Game dev Progress Update

Hi, everyone!

So, it’s time to reveal what I’ve been working on these days and where’s the game at so far. 

First of all, there’s quite some stuff still left to be done before the Chapter 1 is ready. I have been anticipating it to be written by now, and yet, it’s still in the works. However, I intend to release a few beta routes for you all to try out before the game is finished!

Well… As it usually is the case with my projects, it’s mostly due to the expanding scope. I have heard a lot of feedback after presenting the prologue demo a few months ago. The most recurring part of it was that the choices felt stiff and there was no impact in them. No way to really feel the consequences whether they’re bad or good. So, I went back to the drawing board. I took all of these fairly linear stories written for Chapter 1 and reworked them with choices in mind. This resulted in far more writing needed to be done. And A LOT of brainstorming to expand on the stories, to create multiple endings and to make them still feel seamless and logical. But now I’m quite proud of what I’ve achieved. Now you can literally end up on a completely different side quest than the story assumes.

Another thing that’s new is side characters. There’s a whole load of smaller characters who help or work against you. You can engage with them and depending on your choices you can even explore their own stories. In some cases you can even say “screw the main character!” if you end up liking said minor character and make them the new “main” character. I won’t give examples because of the spoilers, but I bet you’re going to enjoy the experience.

As to the reworked routes themselves - each main character will have multiple endings. Some of the minor ones too! This means more of the feeding experience and more of the big bellied experience - which is the right kind of experience! And combat has been reworked too. Now it's choice-based. There's always multiple choices we can make during an encounter with a hostile character and depending on these choices we either "damage" the enemy (their waistline, mostly), or they damage you. And you can lose now, if you make too many wrong choices. There's also "doom" routes now. Where you can lose the game, if you went the totally wrong way. I saw it being requested more than once, to have an ability to lose and have stakes apart from failing to feed the ladies. I hope you'll like that change :3

Now onto the visuals. As you might have seen, I have implemented a sprite system. It’s a total godsend! I now have such absurd flexibility with characters, animations and their designs! Let me show you an example.

Here you can see lady Selena changing expressions and her animations. Which previously was not possible without producing a hundred sprites. But now it’s so easy! Expect all of the characters to now behave like that as well. To have detachable items, bloated/starter bellies on top of their initial, skinny sprite. Expect funny changes or wardrobe malfunctions. It’s all doable now and I’m working daily on implementing all that into sprites. There's new animations for all body sizes as well!


The next update is part technical, part arts: I have updated the inventory! No longer will the mobile users have to hold the item to read the tooltop. Moreover, it has undergone a complete graphical overhaul. Have a look!

I have changed how the tooltips behave now. Instead of popping up on the right side of the inventory screen, now they take the full screen. This allowed me to add far more details and personality to all of the items. Just have a look at the new, refreshed dwarven cook book. It will be the case with most of the items now. I love this solution, personally. There's now so much more personality and immersion into these items.

Next change with the inventory is animations! Well, there's only one animation currently. But I believe it was an important one. Now we have a clear, visual indication every time an item is being added or removed from the inventory. And I've successfully managed to have it show the exact item being added every time :3 (sorry for a botched recording T.T)

https://youtu.be/Yh3ai3EQ95E

But man... That was a nightmare to work with. I've stumbled upon so many bugs... There was infinite item duplication, items not loading properly. Clicking not registering properly. And when I thought I'm all done with the fresh inventory, it turned out all items were disappearing every time you launch the game! Fortunately now I can proudly say: the inventory is bug-free and working as intended.

On the topic of features, I'm planning to add a quest journal to track our choices and adventure. And a journal for the characters we've met. But it would be rather time-consuming and the priority is to have the game in the first place. So I'll add it eventually in some future update, if that's a feature you want to see in the game.

I have mentioned the side characters before, right? Well, have a peek at some of them!

It's just a few examples, but there's far far more appearing in the game! And like I have said, many of them are recurring characters or even have received their own more or less hidden routes.

So - summing up - there's a lot of work already done. Now I'm going to focus on putting my stories and routes into dialogues. I have already written literal thousands of dialogue lines, but thousands still remain. I'm so hyped for this game!

If you feel like I forgot to cover something in this update, please, feel free to ask questions in the comments!