Game Design - The Gameplay Loop of Lab Rats 2

Some ideas for you to ponder: 1) Gate some research/production behind corruption. If an employee is not corrupt/slutty enough, she will be dissatisfied and resistant to the idea of researching or producing particularly debasing serums (represented by loss of efficiency and happiness per day). 2) More random-fire events during the day (I'd love to have *something* happening every day). And have the more corrupt ones provide different/better potential results. For example, an employee might have a friend/contact that she thinks you should hire/corrupt (once she's fully corrupted herself), getting you an employee "rolled" differently to create a more ideal average result (or simply one who starts at a lower base wage). 3) Include alternate methods of making money based on corruption, like the business thing we already get for raising serum price based on sluttiness of the marketing uniform. 4) Allow the player to renegotiate wages with employees as an action (not just offer them raises). Giving a typical employee a pay cut would be a huge happiness hit, likely resulting in them leaving the company. But a slutty employee might take a pay cut if you promise sex.

Scott Snelling

My assumption from the current design is that you will have to buy the clothing you want to give girls at some point. That will eat cash quickly. Also, the sex shop suggests some other items might be added-which you will need to buy. Etc...

Aaror

First let me tell you , I LOVED this post, I learned so much. I agree , the production and corruption loops need overlapping. Sales marketing supply and HR will directly improve with sluttiness levels. Although I think sluttiness wouldn't be a good dependant parameter in this case. Adding a new parameter, "sexiness" which would have 2 aspects , 1st aspect would be "looks" which is predetermined (like fat girls would have low sexiness, toned girls would have higher base sexiness) 2nd aspect would be outfits, the sluttier the girl dresses ,more the sexiness. More the sexiness more it will add to the Sales , supply , Hr skills. Jewellery would also enhance sexiness. Secondly, I would LoVe to see the concept of "fame" being implemented to our company. Right now , buying upgrades with money doesn't quite appeal to me, it would be more realistic if we get t unlock more stuff based on the company's fame. Higher the fame better girls we can recruit, larger batches and so on. I LOVED labrats and labrats2 also looks promising . Great work and good luck bro!

I am remembering back to my days of playing Leasure Suit Larry. One of the fun games in that series was that each seduction was a puzzle. You had to gather/craft/etc some widget or accomplish some goal and bring it back to the object of your desire. With your procedurally generated NPCs, those requirements could be randomly generated. The requirements could be skill levels, crafted items, or the completion of a game objective. The crafted items could have base components that are available for purchase at the mall, and then either infused with technology in the lab, or combined with other items by an NPC that can either be paid or corrupted into providing the service. Girls could have unique requirements for each stage of the seduction (or none. Yeah random), and you have to interact with them to find out. (Some scoff if you aren’t wearing expensive clothing. Others have a secret fantasy that requires a special toy. Still others only have sex with fellow cult members who have been through a special ritual and possess this outlandishly expensive fetish item. P.S. The Gym is this cult’s place of worship, thus why non-members can’t have sex in there…)

I think the two main, overarching, things that need to be added at (A) a competitor, (B) some kind of 3rd party manipulator such as the government setting regulation on the serum for use in hospitals (impacts income), maybe the ability to have your girls "persuade" key officials. I also think a character creator would be nice, maybe as a reward for completing all achievements or something.

zombiegun71

well every loop has a beginning middle and end. the beginning sets the tone, the middle is the fun part, and the end provides a sense of accomplishment. let us break down the business loop: have money, make serum, sell serum for money. so the start is having money, which means that you are going to try and use that money for your purpose maybe? in the end for more than that this start isn't very good and needs a bit of an upgrade. nothing fancy, just some text to provide context as to why you should expand your business, which could tie into the corruption loop. the make serum is a bit mundane and isn't the draw of the game, but it isn't really bad either. i am unsure of how to make it better, so i'd focus on a good interface so that it isn't a chore that you have to spend a lot of time on. like 'Taipan' for the old apple computers, the business side of things was a bit boring, but the combat side of things was interesting, so the business side of things was nice and streamlined and the combat was involved. the sell serum for money is the end, and so the money is the payout. it goes into starting the loop again, which is good, but it needs to get you something else. the money can be exchanged into more employees, which helps with more corruption and more research so this is good. the corruption loop has the same bits, the beginning middle and end. the beginning is when you meet or hire the women, which ties into the end of the business loop. the middle is the main draw of the game. the end is what ever end game is planned for the women. in LR1 this was impregnation and harem endings to the entire game. in LR2 this is going to be much simpler as it isn't the main end goal of the game. the research loop isn't much of a loop gameplay wise. the beginning is when the research is unlocked. the middle is ensuring that you have enough resources to do the research. the end is getting the research and using on serums. so it is rather similar to the business loop in that it is a side loop to the corruption loop. making the middle more engaging might be something to try out, maybe by corrupting women to do different things while on the serum (or not) and to harvest the hormones that are produced from the act. this could be a sort of S&M angle for people, who knows. the end works well, and i am not sure how to make the start better. of course these are different than the game's start, middle and end and shouldn't be confused with them when making them.

james steele

I like this Idea of 'protective uniforms' where the starting girls leave you guessing as to what hotness lies underneath (there is good value in the art of tease), then through corruption stripping down those layers. I second the idea that outside forces (contracts/rivals/events) should heavily influence what gets researched/produced so its not a simple $ farm with one serum.

You're definitely thinking good thoughts here. If your vision of how the corruption loop impacts the business loop involves increasing profits (along the lines of how you can increase your profitability by dressing your sales girls sluttily), then we also need to have a motivation to make money. Right now you can reinvest in the business, of course, but there needs to be more stuff you can do with it. Obviously as you add more crises there will be some opportunities to drain cash, but there needs to be spending-related goals. I think this would be a great way to tie in Lab Rats 1; for $100k or whatever, the player can hire/sponsor/buy Nora's lab and have a chance to start slutting up his old friends. Having some "set piece" characters with richer dialogue than what we will get from the auto-generated girls would be a great change of pace. At some larger amount of money, we could buy Lily and Mom's employer, etc, and find ways to work serum into their diet. Outside of money, I think having a corporate competitor that needs to be defeated would be another good "business motivator" for corrupting girls. Having employees with a high sluttiness/loyalty/whatever would allow you to "attack" the enemy, by sending in your slut army to seduce enemy executives and steal their secrets, sabotage their work, etc.

Dubsington

sorry for the wall of text but i have some trouble expressing myself i already played some games where the progression part of the game is kind of completely detached from the "content" part of the game, and what usually ends up happening is that you focus on either or, depending on your mood as the player. Some games would alternate between giving the player content and tasks, and in that case you sometimes get a really fractured experience, so as you mentioned the best way is to make the game as seamless as possible and make the different parts of the game overlap, interact and support each other If i consider the 3 loops in Lab Rats 2 that you mentioned, the business loop, the research loop and the corruption loop, they somewhat overlap, minimally interact but they do support each other i guess i have only a vague idea of a standard play through cycle in this game (because i usually cheat my way through, sorry):, but i am confident that it usually goes through stages of establishing your business, expanding the production and researching new products, wrapping things up in the lategame. Now throughout the progression of the game the 3 mentioned loop interact just loosely, still the core mechanic is the business loop of acquiring resources, serums and selling the serums with a profit. The research just kind of serves to progress the game and the corruption feels like a side thing to me. The way the 3 interact is through the money system and through available serums. You need to start a base business to get things going, than you start research when you can afford it, and alongside all that you progress corruption on characters in the game. So the business loosely interacts with research by providing the funds to employ a scientist and research interacts with business by providing more profitable serums types. On the other hand corruption is kind of supported by business and research providing some means to raise production but they dont really tie in together, still they kind of support each other because corruption is easier on characters under the influence of the right serum. now i guess you wish to combat the current situation and make the game, as mentioned, more "seamless" i dont share much of a passion for creating stuff and i dont have much creative experience so i can only provide some ideas and, well, the first idea where corruption supports business is protective work clothes, where normally employer has to provide proper work clothes for employees. With more loyalty and corruption, the employees might demand less protective gear, decreasing production expenses. And when you corrupt your employees enough, you could have them work naked to eliminate damage to any employee belongings which could even make them happy in the end :D. In terms of research, your employees probably have a bit more understanding of what they are working with, so instead of trying to convince them that the substances they are working with are not severely harmful, you are trying to convince them that its ethical to work with the said substances, so corruption could be more of a pointer of whether or not your employees agree with your latest work so far i like the game, but sometimes my mind races and i think about things i would put in the game, if putting them into the game was as easy as thinking of them (basically i realize some or all of my ideas are maybe unrealistic and mainly i realize they may not necessarily improve the game) a couple of days ago you posted a link to that daz 3d store site and one of the first things i laid my eyes on was the centaur female and i spent some time thinking what would it be doing in the game, how to suggest to get it into the game (with other antropomorphs or whatnot) and finally settling with the fact that even if it should be in the game, its too soon anyway i came up with a basic idea where the city or government should work as an abstract element and respond to your behavior in the game, allowing, encouraging or punishing your actions based on your relation with them and the amount of influence you have over them. and of of that whole idea i created an idea of reputation that could work with the loops we mentioned earlier. I dont know what stats should the reputation have, but if you are a successful business, it should reflect favorably, your interaction with employees could somewhat have an impact on public reputation and research can also make or break reputation based on whether or not it is believed that you are doing a good or bad thing. and after another step of simplification i guess it can be all kind of achieved with crises and unlocking crises as you progress in the game anyway if you already have an idea of how you will progress the game i would be happy if you follow that idea as i am happy with the game and its current progress, and in the chance you find this wall of text helpful i hope it will serve more as something that will help you realize your own game (its not that i dont want to see my ideas realized, its that i would rather see the game as it was intended and i dont want to sound in any way like i want to have in the game anything i mentioned, they are just ideas that dont need to necessarily serve as suggestions but if they serve as entertainment they already outgrew themselves)

retchedegg

I think one weak part of it, is the way corporate uniforms work, there are no bad things happening if the corp uniform is sluttier than the girls will cope with, and it's also very cheap to buy up slutty uniforms :) I didn't think it would continue to work the way it is now, so I'm really looking forward to see how slutty corporate uniforms will work in the future :p

waffel

It is a shame I can only like this once. Yes, yes, dear sweet lord YES! I was hoping that the game would take that sort of direction. Having the sales and marketing girls be more effective the more you corrupt them is a cool concept. A bit less so for the R&D and production side as logically more focused individuals would give higher productivity than ones constantly finding excuses to splash water over their outfits. HR I could see as a balancing act as (ideally) your HR lady would influence the overall stat gain of your employees based on her own (IE a slutty HR manager would, slowly over time, raise the Sluttiness caps of those employees with Sluttiness below hers to match. Ones with higher sluttiness would be unaffected. Likewise for Happiness, Obedience, etc). Since you brought up my beloved Xcom: Base building/upgrading would be a fine direction to the game. Start off with a crappy 1-room apartment, a beat-up car and a workplace that is a basic unit in a small industrial park and over the course of making more and more money buy better lodgings, faster cars and expand to an independent big-pharma complex. Such scaling of home/car would make you more appealing to the ladies (more random encounters, better Sluttiness gains or temporary boosts), while workplace upgrades would allow for hiring more workers for each upgraded division as well as unlock more research options, add more production lines, get more contracts, etc. Anyway that's my take, really looking forward to see as to how you approach this. :)

Yes please to more game design updates.