itch.io

Wait, so current game version was made with C3? Yay! Glad to see that it's still alive and kicking.

(and transfer to GoDot is even better! Hmmmmm, one more reason to ponder GoDot modding...)

That last option in list of topics to "ask about job" in Brothel.

It's not Godly Frank Xenodochial Positive (sic!), is it?

I swear, I'm playing smut and smut-like games in English since late 200Xs, worked alot in English-first companies - and it's the first time ever I've bumped onto this acronym.
Maybe it should be reworded into something encounterable more often.

(this - or my English is not even B1 anymore)

That's noble words!
Hmmmmm, let me think a little...
Do note that while I can assess current state of affairs, I can't peek into your plans. So most things I'll say are HOPEFULLY taken into account, will become irrelevant soon or otherwise void and null.
I think that I'll leave it here in the open, since it's more or less universal set of problems. Gamers develop seldom. Developers are gaming seldom. And neither is a qualified seller. Might come handy to someone eventually. Which will be for good for everyone, eventually.

I as avid gamer am tired of looking for what to play next.
However, each and every single publishing platform I came across is busy shooting themselves in the foot in this regard.
Yes, Steam included. I can dredge Steam for hours, using third-party tools even, and find nothing - just to bump at something relevant few days, weeks, months even later. My year's best purchase there was made by a sheer accident - and that's for me, knowing EXACTLY what I'm looking for.
(for historical purposes, it was Steam version of Card Artisan. Masterpieces like this pop in once a decade. And I wonder why can't I find it at both Steam and Itch regardless of how hard I try. . .)
You wrote: "no tricky algorithms will define how your customers will find your games".
It MAY work while your games catalogue is slim.
Unfortunately, even curated catalogue tends to get very bloated very soon. Some means for automatization will be necessary.
How to solve this?
Well, I see that you are no stranger to AI.
And developers will give you enough material to categorize your catalogue: game screenshots.
And since every genre / subgenre tends to use similar patterns in its UI building...
(and if the developer supplied you with arts-only no-UI screenshots... do he really want to be discovered?)
Genre/subgenre separation is a problem - however, I've bumped onto one very good example of almost-scientifical game genres classification few decads ago (do note that it's in Russian - but it's exceptionally well-written, your favourite translation software should process it well).
Fiction genres (which are supposed to cover sorting things outside of gameplay genres) are, on the contrary, relatively well standartized...

If the problem above is solved, then
I as potential game developer with big ambitions am tired of constantly discovering new hoops to jump through.
Whatever your publishing process will be, I need it all in a step-by-step guide in a singular place.
From developer account registration to getting actual cash.
If it's too big for a step-by-step guide, then... maybe it's time to revise this process?
Fair Revenue Split and Copy Protection are nice - but what's the point in it if I am not sure if I'll be able to make it to actual income?
If games discoverability was a mere contest in shooting in the foot, then transparency of publishing process is a damn feet poaching!
Like, when our local... hehehe... small indie social network decided to become a... hehehe... small indie game publisher, they were so inclined to become first on market so they've COMPLETELY forgot to share ANY publishing process description with actual indie game developers. Even right after government-level nation-wide announcement: Yes, We're Open For Business Now!
Yes, I've spent hours (days even) looking. No publically available information found.
Then they've reported to shareholders: hey, we did the thing you wanted but... noone's coming to publish games with us!
(except some military grade shovelware from people with no creativity and abundnance of free time to get this stuff sorted. Of course it flopped hard)
As of here and now, I find it bewildering to see that, all of a sudden, players have to ask developers why, for example, some games had to be double-listed. Let's pretend that I'm still eager to pay for stuff like that. Aaaaaand, it's shadowbanned. Noone can get my money. Uncool.
If things like this are unavoidable, these must be stated explicitly for BOTH PLAYERS AND DEVELOPERS ALIKE.
But I still don't see any intel on this even in a dedicated FAQ entry for developers. If it's allowed but not discoverable - then it's not allowed. That's simple. And things like this Should Not Happen.

That's the skeleton. The two-piece cornerstone which will hold everything else. Without it, other decisions won't help you descend above others.

Oh, and one more thing.
If you're planning to get a grip on some indie games, you'll bump onto "pay what you want" monetization scheme eventually.
You see, can't tell about WHOLE world of indie game development, but here in our country there is a roadblock called "necessity to make legal entity for almost all commerce oriented activities".
It's an absolutely humongous can of worms.
Since I've never had enough time to breach through the question above, I didn't pondered this financial/juridical sophism enough YET.
Two things I know for sure:
1. Making a dedicated legal entity consisting of me alone is completely out of question. Our SIMPLIFIED taxation policy is difficult to navigate through even with full crew of accountants and lawyers and consultants. I as lone developer can't afford that in this specific point of time and space. And I've seen enough people getting disproportionally big problems by trying to go legit.
2. There IS a definition of DONATION in our codex of laws, which de jure allows your average John Doe to receive monetary tokens of appreciation of their work (and personality, probably). With official taxation and stuff. Which 100% fits "pay what you want" monetization scheme, if cooked right.
As of the latter, I'm 110% sure that I'm not the one with this problem/interest.
But I don't see even a list of potential cash transfer reasons to choose from on any platform supporting cashing out one's earnings.
Which is a HUGE thing. Since if I can't get cash transfer with legally appropriate transfer reason - then I'm in trouble. Big trouble, if taxation oversight responsibles would spot it. And I do NOT want any risks of this kind. I can't afford that. Period.
Not mentioning that every Bob, Locke and their pet rock tend to resort to having only PayPal (which still doesn't allow RECEIVING funds for residents of quite a lot of countries) as a sole cash out option.
And only very few sites support general purpose "man, I love what that guy is doing. Here, he can have my money" type of transactions, on top of that.
But, alas, monetization topic is as infinite as humankind's stupidity.
Infinite - yet it needs some simple solutions, if you hope to attract people from countries where personal accountant is a luxury.

...I think it's enough for starts.
Specific HOWs depend on what you have available.
It's WHYs that are important in given set of circumstances.

It's not much, since I'm in a sort of indefinite retirement from IT. And my skills are degrading faster than I thought.
Still, hopefully, SOMEONE would find this message in a bottle eventually.
The treasure awaits the determined.

> Our goal is to have a marketplace able to let gamers explore and discover new games they want, both indie and commercial, instead of brutally forcing them to buy what is currently trendy.

Noble goal.
Naive goal.
VERY naive goal.
Especially for someone who don't even have newsletter pop-up working properly.

I'd consider joining the tribe.
If (big IF) I'll believe in seriousness of your intents.
Which is unlikely, given what I currently see there currently.
And since most damage has been done already at clumsy preplanning.

Don't get me wrong, I have no intent nor desire to berate you or make you feel bad.
I just...
I worked in IT for 10 years.
I worked with people for 18 years total (IT included).
I just don't see any signs of success for this project.
And I highly doubt that my advice would be of any use at this stage.

(don't want to listen to me?
Riddle me this: if your venture was a threat to create a successful Itch.io contender, then why local moderation left your theme be?
Maybe - just maybe - I have some good advice to tell you?)

You're the first one to mention rape kinks in this sub-thread. As a matter of fact, in whole thread. What's this information doing here? Are you responding to right theme? And, by the way, do you understand that normalization of rape fantasies is not something that should be allowed since it creates too many complications for us fully-consensual people?

Oh, you don't.

You've failed your Reading skill check.

Try rerolling it.

Something is not quite right with Linux build. While I can download it through website, it can't be downloaded with itch.io's official Linux app. It doesn't even pop in in versions choice.

Well, Super Deepthroat the Videogame is how many years old? Ten? Fifteen?

And you've basically resuscicated this niche with quite interesting concept!

Keep it up!

I believe it's not quite developer's choice.
Videogame publishers (and not only them) are having very special requirements in regard to that.
Which leads to exceptionally silly situations like "Some moderator thought that one of the hand-drawn doodles made by (known in our lands) artist on stream featured non-consensual content so whole channel got demolished. On PornHub."

Welcome to Alpha version. Game mechanics are not set in stone yet.

Good news: unless it's some bullshit like regrowing Crystal locks, it's all manageable.

If you want to reach NG+ by legit means, consider fire mage focused on free casting stuff. Yes, upcasted fireballs with 0 manacost. Check Wizard's learnable perks carefully. And don't equip things which you don't need. Don't open purple chests. Kill ghosts on sight.

On a tactical level... Don't get cornered. Don't accept quests unless you've uncovered whole level map. Don't accept more than one quest at a time. And yes...

> Should I accept quests (looks like a pretty bad idea when they bind me into doll gear on the first dungeon level)?

Un-select Bound Crusader perk in pre-session perks selection. And don't you even dare to touch kinky game mode button (which is below normal and perk selection buttons).

> Is capturing generally the preferred way of defeating enemies?

Yes unless you're planning to use Summit (player base). If you won't personally wrap every prisoner like a christmas gift, they tend to escape. Which might turn your player base into an Apocalypse grade battleground. Since Summit is generally useless, not much of a problem.

Oh. So THAT's how it all started. Awesome!

Golly... This animated wishlist cover scared me shirtless... Was too accustomed to it being static...

У меня в стране тоже нету PayPal. Но как-то же я её смог купить. О чём жалею - но тут и так тема доверху загажена, незачем дальше флудить. Увы, KD - не Loop Hero, автор которого, помнится, очень сильно удивился, когда его игру запретили продавать в определённых местах, и сам пошёл делиться бесплатно туда, где дают бесплатно.

Ищите "альтернативные источники", что ли. Раз уж по-другому в нашем невменяемом мире нельзя. Крайняя версия с ИТЧа точно есть.

(ах, да, в 2025 году даже "альтернативными источниками" заправляют какие-то жопошники, которым несёшь уникальный контент, которого в Сети больше нигде нет, - а они рыла свои утиные кривят. Меня намедни с двух выщемили ни за что... но это тоже отдельная тема. Не для этого разговора...

Страдаем, короче)

Copilot's responses look more and more like human-made...

> Which one is more important between bracing a gun and fighting on the web? Both. 

Are you even an adult?

Help itch.io find better payment gateway options. It'll have more positive impact on more people.

There are too many dope-heads-with-power to chase in the world, unfortunately.

If, by any chance, you DO have a will and a strength to "raise awareness", there are ongoing wars in the world. It's... you know... at least SLIGHTLY more important than yet another ruckus related to videogames.

> Share. Everywhere.

Not your personal army, bud.

> He's behind what happened lately, and there's also a video and other proofs mentioned.

Yes, and Hitler alone holds La Responsibilite (<- Disco Elysium reference) for what Germans did.

Now, remind me, why are you spamming random links from Reddit here, backed by AI video and some screenshot?

And, more importantly, which alternatives YOU offer? Which good deeds YOU done to mitigate impending catastrophe?
You can stand here pretending to "help" by "raising awareness" in the middle of the system is about to crash. Sober people would prepare to evacuate from the ruins or help those caught in the aftermath.

NLCH's idea is right, however, it's tad more complex than "you give a company the right to dictate what you can or can not consume".

Raw biology and common sense dictate that social superstructures have to care about members of said structures (citizens) propagating successfully. Said social superstructures' populations will dwindle otherwise, and superstructures themselves would gonna disappear as a result.

Inappropriate porn (guro, pedo, bestiality, whatever glorifies unhealthy sexual intercourse) affects these matters directly.

Payment gateway providers, for some reason, got sick of this bullshit and pulled the plug so hard so even Steam (with all their indifference) was shaken a little. Despite them [payment providers] not giving a damn about anything but profits. Something bigger scared them, apparently. Which is weird to see - however, it's only about 1/2 of the real problem. And it - believe me or not - is a lesser half.

Now, this probably will gonna have me permabanned here too, however, I'll take a liberty to tell about second half of the problem without self-censoring things too much. I'll damn explode otherwise. This thought is pestering me since one of Patreon purges of 2018, time to spill it a little.

The second half of the problem is that you can't just ban things blindly.
You have to provide alternatives.
Reasonable, sensible alternatives.

Example from our grim past: various sexual deviations were banned in Germany in late-to-middle of past century.
HOWEVER
An alternative was offered. As a matter of fact, more than one, unified by a singular relatively sane idea.
A culture of appreciation of healthy human body. And an encouragement to give birth to healthy children.
Do note that I refer to this specific point of space-time as an example of a right IDEA about "how and why should we deal with porn". Not as an example of right EXECUTION of said idea (since it's obvious that the execution was shite and the world would be a bit better place if all that shite wouldn't happen).
Yes, current carpet-bans of payments to prawn creators puts the author(s) of this idea well below German politicians of 193x. Simply because payment ban initiators didn't offered any sane alternative AT ALL.

> Then it's LGBT content, because it's almost sexual anyways.

Please stop dragging LGBTQ+ into this.
Structures which support this stuff officially deserved this specific predicament by doing everything to make healthy relationships between heterosexual people viewed as a deviation.
I'll probably change my mind once I won't have to guess the gender of displayed person in whatever new porn piece of "art" ended up on my desktop. I have to guess too damn often nowadays.

> or- if you’re purposely equating an act that is equivalent to entering a random phrase into a search box

I'm too drunk to explain morep recisely why "entering a carefully premeditated prompt" is not equal to "entering a random phrase into a search box". Especially to a person which does not know jack about euther AI prompt engineering, or how more or less decent AI actually works, or how actual game design works.

As of AI part, I recommend getting acquainted with "Golem XIV" by S. Lem . That's a nice starting point for getting rid of any AI-related ignorance in human beings (or devolved species pretending to be ones).

For game design... http://lki.ru/text.php?id=192 is the best crash course into game design I know - however, it's available in Russian only.
I don't know any alternatives in English which would be both as short and as informative yet. Any clues on such are much appreciated.

There's a lot of steps between "holy shit, I have a nice idea for a game" and "I've played this game and it was actually quite nice!" - steps which could be done differently, with different tools.
You can keep copium'ing in human-made AAA slop (and/or human-made indie shovelware).
Or you can embrace all benefits of acceptine "if you can't see the difference then what's the difference?" (contributed to RoninPawn) paradigm and enjoy good products made by able people with the help of AI...

...oh, wait, you didn't even tried the game by OP.
So, what makes your "opinion" different from generic trolling if you don't even know a thing about the game-in-question?

You didn't even bothered to understand my response in the first place.

What a regretful sight.

> Entering a prompt into a generator is not “making a game”.

Nor is coding.

"Making a game" is, among other things "planning its structure".
If planning was so good so, once used as a prompt for AI, it resulted in a satisfying game - who cares then?
"Planning" is an important part of the "making". And there are too many games around, which were made without any plan whatsoever. With predictably low quality of resulting game-containing coding product.

> Why do so many people want NSFW games? 

You've skipped biology classes, did you?

Living entities (Homo Sapiens Sapiens included, unfortunately) have to procreate somehow. They'll accumulate stress otherwise. Once enough stress would gonna accumulate this way, sais sapient sapienses might start having weird sprees of inappropriate behavior. Simply because procreation is in our nature - and our instincts don't give a rat's ass about circumstances being highly incompatible with raising able and happy children (in this specific statement I mostly refer to my country - however, many people worldwide might relate to this for similar reasons). And sometimes our instincts are way stronger than our reason AND local laws combined.
If biology is not an authority - have a looksie at real-world communities which, for whatever global enough and strong enoughreason, have banned everything except sex with purpose of conceiving a child. Then think again. I had an intent to refer to a specific (quite huge) community - however, I already got permabanned with a reason "[OMITTED]phobia" for doing so in one (thanks goodness it's not itch.io) and I'm not quite eager to tempt fate again... yet. We're all adult people here (if you're still a little angel, leave the room. We'll be glad to see you again once you're an adult) and we all probably understant which group I'm referring to anyway.

NSFW art (games included) is a nice way to fend off some stress built up by said biological urges and bodily demands. With or without having specific interactions with one's body. Sometimes even sheer visual appreciation of tasteful enough beauty does wonders.

Like, I in sound mind understand that sometimes even best of us have animalistic urges of inappropriate.
I work with people. I'm working with people for 18 (eighteen) years.
And I never did ANYTINHG incriminating to any of my colleagues and clients - thanks to timely and carefully measured usage of porn. Despite being surrounded by beautiful ladies much more often than I can afford urge-wise.

> Are pornographic games really that appealing?

Most are not. Quite the opposite usually. Too many fetishes, too many developers trying to appease everyone at once (and failing horribly)... too few developers actually respecting consumer's right to skip things said consumer does not like...

All in all, porn games niche is in indefinite crisis since... for how long? Probably since Leisure Suit Larry 7 release. I don't remember any games of similar quality being released afterwards.

HOWEVER

Unfortunately, we live in times when arrogant youngsters (and leftovers of various abhorrent subcultures of internets of the past) live with "the worse - the better" motto.
Which, as a side effect, causes already-downwards-pointing spiral of porn games quality spin downwards faster, way faster...
Today's situation is a culmination of that.
Common folk couldn't get rid of content they don't want to see because this shit is leaking everywhere. And modern-day popular business models, on the contrary, encourage game developers to smear their shit all over the face of any player they might reach. Without informing them what they're about to do beforehead.
So grey suits took matters into their own hands. Surprisingly. For once, their interests coincided with interests of vanilla people.

So... d'oh...
I'm mildly confused that, instead of returning "ART" and "COMMON SENSE" into porn games, people do shittalking.

Which perks are you starting with? One of these might have something to do with that.

Step 1: equip riding crop.
Step 2: enable attacking everyone in menus in bottom right corner.
Step 3: apply disciplinary sanctions for littering liberally.

I believe people tossed into latex encoating machine have their High Profile modifiers disabled, while encased.
Needs metric ton of clicking to boot though...

If, by any chance, the offer still stands - I'd like to join fellow pilots/farmers at Steam too.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Alronbem/
It might take few tries since... *sigh* God knows where Valve hid "who can message you" settings in that new UI this time...

One of the most careful guro/amputee definitions I've ever seen. And I've seen a plenty of attempts to game the rules over the last twenty years...

Both animations and body measurements... not with currently used graphics framework, as far as I know...
There MIGHT BE a creative solution which might help with implementing all that cheese without having to draw ten times more sprites for each wearable in the game.
If (big IF!) something like that would gonna be implemented, with current textures handling it might hit game's performance startight into its bells.
In other words... everything's terrible... that's a job for graphics framework built with exactly these goals in mind, unfortunately.

> -does any skill make my character fly to avoid atack in some move

Sprint (available for anyone not slowed down too much) helps with usual attacks.
Vault passive lets you Sprint through some things through which you can't otherwise.
There's Spellsword class mod available outside of Discord, which is decently balanced AND allows doing somewhat like that, but with projectiles, as well.

You're speaking about "%FACTION%'s Prison" type of location.
Enemies you meet on main floors are either recon parties or strays most of the time.
Faction prisons? They live there. And are eager to defend their home.

I believe that prisons on boss floors are a side effect of having actual locations as prisons.
Which is good! Being dragged to some limbo, with a chance to lose some valuables there irreversibly, sucked.

"Bondage: Mandatory" exists in shrine config on game start. There are restraints which are too easy to get out of before lock expiration in the list though.
Whopping +82 Tickle Resist perk, which (as far as I recall) translates into 10% or so reduction of damage which is dealt (if I remember correctly) in batches of up to 30 per hit at best is basically nothing. And there are many more junk perks like that.
If you're looking forward to becoming wrapped like a Christmas gift over time, Minefield + Panic (Traps) (+ Panic (Chests) for a good measure) offers something quite like that. Especially on lategame tilesets, where trap tiles are exceptionally hard to see.

Me? Patreon is banned in our country. Free version gives metric ton of content to waddle through though.

It does exactly what's written on a tin. Boosts Lust meter ("orgasm gauge"). You might want to pop one if you're planning to use "Give Up" button, just to save some time.

Mimics start spawning from 50ish (maybe 60ish) level.  They can happen anywhere where common chests can spawn. Chance to meet one... about 1 in 100 common chests, I suppose. I barely meet any with treasure finding gear.

Do note that for a level 50 mini-boss they're VERY strong...

"Ask" Violet's "help".

Understood!
I have to believe the Creator. But I also believe my very eyes (and a tester's hunch).
I promise to try to reproduce it on video, once I'll have few hours (and some Energy) to spare.

While we're here, thank you for hilarious game.
I appreciate your sense of humor. Didn't laughed that hard over such themes for years.
(now I know who built first Annoy-o-tron...)

I don't think that armbinder+straitjacket = the same problem.
The game does not adhere to common sense, when dealing with playable character's bindings <-> binding slots, as strictly as it currently does with NPC bindings.
I remember ending up with combos like rigid (hinged or... whatever those rigid handcuffs are called) handcuffs + boxbinder. Which, even for immortals, is impossible without breaking few bones.
Well, that's what Alpha versions are for (<- we are here). To sort out core gameplay.

In regard to this theme's specific problem, boiled down issue description is like "bondage furniture accept characters which already have restraint-forced pose, which is incompatible with said bondage furniture".
Like getting railed by one bar prison trap while wearing a petsuit - I believe that it is still a thing. Which "as currently is" - even for immortal - is supposed to cause... barely compatible with "existing in sound mind" health condition, to say the least. But it doesn't currently.
I believe, the main cause is that "bondage furniture" is a restraint slot on its own (which is PROBABLY shared with big bubbles).

I'm fairly certain that I did learned Greatest Alchemite recipe but it's not present in my savegame anymore.

Notable steps taken which may or may not affect problem appearance, in order:

Get rid of Glace for the first time
Get Nel to almost maximum relationship
Nel starts preparations for possession training
Get recipe book for Greatest Alchemite while at Alchemy around 87 and with only 1 simple Alchemite in inventory and learn it (no recipe in recipe list yet)
Sleep
Buy some Alchemite from Lucan's
Craft T2 (Greater) Alchemite until Alchemy 100, see recipe popping
Forget to craft T3 (Greatest) Alchemite to make it appear in auto crafting recipe list. Recipes requirine Greatest Alchemite still show question mark instead of it
Loot some Greatest Alchemite anywhere. See Recipes acknowledging Greatest Alchemite (no more question marks in its place). But recipe to craft said Greatest Alchemite is gone.

Savegame: https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZfMTtZqeQKM9Gxd8FzM3TQIECCSf4yG1JX