Post by Roguelikes4Lyfe in Feedback on various things in the game

Viewing post in Feedback on various things in the game

If you have a game with a playable failure state centered on bondage and player-as sub content, rather than a Game Over screen, which isn't scripted, you're already playing something that's really rare in the adult game sphere. Most games don't do this. The assumption by devs is that most players don't enjoy actually punishing consequences in their kinky video games. That they just want the *appearance* of consequences that's really just a photo gallery with extra steps. This assumption is fair I think. Most players probably do want that.

But some don't. And those other players want something to enjoy also that speaks to them.

I love Kinky Dungeon's bondage content, and I love how strict and unforgiving it is to players who make repeated mistakes. It's PERFECT for what I'd want in a game like this, with the only caveats being the fact that I'm looking forward to bugfixes and expansions of what's already here.

I love how there are soft-locks instead of game overs. In fact I'm still really looking forward to the permanent prison idea Ada mentioned a while back in the hope that it still makes it into the game somehow.

I love the actual risk-taking, in lovely roguelike form, of knowing the consequences that follow missteps. As I said before this means I do agree that any easy OP workarounds that make the game easy are better absent or optional.

If the game gets changed, players like me don't have the content we like. My question is, given how rare the defeat consequence content in this game is, in the larger adult game sphere, why in the world does it need to be changed/removed when there are so many players in this space who love it? Why can't those who don't like it go play any of dozens of other adult games with established formulaic content that appeals to them?

Sometimes I don't think it's clear to people that, for some players, player-as-sub content SHOULD be 'frustrating', genuinely limiting, or even downright 'boring', because all of that is immersively kinky. And it's rare in adult games compared to the dozens upon dozens of 'play as a male Dom and do 598 things to your female sub' games that are out there.

Why can't it be like the SFW indie game sphere where there's something for everyone?

anon546459 days ago(+1)

The problem is that getting bound is not part of the gameplay loop, it is a threat that ends it. So we have a game centered around bondage but the gameplay itself is about doing all you can to avoid bondage. Even just a little can snowball out of control real fast. Got your ankles tied? Whoops, now you can't dodge the 5+ bondage spells that are about to hit you. But at the same time, avoiding getting bound at all as your character becomes more and more powerful becomes trivially easy. And what do we have at that point? A bondage game without bondage. Playing whack-a-mole with NPCs that you defeat in 1-3 hits and they are powerless to to anything against you, because the alternative would be to risk a game over, and there is hardly any inbetween. If this was a 3d game with much more immersive bondage simulation, I'd understand the appeal of getting stuck indefinitely, but it's not.

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Roguelikes4Lyfe8 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

@Norn Berg

Here is another example where a person's NSFW preferences as a player make all the difference. I personally have never been interested in 'gameplay vs porn balance' as a concept in games, quite simply because I don't care about porn. Porn is boring to me and if it's present in a game I'm just waiting around for something more interesting to happen. So for me, content that actually is sexy and fun to me in a video game is necessarily going to be something that affects gameplay and uses gameplay in order to make those sexy and fun things immersive.

Playing a game with some eye candy added that has little to no realistic in-game justification and then regularly breaking from the gameplay to watch in-game porn, or even just bondage art or whatever, without gameplay significance, could not be less interesting to me. I'd rather play Stanley Parable for an entire duration of a Tuesday, because at least I'd get the Steam achievement.

This isn't to say I don't love bondage art or bondage photoshoots. They can both be amazing. But if I want to see either, I'm going and I'm looking at them, not playing a video game. A video game is a game, and so a bondage game should, to my preferences, simulate the experience of either being in bondage or putting another character in bondage, as much as a video game and developer want and can do such a thing with a video game.

I like CYOA games. I like branching paths in game stories. I like it when losing actually means you *lose* and real consequences happen, and it adds stakes and risk to playing. As someone who likes to attempt to 'get through this many levels without dying' type challenges in SFW games, it feels like a spicy kinky version of what I already know and like.

> Because it's "or-either" situation: either the player's character is reveling in bodily pleasures - or actually... well... progressing in the game.

It's not though. Because 'progress' in a NSFW game isn't always, and actually often is *not* the same as 'progress' in a SFW game. In fact a lot of NSFW games are most closely related to open-world games which prioritize experimentation and side quests in the sense that your character getting into situations that are markedly inconvenient, impractical and far outside any conventional idea of 'progressing' in a mission or hero's journey. If that were not the case, then you just have a regular video game with NSFW art and dialogue added in as an aesthetic flavor with no real gameplay changes.

Some people like aesthetics only in an otherwise typical video game, and others like NSFW content to meaningfully change gameplay in any of many different possible ways.

If you are a person who wants your NSFW video game to play just like a SFW equivalent for its genre except it has [insert sexy content here] added in as aesthetic decoration, you won't like games that use NSFW content to change and derail the way video games usually play. If on the other hand you are gameplay-centric with the NSFW content you like, like me, you'll love when games do that.

Neither is invalid or bad game design. Any more than racing games are bad game design because 'all you do is drive around a looping track over and over' (I don't tend to play racing games because I find most of them boring unless I have friends in the same room).

If person doesn't like a thing, then to them that thing will seem 'pointless'. But it's not to somebody else.

Kinky Dungeon has had these player-as-captive elements for so long now, it's clearly part of the intended vision for the game that people like and generally think is well designed *for them*. If other people don't like it, that means other people don't like it...and they're free to go play something else. That's why game genres exist. That's why Steam has tags.

As an aforementioned working person I assume that the small-ish time I can set aside for video games will sometimes lead to disappointment because whatever I play isn't my thing. And that's ok with me. Kinky Dungeon, with all of the elements seen as boring or pointless here in this thread, is not such a case for me, and many others.

I can't comment on the Discord drama because I don't spend time on the server and I have no knowledge or awareness of this "weird band of ragtags" you speak of or what sort of insult this is supposed to be.

---

Criticisms about how well a game manages to fit into its vision for what it wants to be I totally understand. I don't understand why a game's vision not being to a particular person's liking somehow translates to that vision being objectively bad and in need or change or removed, when a whole list of other players completely disagree and love the vision that game has.

I return again to my point from before. Games with bondage consequences for players who lose, which isn't pre-scripted, and is actually immersively restrictive and confining to the player's character and gives lasting consequences and a branching path for the game and story...are extremely rare. And there's a whole niche of players who love them and have almost nothing to choose from. So why in the world would we want to take one of these rare games and change it and get rid of that content and morph it into just another of a million NSFW games out there, such that *this* niche of players no longer has player-as-sub content that they like, all to grow the already-large library of games already available to everyone else? It doesn't make any sense to me.

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Roguelikes4Lyfe8 days ago(+2)

> You're basically explaining to me the very same thing which I've described in previous posts.

Actually, I'm explaining that people's definition of 'progress' in a NSFW is often not like SFW games. In essence, the very 'rules' of good game design regarding pushing the player forward to new content are looser, and even counterproductive when a player wants to have consequences that hold them back due to failure.

> current state of affairs is not what was advertised.

If that's how you feel, with the seriousness that you express it, I suggest you take it up with the dev.

On the other hand, If you want a hand in development, subscribe to her Patreon.

> I won't start on how massively this is irrelevant to Itch.io

It doesn't matter whether it is or is not relevant to Itch.io. Games have genres. Tags, labels, what-have-you. Google also exists. You look up a game. See what's in it. See if you might like it. And everybody's got their own thing they enjoy. It makes no sense to go around lobbying to change the content of games you don't like, even though there is nothing objectively wrong with that content, in such a way that other people who love that content, which is rare, will no longer have it. Just go play something else. The point of serious criticism is to point out things that are objectively bad. Not things that are perfectly fine but one person doesn't happen to like because they prefer something else. That's just a monologue on your video game preferences. Which is fine. But it's not serious criticism of this video game.

It'd be like if I go on Steam and say "Hey. Crypt of the Necrodancer is great and really fun, but I don't want to dance to a rhythm while dungeon crawling. It's distracting and annoying to me personally. Remove the music please. And stop making the shopkeeper fight the player when attacked. I just want to attack him if I want without consequence. And---"

It doesn't make any sense.

I would suggest that maybe whatever Discord drama seems to be animating your commentary might be some of the source of your ire. I am quite unaware of it, so I'm unsure of how I would be participating in it.

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Roguelikes4Lyfe8 days ago (2 edits)

> Well, yes. Since, well, intent to progress anywhere conflicts with bodily desires manifesting during playthrough. And due to formulae of proper "press X to Sex" being at hand exactly when it's needed is still due to be invented by developers.

If you're a player who likes to be, essentially, Dommed by gameplay mechanics and to not be in control, in certain circumstances, there is no 'press X to Sex' function possible that could satisfy those players. There is a fundamental difference between someone who wants to press a button to watch porn or soft porn or whatever, vs a player who wants to be subjected to in-game domination and to genuinely not be in control of it. The latter category doesn't want 'solutions' to 'fix' the gameplay they love. They want it left alone or else refined but kept mostly as it is. Because being in control misses the point. If my character has been defeated and captured, I don't want a carpet rolled out for my character and to be given options and easy ways out and shortcuts 'back to the action' in the name of sensible game design. I want to be a captive who doesn't get to progress and instead has to sit in a cell or be led around on a leash or whatever because I failed and got captured. That is a feature, not a bug.

Players whose kinky preferences don't drift into a submissive headspace will just fundamentally not get why anyone would want to play a game like that. But we do. We enjoy it. You don't have to. Your kink isn't someone else's kink. That's life, not bad game design.

> I feel like I'm too sober to explain why we're on the same side here more coherently.

In terms of not having ill-will and having good intentions for our fellow gamer players, I imagine that's true. In terms of the topics at hand, I'm not sure.

> Thanks, Captain. It's so easy to give advices.

There is no other advice I am in a good position to give. If you genuinely believe you were misled by false advertising to the point of being owed a refund, then it's up to you to pursue that with the dev, or not. You didn't pay me $10. I too paid $10 for the game months ago and I'm happy with my purchase and don't feel misled at all.

You indicate ongoing problems and drama with Discord members. I was not a part of what is or is not going on and I cannot give commentary on it. Whatever it is, I hope it works itself out.

> Ten steps forward, nine steps backward.

Not if I can get through to you what 'it' means which 'doesn't make sense'.

A - "I don't like this thing."

B - "This thing is objectively bad."

These statements are not interchangeable. They often overlap, but plenty of times they are completely separate statements. And when they are misapplied as one and the same, misguided advice is given to developers.

I don't like Half Life 2. That's right. Half Life 2. It bores me silly. I made myself finish it many years ago and I don't remember most of it. I don't care. I love Portal and Portal 2, but I'll probably never play Half Life 2 again.

"One of the greatest games of all time" and I see why people feel that way, genuinely.

If Half Life 2 were designed the way I like it, by the time the devs were done revising it it would look like Value's take on Deus Ex (2000). And I would love it.

But it wouldn't be Half Life 2. It would be some other game under the same name, and then millions of players who love Half Life 2 wouldn't have it anymore.

This is exactly the same thing.

Almost all adult game devs assume, mostly correctly, that their players want to be 'in control' and observe periodic 'action' involving pixelated humans triggered by the equivalent of your conceptual press X for sex button. That there is a strong limit to their desire for immersive roleplay, and for them the game is mostly a novelty frame around porn. Meanwhile, players who instead want to be genuinely faced with kinky hazards and be made in-game to endure genuine kinky consequences for failure do not want to be 'in control' or to have their convenience pandered to or to have their submissive/captive status be nominal or aesthetic-only with laws-of-physics breaking fantastical fighting abilities that defy all notions of bondage and its effects. And anyone who steps in to want to make those changes and to 'fix' things that aren't broken is taking away the content that those players are here for. It misses the entire point.

It is uncommon to find a NSFW game, especially outside of the visual novel genre, that isn't designed around players who want to be a disembodied observer watching 'action' from an abstract distance. It's the norm. It defines most of this space. It's hard to even find the exceptions, and when you do there's always a crowd complaining that they can't just watch porn in the porn game bruh. And it's like....they're video games. Porn is porn. Photos and videos are there for your photo and video needs. Why can't video games be used as the unique medium that they are to enable roleplay of kink in the way different people want it the same way they have always enabled people to roleplay being a space marine or a wizard or an amusement park manager or whatever in the SFW space? Every medium has its unique strengths. Why does every NSFW game need to be the equivalent of naughty playing cards on a 1950s Navy vessel?

> Nonlethal oriented combat, skill-less (and, to a degree, classless) roleplay system, lack of overworld map and more, more, much more things in Kinky Dungeon don't put it even remotely close to "traditional roguelikes" (which, if my Memory serves me right, are ADOM (old ADOM, not Ultimate... thing) and Angband clones. Can't vouch for other titles since I didn't played these - had my share of fun with most popular (or most heared of).)

- If combat were lethal, wouldn't it make this game a bit dark, considering the subject matter? I fail to see the problem with the combat being nonlethal. I'm fine with it and fully expected it before buying the game.

- It's not skill-less or classless. It literally has both prominently present in the game. You just don't think the skills and classes are implemented well. This is a separate conversation and debate. But it's not false advertising.

- There is an overworld map. It's shown after every floor and multiple options for the next floor are given based on terrain, winning conditions and enemy types.

- From Wikipedia: "Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting the influence of tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons."

Kinky Dungeon fits all of this, except substitute 'permanent death' for long-term captivity. Part of the aforementioned devious twist.

> There are no singular genres list which would be universally acceptable by anyone to date.

If that's the standard for the acceptability of a thing, we may as well just give up and go back to books.

The gap between 'has flaws and missteps sometimes' and 'is useless and can't be used to guide video game purchases' is immense.

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Roguelikes4Lyfe6 days ago

> Military grade scam

Seriously?

The entire original debate about actual game content and the merits of it has now been abandoned, repeatedly, in favor of a discussion around how you were 'scammed' by a video game whose full version is available, for free, in your browser for you to play for as long as necessary to decide if you want to buy the offline version.

Did you not know that? You could have played the whole game online for a year before you bought it.

The game has content in it that you personally don't like, and that you personally don't think fits the definition of a genre term you yourself admit is part of a system of labeling that is not universally accepted, and because of this you are now 'scammed' and this situation is like Ponzi schemes, IT job/career issues and other injustices.

If a genuinely scam-esque thing happened on Discord? Again, I'm unable to speak on it because I wasn't there and don't know the people involved.

Victim-blaming is a persistent, pervasive and tragic norm in societies around the world, surrounding any of a host of issues.

Buying and then not liking a video game whose full-version demo can be played for free, after finding that its content doesn't fit your definitions of terms you yourself describe as under contention (not universally accepted), and then me coming along and saying 'Sorry. Play a different game then?' is not victim blaming. It is not even close to victim blaming.

I'm going to level with you. Maybe some other stress that's going on in life is getting mixed into the topic of this discussion, and maybe that other stress actually fits the severity, tone and proclamations you're expressing here. If so, I'm sincerely sorry for whatever those things are. Because they do not fit this situation.

> But there's no deficit of most bewildering speculations and gaslighting attempts.

The internet has done this strange thing where it's caused people to throw around heavy, serious accusations like they're just casual words to say on a page. There was no gaslighting, there is no gaslighting and there will be no gaslighting. I don't gaslight people. I would recommend you redirect those accusations where ever they actually belong.

In the meantime I'm going to continue enjoying this military grade scam called Kinky Dungeon.

Roguelikes4Lyfe8 days ago

Also, a critically important addendum. The web version of this game is free, and contains everything the paid game contains. It is essentially an unlimited demo you can play for as long as you want to see if you want to buy the offline version or not. Isn't that the ultimate bulwark against consumer buyer's remorse?

Roguelikes4Lyfe8 days ago (2 edits) (+2)

@anon54645

See, that's not a problem where I'm concerned. In fact I'm quite glad the game doesn't play like this. If getting bound were part of the gameplay loop in such a way that it doesn't disempower you the way bondage realistically does, it's not immersive and so not fun for me. I don't like 'bondage' except you have full capabilities anyway because reasons and it's just something nice to look at on an anime character. I *like* the fact that bondage is a more realistic hinderance that makes you less capable or incapable of fighting.

I like bondage to be *actual bondage* in a game, and so do many other players of KD.

If the vision being put forth here is "let's keep the player able to fully fight no matter what but with the aesthetics of bondage added in though they don't really do anything" I guess I just don't see the point to that. Not with player-as-sub content. With player-as-Domme content sure, because the *other* characters are tied up and so sure most of that is about the aesthetics of them? But if it's your own character? Shouldn't it, you know, confine you and restrain you and stop you from being able to do things?

If you're not somebody who enjoys a scenario involving the risk of being captured and trying to avoid it, and delightfully 'dreading' the consequences of failure, it's going to seem like bad game design. I've seen this so many times with complaints about other games 'rewarding you for losing' with [defeated and humiliated] Game Over screens and how it doesn't make any sense to reward the player with sexy times for losing etc.

All of this comes down to what you like as a player. Some players like, even love the punishment-for-failure dynamic in things happening to their character because they failed/got defeated. Including things that make gameplay inconvenient, restrictive, 'boring', derailed and extra difficult. If *you* don't like any of that, that isn't an indication of bad game design. It's an indication that your kink isn't the same as someone else's kink.

There are a million NSFW games that play just like any other game except that they have sexy fun fetish kink fun times of whatever type added in as an aesthetic accompaniment that either doesn't change the gameplay at all from a SFW game, or only changes it mildly. Meanwhile almost no games exist like KD, where players actually get punished with immersive bondage consequences for being defeated. A few more are being developed in recent years, but it's rare.

So the answer isn't to take KD and turn it into just another game like a million others, it's to go play those million others and let a rare niche that appeals greatly to a niche of players exist as it is so they too can have what they like.

Specific games have a specific vision, and they should be refined to more closely fit their particular vision, rather than dramatically altered to be something else.

I agree with people in the thread here that difficulty changes so that player characters don't become OP and the game instead becomes harder and harder with time, consistently, is a good idea. But I agree with it mostly because it would keep the risk of spiraling into helpless bondage captivity consistent; the very thing under contention here. So *shrug*

anon546458 days ago(+1)

My issue is not that bondage in the game is disempowering or that it makes me unable to fight. I was not the one who brought up bound fighter builds. My issue is that once you are full bound and captured, it's gg. Getting bound and captured should be something the player would try to avoid, but IMHO it should not be the end of the world (the game). That's why I said that there should be a way the player could earn their freedom back. Integrate being captive into the gameplay, rather than having it as an interactive game over screen. You have other preferences, and I respect that, but let's agree to disagree.

Roguelikes4Lyfe8 days ago

This is why I like detailed options menus with plenty of customization, so that for example both you and I can play a game like this and both enjoy it.

With regard to your issue with the severity of the fail state, I think the bar for Game Over may be higher than you realize. If you're fully bound and captured in a cell, or a faction cell, or doll processing or a cage/display stand, unless your security level is really high, there is an eventual point where you're released as a bound prisoner who is allowed the freedom to not be in a cell. As I'm sure you've seen many times playing the game. That point eventually comes with most situations even if you don't have cell rescues on. Now of course you can still be overwhelmed by menacing enemies dominating you all over the map while you're too tied up and docile to stop it, and it may seem to go on forever. But there are usually at least slim chances for escape. Ghosts, shrines, sharp things, asking for help from enemies ("They might see you as submissive") and so on.

One thing I like so much about the punishing consequences for losing in this game is that it's not immediate, all at once, Game Over that's interactive. Soft-lock Game Overs actually take quite a few defeats before they are even possible unless you have certain perks set.

I guess I don't understand how you're getting that, because I've been captured, fully bound, and stuck for a while and eventually ended up escaping and taking down all my captors repeatedly in playthroughs. It's not easy, but it's often very possible. The situations where it's kind of Game Over are when you're bound in a dozen items, locked in a cell and with max or near max security level. Technically not a game over, but you're end up stuck for so long waiting for the level to drop and you were probably taken to a faction prison with even less visits from guards and so yeah. A lot of people will want to just restart at that point in stead of waiting a really, really long time to be let out.

Yes, I very much like that those soft-lock Game Overs are possible, and I find myself sticking with them for quite a while as part of my roleplay-minded immersive playthroughs. But since that's not your thing, you might try playing around with perks and looking at all your options in a lot of these situations. It's usually not just Game Over even when it seems like it is.

Roguelikes4Lyfe8 days ago(+1)

Oh, and that reminds me of another thing. Visits from guards. Every time a guard opens the cell door you can walk/hop out and try to escape at the risk of raising your security level if you're caught. That's where level layout RNG becomes important because if you're all bound up in everything you almost certainly will be caught unless you can get to a ghost or shrine or else lead enemies into a fight with someone other than you. This is one reason the faction prisons don't have as many guard visits. Stricter because of less chances to escape.

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