Okay this was a late night idea you get as you're about to sleep so bear with me....

I haven't got much yet but I figure maybe some of us could work together on this. So I was thinking about some sort of metroidvania puzzle platformer type game. You play as Hypno-tan and solve puzzles and defeat enemies, one of the main mechanics is changing abilities by self hypnotizing and kinda transforming. I want it do be story driven as well with some fun dialogue, maybe relate it to the comic thing too.

I don't know.... I figure I could at least get some feedback on if this is even a good idea if I post about it. Well anyway here's a sketch of Hypno-tan I did while thinking about this: i.imgur.com/XgSDtdx.jpg

A game would be tons of fun to work on! I wish I wasn't so busy and poor, I'd focus more time on stuff like this, like writing for it. Writing for the comic has been loads fun, I'd expect the game to be the same.

It would have to be carefully designed in two respects: first in gameplay fundamentals and secondly in terms of fetish content.

For gameplay, i'd look towards the Shantae series, which is action-platformer with a bit of exploration (closer on the spectrum to platformer than to Metroid, but with some involved combat and treasure-hunting) and also involves a transformational element.

Secondly, however, to make a hypno-game that really sings, you need to have it be full of peril not of death, but of corruption and enslavement. Each of these transformations, perhaps, not types of self-hypnosis, but the influence of magical sprites Hypnotan has contracted with; sprites who do not care especially about her well-being but have a deal to follow through upon. Overuse of these powers will lead to a game-over as she becomes permanently transformed and enslaved to one of the sprites in question.

On the matter of "death," health should not be a matter of hit points or physical damage, but entirely a matter of willpower. Hypnotan's skills are psychic in origin, so "damage" she takes leaves her body unscathed but her mind just a little weaker. Traps include hypnotic gas, bewitching pollen, rivers of mind-melting ooze, enemies who can attack with an enchanting glance as readily as a spear.

The player, too, is tempted to game-over. Perhaps aside from the "corruption" element of her transformations, each world has a boss figure who will find and enslave Hypnotan should she fall in their domain, and you get a little text-and-picture story of Hypnotan's fate, which are collectible and re-viewable at the player's leisure.

Those are some excellent ideas Ogodei-Khan.

I have definitely been influenced in the side gameplay by the Shantae series so I'm glad you noticed that. The whole matter of how to do game overs and damage is perfect, it's what I was looking for. Each boss could be theme around a type of mind control too. I'm not 100% on magical sprites but it does make more sense and the mechanic behind it is really good. Perhaps it's not the sprites that would enslave her but rather they weaken her mental state unintentionally even though they want to help, it'd be less conflicting with the whole stage boss thing. I suppose a basic story outline would help define how the mechanic works a little better, something I'll have to work on.

I'm glad that the response so far has been positive.

Before the game begins proper, Hypno-tan is captured within an orb that puts her to sleep and teleports her into a dread castle on a hill. There, she learns that The Magician, the master of the castle, has plans to turn her into one of his greatest minions.

Hypno-tan by herself is powerless, in terms of offense. Like Hub-favorite Shantae, she uses her hair as her most basic form of self-defense, using her ahoge to hypnotize low-level enemies to fight off other enemies, serve as stepladders, or unlock sturdy rooms. As time goes on, she can unlock more weapons, with the capability of enslaving more types and a greater number of enemies. A pocketwatch, friendly parasites, a slave-tattoo-placing glove, hypno-beam ring, etc...

If she wishes, Hypno-tan can elect to finish off the bosses (The Magician's previous great minions) with hypnosis, rather than having her own slaves destroy them. The bosses would typically be weak to one form of hypnosis in particular, and become weaker as their health rolls down. Likewise, as willpower falls, they will become slower and take off less health/will of their own. At full health, their will is nearly indomitable (just enough to allow for a challenge/super-pacifist run :P). If they can be subdued, you may summon them at any time to assist you with power-attacks, enslaving hordes of enemies at once, or even taking chunks off boss willpower. However, they maintain the health you enslaved them at, and cannot be healed.

Each boss has unique attacks which can cause Hypno-tan to temporarily attack her own allies, eroding a bit of her willpower each time. Depending on how you swing, you can test different forms of mind control on each one, or push them to try different forms of control on you.

The Puppeteer - main attack involves minions attempting to push you into place in order for wires to secure you.

* There are several false loot-chests in his boss room, which will cause living costumes to jump out and ensnare you.
* If you are too elusive without using many attacks, a giant pocket-watch may descend from the ceiling to freeze you in place when facing it.

The Slime - main attacks involve tentacles, slime snakes and enveloping.

* If you attack the tentacles and minions, it will grow a hypnotic eyestalk that will pursue you, forcing you to automatically walk in its direction if idle. As your willpower fades, you will begin walking toward it during even slight moments of idleness, and have to hold down the opposite direction to break free.
* If you mostly attack the main body, it will split off a slime-clone of Hypno-kun, and emit pheromone-laden gas that, if inhaled, will cause you to stop and make out with the clone.
* If your minions are especially aggressive with it, it will drop crawling parasites that will force you to attack your own allies on contact.

The Siren - Attacks using musical notes that can force Hypno-tan to drop an item, walk into a trap, or temporarily remove her sweater (draining will). She can emit a sonic aura that makes backing away harder the closer Hypno-tan is.

* If Hypno-tan successfully escapes the aura a few times, the Siren will swoop in to kiss her with a move that drains HT's willpower, and refills her own.
* If you are especially aggressive, she uses her ultimate attack: a soundwave that covers the screen, save for a few hiding places, and puts all enemies to sleep until woken on contact.

The Mad Scientist - "room" type boss, who you need to fight through four brainwashing rooms in order to get to. Different paths towards the main body yield different dangers, such as robotization beams, fem/futa chemical baths, or microchip-injecting cyber-spiders. These dangers will not erode willpower by themselves, but send you walking back towards one of the brainwashing rooms in question.

The Magician - attacks using a variety of orbs which can absorb Hypno-tan or her allies, causing them to temporarily transform into various bodies/personalities.

* Utilize too many power-attacks, and he'll use full-powered eye beams on you, creating an illusory version of the entire boss room; turning it into an inescapable dungeon, or perhaps a sugar-sweet paradise, each of which saps great amounts of your will.
* Use too many minions, and he'll summon ghosts in order to possess them (with twice their original willpower), and possibly you.

Five "bad" endings will see Hypno-tan enslaved to each boss... however, depending on whether or not being submissive to any of them sounds appealing to you, you can just choose to fail whenever :P . The worst ending involves falling to basic enemies, in which case The Magician changes his mind about you, and simply makes you into a disposable minion.

EDIT: Ogodei-Khan is a mind-reader.

Something I've learned from AGDG is that it's best to know how to make a game before you start getting hyped up over ideas for a game.

*I may be appropriating the ideas in the above post kekeke

I'm thinking that's why he's looking to collaborate with people :P

We have a decent number of game design people on the site, too.

But that does sound like good advice for many things.

*goes to count her chickens*

Joke's on you. It's not appropriation if I appreciate it B)

*Floats down from the sky, highlighted in a spotlight, as he gently lands on a podium at the front of a stage, which immediately tips to the side, causing him to fall back behind the curtain. The sounds of heavy objects can be heard crashing down for several seconds before several marbles, and a trash can lid slide out from under the curtain. The spotlight blinks a few times before shutting off completely as a second set of crashing sounds emanate from backstage. He then stumbles out from behind the curtain with numerous wires still clinging to him.*

Sorry, um.. er.. I know how to program games with stencyl if that is at all helpful. ^_^;

Hey, i'm a major Nintendo fan (only have gamed on Nintendo consoles, aside from a little dabbling in Steam), and agree with their approach to game design, which is that the gameplay comes first. That's why i suggested that the theme be integrated into how the game plays, firstly, and that this relationship should be realistic to good game design, secondly. Anything too weird and the game becomes esoteric if not downright bad, too tame and its just another generic platformer.

My thought with the transformations is that they would diminish her willpower, creating a risk/reward mechanic: some scenarios are just perfect for a transformation, but you cut your current willpower by half to transform (and double your willpower when transforming back, including any health pickups you got while transformed)

Oh honey



I've been working on a roguelike on and off, so I might use some of it for classes/abilities in that.



Yeah, but if you don't limit your scope before you start typing more than a paragraph about how your game will play you die. That's where Nintendo fails a lot of the time recently, actually. They have a room full of idea guys come up with FEATURES and GIMMICKS and then they throw it at programmers and tell them to make all of it work, and it turns out shitty. Mario 64 is my favorite game of theirs and it started as basically a tech demo.

Multiplies MX + B where M is the number of transformations, X is the number of actions common to your avatar and B is the number of distinct animations accounting for unique incapacitation.
The multiplies that by A, where A is the average number of frames required by the animation in a scene. This gives A(MX + B). Note that I am not assuming that each unique animation has to be done against every avatar, in which case you would have AMY, where Y is any distinct action; =X+B.
Given 6 frames per scene, 10 transformations and a character who can walk, jump, fall, take blows and incapacitate uniquely. Then 10 unique environmental hazards that operate on avatar distinctly (B->M, B=M * 10). And add to that 24 completely imaginary unique animations - 6 of these cover a distinct action. We have 50 + 124 = 174*6 = 24+280+600 = 904.
AMY generates (5+10+4)10*6=190*6=1140. AMY is fiendish. Her friend HAMY, where H is the time needed to draw a frame by an artist is worse. Her friend WHAMY, where W is the cost of the artists time, is terrible.

Notice that the units given are in chicken eggs.

Stencyl is not a bad game design program by any means. There are a lot of bad games made using Stencyl because it's easy to get started with and some people don't have the sense to not publish the tutorial game, but that does not mean the tool is bad.

For example, here's a good game made with Stencyl: www.stencyl.com/game/play/22535

This

Professional Game Programmer here (C++, C#, Monogame, Unity and some rusty DirectX)

Professional opinion? Seems we have lots of ideas and quite a few artists writers etc. Unity would be a good choice of engine. I've had luck using it in longer gamejams because while the designers are designers you can throw together some tools (Yay unity custom editor extensions. You da real MVP) and the designers can deal with implementing them themselves.



Yeah traditional pixel isn't isn't going to be an option with lots of transformations. I know people who have had luck using 2d animations made with things like spline (esotericsoftware.com/) and spriter (www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm). Which would save a lot of time

That is a very simple platformer that relies heavily on its ~charming~ artstyle, just like every game on their "best games" section, and I highly doubt you would be able to program the transformation stuff other people have been talking about.

Unity is a pretty good choice, though.