Seeking Playtesters

#1

Some of my favorite stories on this site use the cursed board premise, like Baralai’s Hímringyó series, and for a while I’ve been thinking it’d be amazing if someone made an actual transformation and hypnosis-themed game. Well, a few month’s ago I played @Cervello’s Kink Week and got inspired to try making a text-based game of my own.

Campus Magnum is a gay erotica game for PC (and I think it’s playable on most mobile devices). There is an open beta on my itch.io page, and I hoped people might be interested in playtesting. I’m a complete novice at coding, so there’s sure to be more than a few bugs and typos that I haven’t found. I would really appreciate your feedback.

Campus Magnum

It’s game night! You’ve just sat down to play with your two college roommates and best friends in the world. But, oh no! What you thought would be a fun card game is actually a 15th century alchemist’s perverse ritual for transforming men into insatiable sex slaves. With your bodies and minds on the line, can you complete the game and turn everyone back to normal? And by the end, will you even still want to?

Campus Magnum is a transformation-themed, gay erotica card game. It contains explicit content as well as descriptions of domination, submission, humiliation, and sadomasochism. The fantastical events depicted are intended purely for the enjoyment of the player and are in no way meant to promote hate speech, sexism, or intolerance toward any group of people. If you are uncomfortable reading about such themes or are under the age of 18, do not play.

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#2

I’m very interested. Hope to give it a play tonite!

1 Like
#3

Neat game! The story telling was really good but I did have a few things that bothered me.

It might just be because I’m a dumbass, but I kept forgetting which character was Mark and which one was Caleb. Would it be possible to put their names underneath their pictures? The color coding of dialogue helped a lot thinking about who was talking when, but when it went to the actually story parts I kept getting confused. Again it might just be because I’m a dumbass and no one else is having this problem at all.

Secondly, it took me three times before I realized that the other players were ‘playing.’ I kept trying to choose the cards during their turns and then it would just disappear. I didn’t realize that it was ‘their turn.’ The color coding of the turns helped me figure it out, but do you think it might be more useful to have the color along with the name of the person who’s turn it is. And for Ethan/Red, have it say ‘Your Turn’? So instead of saying “1st Player’s Turn” it says “Your Turn.”

Also can you put it in the rules what the solar and lunar symbols mean. I know after each turn the symbols change it announces that the one with the Lunar is supposed to go for the middle score, but I kept forgetting.

Again, some of these criticisms might be because I’m a total dumbass.

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#4

No, no I think those are very fair criticisms. I really appreciate you taking the time to play and let me know your thoughts. The player names can definitely be added, I just need to figure out where to put them exactly: under the avatars, over, or in the score boxes. I’ll have to play around with it and see what ends up looking the best.

#5

I loved this line

Oh God, how are we supposed to turn back to normal if I can’t even tell what’s real?

I ran into something that looks like a bug here

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Here’s my end screen if that helps troubleshoot it:

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I really enjoyed it. I played it without rules the first time and got the just of it. Now I’m playing again to see if I can’t end up with a better outcome for myself.

#6

Oh, yup, that’s an error. It should be fixed in just a few minutes.

Also… Damn. You won on your first playthrough?

Edit: Oh, and there’s a typo in that summary screen, haha. I’ll get that in a sec too.

#7

Beginners luck. I lost on my second, and in my third I’ve transformed one of the other guys into a muscular dumbass with a big butt. Wish it was me :wink:

#8

I played last Eve. I didn’t lose… But honestly, some of the card titles were a little archaic for me. I didn’t always know what I was getting rid of.

#9

Hey glad I was able to inspire something this good. It looks great, it plays well, and is super hot. The biggest problem I had was remembering which cards cause what actions but that comes with time.

The only weird thing that happened in my playthrough was someone offered Caleb a card, he accepted, and immediately got mad because he got a card he didn’t want. It doesn’t look like he was lied to, unless the user is unable to tell when the two others lie to each other.

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#10

Hey. Yeah I started learning Twine after playing your games. I’ve checked out a bunch of peoples transformation games since then, and I still think yours are my favorite.

This was a bit of leftover dialogue from a change I made earlier this week. Until a couple of days ago, players didn’t announce what transformations were applied to cards, so the recipient was always surprised. But playtesters have been telling me they want more control over what happens, so I changed that as well as added in the dialogue options where you can advise the others what mental transformations to pick. In my haste to get those changes up, I kind of forgot about Caleb’s reaction to being made fat. I’ve added in new dialogue for that scene and for a scene where Mark loses his muscles so they make sense again. Thanks for pointing this out.

…and I’m really looking forward to your next project.

#11

Thanks. It’s gonna be a long time before I’ve got anything ready but I’ve got a couple in the early stages. I think you’re more twine-savvy than me even though you picked it up later. It looks really slick, good job man.

#12

I thought the game was made well and the writing was good. The design was elegant and relatively easy to follow and the actual gameplay was not pointless. That’s a big achievement because it’s easy to make a game where the gameplay itself is irrelevant or broken. I found myself having to think about the best way to manoeuvre a certain character into being the middle scorer or top scorer etc. or how to try and wipe out a score with the toxins.

I would recommend having the two cards being decided on by the other players stay on the screen just a tiny bit longer. As it is it’s kind of blink and you miss it and you need the information to decide if they’re bluffing or not or what the possible options are.

If I were adding content then the first thing I would improve would be the conclusion/end game so that more possible endings or flexibility about the endings was possible. It feels like the ending should be the pay off for the alterations made in the game so slightly tailored elements of narrative there would have a high impact. Maybe a little more text or characterization based on which transformations have stuck.

Especially if the player wins it would be nice to be rewarded with a few options on transforming the other two - although I guess that’s already your plan since you give a code and a contact for ideas.

I also felt like the characters felt a bit interchangeable despite them having clear ‘archetypes’ that were different. I understand entirely that that’s in the nature of the game - you need to be able to swap in any of the names in any of the bits of text/stories. But that somewhat erodes the characterization differences between them. However maybe there could be a way to put in a bit more banter or commentary between characters that shared their personality more - maybe in the bits that are the text boxes directly from the characters. Some hints in the dialogue or characterization to Caleb’s hidden crush on Ethan, or Mark being more of a bro etc.

Really fantastic work though. The writing is good, the game play itself is solid, the UI and style is elegant. You already did well at overcoming most of the main pitfalls that a lot of games fail at.

#13

One thing I noticed is that the weighting of some of the transformation options seemed to be off. The option for stature or the stretchy asshole one (forget what its called) didn’t crop up much.

Also, is it intended that the first selection is always a 3 point Dissolution or an Exhaltation and no matter who you pick, what transformation is picked and if you lie or not, the guy will accept it?

#14

@Reynard, thank you for such a thorough writeup. Rather than keeping the cards on screen for longer, I was looking at adding marks to the “Card Reference” screen that highlights the two drawn cards even after they’ve left the screen. What would you think of that solution?

You’re absolutely right about the endings. They’re what I’m working on right now between bug fixes and editing. I hope to add in another five endings for Caleb and Mark based on their specific transformations. My plan for the player character’s win is to swap out the request for feedback with a minigame in which you get to customize your roommates to your exact desires. I want to make sure the base game works as intended before implementing a second system on top of it, but I hope to have something working in the near future.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to really account for every change players have experienced in an ending. With up to 25 turns and 83 different scenes to choose from, the number of permutations may as well be infinite. But the emailed feedback is really helping to narrow down what transformations people think stand out the most and should have a direct effect on the ending.

@Mesi, a fix will be uploaded later today to make the transformations come up a bit more evenly. There will still be a few that come up slightly less frequently, because each character has one transformation they can’t receive. You already found your character’s; he can’t get taller via the Stature transformation.

The first two turns are meant to act as a kind of tutorial, so there’s a lot less randomization there. The NPCs will always accept the card you offer first. The second player’s draw will always be a Multiplication and a Separation; although, the kept card won’t always be the same and it won’t always be offered to the same player. All of the NPCs choices are based off of of two decision trees where they consider a card’s potential value to them versus its potential risk. This is even true of the first turn.

#15

Several times and it’s quite fun. If anyone is thinking about giving it a shot it’s a browser game so you can play it on pretty much anything. I even tried it on my phone and while it was a little hard to read the text on the cards it worked fine on a Samsung Galaxy S 10.

#16

Just wanted to say that you made a really fun game but I did notice that in the event for the frat if the player who has the lunar card is Mark then it will still count as if he was chosen and it doesn’t mention why Caleb was chosen and there was a typo in that same event. Also when giving Caleb the loyalty trait instead of his dialogue being his color it’s Mark’s green.
Though I played on my phone so it’s possible that that’s what’s causing those things.

#17

Thanks. I fixed the frat scene. When Mark is selected, it should now read, “You couldn’t blame him. Half the rugby team were members, and here was Caleb–skinny, timid Caleb–being asked to pledge while Mark was ignored. You can only assume he pissed off the wrong people at practice or something.”

And I fixed about a dozen typos in that passage. Seriously, it’s amazing how many things I missed. Hopefully, I got the one you saw.

I wasn’t able to recreate the dialogue issue with “Loyalty” on desktop or mobile. If you encounter it again, and it’s not too inconvenient, a screenshot would help me source the problem. Thanks for the feedback, and I’m glad you enjoyed it.