Sup /tkr/. I'm a developer who makes games in his free time. I'm considering making a tickling game (mostly out of patriotism so american devs have better representation in the scene) but I wanted to hop in here to poll the room. I don't submerge myself in 'the culture' of the fetish, but I feel we don't have a good developer rep; and I wouldn't mind having a donation link sometime down the line.
I don't like how the majority of games out there are simple RPG maker projects or text adventure games. WTFeather is the only other example I can think of, but he made a rhythm game with tickling as the dressing. Credit to him, and respect to the fellow Unity dev, but I would want to make a game that is *mechanically* about tickling.
Ideally, these mechanics would interact with each character in the same way, but have different effects depending on the profile of the character. RPG maker games do this by changing the damage each attack does.
I'm not really an overtly sexual person IRL, but if we come up with a good idea I would be willing to put my other projects on hold so we could get a prototype going. Things might slow down after that though.
TL;DR: I want to prototype a system that is a satisfying representation of what the majority of us enjoy about tickling. Stripping it down to its barest mechanics, what would this representation look like? We can build a narrative around it later, but good games (even smut like this) needs to be mechanically engaging. I want to be able to jerk it to the gameplay, not the cutscenes.