Interview with Sad Crab an adult gaming developer behind Innocent Witches

ADULT GAME DEVELOPER INTERVIEW: SAD CRAB

Innocent Witches is one of the most supported 2dcg adult game on Patreon and we took the opportunity to talk to the developer behind the game that made our Game of the Month November

1. Can you tell us more about the story of Innocent Witches? How did you come up with it?

We came up with this idea when the genre of western "trainer" games was at its early stages. More precisely, when the game by Akabur came out, "Witch Trainer". It was about the main protagonist, Genie, who resembles the similarly named character from Aladdin, magically appearing in Hogwarts and starting to gradually corrupt the main heroine, Hermione, into a sex-craving nymphomaniac. The thing Akabur nailed the most is the balance between simple mechanics and gradual corruption, things that the modern "trainer" games often lack. Instead of jumping straight to sex, the hero makes Hermione convince herself that what she is doing is not for pleasure, but for helping her house, Gryffindor, get more points and raise over other houses. This process was very satisfying, and combined with crispy and juicy art style, it hit the bullseye. This was one of the main points that encouraged us to start working on our own game, because we wanted to expand the idea and create something that the players will like even more than the original.

2. Innocent Witches are kind-of based on Harry Potter, are you a big fan of the books, the movies or just the fantasy?

All of us in the team are familiar with the HP universe, and some are more into it than others. Several members read all the books and watched all the movies, for example, which greatly helps keeping the game semi-canon. Of course, we have to make exceptions and can't follow all the rules of HP universe, but those who read the books know that J. K. Rowling herself did bend her own rules numerous times in order to show the events the way she envisioned them, so... why not do the same in our game :)

3. How long has the game been in development? How did it all start?

The game was in development for quite some time, and it underwent a lot of changes during the journey. Like we mentioned before, we were big fans of the Witch Trainer game at the time, and decided to build on top of it. After finishing the story of the game, the author announced that the game is complete and it will not be expanded anymore, even though the game included only one heroine, Hermione. This piece of news was quite sad for the fans (us included), and we decided to create something based on Witch Trainer in order to expand it. First, it was just a mod that added interactions with additional characters, such as Luna Lovegood and Daphne Greengrass.

It was all nice and dandy during these early stages, but soon we realized that the rules and the setting of the existing game were too limited.

The game (Witch Trainer) onlyhad one location, Headmaster's office, and only a few interactive objects in there. We thought, why not get outside these bounds and do something bigger, with more variety and interactivity? At the time, the team consisted of an artist (Siserg), a programmer (Andy), a manager (Khan), a writer (Dron) and a game designer / writer (MetalTobie). It was enough for creating a separate game, Innocent Witches, which we're continuing to work on to this day.
During the years of the development a lot of changes were happening to the team and the methods of the development itself. Due to lack of experience we made mistakes, learned from them, then made new mistakes, and corrected them as well, learning in the process. Some members left the team, while others joined, and as of today we're still strong and going!

4. Are you a solo dev, or do you have help creating the game?

We're a team of people with different backgrounds, but all of us are passionate about one thing - creating something that both we and the players like. We are very fortunate to have Siserg as our lead artist as well, which allows us to create amazing scenes with juicy and colorful art. Other members are equally invaluable, as they have great experience in their own fields.

5. Where are you from (can be a broad answer)? What did you do before developing adult games?

Our team is international. We have people from all around the world - CIS, Scandinavia, USA, EU and Russia. Before we started to work on Innocent Witches we all were just students without any concrete specialization. Nowadays most of us have work and other things they have to spend time on, but we're still working on the game and we'll continue to do so until it's finished.

6. What led you onto the path of creating adult games?

First of all it was the desire to expand the Witch Trainer and to add new content to it. Secondly, the idea of subtle corruption of the famous female character is very fascinating and, if done right, makes the whole process very satisfactory from a psychological point of view. We're not speaking about rape or any abuse here, but rather of making the stoic character, which is not interested in sex at all, especially not with the protagonist, to gradually change her own personality and become closer and closer to the main hero, resulting in sex and erotic interactions.

7. You have a huge fan base, what aspects of the game are your fans most excited about, is it the art, the sex scenes, the story?

We think it's all of the above really. First thing that attracts the players is of course the juicy art. Players jump into the game expecting your usual 5 minute "quick fuck" game, but instead they are met with a nice story and cool gameplay that consists of minigames, puzzles and other events. The game then gradually awards the player for the time they spend on it, without overflooding the player with sex. This makes the player to be interested in the game itself, and as a bonus the game provides lots of erotic and lewd content. We think that it’s the right way of how adult games should be created, at least in the genre of seduction and corruption.

8. What does the process of creating new characters look like? Can you show us an example of how you do your art? Do you maybe have any early takes?

Usually it starts from the actual need of introducing a new character into the game. As of now, we have a bunch of side characters in the game, and we're hesitating to introduce new ones since the existing ones still lack a lot of planned content for them. Even though we have several artists working on the game, spreading the resources is not very efficient, we think it's better to focus on the existing characters instead of constantly introducing new ones.

After the need is identified, the artists do their usual thing, draw a sketch, then create a line art for it, and finally fill it with colors. After that the character undergoes at least one round of corrections and edits until it's ready to be inserted into the game. During these last stages all of the team provides feedback, which helps the artists to correct small things they might've not noticed when they were working with the art.

When it comes to early takes, we have some of them available in the game, in the so called "Memoria" minigame. Here's some of them:

9. Slytherin or Ravenclaw?

Hard to tell, it's probably 50 / 50 in the team, and it’s not only about those two, all four houses are loved by us :)

10. As this is an adult game, what, in your opinion, is the hottest scene in the game? (you can send a picture of it, we won't mind 😉.

The scene that is most liked by the players so far is Ginny Weasely rewarding the main hero for helping her with getting better in quidditch. However, as the game develops, more and more scenes are getting added, and with time the favorites may change.

Here's a sneak peak of the aforementioned scene ;)

Another popular one involves the most bizarre female student in the whole Hogwarts. She too needs a loving touch ;)

11. Are there any particular fetishes that you're excited to introduce in the game?

When it comes to fetishes, we always strive to include as many of them as possible, without getting too much outside of the game’s setting. Currently, the game has most of the common fetishes, and the list is being expanded with each new major release. At the moment we’re not planning to add any of the niche fetishes, but as the time goes, these might come as optional add-ins in the future.

12. Innocent Witches has animations, how long does it take to make an animated scene? Any tips you would share on how to approach creating animations?

Our game uses two types of animations - frame by frame and Live2D. First one is fairly straightforward - the artist creates a number of frames, which are then played one after another in the game. Similarly how the animations are created by drawing some characters moving through the pages of the notepad, and then quickly going through the notepad page by page. These types of animations are relatively quick to create, but require a lot of concentration from the artist, as each frame should be properly connected with the preceding one and then transition into the next one.

The second type of animation is Live2D. This is basically a separate engine that is run within the game, and which directly manipulates and deforms the art. Instead of playing the animation frame by frame, it grabs the pre-created pieces of the scene, like head, arms and so on, puts them together at the right coordinates and then moves and deforms them in real time using the predefined parameters (mostly transition time and coordinates). All of this, however, needs to be first created outside of the game by an animator, who is skilled in Live2D software. This software is not super mainstream and is mostly used in Asia, as its developers are located in Japan. However, we were among the ones who helped the game’s engine creator, Renpytom, to add Live2D to Ren’py (game’s engine), and then test it and fix most of the issues. We have been using Live2D ever since and will continue to use it in future.

When it comes to the time spent on the creation, it mainly depends on several factors - how complex the scene to be animated, how good you want it to look and how skilled the person who will be responsible for the animation. By identifying and balancing these factors the creation of an animation, even Live2D one, can be very quick. For example, it can take one week for a relatively skilled person to create a moderately complex scene in Live2D, and probably one more week to implement the corrections provided by the person who adds the animation to the game.

A valuable tip is to always dedicate some of the planned time to corrections, because it’s almost never possible to create a correct animation with all the proper transitions on the first try.

13. Do you identify with any of the characters portrayed in the game?

Yeah, most of the time it’s quite fun to identify with Marcus, the main protagonist. Other times, it’s interesting to switch to Snape, when you just want to facepalm after hearing about another silly situation that Marcus has got himself into.

14. Who is your favorite girl in Innocent Witches?

We love all of them, but if we talk more specifically, then, for example, Siserg’s favorite character is Daphne, Khan is more into Susan and Benq is fond of Hermione.

15. We talked about the influences of books and games, but what about the adult sector? Any influences? Any favorite porn stars or movies?

Not really, no. We might add a reference or two in future though, such as Sasha Gray ;)

16 How long does it take for you to produce an update? Do you follow any steps, or do you have more of a go-with-the-flow kind of approach?

Usually it takes a couple of months. Sometimes it takes longer due to events in real life, or some personal things that need to be taken care of.

When it comes to the development plan, during the first stages of the development we didn’t have any strict plans, as we were quite new to game dev. During the following years we’ve moved to a more organized, agile approach. We’re using so called sprints, which essentially are just set periods of time, like a week or ten days. For each sprint we formulate a set of tasks that we think are possible to finish by the end of the sprint, and then focus on them. If we couldn’t finish something in time, we either move it to the next sprint, or save it in the backlog to return to it later. This way it’s much easier to measure the amount of work that has been done so far, and to see that stuff is actually getting done, which is important for keeping yourself from burning out.

17. Can you talk more about the upcoming content? What can we expect in the future?

At the moment we’re working on updating the previous version of the story, which was never finished, by adding new content and polishing rough edges, and we’re almost finished with it. After that we will continue the main updated story, which means more explicit scenes with the prefects and, of course, plot twists. In future we are also planning to add more characters, such as Cho Chang, alongside new locations, such as Hogsmeade village. And of course, more lewd stuff >:D

18. Which aspect of the game improved the most since when you started the development? If you were to go back in time, would you do anything differently?

The overall flow of the game improved a lot. Initially, we were very limited by the lack of different locations for Marcus to visit, which led to almost all action happening in one place (Headmaster’s office, just like in Witch Trainer). However, as the game got bigger, many new locations were added, and this allowed us to tell the story in a much more diversified way. At the current state of the game, players visit different locations and characters, interact with the items in these locations and so on, instead of sitting all the time in the office.

If we would go back in time we would definitely spend much more time on planning the core mechanics of the game, such as time, locations, character progression and quest system. Many things were not taken into consideration back then, and since these systems are built very deep into the game, it’s very painful to make any change to them now, as this will involve going through all the game and adjusting stuff everywhere. But we’re not giving up and working on these little by little, and we’re sure we’ll be able to eventually make everything work better and in a more balanced way.

19. Are you working on any other projects besides Innocent Witches?

At the moment Innocent Witches is the only project we’re working on.

20. What are some of the struggles you have been facing while developing the game?

The biggest struggle is, as always, proper time management. Life is getting busier and busier with each day, different global events keep happening in the world, all of this takes its toll on both our physical and mental condition. We’re always trying to do as much as possible in the best way possible, but there’s always something that comes in the way. This leads to delays, some content that doesn’t make it into the game, and more bugs that keep piling up. However, the agile approach that was described earlier, greatly helps to mitigate all of these issues. This way the big tasks get divided into smaller tasks, which then in turn are assigned to time periods, during which these specific tasks need to be done. In the end, it’s a great feeling when after working several days on a task you see green check marks in the planning table, commit history in the git repository and that the big task is now finished and gets moved into the “Completed” section.

21. How has your experience been in the adult gaming industry so far? What are the top advantages and disadvantages you’ve come across so far?

So far our experience in this industry is pretty positive. However, it was not always so. During early stages when we had no experience in game dev and were pretty much experimenting with everything, we were receiving a lot of negative feedback about lack of sexual content and general emptyness of the game. Most of the players at that time expected hardcore sex right from the start of the game, while we wanted to stay true to the original game and create a gradual corruption experience. This meant that at the start of the story we had to first establish a lot of things, such as proper introduction of the characters, setting up the story, outlining the main goals of the protagonist, and so on. We simply could not jump into sex scenes right after beginning the story. There are ways to properly do this, of course, and we tried to do that by introducing a sex scene very early in the game, but later we started to receive a lot of negative feedback about this scene, because it seemed out of place and happened too suddenly. Despite the negativity, we continued to work on the game and gradually introduced more erotic scenes, and later more sex scenes, as it should happen in a proper corruption game. We’re still developing the game now, and we’re not at the stage where you can freely start a sex scene with any character, but as the story continues we will be able to put more and more explicit scenes without them looking out of place or too sudden.

Also, the adult games were very niche at the time we started the development, which meant that the only somewhat reliable way to fund the development was through donations, which we are still greatly dependent on. Luckily, through hard work, staying true to the original goals and by having an amazing community, we were able to stay afloat and later increase the amount of resources that we used (and continue to do so) to add even more content to the game. As the time went, we invested more into the additional artists, Live2D animators, game designers with actual game dev experience, music composers, and numerous other great people, which in the end means more content for the players to enjoy :)

22. Do you play adult games often? If so, which ones are your favorites currently? Any recommendations?

All of us played a lot of games back in the day, but lately it doesn’t happen that often, as most of the time is spent on either real life issues, or the development of the game. One of the favorite adult games of the whole team is, of course, Witch Trainer. Others are Princess Trainer, Four Elements Trainer, Summertime Saga and Something Unlimited. There are many Japanese VNs also that are cool, such as the Rance series, games by Eushully (Kamidori Alchemy Meister and so on) and Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai! series.

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23. What is/are your advice(s) for the new developers? Any tips on what should be the first thing when starting?

First thing is to make sure that you have enough content to start with. This means that it’s best to create a solid chunk of the game first and only then show it to the players. This way the players will see that you are serious about your intentions, and they will stick around and support the development.

Another important thing is to properly plan the core mechanics of the game. It’s especially crucial if you plan to work on it for more than one year. It’s important to decide if your game will have any fundamental systems that will then be used throughout the game. For example, how will the player generate the resources (gold, gems, etc) and how will they spend them (shops, new equipment, etc)? How will the player be able to advance their character (characteristics, skills, etc)? How will the game gate the content (skill checks, stat checks, etc)? Or will the game be just a vanilla VN without any advanced mechanics? What is the game engine that works best for achieving these goals? These are fundamental things that need to be decided early on, as any changes later will become more and more costly as the game grows bigger. And it’s completely normal that these might change during the early development, but it’s crucial to establish them before continuing moving forward to the main parts of the game.

Finally, please use the agile development model, version control (git) and proper planning, even if you’re solo. The game’s development, especially at the early stages, is very dynamic. A lot of things may drastically change as you decide what works best for the goals that you’ve set for your game. By having a good way to keep track of what’s on the TODO list (such as a kanban board) and how much time you plan to spend on it will save you a lot of time. And it also helps to see that you’re doing stuff and things are actually moving forward when you see small tasks constantly getting completed.

24. What game would you like to see as our game of the month?

Hmm… As the whole team leans more to 2D rather than 3D, then it should be something with this type of art… Slutcraft, maybe?

25. Have anything to say to the members of Spicygaming? Now is your chance 😊

If you’re interested in HP universe and want to seduce some of its iconic characters, and have fun in the process - don’t hesitate to check out our game! We have a free version available with lots of content in it, so just jump in and enjoy the ride ;) We also have a Discord server where all the devs are almost always available for a chat and to help with a certain puzzle or quest. Finally, we also want to thank all our supporters for their continued help during this difficult journey, it wouldn’t be possible to make it so far without you <3

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