[dessgeega]

[dessgeega]

there's this pretty amazing flash platformer that is by all appearances a perfectly normal if not very good platform game until about halfway through when you get swallowed alive by a giant plant (sans clothing) and have to press the right sequence of buttons to escape the plant's ever-tightening insides before you are digested.
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[dessgeega]

the one where the boss of every floor is a domme and if you defeat her you get to TURN THE TABLES ON HER in a graphic scene? the random encounters were far too hard for me to even reach the first boss.
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[dessgeega]

lightning warrior raidy's in english now? that seems like a good excuse to replay it.
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[dessgeega]

so, dungeons and discipline*: lightning warrior raidy.

raidy is a bare-assed sword-for-hire who has happened upon a town whose young women have all been taken by monsters from a nearby tower. armed with the power to channel lightning through her sword, raidy sets off to succeed where the men of the town have failed and rescue the captive women.

in the tower, the game plays like your average wizardry-style dungeon crawler: you explore a maze of empty rooms, occasionally being accosted by one of the lady-snatching monsters. the monsters actually happen to be women attired in such a way as to suggest whatever creature they're supposed to be: for example, the minotaur has horns and a cowbell around her neck, and the were-bat is upside down. when you defeat the monster, her clothes are either destroyed or knocked-asunder, and in some cases she masturbates with her battle-axe.

these battles are either effortlessly easy or impossibly hard depending on whether or not you've grabbed the power-up (either a new sword or a stronger piece of armor) from the previous floor, which involves finding the key hidden somewhere on the floor and using it to open the door guarding the treasure. this is really just a matter of spending time exploring, because by the time you're done with the floor, as i've said, the battles are easy, and you'll have found the map (you have a map in the upper corner of the screen, but it neglects to show you where the walls are until you find the right chest about halfway through the floor).

(incidentally, the first few battles of the game are of the "impossibly hard" type, until you level up your first time. you start the game with ten healing potions, which should get you to that point.)

in the middle of each floor is a room where the boss resides. what happens when you reach that room follows this formula: raidy stumbles upon the boss tormenting one of the captives as suits her particular kink (the floor one boss likes whips, the floor two sorceress likes to fuck girls with her magic staff while her pet cocksnake molests them). you're given a menu with the options "look", "talk", and "fight", but you're required to exhaust the look and talk options before you can choose to fight.

what happens next depends on whether or not you've discovered the boss's weakness: somewhere on each floor is a cell full of prisoners, and if you find and talk to them, they will reveal the boss's secret weakness. if raidy doesn't know the boss's weakness, the boss will instantly dispatch her and introduce her to life as her new plaything with a graphic scene that culminates in an orgasm and a game over.

if raidy knows the boss's weakness, the battle will begin the same as any other. when the boss has lost enough hitpoints, raidy will suddenly strike her weakpoint, causing her clothes to somehow disappear and rendering her helpless. she surrenders, and then follows another graphic scene where raidy strips the boss, ties her down, and teachers her a lesson with her own implements of torture. raidy frees the captive, who in turn frees the other prisoners on the floor, saving you the trouble.

now you can climb the staircase to the next floor - which is invisble until you step on the space it occupies, by the way. same thing with treasure chests, so if you find an empty 2x2 room (and you will), you're going to want to actually walk inside it.

the interesting thing is that while the smut is the draw of the game and the goal, there is an actual game here! a bland one, but imagine if it wasn't. what if it was actually attached to a compelling game? i think i smell a project.

* greg costikyan used this phrase before me.
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[dessgeega]

we get it, dais: you're boring. you don't need to troll every sex-related thread to convince us how Beneath You this all is.
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[dessgeega]

oh, i think raidy is more interesting in concept than in execution. but there are little hints that the videogame medium could explore seduction in a way that is entirely unlike the way it is presented in other mediums. the boss encounters aren't just text dumps (though there's plenty of text, and plenty of dump); you're given three options, "look", "talk" and "fight".

when you talk to the boss she guides you through a small enactment of roles: "girls do not often come to me of their own accord." "i've come to defeat you, monster!" "i like your spirit. you'll make a fine pet." "p-pet? never! have at thee!" if you talk to her more she will continue to goad her into fighting her, until you pick "fight".

at which point the game will switch to the typical "battle display" familiar from the random encounters, and the boss will almost casually dispatches her secret weapon that renders you helpless, cackling at how you've stepped into her trap and created the outcome she expected all along. you stepped into the trap. you clicked the button, knowing the outcome.

in an abstract and limited way, it is almost like seduction. it is different than simply reading text (even though that is MOST of what you're doing); the nature of the medium demands a COMPLICITY from the player that isn't present in the same way in other media. raidy doesn't tread very far down this path - that's not its goal, after all - but it hints that such possibilities exist: to use player agency to engineer a more compelling presentation of seduction.

i've often compared the way a game author guides the player through a game to the way a top guides a bottom through a scene. and though raidy is far from the best example of either smut or videogame, the POTENTIALITY of applying that dynamic to an actual representation of flirtation and seduction is something that deeply interests and excites me. hell, i've been playing with the concept in my own games for a while now.
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[dessgeega]

also, domme restaurant intrigues me. tell me more.
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[dessgeega]

[dessgeega]

that reminds me of my two favorite attempts to document the subject, luckykiss xxx and snow blossom house, both by anne-marie schleiner.
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[dessgeega]

[dessgeega]

thread needs less self-righteous prudes telling the rest of us what are and aren't legitimate avenues for us to experience our sexuality
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[dessgeega]