Harem Collector September 2013 Public Release!

4Shared Link: http://www.4shared.com/file/_NJi7qBu/HaremCollector_September2013_p.html
MEGA Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!nZ5BBQRC
MEGA Encryption Key: Eci8wyKuyDTUPnbfZizy-XOvobZaje4Ov1r3UCTtKnc

What’s New in this Version: 

-Penelope’s love quest is now available.
-There is now a randomly generated quest that refreshes daily.
-There is a whole pile of additional CGs. Happy hunting!
-The entire relationship system has been overhauled.
-The various flower gift items have been consolidated under a single item. Two new gift items take the place of Moondrops and Pink Cat.
-The Flower Girl now sells two new reagent-type items in place of the eliminated flowers.
-The Northmarket toy store now has useful things for you to buy.
-There is now awesome boss music.
-Favoured gifts now grant +3 relationship point instead of +2.
-The “random” sex scenes that occur after some quests now include a relationship bonus for all participants.
-Doll’s “Defender of Life” skill now utilizes threat rating rather than a cover mechanic. In a similar vein, Martyrdom’s threat increase has been greatly reduced in order to promote granularity.
-General clothing now decreases threat by an additional 5%.
-Demon Dice now have a damage bonus dependent on the user’s luck stat.
-The ledger detailing your investments in the manor study can now sort your investments alphabetically, by dividend or by investment.
-Doll has a new sprite and face
-Larelle’s eye colour has been corrected in all her pics.
-Penelope’s face sprites should look a little less like they were resized by a thirteen year old.
-Double doors in the game should now look like proper double doors.
-The very beginning of the game now has two extra randomly-generated names and an extra hidden bonus name.
New Stuff Even If you Are a Backer:
-Improved encourage now heals a number of status ailments instead of raising the dead.

-Florine’s new art has been implemented.

Let’s Talk

First of all, I’d like to welcome longtime fan Daishi to the Harem Collector team. Daishi is one of potentially two people who will contributing writing to the game, increasing the quality of the game for you  and freeing up more of my time to make more awesome game stuff.

Anyway, I was going to write about something completely different today, and I had actually wrote the entire blog post out in advance (a first for me). But after hearing Nekochan’s comments on it, I want to make sure it gets reviewed by a couple more friends of mine before releasing it into the wilds of the interwebs. It might come out next week.

But this leaves me without a topic for this week’s post. Mental Note: prepare a blog post to keep saved in case I have to do this again.

So, this week isn’t about me, it’s about you.

So in the comments below, tell me which of the Harem Collector girls is your favourite and why, let me know who like and why you like them, and what kind of sex scenes you’d like to see them in. Do you have a couple girls you’d like to see paired together? Is there a fetish you have that you’d like to see a girl used to explore?

I’ll be paying extra close attention to the comments this week, making notes for possible future game content and just reading with interest what you guys think.

Game Reviews

Just a quick update- Kargan3033 reviewed both Dungeon Assault and Harem Collector the other day. He’s putting together a review blog for free to play H-games and related projects, and has also reviewed Overwhored.

In case you’re interested:

Harem Collector Review

Dungeon Assault Review

There will be a more normal blog post on Wednesday, so I’ll see you then.

Sequelitis

Okay, first things first- Harem Collector is now hosted at Mega.

Now, as some of you might have understood from my forum posts here and there. you won’t be able to capture all 151 girls in Harem Collector. The reason being is my original design document outlined a game that was too much game for one game. This being my first large-scale RPG Maker project, I had no idea of the limitations of the engine and my own limitations, and it seems to mean that the best thing for the game would not be creating a bloated, confused mess that runs the length of the entire plot. So Harem Collector is being broken down into five discrete parts.

Harem Collector
-Takes place in the Middle Kingdom, a very literally named place which appears to be a more-or-less productive, happy kingdom.
-Will involve recruiting about 30 girls total. For those of you keeping score at home, the current version of the game contains 16.
-There are four main questlines, which will include the Adventurer’s Guild, playing the game of houses and becoming a proper noble, saving the elven race from extinction, and participating in magical research on a fallen empire that used to exist where the Middle Kingdom is now.

Harem Collector Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
-Takes place in Kellos, a heavily militarized empire that exists to the east of the Middle Kingdom.
-Again, will involve about 30 new girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his own household, including Meline for certain but at an appropriate time I’ll run polls to see who else will be going.
-There are, again, four main questlines. One will involve joining a resistance group to overthrown the current power structure. One will involve joining a cult that worships Dragons as opposed to the Angels. The others are still up in the air at this point.

Harem Collector Part 3: Collect Harder
 -Takes place in the frigid, lawless country to the north of the Middle Kingdom.
-Again, will involve about 30 girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his own household again, including Yamamaya for certain.
-Main questlines will include: ruling over Yamamaya’s tribe as her mate, bringing law to the lawless and founding your own kingdom, as well as other things.

Harem Collector 4: Goblet of Fanservice
-Takes place on a tropical archipelago to the far south of the Middle Kingdom, across the ocean, where the Hero will be placed in charge of his own colony by the rulers of the Middle Kingdom.
– Again, about 30 new girls. The Hero will take with him a portion of his existing harem, will will be determined at an appropriate time.
-The primary conflict in this game will involve a case of colonists versus natives. The archipelago will be inhabited by a civilization of alleged “savages” that the Middle Kingdom looks down on but who in fact have a perfectly good civilization already, and the Hero will have to balance the demands of his backers in the Middle Kingdom versus the political realities of deal with the native society. Of course, this whole thing will be played for laughs.

Harem Collector 5: The Fifth One (I’ve run out of subtitle jokes)
-Takes place partially in the dwarf-inhabited, magitek-powered country to the west of the Middle Kingdom, and partially in another dimension entirely.
-This game will involve batting cleanup. I’m sure that very few of the other games will involve exactly 30 girls, and are more likely to go over than under. This game will involve however many are left.
-The primary conflict in this game will involve an attempt to colonize the setting’s analogue to “heaven”, which by this point the Hero will have extensive dealings with to the point that the invading country hires him as an consultant.

In terms of the series in general:
-The sequels are spaced apart in time, there being about two years between each. Yes, the Hero will engage in a bit of Wife (Slave?) Husbandry, attempting to win the hearts of girls that will join the harem “officially” in one of the sequels.
-There won’t be a lot in terms of importing saves. The games don’t involve any moral choices of real significance, and each sequel will assume that you’ve completed 95% of the content in previous games. IE, questlines and harem girls will be considered to be “fully completed”, but things like hidden bosses and bonus dungeons won’t be referred to.
-The Hero will keep that shitty, rusty greatsword from beginning to end, and by the time you close out the series it will be a weapon of truly immense power.
-Similarly, while the hero will “let himself go” a little between games, he will start each sequel a little stronger and with a full complement of skills that will get added to.

While the original Harem Collector will take longer, I’m hoping to keep the development cycle for each game to about a year. Game development involves a lot of of what us business types like to call “cumulative advantage”. That is, the longer I keep at this, the greater my skills and resources will become, and the better and more-quickly-produced future games will be.

I’ve also mentioned before wanting to take “time off” between installments of Harem Collector to work on different projects. This is true, and I intend at least to do something slightly different after finishing up Harem Collector 1. This thing, let’s call it Project Norn, is a hentai parody game (of course) inspired by the SMT: Persona series. So you have that to one day look forward to.

If you think I’m getting ahead of myself, fear not. Most of what I’ve outlined is from the original HC design plan, just getting properly spaced out and formed into discrete games. My focus remains on Harem Collector part one, and I intend to make tthat the best game it can be with my current abilities.

 

Harem Collector August 2013 Public Release

Public version 3!

If you are importing an old save, it is extremely important that you speak to the demon standing outside your manor before doing anything else in game.

Edit: Before I forget again, the next release is September 18th for backers and September 25th for the public.

So here it is, that big update I promised. What’s new? Well…

-There are two big, new quests! One is started from the Eastfort Adventurer’s Guild, the other begins automatically when you complete a quest after having seven harem girls.
-The first-ever freely explorable combat zone/quest area, called the Giant’s Path. is now open north of Eastfort.
-There is a little quest that occurs within the Giant’s Path.
-There are now unique sprites and faces for Lilac, Violet, Yamamaya and Chimei. Kyrie now has a new face but I’m still using the old sprite because it’s cute.
-Healbot now appears in the manor, in the reading room to the right of the master bedroom. You can chat with him to give back his old name.
-Speaking to Larelle or [REDACTED] in the dungeon should now not cause the game to freeze, die and/or email all your porn to your mom anymore, no matter what you do.
-There are five new sex scenes and a bunch of new CGs
-Having certain combinations of party members in certain places will now trigger bits of party banter.
-Chimei can now be purchased from the Slaver’s Guild market.
-The total number of Dark Seeds in the game is now up to ten, and the guy who collects them has a new reward for you.
-There is now a Trophy Trader in the Northmarket Slums who will swap your trophies for other trophies, for a small fee.
-Part of the counter in Florine’s item shop has been cut away so you can sell your vendor trash/buy stuff and then proceed through instead of exiting out the same you came in and going around.
-All skill use now clearly gives the skill’s name, to help you prepare or counter effectively.
-Tomes should grant skills to the person equipping the tome again.
-Experience point rewards for all enemies have been increased by 10%, and the experience curve as been dropped.
-The Necromanceress should now use Murder of Crows less frequently.
-The Health value of the Electric Blue Slime has been increased.
-The fucked up music that occurs in Lumberhill, the manor and the Eastfort condo has been fixed.
-The Backer Monument is current up to August 13th and the Bugfinder Monument is current up to the July release.
-Numerous other bugfixes have been implemented.
-Herobrine has been removed.
Enjoy your playing!

Progress Update

First of all, thank you for all your comments last week. Even the negative comments, because in many ways for this sort of thing playing the devil’s advocate is even more useful. Going forward, I can’t say for certain what will happen, but don’t expect Harem Collector-related merch until the game is almost completed. Even if I finish my business plan and I’m confident about moving forward, it’ll be a long time before there are any significant changes. And, of course, working on the game itself is always the priority.

Progress is looking pretty good for next week’s release. Oh, did I forget to mention that? The Backer release is on the 14th and the public release is on the 21st. I just finished up one of the new quests yesterday morning. It requires a little polish (and what doesn’t in this game?) and I’m immediately diving into the second big quest that’s going to drop. That second quest shouldn’t take as long (I alreayd know how I’m doing it, and it’s a variation on something already in the game) and as a big plus, Gurotaku already has the CGs completed.

If I get that second quest completed, I can focus my energies on something simple, like filling in the towns or something. Anyway, I’ll talk to you all next week, when some of you will get the new version and others will get teased mercilessly by mysterious bug reports.

Edit:  Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There are now Dragon Age-style banter spots in the game. When the game drops, I’ll actually release pics of their locations because I want people to find them, and let me know if they break flow too much.

July 2013 Public Release

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?x5pueafa2aj74bj

Changes in the new version:

-The hero has a new sprite and faces. This took hours and hours for me to change. If you want to know why there isn’t a big quest or something awesome in this update, it’s because of this. Fuck.
-Meline also has a new sprite and faces, though not all of her faces have been implemented yet.
– For balance reasons, Death no longer prevents characters from gaining any XP.
-Several skills have had their momentum and mana costs changed.
-The Gang Leader’s stun strike has been adjusted to be 66% effective instead of 90%.
-The drop rate of monster drop-only gift items has been doubled.
-There is a new (small) quest, started by trying to invest in the Eastfort drug dealer.
-A new character has been implemented. He joins your party outside your manor.
-The first sex scene with Meline now has CGs
-The second sex scene with Alina (currently plays after the package delivery quest) now has CGs.
-Some CGs have been replaced by new, improved versions by our new official CG guy, Gurotaku. I enlisted him because I kind of suck at doing CGs and he is pretty experienced with 3DCG and helping me out.

By the way, next will there will no be the customary “Stuff in the next version” list, because I’m deviating from those pretty frequently. All I’ll say about the August update is that it’s going to be big.

July Donor Release is Live

If you found it in your heart to donate to Harem Collector, the email with the link to the Donor’s Pack should be in your email. If it isn’t, check your spam folder, or the email you use paypal with in case it’s something different than your normal email. If you still don’t have it, email me and I’ll rectify the situation. Same deal if for some reason you can’t open a .rar.

The rest of you have to wait a week. Adios!

Game Balance By Any Other Name

So, after extensive testing, I think I’ve figured out what’s going on with all the balance issue complaints.And by extensive testing I mean extensive– a week of playing and replaying the game, attempting events in different orders and testing different configurations of characters, items and skills.

After so long testing, what I discovered is that it’s not the game itself that is broken. Rather, the game gets significantly harder depending on how many party members you have when attempting various quests. The Night of the Raping Dead is meant to completed with four party members, going through Elvo’s manor all but requires three, and clearing the orc encampment is either challenging or insanely difficult depending on whether the hero attempts to solo it.

So how did I solve it? Well, the July release will feature a new character who gets forced into your party at some point. This new character won’t have a lot of dialogue and such yet, but will eventually be a fully-fleshed-out member of the cast. I’m actually looking forward to writing for this character- it’s very much a horse of a different colour compared to the other cast members and should provide an interesting new perspective.

Again, for many reasons this will be a smaller update, but at least there will lots of new CGs. I’ve enlisted helpful fan Gurotaku to help we with making the CGs because I kind of suck at it. He has made some new CGs for the release, as well as re-made some of the older CGs that were kind of lame.

If you’re a donor, you will be receiving a new version of Harem Collector sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening.