Project Matchmaker - Outline

Project Basics: Read Here
Intended Gameplay: The central hub will be an overmap/timeline showing all potential "nodes" representing couples the player can interact with. Completing an encounter with a couple will create a new result the player can save to that node, which may lock or unlock other nodes. After that, they can quickly swap out results to get to the other nodes that they want, such as saying "if X couple failed and Y couple succeeded sexually, then that should give me access to Z couple." Exploring these situations will gradually build out a map of possibilities stretching into the past and future.

In an encounter, the player "rides along" with the host, the character that has asked for help. All characters are fully realized and have their own past, motives, and will, but the host relies on you for advice in difficult moments. At first you won't have many options, but when you see what works and what fails, you can rewind to earlier in the encounter and have new options for advising the character. Exploring these possibilities gradually teaches you more about them and lets you lead them to better outcomes. When the host character is satisfied with the outcome, you receive the talisman that serves as your main progression resource.

The main gameplay will consist of exploring possibilities between characters and experimenting to see what mix of factors will create a new outcome. Giving the characters a "happy ending" is the only prerequisite to consider the encounter "finished," but there may be leveling or similar progression tied to exploring more possibilities. Ideally, players will be able to go through encounters they're less interested in as platonic puzzles mainly, but they will be rewarded for delving deep into the pairings they do enjoy.

Story Themes: The narrative will be mostly broken up into many small sections with their own arcs and sometimes their own unique themes. Recurring themes will probably include: struggling to understand and emotionally engage with people dramatically different from oneself; reconciling concepts of self-sacrifice and the greater good with one's deepest personal feelings; struggling with the idea of trying to "force" love to happen; exploring what it means for different people to think and feel in fundamentally different ways, and if that makes true connection richer or impossible; the differences in relationships and their outcomes depending on what kind of interactions lie at the core of the bond; and the ways in which our actions and interactions can dramatically change based on the smallest differences in context.

Sexual Themes: May be similarly varied. Predominant themes should include: first-time sex; sex with alien creatures; sex as a means of showing and accepting vulnerability; fluctuations of power and dominance; sex as a form of manipulation; dramatic physical differences such as size and basic shape. Minor themes may include mind control/influence, impregnation, public sex,  and morally vindicated cheating and incest.

Strengths: Focusing on the emotionally charged "first date" each time should provide a lot of emotional weight, while still allowing a wide variety of outcomes and possibilities in each encounter that don't require massive amounts of resources to follow through. Characters can get pregnant, fundamentally change the nature of their relationship, and make serious, final decisions without it being an absolute nightmare to implement what comes after. If done right, this game should be a very potent emotional and sexual experience. Also, this allows for much easier "one-off" exploration of unusual sexual themes that would be difficult to implement on a large scale.

Weaknesses: We'll never spend more than a few hours with each set of characters, so if I can't make both of them lovable in that small space, the game may quickly feel empty, but if I do well, players may be frustrated we don't get more with characters they like than a quick summary of the rest of their lives. The gameplay could easily lead to the player getting "lost" in all the possibilities depending on how complicated the relationships of consequences get. I'll have to design the UI very carefully and think a lot over how to balance long term repercussions so they feel meaningful and don't force players to focus too much on pairings they maybe don't like as much. Also, more variety of characters we're forced to focus on means more space for players to dislike them, or only even like one pairing and wish the game was "just them."

Scores:
Emotional Engagement: 5
Character Presence: 4
Gameplay Strength: 3
Erotic Potential: 3
Broad/Newcomer Appeal: 2

Major Design Questions
-The ability to reverse any decision and go back on anything this easily may take a lot of the sense of urgency out of decisions and reduce the sympathetic bond between player and character. Should this time travel feature be restricted in some way? Something like "you can only rewind through content you've seen before" may help a lot, but also be frustrating.

-Gameplay may not be very satisfying without more sense of progression. How far should I go to add upgrades, stats, and fiddly bits to make it feel like you're physically getting better at this and being rewarded the more you play? I want to make this a simple "single save slot" kind of progression, but that means that anything with customizing your build would need to be completely reversible or maybe very carefully balanced to make sure any route can get you through all of the content.

-If the different chapters are too dissimilar in feel and sexual content, it may start feeling less like one game and more like an anthology of separate games, with players having strong feelings that some chapters are better or worse. Should I embrace this and work to make it easy to pass through a chapter quickly if the player is uninterested and/or skip sexual content, or should I try to keep every chapter more "vanilla" and similar to the rest to avoid too much dissonance in themes?

Levels of Implementation
Barebones: You give advice to a character of configurable gender to help them develop a relationship with a fixed character. Interact with a series of unlockable dialogue trees, rewind at will and try different routes until you accomplish various goals.
Assets Needed: Basic text engine, two small pieces of art.

Basic: Jump between a handful of different relationships, configuring most of the characters to your desires, guiding each of them in how to interact with their prospective partners. Locking in different outcomes in one relationship will change the conditions in others, opening new possibilities or changing the nature of the encounter somehow.
Assets Needed: Basic text engine, possibly a GUI map of sorts, 10-20+ pieces of art including pinups with alts and some "endings."

Full: Build your stats by guiding configurable characters through their relationships, unlock different possibilities, modify the timeline and unlock new relationships and different modifiers for old content to open up more replayability. Lots of secret hunting to fuel really getting to know every side of these characters.
Assets Needed: Text engine with strong parsing, drawn/animated GUI map, 20+ pieces of art for pinups with expressions and alts, plus "endings."

Why This is the Main Project: Out of the concepts I'm working on, this is one that feels very similar to MVOL in feel while still offering a richer experience both graphically and gameplay-wise, as well as offering a wide variety of characters to get to know. I think it makes a good "safe next step" that should have some broad appeal while still giving a healthy dose of the things that people loved in MVOL in particular.