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Postmortem 1: By the Numbers (Contains Spoilers)
🕑 Added 2025-03-23 14:42:09 +0000 UTCSuccubus Stories v1.0.0 will be coming to the free edition in a few days! So how big is the complete version of the game and how much stuff is there to do? Let’s go over the numbers and talk about it! I will be mentioning some spoiler-y stuff toward the end, but nothing too crazy and there’s no new story content in v1.0.0 to worry about.
Over 600,000 total words.
This is a big and impressive number, but I do think it’s not as useful as it seems at first glance. For one, there’s a lot of dynamically generated content in SS, and also a lot of divergent paths, optional content, and mutually exclusive options, like romances. So realistically, you probably see a lot less than this in the form of raw unique content. On the other hand, the game’s content is dynamic in a lot of places, so if you play for a while fully exploring everything in the game and trying to complete and see every little thing, you might end up with way more than 600,000 words going by your screen.
I think this is mostly a useful metric to show how much work was put into the game more than how much playable content you can get out of it.
34 side quests.
I don’t use the term “side quest” in the game because I think that implies the content is optional and skippable, and I think realistically you should be aiming to do every request you find in SS. I’m referring to the requests and so-called “secret storylines” with this metric.
I’m not sure if this number is big or not. I’m not sure how many side quests a game of this genre and style would normally have. When I think of non-adult games, 34 seems like a reasonable number, but I do think this is high for a game like this. I can assure you that if you aren’t just mashing through them, it will take you many hours to get through all these though.
I think they’re worth reading through, too, some of the funniest and wackiest content is in the side stuff. Hex won’t have side quests at all; no requests, no secret storylines. Instead everything that happens in that game will be part of one of that game’s many “arcs” which will all feed back into the main story.
More than 80 activities.
Depending on how you count stuff, you could probably argue there’s close to 100 activities. Or you could say I’m double counting very similar or related activities and say the real number is closer to 70-ish. “Over 80” is a good baseline. Here’s a list so you can make your own conclusion.
I basically count anything you can do (or that can happen to you) that is repeatable and somewhat lewd as an activity. The term has sort of gotten muddy, or maybe always was. Some activities just deliver random events, but most have some progression or agency.
Early on in the game, I used mostly random events encountered by exploring to give players content to do, but as the game matured I instead opted for more complex gameplay systems with progression or mechanics, or just a specific focus. I think moving in that direction was a huge improvement, and really made the sandbox part of the game a lot more fun.
Six encounter types.
The sexual encounters really are the core of SS’s entire gameplay loop, for better or for worse. There are six encounter types. While some things are missing, I think we have a good spread here, and there are dozens of moves you can learn, and potions you can create and use, and just a lot of fun and sexy stuff that can happen.
While I think Hex‘s encounter system is a huge improvement from a mechanics and gameplay perspective, SS is like a big box of multi-colored legos compared to that game’s sleek model kit. One lets you have a lot of different stuff happen, but it’ll always be a little rough and never quite look perfect, while the other will always deliver a good-looking result but with more limited room for player expression.
Thousands (not literally) of progression elements.
There’s perks, traits, potion recipes, special abilities, social skills, tiaras, and more. There’s just a ton of little things unlocking all the time in SS. Maybe too many little things. I think it’s pretty good though. I think SS doles out content at a pace that doesn’t feel too grindy or too fast to keep up with, and even unlocking something small, like a potion recipe, can often reveal weird new options in far flung events and activities you probably didn’t even know existed.
Three romances!
There are three romance partners in SS. Each has a confession date (which is a request--Charlotte's is my favorite), multiple activities, tons of tiny little interactions, unique sex dialogue, and a set of unique dates for character and relationship development beyond sex (usually). I feel like in so many games, so much media really, a lot of times the sex scene is like the “climax” of the romance arc, and I thought making an adult game gave me so much room to dive deep and go beyond that, and create little fun and memorable moments that explored not just how the relationship started, but what it was like to be in it for the long haul. I wanted to capture a cozy feeling of growing comfortable with someone else, rather than just the early thrill of falling in love or the carnal passion of boning a hot dude or lady (though I wanted both of those too!).
Now whether I succeeded or not is up to you. I think some of the romances are better in some ways than others. I think Priscilla is the most involved in the story directly, so she gets more interaction in general, even outside a romance, so there’s more opportunities for interaction than the others, and all of these moments are designed to consider whether you’re in a relationship with her or not. I think Charlotte has the best romantic dialogue of the three I’ve written, but she’s got a lot of gap moe so that’s practically cheating. She also has the best main activity of the three in my opinion in the form of her sleep skinship activity. Rais has the most sex options just by virtue of being a guy, and I also think some of his “cozy moments” during dates and downtime are the best.
Five story chapters.
Well five, plus a prologue, plus the post-game epilogue. Plus massive branching at certain points, leading to very different scenarios late in chapter 2, and in chapters 4 and 5, based on the player’s choices. I think the story of SS came out pretty good, but I do think the final chapter is a bit light on sandbox problem solving. It’s not really that it’s railroaded, but you just don’t have the same options to flirt and fuck to solve problems after things get a lot more serious, and I think if I rewrote the whole thing now, that’s something I’d try to improve.
But I’m happy with it. I wanted to write a story about forgiveness and revenge but in a way where the shallow “duh” stuff so often baked into those stories could fall away early. Like obviously Pelenor sucks, so he’s almost like a decoy I’ve created so that I can serve you up a more complicated character and ask whether you forgive or hate her. You spend a lot of time carrying out the very mission Rachel first set out on, feeling the same way that she did, only to find that Rachel did something even worse to you than Pelenor ever did. However, I felt that I couldn’t make this a twist ending or a last-minute reveal if I really wanted to theme the game around it as a central conflict; I had to play my cards early and let the shock wear off a bit to do this concept justice, and that forced me to make some unconventional pacing decisions. I hope that the theme was interesting, and genuinely provided an interesting environment to make some tough choices in, without getting too serious or unsexy along the way. I also hope the game was able to smoothly revolve around these key twists and turns without feeling like they came too early and lost their impact by the end.
I enjoyed writing SS’s narrative and I’m glad so many people were receptive to it. I think it came out better than I initially expected. Of course, there are some rough edges and weird inconsistencies I wish I had thought through better, but I really feel like I did my best for my skill level as a writer. I’m not really much of a writer, at least I don’t think of myself that way, but I’m so much better now than when I started SS, and that alone makes me excited to see how well I can pull off the crazy shit I have planned for Hex.
Postmortem #2 coming soon!
This is the first in a series of 3 or so posts I plan to make doing “postmortems” of SS; basically summing up my thoughts and what I’ve learned now that development is ending. In the next post, I want to talk more at length about what I learned on this journey!
I also plan to try to address some questions I get asked occasionally into one of these posts, so if there’s anything you want to know, anything you’re curious about, you can ask in the comments, or message me on Discord or Patreon and I’ll try to address it in a post if it seems interesting! It can be about anything, really; questions about processes, technical questions–anything that you want to know I’ll at least consider. Thanks!
