Discussing Arena

So, yeah.  For those who don't know, Arena was a game I worked on off and on for about a year and some change.  The theme is transformation.  Specifically the Trangender, male to female variety.  The goal is to turn the NPCs into bimbos before they do the same to you.  It's 100% text, no images or fancy user interface.  It was also, I feel, a big success.  It started as random thoughts between myself and a few folks over at the TFGamesSite chat, where I spend waaaaay too much of my time, and evolved slowly but surely into what it is today, thanks in no small part to the comments and contributions of many fine folks.

The game lacks pretty much anything resembling a plot, with some thin reference to you being sent to hell by mistake (you didn't even die yet!), where two demons through you in with a few other guys doomed to be punished for their abusive attitudes toward women.  And for the amusement of the perverted demons, naturally.  So after a brief indoctrination, you are cut adrift in an arena level currently set up to look like a mall designed by airheaded bimbos.  TFs are handled by collecting gems that spawn and drop randomly around the map, and casting the spells associated with each type on either yourself to reverse previous changes, or on the other characters to change them.  Having the right type of gem on hand that matches a spellcast on you will consume both gems, but block any changes, automatically counterspelling them.  This works for NPCs you are targeting too.

I learned a ton of things while making this game, most of it from scratch.  The trouble is, I didn't really plan out things from the beginning.  Whenever something struck my fancy, I just messed with stuff until I could fit it in...which made it damn hard to maintain any kind of smoothness, regularity, or regimentation.  The source code is all over the place with little rhyme or reason.  I didn't get around to adding more levels, more TFs, more story, and more interesting features, environmental interaction, dialog, or much of anything else that I had intended...but the game itself is still a reasonably fun little time waster.  Now, though...I'm strongly considering continuing it.