Hi! Today's devlog is about the progress on the fight system. There won't be a build today, since I haven't finished drawing everything yet!

As I wrote in the last devlog, the first build was a prototype and had a lot of sketches inside it. Obviously I need to update all the art and animations, so I started drawing with the main character:

As you can see, the main character's animations are updated now — but not all of them are drawn yet! I've been racking my brain over how exactly to do the grab attack for the player so that it wouldn't be a copy of the enemy's attack (both the minigame and the visuals), and the plan for developing this attack kept changing bit by bit. Right now I'm at the stage where I'm 80% sure it's going to work.

What am I talking about? Let me lay it out:

The grab attack will be replaced with a special attack (press the forward button to use it). At its core, this special attack will be an action that opens a minigame depending on the enemy. These minigames will all be different! Each one will have its own mechanic that's easy to understand, and control prompts will always be there when needed.

Now, what that means in practice — I'll explain with a couple of examples:

1. You're fighting the goblin girl, and she can grab your dick in order to win! You can use the special attack when she's tired (below half HP / sprite change) to grab her and "dominate" her! This minigame is similar to her own grab, and it will be the basic type of special attack.

2. You're fighting the arachne boss — you can't defeat her, and her grab can one-shot you! You can use the special attack once you've staggered her in order to escape! After the special attack you need to win the escape minigame in order to win and survive!

That's a basic example of how I'm planning to develop the special attacks, and as you can see, the special attacks you have can be had by the monster girls too! The various special attacks will only be available in the DLC, and for the base game I'll leave just the basic minigame (where you have to mash the action button quickly).

Overall I think this way of fighting is very interesting and unique. And even though I'm not planning to add a lot of monsters for the DLC, if I manage to add a dungeon to explore, then I'll be able to go all out there — but more on that later.

Oh, and I also reworked the HP system for the main character:

To make upgrades possible, I made a single heart with a max HP that can always be increased, which will allow for more progression in fights and beyond. I can even lock certain actions behind the hero's HP — for example, fucking a warrior girl who won't submit to you that easily if your max HP is too low. So upgrades won't only affect battles.

Other than that, right now I'm working on the art and the special attacks. I need to write the mechanic out better, so that adding specific minigames later on doesn't create a need to rewrite the code.