Servants and Asynchronous Online Play (Hex Feature Preview)

Note: This feature is under heavy development and is highly experimental. It may not make it in the long run! While I hope to have this feature in v0.0.5α, I can't make any promises right now!

After reaching a certain point in the story, Iris will become powerful enough as a demon to gain access to her own throne realm, a magical subspace nominally under her control that she (along with Meila) can enter by meditating in the chapel. This realm allows players to re-fight bosses, practice deflecting with Meila, and some other unique things. Perhaps the most interesting part of the throne realm, however, is the servant, which is an NPC character the player can customize and name, who helps them manage the realm.

Servants can travel between realms to randomly visit other players, and this is where I think things will get very neat. First, you can give servants certain items, which they will sell in other realms (meaning to other players), returning with the money. While this isn't too crazy exciting right now, some potions and usable items will be fairly unique or rare, so this can be a fun way to make extra money or get certain useful items. I may expand the potions and items you are allowed to sell in the future as well. For example, I'm considering adding a "bolt of fabric" item that acts as a coupon for a free outfit, which could also be made tradeable. I'm not looking to manage a complex economy, here, though.

I also plan to allow you to lewd the servants of other players, though I will provide an option to disallow this to quell the coming NTR rage. Doing so will grant the player who owns the servant sexual experience and SP, and I also want to expand this in the future to create a little bit more direct control over how your servant acts and some of the things they can say, as well as their sexual stats, but this is a long term goal. Eventually servants will also have their own leveling systems, with various cosmetic unlocks.

Servants will be per-playthrough, and at this time, I don't plan to have players make accounts or log-in, but that may prove necessary in the long run. This feature will be optional, and if you play offline, it'll just be shut off and shouldn't have any negative effects. Even if you play online and interact with other players servants, you can shut off the feature for your servant so they won't appear in other players' realms.

One thing I don't intend to provide is direct player-to-player online play or messaging or anything like that. One of my main concerns is accidentally putting players in contact with abusive people or groomers in a totally unmoderated space, so I will limit interactions to the extent I can.

Keep in mind that this feature is highly experimental, and should be considered a possibility, even if it makes it into v0.0.5, which I hope it will. There are many potential downsides here, such as server costs, privacy and security issues, and even potential legal issues. It is not my intention to get stuck in an endless uphill battle over what I see as a secondary feature. One of the reasons I took so long to even announce this was because I am still not sure it's a good idea.

But I do think it could be so fun and neat, I just have to give it a shot. And if not in the alpha, then when?