I'm now done with implementing the gameplay elements of the Mechanical Chosen, so I'm currently playtesting them as I try to implement as much unique flavor for the species as possible.  There are many, many places where it would make sense for Mechanical Chosen to use different flavor text than human Chosen, and even quite a few places where one Mechanical Chosen subspecies should probably use different flavor than a different one (e.g. those with metallic robot bodies versus those who exist as holograms versus those which were designed to be as humanlike as possible).  All I can do is try to catch as many as possible for this release, and then maybe add variants whenever other spots that don't quite "fit" come up during play.

As far as the gameplay goes, I was initially worried that implementing all the different Operations would take too long, but it actually went pretty smoothly.  The only tricky part is making sure that they're all properly balanced difficulty-wise and that they're fun and interesting to play around (my initial plans to have them all be based around blocking or allowing different damage types ended up being pretty boring to play against, so I ended up getting a little more ambitious about giving them unique effects).  From a game design perspective, this is pretty similar to adding Tier 3 Break moves to the other species, with the differences being that there's many more of them, and that their strength depends on which part of the loop they're designed for.  Mechanical Chosen always start off with "Operation Secure a Route to the Demonic Hive", then move on to one of six level 1 Operations after that's disrupted, then move on to one of six more dangerous level 2 Operations, then to an extreme level 3 Operation which imposes some very difficult conditions upon the player.  Finally, after the level 3 Operation is disrupted, the Mechanical Chosen will be pretty much completely defeated, and will adopt a level 4 Operation which actually hurts the Chosen side (such as Operation Kill Everyone, which grants a bunch of bonus Evil Energy every day).  The Operation that's picked depends on which two Vulnerabilities were broken most recently, so players who particularly dislike any given Operation will be able to guarantee that Mechanical Chosen don't use it by picking which Vulnerabilities to break.

Meanwhile, Tier 3 Breaks serve a different purpose for Mechanical Chosen than for other Chosen.  Because the unique gameplay challenge normally provided by Tier 3 Breaks is instead provided by the Operation system, Mechanical Chosen instead basically just use the Tier 3 Break as a buffer before you can finally achieve a Total Break against them.  The Mechanical Chosen's Tier 3 Break action conditions are very simple, and they have no beneficial effects whatsoever.  For example, the Tier 3 Innocence Break action, Sensor Overload, triggers constantly once the Chosen have Lv 5 damage in any trauma, and all it does is increase her PLEA level.  This might make Mechanical Chosen sound weak, but you'll need to take full advantage of this weakness in order to overpower the huge buffs granted by their level 3 Operations.

Currently, I'm waist-deep in the now-familiar workflow of adding a new Chosen species.  I always start with the factors that are pretty much the same between all the species: updating the menus, defining the different subspecies, adding any new body part types which distinguish the new species from the existing ones, and coming up with appropriate transformation incantations and aliases for each subspecies-personality combination.  That last one actually requires some creativity, but I like to get the pure-flavor aspects of each species out of the way first so that I have as much time as possible to mull over the gameplay aspects and make sure they make sense.

Even within the flavor aspects, Mechanical Chosen present a few extra challenges due to the fact that they don't fit the established pattern of the advanced species just being regular humans who awakened or developed certain supernatural traits.  Most of the Mechanical species were never human in the first place, so their "civilian names" should reflect that (though they can still have "adoptive" family members and interact with the Forsaken Bait system).  I want to make sure that the flavor text distinguishes them from human Chosen whenever it would make sense to do so.

On top of that, the gameplay mechanics surrounding the Operation system are also more in-depth than those of most Chosen species, and their planned Forsaken mechanics are quite a bit more complicated as well, since I want to give Mechanical Forsaken a sort of "base building" ability that will allow players to become very, very strong in the postgame and endless mode.

What I might end up needing to do is implement the Mechanical Clash scenario this month, which will allow players to go up against Mechanical Chosen in single play mode, but leave the campaign mode Mechanical Forsaken implementation for next month.  For any players who want to face Mechanical Chosen in campaign mode as soon as possible, the best thing to do is to start a run and play up until beating Judgment, but don't generate the next city after her.  That way, once Mechanical Chosen are added to campaign mode, you'll be able to jump right into a battle against them.

As with the other Chosen species, Mechanical Chosen have their own unique gameplay element which makes them challenging.  Mechanical Chosen represent the peak of human ingenuity, and so their gimmick is that they proactively try to eliminate the Demon threat even before the day of the final battle.  They do this by conducting "Operations."

Upon arriving in the city, Mechanical Chosen almost always commence "Operation: Secure a Route to the Demonic Hive."  This decreases all incoming damage by an amount which is pretty significant, but not unreasonable for an endgame player to overcome.  More importantly, it starts a timer.  If the Operation is not disrupted within a matter of a few days, then the Mechanical Chosen will reach the Demonic Hive and destroy it, which is game over.

Breaking a couple of Vulnerabilities will result in the Mechanical Chosen being unable to continue the Operation.  However, depending on which Vulnerabilities are broken, she'll begin a different Operation.  For example, by breaking her Innocence and Dignity, she might commence "Operation: Entice the Thralls to Betray the Demons."  During this Operation, she lets PLEA damage through in exchange for greatly decreasing other damage types.  And once again, if the Operation is not disrupted in time, it'll be game over.

As the Mechanical Chosen switch between different Operations, their resistances (and maybe some of their other traits) will change, which means that players need to have a Forsaken roster capable of exploiting their weaknesses during each Operation they conduct.  But the trigger for each Operation will remain predictable, so if you do have any holes in your roster, you can still plan around them.

This month's release has a single focus: expanding the "Favorite" Forsaken position so that the one in that position can actually talk about more than just her assessment of whether the currently-selected Commander is strong enough.  Whenever you don't have a Commander selected, your Favorite Forsaken will now instead speak on one of many new potential subjects.

The number of topics is quite high, including subjects like how her Vulnerabilities were broken (or, if they were left intact, her opinions regarding breaking them on other Chosen), her feelings about other Forsaken, her thoughts about the other Chosen species, about the boss Chosen, her thoughts on her former partners, and more.  For each of those subjects, the number of variants depending on her personality, her corruption, and her experiences is also quite high.  My hope is that this will help each Forsaken feel more unique, since even two Forsaken with the same initial personality can turn out quite differently depending on how you corrupt them and how you treat them after they become Forsaken.  Forsaken who have any traits relevant to the attitude system (currently just futanari Forsaken and Forsaken who have developed a stance toward orgasm denial training) also have some unique lines appropriate to their attitude.

I normally don't like to focus an update on just one feature like this, but the number of variants that needed to be written was very high, and this is the kind of feature that needs to be implemented all at once, rather than across multiple updates.  I was still able to fit in a couple of bugfixes and minor improvements, and a decent chunk of the month also went into preparing for the introduction of the next species: Mechanical Chosen.

Mechanical Chosen are one of the two endgame Chosen species, encompassing everything from Chosen who wear power armor all the way to outright robotic Chosen.  Their powers will test the player's ability to respond to a wide variety of challenges, and their difficulty is (of course) yet another step above Devil and Angel Chosen.  Next month's update is going to be a big one, so I hope you all look forward to it!

Click here to download.  Mirror.

Just a quick progress update before I return to work on the next release: writing up all the smalltalk variants is going well.  In fact, I'm a bit ahead of schedule.  I'm currently deciding what to do with the extra time, assuming I finish well before the end of the month.  One option is to just keep adding more smalltalk subjects until I run out of time.  Another is to just do more prelimiary work on the coming Mechanical Chosen species (they have some relatively complicated mechanics, so I'm leaning toward this one).

A third option is to move up my future plans to integrate the smalltalk system into custom sex scenes, so that Forsaken will be able to chat a bit before things start getting hot and heavy, or during natural lulls in the action.  This probably won't come up much in the short term, but it'll lay the groundwork for Chosen and Forsaken to chat with each other once appropriate smalltalk variants have been added - useful for when you're spying on how pure Chosen interact while hanging out, or to add some meat to "just going on a date together" type scenes which can work within the custom sex scene framework.  I'll just have to be careful to make sure that the smalltalk only triggers when nothing more urgent is going on - it'd be a bit silly for Chosen to start talking about their life stories and ethical philosophy while you're knocking on the door to their womb.

For now, I'll just finish the current set of scheduled content and take a look at the options again once that's done.

This past week has been spent doing steady work on the Forsaken smalltalk system.  It can be pretty monotonous to come up with appropriate dialogue lines for every situation/personality/corruption combination for each subject the Forsaken can bring up, so I've also been doing some preparatory work on Mechanical Chosen.  But I want to save all the gameplay and flavor previews related to Mechanical Chosen for next month, so I won't go into detail on that subject just yet.

Presently, the plan is for Forsaken to be able to talk about their own feelings regarding each of their corruption parameters (Hostility, Deviancy, Obedience, and Disgrace), each of their T2 Breaks (virginity and such), each potential T4 Break (including their feelings about whichever Forsaken inflicted it on them, when applicable), their thoughts on their former partners (whether they've fallen as well or they're still Chosen or they're deceased), their Distortion, their species, their combat style, and whichever of the Boss Chosen they're most interested in (with variants depending on whether that Boss Chosen already been defeated).  Of course, the Boss Chosen themselves should also have a few unique lines, too.

This is one of those systems which can't ever be definitively "complete," because you could always imagine something else that your Favorite Forsaken might talk about.  Another subject or two might even make it into the next release, depending on how much time I have left over after the preparations for Mechanical Chosen are complete.  Even as I type this, it occurs to me that it'd make sense for Attitudes (like futanari Chosen's feelings about their own bodies) to get their own smalltalk lines too - the Attitude system didn't yet exist back when I first started working on this feature.  So, I can only hope that the initial release of this feature will still be enough to make the game a little more immersive!