⭐Imp and Guide Sketches

When I was still messing around with the idea of having collectable guides, I briefly tried setting up a system where the imps you encounter would be randomly generated from a collection of parts. I wasn't thrilled with how most of the combinations ended up looking and the fact that any sort of sexual content I added to the game from that point on would require me to draw hundreds of variations of it. Deliberate design seemed like a far better path.

The imp guide was a character I actually used in earlier versions of the game for a rather long time. The idea was again to have several guides you can unlock. Around four guides were planned including a sassy imp girl, the fairy from my previously made game, a magical cat boy and an angel. The lewd content was going to be centered around your guides interacting with the cave environment and wearing sexier clothing sets which would be found in the depths of the cave. The sexier clothes part is something I'm still considering adding back into the game as a reward for reaching different endings.

A while after I implemented imps as inventory companions, I had decided that it would make more sense to have the guide be something other than an imp. The angel guide that's in the game today had gone through a few stylistic changes before making her debut. At one point she was going to be given a 3D body, which ended up as yet another distraction that didn't quite make it to the finished game. Incidentally neither her name nor the name of the magician you play as appear anywhere in the game, which is partially intentional so that players can name them whatever they like. In my head I always called the angel Kanaria.

Of my original ideas for the cave's imps, only a few got to make an in-game appearance in the same form they were sketched in. There are however, quite a few who made it there in spirit.

Many of my first ideas for imp designs were based off a now defunct concept of cave biomes. The cave was to be divided into zones with overlapping tags which would determine what parts of the cave can interconnect with one another. Each area would have items, imps and hazards associated with it. The imps would help you only in their native habitat. The two branches could go into two completely different biomes. Playtesting has proven this overall idea to be counter to the spirit of the game. Rather than picking the path they felt was correct, players would pick the one that led to better rewards or the one they had supporting imps for. Begrudgingly I removed large chunks of code, which these days exists only to mark terrain hazards for the delivery buggy.

The delivery imp was among the last of large gameplay changing systems added to the game. I think that the idea ended up as among the best I had for improving the overall flow of the game. An imp merchant was an alternative I was strongly considering, but it did make its way partially back into the game in the form of the trade system. Having a maid running errands for you was also a possibility, the sketch would later become inspiration for one of the game's endings.

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This was without doubt the most winding roads of game development I've travelled. The second functioning prototype was a game about two spinning curtains with upgradable items behind them. Needless to say, this was a far longer road than I ever intended or anticipated, but I can't say that it wasn't both fun and educational. I hope that you too had fun taking a look at this world of "what may have been". Thank you for reading and I hope to see you next time I decide to make something weird.