(NSFW) Alys vs the Phantom Feline Foe

[Haruspex]

Well, I finally did it.  I finished a game.  It's not a very good one, and it only takes about 15 minutes to finish, but by my bristly beard it's done.

I give you Alys vs The Phantom Feline Foe.

Alys is trapped in Bizarro World.  Her captor, Ignatius Cat.  Can she escape, or will she remain forever the unwilling slave to lewdness of the Phantom Feline Foe.

This is something I've wanted to do for decades, finish a game that is, not necessarily this one, or even of this subject matter.  I found AGS way back in high school, and at that time it was a DOS program called Adventure Creator.  I grew up playing Sierra adventures, and this thing put the idea in my head that I should create an adventure game too.

My desire to create games brought me to go to school to pursue a bachelors of science in game art and design, which I flunked out of after a couple of years.  I recall making a personal art gallery in AGS as a project during that time.

I've started a lot of projects.  I've never gotten particularly far on any of them.  I tell myself that what I'm making sucks, and I ultimately stop, only to start again.  Since about 2003 I've hardly created anything at all, instead starting a family and toiling away at thankless meager work.  I'm in my 30's now.  My artistic ability has stagnated, so I figured I should do something about that.

I joined an Itch.io game jam.  I had a couple of weeks to sit down and build something.  My goal was to press on and create, no matter how much I hated what I was making.  The topic was "lewd", which I figured, hey, why not?

This is the end result.  This is my debut title.  When I look back at my first game, this will be it.  What the hell was I thinking?

Anyway, enjoy it.  I actually enjoyed creating it behind a locked door so my kid didn't wander in to see me drawing a full tentacle rape background to the soothing sounds of Rob Zombie.

As for the lewdness, it's something I've had in my head since I was about 15 and discovered hentai games by downloading "True Love" on a dial up connection.  It's behind me now.  I think I got it out of my system.  My next title will be decidedly un-lewd, and I already have a pretty good idea kicking around in my head.

Thanks, and please be gentle.  Or not.  It's out there now, and belongs to the Internet.  Tear it apart if you want.

I'm going to hell for this aren't I.

[Mandle]

Massive congratulations on finishing your first game and getting it out there...It's quite a feeling isn't it?

I look forward to checking out the game...I'm not shy...

[Slasher]

Hi BeardFacePixelHead

I have given it a play up until trying to find

Spoiler

water for the plant.

[close]

I can't seem to do much or walk off the stone platform area.

Anyhow, my thoughts so far:

Spoiler

I thought the graphics were nice enough and the animations really good. Game play is slow due to long 'Wait' periods. The black Walk graphic can't be seen when against black. Also there is no option to load game at the start and you have to play all through the start sequence before you can load a saved game. I am not keen on lewdness but did have a chuckle. You have also left the Debug on (in Game settings)..

[close]

All in all a good first game attempt... Now, about that plant

[Haruspex]

Well, in the spirit of lewdness, there really is only one source of "water" she has.

If you want specific instructions, show this:

Spoiler

"Use" Alys, then "Use" the plant.  You're welcome.

[close]

Also I'm going to add a border to the walk icon and disable debug.  Thanks for the feedback.

I'm also adding a title screen with load/new game/quit options.  Little oversight on my part there.

[Slasher]

Finished the game.

Well done on your first game

Now get making more games

[Haruspex]

I implemented Slasher's suggestions.  Changed the color of the WalkTo mouse cursor so you can see it against black.  Added a title screen with a load button so you don't have to suffer through the intro every time.  Disabled debug mode.  Changed another little something as an homage.

[selmiak]

ZOMG! the eyes are staring!!! 
and then alys got killed... will try again later 

[Mandle]

I just finished the game, and...

(Comments hidden to avoid spoilers and rants)

On the positive side:

Spoiler

The graphics are impressive for a first game. The music was well chosen. The animations are very good. The puzzle-structure works. And the humour is spot on at the end: "He's so high he's fucking a tree." That got a real laugh from me...

[close]

On the negative side:

Spoiler

Well...you can probably guess what's coming: Alys is not represented as a grown-up... This is extremely creepy from my point of view, and I wonder if you have considered the kind of people that will recommend your game to their peers and spread it through their network... I'm a huge supporter of the view that art and media should not be censored as long as nobody was harmed during its creation... But still: The tentacle-rape visual shows a child-like character penetrated and the game says that she ended up dying via multiple rapings and her body was left to rot... DUDE! Are you not even slightly disturbed that sexual predators might be fapping while looking at that visual, and perhaps imagining the rape-death-rot cycle you describe?

Perhaps in a future version:

Spoiler

Make the tentacle-rape screen another puzzle where Alys can find a way to defeat the creatures that are raping her, and make her way back up to the land above: If done well, this could allow the game to "get away with" the cliched hentai image but at the same time provide an empowering way for the victim to fight back against their violation and win out in the end... This also avoids the annoying and outdated fail-state where the player dies and has to restart the game all over again or from their last manual save point...

[close]

Also: The descriptions of Alys' wet panties as soiled by some foul liquid that she is disgusted by: This seems a rather vicious attack against female sexuality...

Maybe just:

Spoiler

Ditch all the language that says the liquid is disgusting or smelly? And all the inferences that she is ashamed by it?

[close]

Maybe all this was intended as satire of the hentai genre? If so, then you really need to make it clearer that parody was intended... Because at the moment it doesn't feel like satire...

The theme of the event was "lewd", which means sexual humour obviously... But I can't help but feel you might be standing on the blurry line that seperates something lewd from something a lot darker with this game...

Sorry for the rant... You have talent as a game designer and artist... And I am looking forward to your future projects...

[close]

[riley65]

I must be an idiot, because I can't seem to figure out what do to clean the panties after falling into the void going across the vine. I have the little plant from the screen over, but can't seem to use it or the panties on anything, any hints to point me in the right direction here? Or just straight tell me, I don't mind.

[sthomannch]

I started on this game and could proceed to the room after the plant. But I have two problems:
- Sometimes, the game loses focus, so mouse and keyboard stop working in the game
- I can save and the save games go to a directory beneath the user directory, alas, I cannot restore as the saved games are not listed.
Anyway: Nice graphics and some funny ideas, so I hope I can finish it somehow

[Crimson Wizard]

- I can save and the save games go to a directory beneath the user directory, alas, I cannot restore as the saved games are not listed.

Can you tell, do you use default save path, or assign a custom save path in winsetup advanced settings?
There were certain changes to how saves are located in recent version of AGS, and I wonder if there is a kind of bug there.
Other than that, once there was also a bug with non-latin characters in user name folder, but it was thought to be fixed long time ago.

[sthomannch]

I used the default. In other games, a folder "My Saved Games" is created in my user home directory underneath a folder with the name of the game. For this game, a folder is created under "My Saved Games", with name "Alys Save Games". The AGS save games are stored here, together with a copy of "acsetup.cfg", also a 999 copy of savegames is copied here, but none of them can be restored and none appear in the restore dialog.

[Crimson Wizard]

In other games, a folder "My Saved Games" is created in my user home directory underneath a folder with the name of the game. For this game, a folder is created under "My Saved Games", with name "Alys Save Games".

What operating system are you running, is that Windows XP?

[sthomannch]

Crimson Wizard: No 7, but in a virtual machine. I will reinstall the game and also check on some libraries. Thank you very much.


Update: Tried it on another machine and finished the game. Especially the lat part was hillarious! Almost fell of the chair :-)