A Unique Diet V0.9.1 (24 August 2025) update

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Hi y’all. It’s me, the “Unstable Frienemies” guy. I’ve got another one for you.

“A Unique Diet” is a mostly-static Visual Novel that has a bunch of different endings (more than Unstable Frienemies even!) depending on the choices you’ve made by the last scene.

Your long time girlfriend is sweet, supportive, proactive, compassionate… and kind of a dolt. Worried about four or five pounds of baby fat she’s put on, she comes up with a cascading series of … novel… ideas about how to lose the weight.

Heavily inspired by Anonymoose’s “Overstuffed”, which is an example of near-perfect game design.

What I've been up to / Design thoughts

I made a clicker game in Ren’py! It was awful!

As a proof-of-concept, it worked, so I’m calling it a success, but MAN was it a terrible game-as-game.

I’ve cannibalized the images I put together for it and lateralled them into an Idle Incremental game, also made in Ren’py. That’s coming along much nicer - I have one of the Love Interests about 95% done, so I can see that things work, but I want each girl to have their own twist on the mechanics, so it’s still a while in coming.

I got the itch to get Something Done, so A Unique Diet was born. I have a few ideas in the ‘short, relatively linear story with occasional branching depending on player choices’ tank, but this one stood out to me recently for some reason.

The ‘can I do X?’ I had in mind for this project was “Can I make one of these, in my free time, in under a month?” The answer was no, apparently, but I got it done and the in-house playtesting done in about 5 weeks, which I’m pretty happy with.

I’m debating a Patreon. TBD. It’d add a lot of reliability, and increase the amount of time I could reasonably sink into making this sort of thing, but I’m not 100% on whether to pull the trigger on it yet. Let me know if you have an opinion on that.

Thanks for reading my design thoughts! I’ll let you in on something - there are three hidden secrets in A Unique Diet. An ending beyond the last ending, an unlockable that occurs quietly, and one that requires a thorough knowledge of Unstable Frienemies to unlock.

Playable in browser, or on Mac / Windows / Linux after a download.

As ever, let me know if you stumble on any bugs, unintentional typos, or something that just really really rubs you the wrong way.

Version 0.9.1 update info
  • Added the option to skip the ‘introduction’ section entirely after the first completed playthrough, and an optional method to speed up the early and mid-game for ‘power players’ who want to crank out all the endings in one or two sittings.
  • Made Mary-Lynn slightly slower to take umbrage with you, so the ‘good boyfriend’ type endings are less strict and the ‘total asshole’ type ending requires more aggressive intent on the player’s part.
  • Mild sentence restructuring here-and-there.
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So, I thoroughly enjoyed Unstable Frenemies and “100%ed” it and it’s endings. I just finished the same with this one, and I’ll throw out my thoughts (as per your instruction in the Golden Life):

  • Once again, fabulous writing. Your characters speak in a way that is somehow simultaneously organic and stilted to quite a charming effect, and you’re never afraid to treat them as actual characters with how they respond to game events and ponder heavy (teehee) topics. Always a pleasure to read.
  • I personally don’t care much for or seek out AI art, but I also don’t believe in witch-hunting on it around here - I will compliment how well you get your characters to stay on model throughout the game, though.
  • From the gameplay perspective - a bit of a mixed bag for me, not going to lie. Going to spolier the rest of this just in case I stumble into saying something spoliery. From the development background you gave on this (and my own minor experience in doing some game dev on this site), I understand the linearity and simplicity was baked in to the very core of this game (and branching paths are fuckin’ hard to do) and it works fairly well here. You gave a good amount of varied endings that made the loop worth repeating through. That being said… it kind of wears thin after awhile. With absolutely nothing really changing between each run and scene outside of a few minor dialogue changes until the final scene, it gets a little stale. Additionally, the fact that those minor dialogue changes don’t provide much insight into what ending(s) you might be setting yourself up for make them just flavor - good flavor, but not much flavor. What I’m ultimately trying to get at is the desserts were delicious, but the main course became bland after the first few bites.

I feel like I sound harsh here, but overall this a great experience that I recommend to anyone bothering to read my words and I think you are a very good dev with a great consistency in the quality of your games. I love your characters and your worlds, just wish I had a bit more variety in my diet with this one (oh I kill me).

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I agree with the other commenter i think, really like this but it needs a bit more in-dialogue guidance towards the ending path you’re on?

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I have the same rough feedback as the others. I think the core gameplay loop is fun, and as always you did a good job making the AI art consistent and cohesive. But after the first 2-3 times through, all it basically becomes is skip everything and randomly try different combinations for a different ending because there is very minimal dialogue differences and you have no idea what path you are going down.

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Ah, I did find that if you click on unseen endings in the gallery you can see hints to how to get them. It is still a little trial and error, but I was able to get all the endings. Hopefully that helps others!

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No, Fam, that’s exactly the kind of input I need. Thank you!

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If you do make a Patreon I’d love to support it! I really do like your last game a ton and still play it here and there.

This game was fun! A little repetitive but it being made in 5 weeks is impressive as hell. The earlier comments about each run does feel very similar to every other one was a thought I had too.

It might also be nice to be able to pick your gender. The plot doesn’t have anything that makes it matter if it is a guy or not and no pictures to change for it. Just helps for us girlies who enjoy these types of games… Or maybe completionists who play a ton but want a shake up.

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V 0.9.1 dropped! It’s debatable whether it’s worth a redownload. Mostly it makes skipping the Intro scenes (the shower debacle and the Kia discussion) possible after the first time around, and adds a speed-play option after you’ve been through a few times. I think this helps to mitigate the primary issue with the game identified above.

Probable 0.9.2 improvements will include a gender toggle per Kitzt’s insightful suggestion (I’d make it part of the Ren’py Options menu, which I’ve never fiddled with, so that’ll be instructional for me) and a throw-away line during the Gallery Unlock notification that spells out that there’s a way to get hints about any still-locked endings. I’ll be pretty busy IRL for a while, so those might be a week/month out.

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Nice little game with witty script and fairly well-made AI images, that get sloppier and rushed closer to end game. Problem here… Unlike “Unstable Frenemies” it does not have any potential for further expansion or replayability.

After playing through “Unstable Frenemies” I wanted to play more and more. More events, more story, more stages, more endings. I wanted more of everything.

Playing Unique Diet, I was not really invested, even in looking through all the endings. Replaying felt very boring and not worth it, even with provided by the developer shortcuts.

Looking forward to seeing what comes next. Hope you will get all the necessary funds to develop a larger scope game.