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- Jack Of Blades
Hello. I'm a game developer with some experience. I'm currently slowly developing a game in Unity which has the following points... I'll try to be organized:
Main story: You are the reincarnation of an ancient god-like figure who was known for ruling the biggest empire in ancient history. Your powers consist mostly in the ability to reproduce with anyone no matter their race or biology. The story consists in the player growing stronger and recovering their status of ruler, and in the process, survive against those that seek to destroy all evidence of the ancient emperor.
Gameplay: At first I was gonna do a visual novel, but I found that Ren'py was kind of limited in the stuff I wanted to do, so now I'm using Unity:
Grow your power with stronger relationships: Your power is highly influenced on the amount and quality of the relationships you build with other characters, with love being the strongest of relationships you can get.
Gather your party: Relationships are not just for making you stronger, it's also to make others join you in your adventure. With plenty of races, roles and skills, your party can become a power to be reckoned with.
Breed and grow your empire: Seems like the best way to make an empire is to actually put your sweat and blood in it by making your own citizens! Breeding and getting characters pregnant will allow you to have more characters that can either join your party in the future or help directly in growing the empire.
Start an empire: Start with a single house and grow your own base into a fully fledged empire. Gather resources from your adventures to help your base grow faster.
Go on adventures: There is a main story that will eventually catch up to you, but until that happens, you are free to adventure in your own pace. You can explore procedurally generated dungeons and encounters. Explore cities and spend your precious money in buying equipment or other goods.
Sexual content built into the game: Ever felt that sex is not properly integrated into other games? Well... Me too. And I want to do something different. Sex in the game is something common and also up to the player. You can engage into sexual relationships with your companions. Maybe pay a girl to do it with you. Maybe you defeated some bandits and their fate is in your hands. Maybe you and your party were the ones who got defeated and now need to endure being used.
However sex isn't just for show. Sex can and most certainly will end up in pregnancies which can be good or bad...
Pregnancies and breeding: Pregnancies are something good or bad depending on how you play your cards. For starters, any pregnant character will become heavily unfit for combat, so choose correctly who gets your love. Then, offspring will inherit from both parents and usually be a better version of either one once they reach the same level. This means you can strategically choose partners in order to min/max stats or... maybe you end up with an unwanted pregnancy with a weak and trash partner.
Art style: I'm no artist and even though a 3D game would be the dream of anyone, I will stick to 2D art. I'm planning on making characters in the Live2D style, meaning that parts can be swapped and animated through 2d skeletal rigging.
Pricing: There is none. I really like the idea of games being free and players donating money if they felt that the game was worth their time.
I'm currently doing this project as a side thing when I have the time, however unlike others, I plan to stick to this project until I feel it's finished even if it takes years. I would love to hear what you guys think about the idea and also any suggestions for the gameplay. I'm having a hard time deciding on ways to implement fun ways for the sexual content to be involved in the game as a mechanic. Also, I wouldn't mind any help with the stuff I fall short, primarily the art, writing and sound.
I'm more familiar with Unity from the years of experience working with it. Ren'py was a new engine and even though is easy to use, I found myself kind of lost and worried about future mechanics that I would want to implement, such as procedural generation, character customization, dynamic asset creation and loading, serialized data and possible optimizations since python is the back bone of ren'py.
I ask because many games uses Unity and end up with a game that is just like Ren'Py, only without the QoL features and sometimes even laggy.
If you want specific thing, go ahead, but Ren'Py is python and can be really versatile. If you do use another engine, it's possible that some players won't try it.
Maybe let the player choose how to conduct sexual encounters (e.g. which sex acts, how forceful, does the girl climax, etc) and then get variable rewards based on how "well" they did and what they chose. E.G. you were loving and tender with her so now she's X more devoted to you and you get X more power from her bond. Or you were cruel and dominant so now you strengthen a power used for forcefully dominating people. Or you gave her eleventy billion orgasms before finishing inside her so now the kid she gives birth to will be extra powerful. Or you fulfilled her personal fantasies/kinks and that leveled up your support bond with her (like Fire Emblem) and she's more effective as a member of your party.
And of course leave some form of default/auto option for people who don't want to think about all that.
Overwhored is the story of a demon lord who can reproduce with basically anything to produce monsters. He gets defeated by an all female group of heroes and is revived to take revenge on the heroes by corrupting them to add to his harem. It fits with the general story you've proposed and provides a driving motivation to gain more power while expanding your control. Too many open world/sandbox games ignore that need for motivation to give players more freedom and they tend to be really dull in the beginning as a result.
The Last Sovereign has an old soldier gaining the powers of an ancient sex god and using it to fight back against others who also hold pieces of that power. In addition to a similar plot overlap that made me recommend Overwhored, the world building has made sex an integral part of the game's reality instead of something tacked on for the sake of porn. If you really want sexual content built into the game there is no better role model than The Last Sovereign.
Free Cities is a management game. Based on the description you're going to have a lot of management features for expanding the empire and breeding women. Since Free Cities has players running a city-state where slavery is legal and your slaves often get pregnant (if you don't give them contraceptives) it should give you a good idea of what that kind of content looks like in a game.
Main story: You are the reincarnation of an ancient god-like figure who was known for ruling the biggest empire in ancient history. Your powers consist mostly in the ability to reproduce with anyone no matter their race or biology. The story consists in the player growing stronger and recovering their status of ruler, and in the process, survive against those that seek to destroy all evidence of the ancient emperor.
One of the first things here to polish is the story itself if you haven't done so. If you're making a custom lore, try to squeeze in as much lore as you can without it feeling pointless or invasive. That way, you can get people interested in the world you've created and get people actually caring for the backgrounds of the world, characters etc.
One of the perfect examples would be Desert Stalker or Ravager which have brilliantly built interesting worlds and lore around the custom universe.
Grow your power with stronger relationships: Your power is highly influenced on the amount and quality of the relationships you build with other characters, with love being the strongest of relationships you can get.
One of nice ways to expand upon this. Meaning as relationships grow, it unlocks various ways to address your lovers. For example, if it's going to be part of the game, adding new costumes dependent on relationship. Allowing visual changes like tattoos, bodywritings etc.
Alternatively unlocking ability to have nicknames for characters.
Perhaps allow more kinkier content to be unlocked as the characters get more comfortable with the MC.
Gather your party: Relationships are not just for making you stronger, it's also to make others join you in your adventure. With plenty of races, roles and skills, your party can become a power to be reckoned with.
If you intend to have skills based on relationship levels, I'd say please don't make it boring. Like having passive of "Love lvl2: Bigtiddywife does 10% more damage, Love lvl3: Bigtiddywife does 15% more damage" etc. Doesn't hurt to have two or three like that but if everyone is like this, gameplay will grow stale.
You can take example majority of RPGM games where players try to blitz through combat just so they can continue playing the PORN GAME.
Instead perhaps have more interactive, unique abilities? Specific for their own race and personality. Say you have a succubus in your party. She is fully romanced, thus able to use her succubus specific charm ability on people to immobilize them or make them fight for you.
You have... let's say a catgirl. Instead of being able to use weapons, she instead uses her claws as weapons. The more you progress relationships with her, more furious and deadly claw attacks she gets. There's so much fun that can be done with a concept like that.
Breed and grow your empire: Seems like the best way to make an empire is to actually put your sweat and blood in it by making your own citizens! Breeding and getting characters pregnant will allow you to have more characters that can either join your party in the future or help directly in growing the empire.
As concept, this is brilliant. However, deeper you look into it, pillars will start to crumble.
1. How do you intend to explain that your citizens go from babies to adults. How are you going to explain that they somehow accumulated knowledge and formed a personality, right?
One of ways I can see this working is by MC sort of "implanting" the knowledge of his former civilization into each of the women he has kids with. Explaining perhaps that up till certain age the kids will start rapidly aging and forming their personality. If you intend to make this a more... taboo game with loli/shota available, perhaps add in ability for MC to stop this process to have young party members/lovers available.
2. How do you intend making the newly bred characters to not be generic?
One of the main reasons people play the games is the story and characters. Filling your party with "generic elf girl 3" type of characters can get boring very fast. If anything it would be utterly pointless as players would have no personal connection, thus rather having around actual named story characters.
What I'd actually suggest is having a split between new "harem" additions and citizens. Let's say that each character's firstborn will grow up and become a named, custom character. Who follows a story and interacts with her father and mother. In management, combat and sex. Since obviously if you're going to breed the empire, literally every person is going to be your son/daughter.
Then as second option, one the baby is born, you have generic option to "make them an imperial citizen". Which just adds them as generic number to an empire count.
Start an empire: Start with a single house and grow your own base into a fully fledged empire. Gather resources from your adventures to help your base grow faster.
Very ambitious, very fun concept. However... what I'd actually say would be a good middle ground would be having a small plot of land, big city and calling it a day. Instead of adding ANOTHER expansive game mechanic where you paint a map. Sort of play tall. Small, underdog empire. However extremely powerful in it's potential.
With single big city layout, you could easily make a great system for upgrades, clothing, gear and most importantly sex unlocks.
Just for love of everything. Please. It's a porn game. People come to porn games to jack off to its characters and story. Thus... don't make the resource gathering grindy. Make it short and sweet, rather than forcing played to grind over and over the same mobs just to unlock a single damn potion, sex scene or whatever.
Go on adventures: There is a main story that will eventually catch up to you, but until that happens, you are free to adventure in your own pace. You can explore procedurally generated dungeons and encounters. Explore cities and spend your precious money in buying equipment or other goods.
Sounds fun. Can get boring very fast. Because at some point combat just becomes means to play the most overpowered ability, kill everyone and HOPE you finally gathered enough resources to progress.
If you want to make encounters fun, do it more in a roguelike style. Various enemy types per area. However, each encounter rolls a dice. This roll picks a number or percentage. This assigns a random positive or negative modifier that player has to adapt to.
Examples:
- Each round, player team loses 10 mana.
- Every turn, one random enemy or ally is stunned
- Overkilling an enemy by specific amount of damage grants bonus gold (Up to a certain cap)
- Enemies have increased critical chance
- Enemies are cursed with eternal flames. They burn every turn but attacking them burns you too
- Weaker enemies but when defeated (if there is space on battlefield) they burst into smaller enemies.
etc etc etc. You can do SO MUCH with a system like that.
Additional fun OPTIONAL idea that can fuel your game's sexual content would be having a "Capture" ability for monsters or animals. However, make it relatively harder to accomplish so there is a replay value. Using this ability, if you have "pens" built inside your city will allow you to capture these monsters.
This will serve two purposes for any kind of a player:
1. Make them collectibles. Have the main character collect and maintain the pens, cells, whatever with various monsters and animals. Pushing the completionists in us to spend more time on the game itself. If you really wanna influence the game more, perhaps capturing these monsters gives veeery tiny combat bonuses.
2. Use them for sex. Entirely optional but unlocks both monster sex and bestiality. Have characters willingly have sex with them at command of the MC. Assuming they have high enough of a relationship level. This allows you to add another potential interest to your game and draw more people. Different people like different things.
Sexual content built into the game: Ever felt that sex is not properly integrated into other games? Well... Me too. And I want to do something different. Sex in the game is something common and also up to the player. You can engage into sexual relationships with your companions. Maybe pay a girl to do it with you. Maybe you defeated some bandits and their fate is in your hands. Maybe you and your party were the ones who got defeated and now need to endure being used.
However sex isn't just for show. Sex can and most certainly will end up in pregnancies which can be good or bad...
When it comes to sex, you have to be extremely careful with how you handle it. Because you can also end up with players being unhappy with how things are handles or annoyed.
Say you defeat bandits. It instantly begins the defeat fuck. That gets annoying because player has to now skip through the entire sequence. Thus, would be wise to have a prompt asking if you want to have defeat sex or not.
Then same goes for the defeat sex IF YOUR PARTY gets defeated. This goes strongly into cucking/rape territory and lot of people will be displeased if their waifu, daughter or whatever is getting fucked by some random filthy bandit. Make it optional and all is good. Even better, program a setting that disables it completely and skips right to party where your party gets revived, regroups etc.
Another thing would be - don't waste too much time and resources on random, meaningless, pointless scenes with random bandits, monster girls, monsters etc. Focus of these games should be on characters themselves. MC fucking a random bandit is neat... but not really a necessity.
Would be much wiser to initially have sexual content be centered around unlocking sex scenes with characters via relationships.
Additional thing I'd ask maybe. If i'm playing a godlike being, why is there only option to have a love path with people who in essence may be just a breeding stock, right?It's very popular among games to have two paths. One being love, one being domination. Love path being romantic, pretty vanilla.
Domination path perhaps being focused on fetishes, breaking, dominating and making characters do what you will to be done. Over time them growing more and more comfortable with it and loving it. Yet another type of content that may attract more potential players.
One small advice here would be in how you present the sexual content in the game to players or potential players. You have asked to help us pitch ideas or improve yet you haven't mentioned what you're comfortable with. What various kinks you game is going to have, what you want to do. What you're uncomfortable with doing or going to avoid. The reasoon why I ask this is because you're also on a notorious forum know for "Spicy" games. Types of games you also have access to due to the member+ rank
Meaning, if the game has breeding mechanics where you "grow" your new companions, does it means player would also have access to corrupting/building relationships with his young daughters? Or having just scenes with them?
As that completely and utterly changes the type of a game. Makes it both more... lewd but also harder to finance or promote. Although that type of content can be perhaps available as a """""fan patch"""" haha.
Pregnancies and breeding: Pregnancies are something good or bad depending on how you play your cards. For starters, any pregnant character will become heavily unfit for combat, so choose correctly who gets your love. Then, offspring will inherit from both parents and usually be a better version of either one once they reach the same level. This means you can strategically choose partners in order to min/max stats or... maybe you end up with an unwanted pregnancy with a weak and trash partner.
I love the idea of the pregnancy having actual effects on the combat portions. It's realistic, it makes sense. I do however think it would be nice to have a "toggle" for characters to not get pregnant from sex scenes. This way, you can perhaps have a character who is there to just fuck or be your combat carry.
The whole "breeding the best minmaxed offspring" idea is neat. However imo... I think it's extremely pointless? Look. If I want to play a breeding minmax game, what prevents me from playing something like Pokemon, Palworld or Monster Rancher?
Would be instead nice to simply have an "upgrade" system for the daughters where they unlock their full potential over time. This makes them more... shall we say, personal? Then the daughters don't feel like test tubes for next round of cum. But rather actual companions.
Plus you save up shitload of development time by not having an entire genetics system incorporated into a porn game.
Art style: I'm no artist and even though a 3D game would be the dream of anyone, I will stick to 2D art. I'm planning on making characters in the Live2D style, meaning that parts can be swapped and animated through 2d skeletal rigging.
3D fantasy doesn't look that great anyway. 2D is a superior choice. Lot of the models for fantasy races just... don't look good in ren'py. I'd give examples but I don't want to badmouth other devs' games as they work hard with whatever resources they have available.
Plus 2D also unlocks usage of Ai for simple things like maps, backgrounds etc. Which is a bonus that may save up some time.
Pricing: There is none. I really like the idea of games being free and players donating money if they felt that the game was worth their time.
I'm currently doing this project as a side thing when I have the time, however unlike others, I plan to stick to this project until I feel it's finished even if it takes years. I would love to hear what you guys think about the idea and also any suggestions for the gameplay. I'm having a hard time deciding on ways to implement fun ways for the sexual content to be involved in the game as a mechanic. Also, I wouldn't mind any help with the stuff I fall short, primarily the art, writing and sound.
Alright so... here's the thing. I'm a person who has supported huge amount of devs over time and what you're suggesting is frankly, with apologies, a terrible plan. I assume you work a full time or part time job on the side, right? This means you have limited time to work on the game.
Nothing prevents you from make good basis of the initial game where you start with nothing and slowly climb up. If your game is ACTUALLY GOOD and you work consistently. people will grow to trust you.
Over time these same people can help you make game development your main job. Platforms like subscribestar (which allows EVERYTHING) and Patreon (Restrictive but more accessible) are a key to such way of development.
I'd recommend you first make the base game with good amount of content. Enough that it's playable and impresses people. Then proceed to release it. Preferably at first with "normal" content so you can publish the game both here and... on the other big gaming forum site.
Additional amazing way would be to give your supporters some control and make it worth would be let them vote on things you'd feel like doing. Say make a poll where you ask what enemy type should be done first and get scenes for them. Give them option between wolves, bandits, undead. Whatever is comfortable with you and whatever you'd do anyway. But let them choose priority additions.
More freedom would be having selection of characters who get voted on to get an extra scene per update. That way fan favorites win. Assuming whoever wins, gets to be put on a cooldown before they're allowed to appear again.
For super high tier supporters, you could allow them to design or give rough ideas of what character's "offspring" aka daughter is going to look like, behave etc. Something that you discuss with the person involved (namely as mention far above if you go with suggested firstborn daughter character system).
Extremely tempting as it's elbow deep involvement with the game. Assuming you're comfortable doing it and you have creative freedom in aspects you like. However, only make it limited time offer per specific amount of people. So they suggest but you also get to design offspring by yourself too.
I'd be extremely happy to help with potential reward systems further if you'd be interested or discuss more ideas... as you can see by the wall of text.
One of the first things here to polish is the story itself if you haven't done so. If you're making a custom lore, try to squeeze in as much lore as you can without it feeling pointless or invasive. That way, you can get people interested in the world you've created and get people actually caring for the backgrounds of the world, characters etc.
One of the perfect examples would be Desert Stalker or Ravager which have brilliantly built interesting worlds and lore around the custom universe.
One of nice ways to expand upon this. Meaning as relationships grow, it unlocks various ways to address your lovers. For example, if it's going to be part of the game, adding new costumes dependent on relationship. Allowing visual changes like tattoos, bodywritings etc.
Alternatively unlocking ability to have nicknames for characters.
Perhaps allow more kinkier content to be unlocked as the characters get more comfortable with the MC.
If you intend to have skills based on relationship levels, I'd say please don't make it boring. Like having passive of "Love lvl2: Bigtiddywife does 10% more damage, Love lvl3: Bigtiddywife does 15% more damage" etc. Doesn't hurt to have two or three like that but if everyone is like this, gameplay will grow stale.
You can take example majority of RPGM games where players try to blitz through combat just so they can continue playing the PORN GAME.
Instead perhaps have more interactive, unique abilities? Specific for their own race and personality. Say you have a succubus in your party. She is fully romanced, thus able to use her succubus specific charm ability on people to immobilize them or make them fight for you.
You have... let's say a catgirl. Instead of being able to use weapons, she instead uses her claws as weapons. The more you progress relationships with her, more furious and deadly claw attacks she gets. There's so much fun that can be done with a concept like that.
As concept, this is brilliant. However, deeper you look into it, pillars will start to crumble.
1. How do you intend to explain that your citizens go from babies to adults. How are you going to explain that they somehow accumulated knowledge and formed a personality, right?
One of ways I can see this working is by MC sort of "implanting" the knowledge of his former civilization into each of the women he has kids with. Explaining perhaps that up till certain age the kids will start rapidly aging and forming their personality. If you intend to make this a more... taboo game with loli/shota available, perhaps add in ability for MC to stop this process to have young party members/lovers available.
2. How do you intend making the newly bred characters to not be generic?
One of the main reasons people play the games is the story and characters. Filling your party with "generic elf girl 3" type of characters can get boring very fast. If anything it would be utterly pointless as players would have no personal connection, thus rather having around actual named story characters.
What I'd actually suggest is having a split between new "harem" additions and citizens. Let's say that each character's firstborn will grow up and become a named, custom character. Who follows a story and interacts with her father and mother. In management, combat and sex. Since obviously if you're going to breed the empire, literally every person is going to be your son/daughter.
Then as second option, one the baby is born, you have generic option to "make them an imperial citizen". Which just adds them as generic number to an empire count.
Very ambitious, very fun concept. However... what I'd actually say would be a good middle ground would be having a small plot of land, big city and calling it a day. Instead of adding ANOTHER expansive game mechanic where you paint a map. Sort of play tall. Small, underdog empire. However extremely powerful in it's potential.
With single big city layout, you could easily make a great system for upgrades, clothing, gear and most importantly sex unlocks.
Just for love of everything. Please. It's a porn game. People come to porn games to jack off to its characters and story. Thus... don't make the resource gathering grindy. Make it short and sweet, rather than forcing played to grind over and over the same mobs just to unlock a single damn potion, sex scene or whatever.
Sounds fun. Can get boring very fast. Because at some point combat just becomes means to play the most overpowered ability, kill everyone and HOPE you finally gathered enough resources to progress.
If you want to make encounters fun, do it more in a roguelike style. Various enemy types per area. However, each encounter rolls a dice. This roll picks a number or percentage. This assigns a random positive or negative modifier that player has to adapt to.
Examples:
- Each round, player team loses 10 mana.
- Every turn, one random enemy or ally is stunned
- Overkilling an enemy by specific amount of damage grants bonus gold (Up to a certain cap)
- Enemies have increased critical chance
- Enemies are cursed with eternal flames. They burn every turn but attacking them burns you too
- Weaker enemies but when defeated (if there is space on battlefield) they burst into smaller enemies.
etc etc etc. You can do SO MUCH with a system like that.
Additional fun OPTIONAL idea that can fuel your game's sexual content would be having a "Capture" ability for monsters or animals. However, make it relatively harder to accomplish so there is a replay value. Using this ability, if you have "pens" built inside your city will allow you to capture these monsters.
This will serve two purposes for any kind of a player:
1. Make them collectibles. Have the main character collect and maintain the pens, cells, whatever with various monsters and animals. Pushing the completionists in us to spend more time on the game itself. If you really wanna influence the game more, perhaps capturing these monsters gives veeery tiny combat bonuses.
2. Use them for sex. Entirely optional but unlocks both monster sex and bestiality. Have characters willingly have sex with them at command of the MC. Assuming they have high enough of a relationship level. This allows you to add another potential interest to your game and draw more people. Different people like different things.
When it comes to sex, you have to be extremely careful with how you handle it. Because you can also end up with players being unhappy with how things are handles or annoyed.
Say you defeat bandits. It instantly begins the defeat fuck. That gets annoying because player has to now skip through the entire sequence. Thus, would be wise to have a prompt asking if you want to have defeat sex or not.
Then same goes for the defeat sex IF YOUR PARTY gets defeated. This goes strongly into cucking/rape territory and lot of people will be displeased if their waifu, daughter or whatever is getting fucked by some random filthy bandit. Make it optional and all is good. Even better, program a setting that disables it completely and skips right to party where your party gets revived, regroups etc.
Another thing would be - don't waste too much time and resources on random, meaningless, pointless scenes with random bandits, monster girls, monsters etc. Focus of these games should be on characters themselves. MC fucking a random bandit is neat... but not really a necessity.
Would be much wiser to initially have sexual content be centered around unlocking sex scenes with characters via relationships.
Additional thing I'd ask maybe. If i'm playing a godlike being, why is there only option to have a love path with people who in essence may be just a breeding stock, right?It's very popular among games to have two paths. One being love, one being domination. Love path being romantic, pretty vanilla.
Domination path perhaps being focused on fetishes, breaking, dominating and making characters do what you will to be done. Over time them growing more and more comfortable with it and loving it. Yet another type of content that may attract more potential players.
One small advice here would be in how you present the sexual content in the game to players or potential players. You have asked to help us pitch ideas or improve yet you haven't mentioned what you're comfortable with. What various kinks you game is going to have, what you want to do. What you're uncomfortable with doing or going to avoid. The reasoon why I ask this is because you're also on a notorious forum know for "Spicy" games. Types of games you also have access to due to the member+ rank
Meaning, if the game has breeding mechanics where you "grow" your new companions, does it means player would also have access to corrupting/building relationships with his young daughters? Or having just scenes with them?
As that completely and utterly changes the type of a game. Makes it both more... lewd but also harder to finance or promote. Although that type of content can be perhaps available as a """""fan patch"""" haha.
I love the idea of the pregnancy having actual effects on the combat portions. It's realistic, it makes sense. I do however think it would be nice to have a "toggle" for characters to not get pregnant from sex scenes. This way, you can perhaps have a character who is there to just fuck or be your combat carry.
The whole "breeding the best minmaxed offspring" idea is neat. However imo... I think it's extremely pointless? Look. If I want to play a breeding minmax game, what prevents me from playing something like Pokemon, Palworld or Monster Rancher?
Would be instead nice to simply have an "upgrade" system for the daughters where they unlock their full potential over time. This makes them more... shall we say, personal? Then the daughters don't feel like test tubes for next round of cum. But rather actual companions.
Plus you save up shitload of development time by not having an entire genetics system incorporated into a porn game.
3D fantasy doesn't look that great anyway. 2D is a superior choice. Lot of the models for fantasy races just... don't look good in ren'py. I'd give examples but I don't want to badmouth other devs' games as they work hard with whatever resources they have available.
Plus 2D also unlocks usage of Ai for simple things like maps, backgrounds etc. Which is a bonus that may save up some time.
Alright so... here's the thing. I'm a person who has supported huge amount of devs over time and what you're suggesting is frankly, with apologies, a terrible plan. I assume you work a full time or part time job on the side, right? This means you have limited time to work on the game.
Nothing prevents you from make good basis of the initial game where you start with nothing and slowly climb up. If your game is ACTUALLY GOOD and you work consistently. people will grow to trust you.
Over time these same people can help you make game development your main job. Platforms like subscribestar (which allows EVERYTHING) and Patreon (Restrictive but more accessible) are a key to such way of development.
I'd recommend you first make the base game with good amount of content. Enough that it's playable and impresses people. Then proceed to release it. Preferably at first with "normal" content so you can publish the game both here and... on the other big gaming forum site.
Additional amazing way would be to give your supporters some control and make it worth would be let them vote on things you'd feel like doing. Say make a poll where you ask what enemy type should be done first and get scenes for them. Give them option between wolves, bandits, undead. Whatever is comfortable with you and whatever you'd do anyway. But let them choose priority additions.
More freedom would be having selection of characters who get voted on to get an extra scene per update. That way fan favorites win. Assuming whoever wins, gets to be put on a cooldown before they're allowed to appear again.
For super high tier supporters, you could allow them to design or give rough ideas of what character's "offspring" aka daughter is going to look like, behave etc. Something that you discuss with the person involved (namely as mention far above if you go with suggested firstborn daughter character system).
Extremely tempting as it's elbow deep involvement with the game. Assuming you're comfortable doing it and you have creative freedom in aspects you like. However, only make it limited time offer per specific amount of people. So they suggest but you also get to design offspring by yourself too.
I'd be extremely happy to help with potential reward systems further if you'd be interested or discuss more ideas... as you can see by the wall of text.
I am extremely impressed by the amount of effort you put into this reply and of course, all the points you mentioned. I will have to take a look and rethink how I go about some things. You made a really good point about the min-max being a possible problem because it nullifies previous relationships.
Also. I think a lot of stuff will have to be able be toggled, to appeal to everyone's taste to some degree, including the "fan patch" which is something I was planning.
I would comment more on the other things you have commented but I believe actions speak more than words, and such I will get to work on it and you can see for yourself what things made it into the game.
