Imperial (updated November 16th)

[Sherlocho]

Updated to include full list of tags and pairings, available here.

Imperial is a WIP text-based Adult Interactive Fiction game that I'm working on in my spare time. There isn't a lot to it and it's not that great but the basic gameplay is there along with about 20 sex scenes of varying length and complexity. I have a whole spiel on my dev blog but I'll keep it short here.


You play as a (female) soldier in a gaslamp fantasy world. Gameplay is very similar to something like CoC where you explore areas which have randomized encounters. Encounters usually lead to one of a couple sex scenes depending on how you handle the situation. Most of the sex scenes branch out at some point to give you different variants depending on your choices. There is combat but it's wholly automated and based on a hidden statistic which increases as you complete encounters or find certain items. Aside from random one-off encounters, the game features quests which take the form of a series of events that results in the player being captured, enslaved or otherwise whisked away from the regular daily routine until they find a way to escape. Right now I've got one quest in there with about a dozen different scenes, most of which branch at least once, and two endings.


The focus on the game is on experiencing the scenes and story without having to grind or find a bunch of loot to progress. Losing in combat won't lead to your character getting killed or you losing any progress, instead it'll result in a different scene than if you had won. In some cases, the outcome is predetermined for the purpose of the story but you shouldn't have to reload or try to find the optimal path to enjoy yourself.


The game is, obviously, heavy on text. I've tried to keep the fluff and world building mostly optional so you don't have to read any of my pointless drivel if you don't want to.


The game can be played both online and offline, with full instructions available here. Older versions can be downloaded from my blog if required for whatever reason.


Any and all feedback is appreciated, including bug reports, suggestions, questions, and so on. English is not my first language so if you catch any spelling or grammar errors, I'd appreciate that too. I proofread as much as I can but sometimes awkward translations slip through and everything sounds stupid.


Current game version is 0.2.3 (updated November 16th)

 

[Scarebear]

I like the game so far! 


Just went through the Brook Man encounter and two things of note came up:


- When you get back to the cabin it says it's too late in the day to go on patrol but too early to go to bed. Is this a bug or am I supposed to be doing something else?


- The necklace you get during the Brook Man encounter doesn't show up in your inventory.

 

[Sherlocho]

That first one was a bug which the editor missed when I was doing the latest update. You're supposed to go to bed when you return from the brook man but due to an error on my part it blocked you from progressing any further so thanks for reporting that right away! I released another update on the Textadventures site which should let you keep going after that encounter. It's still showing the wrong flavor text but I'll have to take care of that tomorrow. The necklace is also a bug where the game sends the item to the wrong place but it doesn't have an impact on the gameplay right now so I'll fix that tomorrow as well. If anyone else played they probably got stuck at the same place so if you want to see the rest, the fixed (and hopefully working version) should be available here.

 

[Akhter13]

These are just some random observations


some sort of clock could be handy


maybe you should be able to go to locations from the map straight away I must admit I felt trapped


can't seem to reliably buy supplies from lonnbo tried to buy 15 did not work then 10 did


how do you come to the figure of 82 years what mechanism could you use?

 

[Sherlocho]

Thanks for your feedback!


I can definitely add a clock. There's only two different times of day in the cabin, morning and afternoon, and I try to convey what time it is through flavor text and room descriptions but a clock that tells you what time it is is an easy addition.


There are only two locations to visit via the map right now, the tower which should be available once you discover it through patrolling, and the town which unlocks at day 7 IIRC, as soon as your food supply runs out. Once you visit the town once it becomes available from the map. I might lower the number of days until the town unlocks so you don't have to go through a bunch of nothing right at the start. The first couple of days are supposed to be a sort of intro where certain unique events take place but it's not a very action-packed sequence. I could probably rework that to a more dynamic system.


If you try to buy more than 10 "units" of food, the response should explain that your pack animal can only carry so much. If that didn't trigger for you, it sounds like a bug so I'll check it out before the next update.


By 82 years, I assume you're referring to the mirror conversation? If so, that's simply flavor text to show that she's been trapped for a long time. It's what I've got instead of typing out the entire back-and-forth of "I don't remember when I was trapped but so-and-so happened" etc. etc.

 

[Scarebear]

Is there anyway to get away from the Mistress? Cuz it was fun for a couple scenes, but now I want to go back to my patrols.


EDIT;; Also, what are you supposed to do after cleaning both floors?


I put up my supplies and took a bath but it wouldn't let me go to sleep.

 

[Sherlocho]

Is there anyway to get away from the Mistress? Cuz it was fun for a couple scenes, but now I want to go back to my patrols.


EDIT;; Also, what are you supposed to do after cleaning both floors?


I put up my supplies and took a bath but it wouldn't let me go to sleep.

There are two ways to escape and finish the quest. There's a hidden submissiveness rating which increases every time you complete one day of work. How much it goes up depends on which task you complete and once you get high enough a few new scenes change. That probably isn't very clear from the text so I'll look into that. The other way is faster and the chain for that escape starts the third time you're punished for refusing work.


After cleaning both floors, putting the supplies back and taking a bath should be all that's needed to let you sleep. Do you happen to remember what sort of error you got when trying to sleep?


Thanks for your feedback!

 

[EmperorG]

Will we eventually be able to save? Got all the way to the abandoned tower and played along till the cleaning the house stage, then it froze up on me and had to restart

 

[Sherlocho]

You can save but due to the limitations of the Quest engine, you can only do so if you are logged in at the Textadventures site when playing online or by installing Quest and downloading the game to the desktop. When logged in and playing online straight from the website, you only have one save available. When downloading and playing locally you can make as many saves as needed. Also, I don't know if the saves are compatible across updates so it may erase any saves if you're saving online and I update the game (which I do when I have time to put out something substantial).


If I figure out a way to host the game as a standalone thing outside of the Textadventures site in the future, there may be a way to save and play without having to sign up or download anything. If you're interested in doing either of those things, the links for signing up or downloading Quest are at the bottom of the original post.

 

[MisterSnowman]

Just wanted to point out that when you unlock the tower, it is listed twice when you look at the map back in your cabin. 

 

[Scarebear]

There are two ways to escape and finish the quest. There's a hidden submissiveness rating which increases every time you complete one day of work. How much it goes up depends on which task you complete and once you get high enough a few new scenes change. That probably isn't very clear from the text so I'll look into that. The other way is faster and the chain for that escape starts the third time you're punished for refusing work.


After cleaning both floors, putting the supplies back and taking a bath should be all that's needed to let you sleep. Do you happen to remember what sort of error you got when trying to sleep?


Thanks for your feedback!

Refusing to clean or just disobeying in general?


It was something along the lines of not being tired yet or something. I went back and checked all of the rooms but I didn't miss anything.

 

[Sherlocho]

Refusing to clean or just disobeying in general?


It was something along the lines of not being tired yet or something. I went back and checked all of the rooms but I didn't miss anything.

At the start of each day of captivity starting with day 2, a menu pops up (I hope) where you have to select a task to perform. Refusing from that menu 3 days in a row (or refusing once and then disobeying when punished twice in a row) should trigger the first dialog for the escape ending, down in the dungeon. Every time you obey during one of the quest scenes, your submissiveness goes up and once it reaches a certain limit, the obey ending triggers automatically. It's good that you brought this up because now that I think about it, there's at least one step where the next goal isn't very well explained. I'll have to look into adding some sort of item to remind you what the next step is in case the player gets lost or misses a scene.


I'm checking to see if I can find the error with sleeping on my end, I think I know where I might have messed something up.

 

[Akhter13]

You don't need to take a bath right now. Comfortable or not, you'll have to come back later.


I had the bath before returning the cleaning supplies and am now stuck


maybe you could just add a wait button that then allows you to sleep

 

[EmperorG]

You don't need to take a bath right now. Comfortable or not, you'll have to come back later.


I had the bath before returning the cleaning supplies and am now stuck


maybe you could just add a wait button that then allows you to sleep

Have the same issue, cleaned both floors, put away cleaning supplies, took a bath, and then stuck cause nothing left to do. Who knew trying to submit to a Dom was such hard work!

 

[Akhter13]

Have the same issue, cleaned both floors, put away cleaning supplies, took a bath, and then stuck cause nothing left to do. Who knew trying to submit to a Dom was such hard work!

your lucky it won't let me clean upstairs because I have cleaned downstairs

 

[Sherlocho]

Thanks for your continued feedback. Are you unable to sleep on the bed in the bedroom to the east once this error occurs? The message is supposed to appear once you've already taken a bath but it shouldn't matter if you do it before or after returning the supplies. I'll look into the cleaning error with the update I'm working on now.

 

[EmperorG]

your lucky it won't let me clean upstairs because I have cleaned downstairs

That's probably because I cleaned upstairs first, actually from what I remember I went back upstairs to see what recleaning would do and it said there was no point since I'd already cleaned downstairs.

Thanks for your continued feedback. Are you unable to sleep on the bed in the bedroom to the east once this error occurs? The message is supposed to appear once you've already taken a bath but it shouldn't matter if you do it before or after returning the supplies. I'll look into the cleaning error with the update I'm working on now.

Yeah my problem was that it didn't let me sleep on the bed, and since Stark's Dungeon and the Kennel are closed I couldn't go anywhere. 


The order I did things was: Cleaned upstairs, cleaned downstairs, put supplies away, took a bath with the servants option used. After that I had nothing left to do and couldn't sleep.

 

[Sherlocho]

That's probably because I cleaned upstairs first, actually from what I remember I went back upstairs to see what recleaning would do and it said there was no point since I'd already cleaned downstairs.


Yeah my problem was that it didn't let me sleep on the bed, and since Stark's Dungeon and the Kennel are closed I couldn't go anywhere. 


The order I did things was: Cleaned upstairs, cleaned downstairs, put supplies away, took a bath with the servants option used. After that I had nothing left to do and couldn't sleep.

Thanks for your very detailed feedback! I'm trying to reproduce on my end but I can't get it to bug out. I'm hoping it's a hiccup in the Quest engine because what you're doing is absolutely correct and should let you sleep afterwards. I'm uploading an update now but I will keep looking at this because if the game breaks as soon as you enter the quest it sort of defeats the point of the game. Thanks again!

 

[Scarebear]

Is anyone else having problems loading saves?


Everytime I try it takes me to where I was but the continue button is gone and only the text box is there, but nothing I type in will let me continue.


I'm playing online.

 

[Sherlocho]

Hi Scarebear, I see the issue you're describing as well. I've never saved with the Continue... prompt up in the online version before but it seems to happen every time. Haven't had much free time this week but I will see what I can do about that in the coming day or two.

 

[Anomolousrabbit]

I can't sleep in the capturezone either. I: Cleaned downstairs, cleaned upstairs, replaced supplies, bathed, tried to sleep. Then wandered around a lot in case time needed to pass.


Happens on both obey and disobey paths and with or without the tail.


Would it be useful to upload the save somewhere?

 

[Sherlocho]

If you could upload it to some file sharing service, that would be swell. Is this on the latest version of the game or some previously downloaded release? There shouldn't be anything in there stopping you from sleeping, as soon as you complete the daily task it should kick in. I'll put in a little workaround until I find out what's causing the problem.

 

[asmariamoon]

Hi there.  I got about 27 days in, just exploring the forest and seeing what kind of events there were before this error popped up.


Error running script: Error compiling expression 'player.Tenthole = 0': CompareElement: Operation 'Equal' is not defined for types 'Object' and 'Int32'


Not sure which event it was trying to trigger when I got this, but hopefully you can find it.


[Edit] BTW, I'm playing via the downloaded file.

 

[Sherlocho]

Hi asmarimoon, thanks for your report. That error pops up occasionally when the game tries to check certain attributes, I think that the engine chugs briefly and does things in the wrong order. In this case it sending you to the glade with the tentacle scene and checking how many times you've already been there but broke down for some reason. I'm putting out an update in the next hour that will change the order of operations a bit in that scene but do you remember if you'd already seen the tentacle encounter before this happened?


Thanks for playing!

 

[Anomolousrabbit]

If you could upload it to some file sharing service, that would be swell. Is this on the latest version of the game or some previously downloaded release? There shouldn't be anything in there stopping you from sleeping, as soon as you complete the daily task it should kick in. I'll put in a little workaround until I find out what's causing the problem.

Ok, here's the save:


https://we.tl/MSGEp51GBG


This save is using version 0.1.6 downloaded off the site, but the same occurred using the live ('play online') version.


Edit: Version  0.1.7 works on a new game, so it seems you found it.

 

[Sherlocho]

Hi, rabbit. I think that I have managed to manually add the workaround to your save. I'm still trying to figure out why the game breaks at that point but if you are still stuck and want to keep playing, try this and check for a painting inside the bedroom: https://mega.nz/#!XcoFSCBS!JuDIpGDXN003mP3JXE0RKQAsjcgqO1LJu9LhC24cwm8 Looking at the painting should then let you sleep.


I changed the way the game checks your status before sleeping in the latest version to hopefully fix the error but when you save a Quest game, it basically creates a mirror image of the entire game with your specific game state so new updates can't be loaded in old saves as far as I can tell. I'll add a quick tutorial for how to add the workaround manually if anyone else playing an old version happens upon the same issue.


If you want to try adding the workaround yourself, follow these steps or send me a message with a link to your save and I'll try to get you sorted out.

 

[Anomolousrabbit]

I created a new game in 0.1.7 and that worked fine, so no worries. Thanks for the offer though.

 

[asmariamoon]

Hi asmarimoon, thanks for your report. That error pops up occasionally when the game tries to check certain attributes, I think that the engine chugs briefly and does things in the wrong order. In this case it sending you to the glade with the tentacle scene and checking how many times you've already been there but broke down for some reason. I'm putting out an update in the next hour that will change the order of operations a bit in that scene but do you remember if you'd already seen the tentacle encounter before this happened?


Thanks for playing!

Yeah, I did get the tentacle scene once before.

 

[Sherlocho]

Thanks for clarifying, asmari. I received another report of the same issue and it turns out that it was a simple fix on my part. I put out a fix this week so it should work fine until I accidentally fuck it up again.

 

[Kei]

How the hell is this not on every must play erotic game list ever? This game is great! It has so much content and a few inconsistencies aside, it's all rather very high quality. Good work!