Developing a Tickling Sim Game.

[thrafec]

Hey Folks! You might know me for my art, if you're familiar with me at all 😆.

In my day job, though, I'm a software developer, and from the start of my making art, I've had people telling me I should make a game in my style. I've got a couple projects on my plate already... But I'm doing some exploration to see what it might take to make a proper tickling simulator game.

Of course, the coding I've done so far is trivial, so it's basically just an idea at this point... But the elevator pitch is this: "A tickling game that's a cross between Tickle Kuri and Madlab Tickling using pixel art, with a focus on full-body reactions." I'm planning on starting it out as a simple application that just allows you to tickle one character, one spot at a time, and have a dynamic 'mood' system that drives their text reactions.


So what makes a good tickling sim, in your opinion? What should I focus on in my development efforts?

 

[sharkattack500]

When someone says sim games, my mind goes to stuff like cities skyline or like dwarf fortress. I'm familiar with Tickle Kuri and Madlab, but I don't know if I'd call those games. Maybe interactive animations? Which, don't get me wrong, is great to make and would be very cool in its own right. Games to me have goals or objectives, usually involve resource management, maybe a story or some context. To me, these are the things that make a game fun and interesting. Sorry that's not really specific, but I honestly am not sure what you are trying to make.

 

[thrafec]

When someone says sim games, my mind goes to stuff like cities skyline or like dwarf fortress. I'm familiar with Tickle Kuri and Madlab, but I don't know if I'd call those games. Maybe interactive animations? Which, don't get me wrong, is great to make and would be very cool in its own right. Games to me have goals or objectives, usually involve resource management, maybe a story or some context. To me, these are the things that make a game fun and interesting. Sorry that's not really specific, but I honestly am not sure what you are trying to make.

I get what you're saying...

I suppose I should say that I'm, at first, making an interactive animation that's tied together with a reactive dialogue system. What is a bit confusing is that I intend for the app to be a mechanical sandbox. Like different tickling approaches will drive the lee into different emotional states, driving different dialogue options... But ultimately you are just progressing through a flow of different animations.

But through that sandbox I'm trying to simulate tickling, right?

Definitions aside, hopefully that gives a better idea of what I'm trying to make.

 

[sharkattack500]

Isee I see Isee, now it's all coming together in my head.

So it's like the "interactive buddy" of tickling if you've ever heard of that old flash game. The premise of that was you beat up a orby figure to get money, you used the money to buy new weapons or cosmetics, which you then used on the figure, rinse and repeat. I suppose you could do something like that, but instead of weapons, you buy tickling tools, poses, etc. Maybe you could have different ticklees with different objectives (get to a certain state, dress them in a certain way, etc) to unlock things. Achievements are always nice (use a feather 10 times). Special animations for completing objectives?

That being said, the real fun for a simulation is, in my opinion, the creativity and the ability to experiment. The more interesting the tickling tools, the scenarios, the better. Some random girl sitting in stocks with feathers, hairbrush, blindfold, gag, BORING. Give me a tomb raider hanging onto a vine, where you can send scarabs and summon the spirit of an egyptian princess to tickle them. The reward scene happens after they fall into some tickly doom. Build an environment and let the player experiment. Maybe summoning a succubus to tickle and a horde of mini goblins isn't such a good idea because the goblins just end up tickling the succubus? Have the player's choices do something fun and interesting. I don't know, come up with something better, but hopefully I've got my point across.

 

[thrafec]

Loads of great ideas in there, actually. Like gating specific tools behind achievements, summoning characters... Reward scenes... All will take significant development time, but I think they'd be worth it!

Thanks man! You definitely got your point across.

 

[sharkattack500]

Saw your first upload, it is smooth and polished. The animations are great, the UI is intuitive. That being said, since you are looking for feedback:

General

• Could use some more explanation, maybe hover tooltips. ex. What is the difference between green and yellow hands?
• I got the "armpit" text when tickling the bellybutton
• Spot indicators are very small on the upperbody.
• Consider a web version? I don't really want to download a new exe every two weeks.

Gameplay

• An interesting mechanic could be that she is using her magic to block certain parts and as you tickle, she loses focus and new spots open up?

 

[thrafec]

Awesome! Thanks, man!

Good thought. The green and yellow hands change from 'gentle' tickling to 'moderate' tickling, each with their own animations.
That's a recurring bug, been getting lots of reports on it. I'll be looking into that!
Fair enough, easy fix!
I'll look into that. Shouldn't be too hard, I don't think.

Love that idea. I'll see how things play out. I'd love to do something like that, though.