It's a spooky time at the Embassy!

All the monsters are dressed to celebrate this spooky holiday, and there's a deeper mystery afoot- something has been haunting the Embassy at night!

Talk to the ambassadors for some sexy scenes, and solve the mystery to keep the Embassy safe!

Halloween Specials (to make this time of year more fun)

• # of encounters to befriend ALL monsters reduced to 2!
• Gold income x2
• Deathstalker encounter rate x2
• Ghost quest
• Spooky locations and costumes
• Sexy costume scenes

What's up next? In the next release of MA (coming mid-November)...

• Two new monster species
• A new area & questline
• Save system (download only)
• More nsfw scenes

_________________________

So now that that's out of the way, let's delve into what exactly is inside the Halloween version of the game!

Costumes

I started with a simple concept: I wanted all the characters in MA to dress up for Halloween. As listed in the game description, there are currently seven monster species. 

Lamias were easy; I love witch costumes, and I love my snake people. 
Slimes took a bit longer; I wanted to go for a cute look (the slimes would scare themselves with anything spooky!) but my first attempts at pumpkin and bumblebee costumes didn't quite work with them. I also wanted to work in their ongoing theme of their clothes being made out of their own slime. I saw an image of a shark costume; it was MUCH sillier than the ones the slimes ended up with, but I knew it was perfect for them. Something 'spooky' in a completely not-spooky way.

I used the Taur's costumes to touch on a bit of their history as well; they were held captive on farms generations before the game takes place, and one of the ambassadors remarks on her mixed feelings about wearing a scarecrow outfit (a piece of decoration for a farm).
Right at the beginning of the process, I had a vision of a cowboy scorpion for the Deathstalkers, and while I looked into other possible costumes I couldn't shake the desire to put a cowboy had on their heads. 
Corvals were always meant to be at the heart of the mystery for this seasonal release, so they got a sheet-- but if you look closely, you can see some forbidden images underneath. 

Imps got their costumes right as I was watching Cobra Kai, although I didn't think about the connection until later! It makes sense that these tricksters would be wearing a costume made well-known by bullies.
Finally, the fauns. I liked the idea of matching costumes for them, as the prince and princess; but the fauns are one of the more sexually comfortable races. Once I thought about the male ambassador in a princess dress, I was hooked on the idea; and the female ambassador looks striking as a prince.

Quest

Another item I had on the agenda from the beginning of development was a quest. Gotta have something for the players to actually do, right?

I won't spoil the end of the quest here, but the idea of a haunting in the Embassy was very appealing. The question then became: is it a real ghost, or someone pulling a prank? 

The biggest hurdle for the quest was making the minigame to find the culprit.  I spent a while playing small strategy games to get an idea for what I wanted to do; at first, the game was intended to be more of a Luigi's Mansion style game, where you would try to illuminate the ghost to catch them. Later, this developed into something more of a chase. 
At this point the minigame was actually VERY difficult to beat; the ghost was extremely good at avoiding the player. I took out the ghost's ability to predict player actions, but this made it less of a game and more three-button-presses. The light mechanics that ended up in the final game are two versions of my solution for this easy gameplay; while the overall game is still quite easy, it is at least possible to lose every once in a while. 

Backgrounds

Finally, the entirety of the game's locations needed to be spookified. The embassy's backgrounds were changed to show decorations put up by its inhabitants; bats are strung from windows, lights frame the hallways, etc. 

Outside of the embassy, the changes are less decoration and more natural spookiness; the trees have come alive, spiders wait in the leaves, and a blood moon shines down from above.

By the end, I had 15 spooky backgrounds to make each part of the game feel themed to Halloween!