characters as a whole.

The reason for the noun customisation is a bit different. Some people like it more vulgar, some people like it less vulgar. I'm in the later camp and find vulgar words to be a turn off. I know other people who are working on the game have different tastes in the matter and it will work different for them. The whole thing is just a no-win situation no matter what I do so I prefer to keep it as is.

 

[karunama]

Rather than listing each individual partner, it would be more concise (and, believe it or not, informative) to list pairings in the common acronyms or to at least include them. For example F/F, M/F, etc. Since you only included the information about the potential partners, I was under the (painfully mistaken) belief that the protag's gender wasn't set.

 

[EsoCat]

Rather than listing each individual partner, it would be more concise (and, believe it or not, informative) to list pairings in the common acronyms or to at least include them. For example F/F, M/F, etc. Since you only included the information about the potential partners, I was under the (painfully mistaken) belief that the protag's gender wasn't set.

It was covered under the information link.

 

[Miscellaneous Forum Viewer]

Rather than listing each individual partner, it would be more concise (and, believe it or not, informative) to list pairings in the common acronyms or to at least include them. For example F/F, M/F, etc. Since you only included the information about the potential partners, I was under the (painfully mistaken) belief that the protag's gender wasn't set.

From the info page it seems to be F/M, F/F, F/Monster. So female protagonist, probably not up your alley(if I recall what your tastes usually are). Not of any interest to myself either seeing as it's from both a female and sub pov. Also a mage.

 

[EsoCat]

Not of any interest to myself either seeing as it's from both a female and sub pov. Also a mage.

So I completely understand the male part of this, but what's wrong with the protag being a mage exactly?

 

[SirSpectacular]

I can see a lot of potential in what you've created. Keep it up! The engine looks pretty solid (to a non-expert like myself) so I'd love to see you keep going with some more content. Also, I'm excited by the concept of consenticles, I've yet to see the words "romance" and "shoggoth" used in the same sentence when describing a porny video game so that'll be an exciting first.

I can see what you're trying to do with the word based character creation and I approve of the concept though you might want to tweak it a bit. I think that your system would greatly benefit from grouping similar words together. For example, you could keep all of the slender body shape adjectives on the left side of the screen and the curvier body shape adjectives on the right side of the screen. Similarly, you could group adjectives for wet together when describing pussies and you could group adjectives for fairer skin tones together and darker skin tones together. Something like that would allow players to find the words to describe the character they have in mind more easily. As it is right now, the random-ish ordering forces the player to slow down and consider each word, which is great for some, but there are also impatient players who may want to zoom through character creation and might view the current system as tedious.

(Edit: Sharing my opinion on female protagonist)

Having a female only protagonist might alienate some, but I actually think that it might not alienate that many. For example, I happen to enjoy playing games as a female submissive even though I'm a male with kinks that fall into the dominant side of things. This is because the concept of women being dominated is attractive to me even if the game is written from their perspective.

Unless your game is designed to accommodate any gender of protagonist from the ground up, don't expend your scope too much at this stage unless you're getting a lot of requests for a male protagonist and you decide that implementing that is feasible.

 

[Kesil]

I really like how detailed character creation is and, especially that noun customization. I don't know if my computer's to blame, but I can't select things https://i.imgur.com/6JI0T6w.jpg

P.S. I'm not one for sound in my smut games.

 

[MotoKuchoma]

I voted no because your intro post doesnt tell me at all what this game is, so I'm naturally uninterested.

 

[Miscellaneous Forum Viewer]

So I completely understand the male part of this, but what's wrong with the protag being a mage exactly?

A bit of humor to add to the post. There's nothing wrong with the protag being a mage, just a sort of inside joke from my personal history of my stated dislike of magery since I prefer to play warriors and have referenced that on almost every game with a similar premise over the past couple years.

Note: I personally will likely not play or even comment much further on your game due to it not being my thing, but don't let that discourage you from creating. The world is always better with more games in it, especially of different tastes. In fact, I would encourage you to put your heart and/or perversions into doing what you like as long as you don't try to enforce some sort of legislation on people.

 

[Rfpnj]

I really like how detailed character creation is and, especially that noun customization. I don't know if my computer's to blame, but I can't select things https://i.imgur.com/6JI0T6w.jpg

P.S. I'm not one for sound in my smut games.

I had the same issue, it is due to the fonts, and tiny install program not being run so they are on your computer. The instructions detail the steps to take to fix the issue.

 

[EsoCat]

I can see what you're trying to do with the word based character creation and I approve of the concept though you might want to tweak it a bit. I think that your system would greatly benefit from grouping similar words together. For example, you could keep all of the slender body shape adjectives on the left side of the screen and the curvier body shape adjectives on the right side of the screen. Similarly, you could group adjectives for wet together when describing pussies and you could group adjectives for fairer skin tones together and darker skin tones together. Something like that would allow players to find the words to describe the character they have in mind more easily. As it is right now, the random-ish ordering forces the player to slow down and consider each word, which is great for some, but there are also impatient players who may want to zoom through character creation and might view the current system as tedious.

(Edit: Sharing my opinion on female protagonist)

Having a female only protagonist might alienate some, but I actually think that it might not alienate that many. For example, I happen to enjoy playing games as a female submissive even though I'm a male with kinks that fall into the dominant side of things. This is because the concept of women being dominated is attractive to me even if the game is written from their perspective.

Unless your game is designed to accommodate any gender of protagonist from the ground up, don't expend your scope too much at this stage unless you're getting a lot of requests for a male protagonist and you decide that implementing that is feasible.

To address some of these things:
1) The mechanic for grouping adjectives is implemented but we've not yet combed the lists to figure out how to best sort them into categories. Like mentioned before we also plan to do presets of some sort but that's a bit conceptual ATM. We know this is an issue for some people and why and are trying to address it without taking away the customisation from people who want it.
2) The ordering is actually alphabetical ATM.
3) The game could allow for a male protagonist, but we're already struggling with a pretty broad scope for what we're doing and with the number of people currently having at it it's just not feasible.

I really like how detailed character creation is and, especially that noun customization. I don't know if my computer's to blame, but I can't select things https://i.imgur.com/6JI0T6w.jpg

P.S. I'm not one for sound in my smut games.

Like someone mentioned before - you should follow the Instructions.txt file and it will fix everything.

I voted no because your intro post doesnt tell me at all what this game is, so I'm naturally uninterested.

The explanation was posted as a link just below the download.

I had the same issue, it is due to the fonts, and tiny install program not being run so they are on your computer. The instructions detail the steps to take to fix the issue.

Yes, if you do the installation everything should be fine.
But that means both the program and the fonts.
I'm working on improving this, it's the only installer I've ever written in my life so far!

 

[EsoCat]

P.S. I'm not one for sound in my smut games.

Oh, sorry, forgot to address this.
Yeah, I'm going to add some volume control soon.
This will include a mute function.

Edit:
As a temporary solution while I look in how to best handle sound volume you can mute UI noises from the Options Menu.
This will be present in the next update.

 

[SirSpectacular]

3) The game could allow for a male protagonist, but we're already struggling with a pretty broad scope for what we're doing and with the number of people currently having at it it's just not feasible.

I think it's quite wise of you to narrow your scope to only including a female protagonist for now. A lot of adult game developers start out intending to create massive and detailed games but many burn out before they managed to deliver on their concept. I suspect that, if you did divert your focus towards writing scenes that can accommodate all manner of protagonist plumbing, it might hurt your game more than help. I'd suggest that you consider (optionally) expanding scenes to include a male PC later on, once you've polished your female centered experience.

I believe that there's a concept in game design called "minimum viable product". Basically, you want to focus on making a playable game first (without any of the bells and whistles), then you can expand and add new mechanics and content afterwards.

(Edit)
Oh, and about the fonts, I wonder if there is a way to make your EsotericInstaller.exe function also install the fonts on the computer.

Alternatively, you could also modify your engine to check if the fonts are installed and have some sort of alternative font and symbol system that is uses when the operating system doesn't have the nice fonts installed. It might not be as pretty, but it'll make the game playable for players who don't read instruction text files.

 

[EsoCat]

Oh, and about the fonts, I wonder if there is a way to make your EsotericInstaller.exe function also install the fonts on the computer.

Alternatively, you could also modify your engine to check if the fonts are installed and have some sort of alternative font and symbol system that is uses when the operating system doesn't have the nice fonts installed. It might not be as pretty, but it'll make the game playable for players who don't read instruction text files.

I tried including fonts in the installer. Sadly it had... mixed results and sometimes caused errors so I stepped back to consider it later.
I also considered making the engine check if installation was done.

This will however not work for the fonts as the fonts are actually not part of the engine.
An additional problem is that glyph font sets like FA use UTF8 reserved character codes.

Still hammering these things like.
I'd like to at least include everything in the installer.

 

[Kesil]

Like someone mentioned before - you should follow the Instructions.txt file and it will fix everything.

Though I installed both fonts and ran the game in administrator mode, I still can't go past the build adjectives screen. https://i.imgur.com/osiIZru.jpg
This upsets me to no end as it's the first time an erotic game catches my fancy in a while.

 

[EsoCat]

Though I installed both fonts and ran the game in administrator mode, I still can't go past the build adjectives screen. https://i.imgur.com/osiIZru.jpg
This upsets me to no end as it's the first time an erotic game catches my fancy in a while.

You're not supposed to run the game in administrator mode, just the little program that's called EsotericInstaller.

I can see that there's something off with it. Specifically that:
a) It doesn't seem like the Font Awesome stuff is rendering because I can't see any of the glyphs from it.
b) It doesn't seem like the installer was ran because the CSS is not rendering correctly.
What system do you have?

 

[Kesil]

Windows 7.

Edit: apparently, that "You're not supposed to run the game in administrator mode, just the little program that's called EsotericInstaller." was the problem.

 

[EsoCat]

Windows 7.

Edit: apparently, that "You're not supposed to run the game in administrator mode, just the little program that's called EsotericInstaller." was the problem.

Yes.
Is everything fine now?

 

[Kesil]

It is indeed. I am enjoying it so far.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Female protagonist thing:
That's totally fine, make the game you want to make. The issue here is just making sure that information is apparent and obvious to the player when you're pitching the game. Same as the fetishes and pairings or giving a summary of gameplay and/or screenshots. These things tell the people who're into what your game has to offer know to download and try the game and those who aren't into that know to avoid it.

 

[Spine]

I look forward to seeing where this goes. personally, i would like to see some CG's. also, a better way to explain to the player what you have to do with the files in order to start, it took me a little while to figure that out.

 

[EsoCat]

I look forward to seeing where this goes. personally, i would like to see some CG's. also, a better way to explain to the player what you have to do with the files in order to start, it took me a little while to figure that out.

I don't think we will ever have any CGs at all.

 

[EsoCat]

So... moving on from this version, here's what we're working on next.

• We've decided to develop the Necromancy subplot to start with.
• This means we're tackling Cornelius first (male dom, spanking and fellatio scenes coming up next, most likely, but cute romance stuff as well).
• Developing some plot for this subplot as well (mostly non-lewd things).
• Considering working on the in-game Internet some more, possibly making some pornographic vignettes based around it, possibly implementing giving cam shows for an audience (extension to the masturbation scene).

As a fun fact.
We're working on a conversation tree editor to help with the writing.
Nothing too extravagant, but it should be helpful in the future.

 

[EsoCat]

And so development slowly continues.

We're extending the intro with more interactivity and working towards including the first dom into the game, along with interactions and a few sex scenes to start out with.

In the process we've made a conversation editor of sorts, mostly by cobbling it together from existing components. But it is quite a useful tool to have.

In the meantime we've also worked on implementing some basic Internet related mechanics into the game, since we want the PC to be able to look things up online (especially since we're working on ghost stories right now and being able to look up information about the past online seems important for this part of the game). Lots of room for interesting/fun/funny stuff to be done with this as well, but time will tell what we throw in (though if you have any ideas do share).