Poll: To Action Gameplay, Or Not To Action Gameplay?

(Concept Art "Kinky Demons")

Hey everyone,

Today, I'm coming to you with something that I've been thinking about for a long while, and I've decided to write up my whole thought process for you. I'm sorry that it is becoming a bit long, but it is about an important decision for the future of my games.

As you all know, I'm already planning the sequel to BMO TV called "Kinky Demons." I will only start working on this fully when BMO TV is almost complete, but since I possibly have to scale production up for this by hiring somebody, I have to plan ahead at least a little bit so I already know what I'm doing.

Here's the gist of the plot: At the true ending of BMO TV, the world has come to an unexpected turn where a demonic portal is opened, and monsters swarm into our world. In Kinky Demons, we jump ten years ahead into a world completely changed by this phenomenon. We meet Sam, who goes to a private military school where he doesn't fit in at all. Some unfortunate events lead him to go on an adventure outside the walls of the school, where he has to survive on his own. Interacting with the demons, however, might make you one yourself, and this also leads to realizations about Sam's gender identity and who these demons really are.

I really like the premise of this story. I did leave out a lot of the twisty nature of the story, of course. If you remember, I got concept funding from the state for this, so I already have a whole lot of the story planned out that I think will be epic.

However, the one big pillar that I'm still unsure about is gameplay.

When I started out with BMO TV, I wanted to break the tradition of text games at TFGames.Site, and so I came up with the idea for a fully graphic version of an already beloved concept. In the history of video games, story-driven games evolved from text-based games to point-and-click adventures, so it was only natural to transform a text-based concept into a point-and-click adventure. It's the natural evolution, but the gameplay remains mainly the same. We've seen a lot of the same historical evolution of text games happen with other TFGames, like the map system of Trap Quest or the merging of action gameplay into text games in X-Change Life. It feels like it's a slow process to go from Twine to something more graphical and action-focused, even though this exact shift in video games has already happened fifty years ago in the video game industry as a whole.

We also have RPGMaker games, but they are stiff and unlikely to evolve much because they are, by design, made to imitate the past, not the future.

Of course, most of this is because of limited resources. This is still mostly a hobbyist community, after all. But then we have the success of this Patreon, and I can't stop thinking that maybe we can use the resources to make something that is not set out from the beginning to work without the need for financial support. BMO TV is actually already a bit like that but the base concept was to just buy backgrounds and character art depending on what the financial support allows for every month. The success of the Patreon has made the scope increase a lot. However, the base concept is still conceptualized with less than half of the financial support in mind.

So, I became a little ambitious and imagined an action-adventure in the likes of Diablo or Hades, where you can gain certain monstrous traits from the demons around you to use in a sort of Rogue Hack'n'Slash gameplay and then visit cities of demons where you can talk to them and have romantic relationships with them, play events where you transform your body both in gender and monstrousness, etc. It's not an unfeasible concept. I'd just need a bit more help on the 2D or 3D graphics side of things, depending on what we decide to use.

But there's an obvious issue with this plan. The reason games haven't become more action-focused on TFGames might not necessarily be because these games aren't possible but because a lot of people don't play these games for the gameplay, and thus, it should not be the primary focus or take a lot of energy from the player. There's Corruption of Champions 2, which has exorbitant amounts of funding, but they still decided to make it a turn-based text game. And there are examples of action gameplay, like in "Rise of the Bimbies", which is a fun game, but didn't gain a big player base. I think the reason action gameplay didn't gain more traction is that players don't set out to play a game from this community for its mechanics but for its story and kinky nature. Here, we come back to a whole different point in the history of video games: the Ludology vs. Narratology debate.

This debate, in essence, concerns whether games should focus on gameplay or storytelling, and I think we all know that the resolution was to weave both together, as was my plan with Kinky Demons.

But we can now critically consider these two concepts as "kind of separate but having to work together" in the conceptualization of games. The balance between the two varies from game to game. The biggest factor to keep in mind, however, is always the target audience. So what if the target audience is not seeking action-focused gameplay?

The development of BMO TV has shown that all gameplay is often even disregarded as an obstacle, a way for me to slow the player down so they don't get to the "content" fast enough. I know not everybody thinks like this, but it has been the most surprising part of my work in the community. I can see this in something like Femdemic, but a puzzle in BMO TV doesn't give me that same feeling.

Gameplay is such an important part of the "content" for me. I'm not a big fan of games where you don't have to apply any strategy at all to reach your goal, like in pure visual novels. Or where you can't really steer the result of the "content".

For me, games are about strategizing to solve complex systems to reach a desired goal, whether this happens in an action game, a relaxed point-and-click adventure, or just through story choices. At the end of the day, the reward (e.g. story and/or transformations) you get for this has to be worth it, no matter what kind of gameplay there is. However, the player needs to be invested in the gameplay, not just the reward or the story, for the game to be considered good overall.

Now, this is not something that I can just "test out" without a lot of effort. Action Gameplay is more expensive to develop, especially if it's supposed to be good, and I'd need extra people to work on this. So before I jump into something that I'll regret, I want to do a poll to see what you all think.

Would you even like the general idea of a more action-focused game with all the TF goodness on top, or would you rather that I stick with what I know best already and create a relaxed experience?

Option A - A topdown action adventure where you learn attacks based on your transformation and have city hubs where you experience all the story, kinky, and transformation events. This would mean a switch between action gameplay and more relaxed exploration of the city and its NPCs, but you can't access new regions without beating the action gameplay of each region. (Update: I was told to clarify that this would have to include different difficulty modes)

Option B - Maybe we don't need the action gameplay and can just spend a lot of time in the city hubs. We can have all the same story events, learn about the demons, and such, but we don't need it to be about fighting at all, and we just focus on exploring the region with a similar gameplay system as in BMO TV, but I'd definitely add some strategic elements to it that I haven't thought of yet. Solving quests and thus reaching story events in the city would be the goal that unlocks traveling to other areas. Although, this would mean that all gameplay will be on the more relaxed side.

I'm not saying that I'll do whatever the community decides. I just want to see what you all think, and then I'll spend another year thinking about it before I make my decision. Having to hire people to work on something that I'm unsure about is a scary prospect and something I don't take lightly. However, I also want to make content that stands out, and there isn't much that would compare to what I have planned out there in the community. Then again, as I observed before, there might be a good reason for it. Namely, the player base not being interested in it.

So there you have it. My complete thought process about the future of "Kinky Demons".

Please let me know your thoughts.

I'll be back soon with the progress report for v0.6.6 of BMO TV.

Best,

Kim