Appetite for Growth V1.0 released 12/8/25

[gckoch]

Welcome to Appetite for Growth!

After moving to a new town, our main character finds herself rooming with a girl who has some peculiar proclivities. Thankfully for our protagonist, the two share a mutual interest. To make things even more interesting, a mysterious entity seems to be willing to support our main character in her pursuits. In Appetite for growth, you will have opportunities to fatten a broad cast of characters with unique body types through magic, “science” or just old fashion feeding.

Appetite for Growth is a Visual Novel made using Twine. It has some mildly branching stories, over 30,000 words and just under 500 images. The 4 main girls (seen in title card) and the main character currently have 4 weight stages.

This game does contain sex scenes and nudity.

I tried my best to bug test; however, I am new to twine, coding and game developing. I will try to fix any bugs that are reported as soon as I can.

I have been playing the games on Weight Gaming for a few years now and appreciate all the time and effort everyone puts into their games. I really enjoyed Big Aspirations and used a lot of its mechanics as inspiration for my game.

I also want to thank the owner of Weight Gaming, Grotlover2. I have been a lurker without an account for a long time and without these forums I would have never pursued making my own game, a process which I have really enjoyed. I know running Weight Gaming has been tough lately but I hope you know that, whatever ends up happening to Weight Gaming, you are appreciated.

AI disclaimer: All images were made using AI. I also used AI to help come up with a few names when I needed lists of names to choose from.

Download here: Appetite for Growth by gcko

[ticktock]

I enjoyed it. The characters are interesting and the game flow is similar to Big Aspirations and possibly Fill Me Up. I like the idea of having multiple characters of focus and the branching behavior depending on who is gaining. I did run into a breaking bug however, around day 74, I got a blank screen. I think this was during Nat’s last weight transition. Both Amy and the MC were only at stage 3. Keep up the great work.

[gckoch]

I’m glad you liked it! Thank you for letting me know about the bug. I think I found it. It should be fixed and I and am uploading a hotfix to itch.io now.

[Krodmandoon]

Welcome to weight gaming @gckoch.

This is nice to see. I agree with @ticktock gives me a bit of vibes of Fill Me Up, or Big Aspirations, even a bit of Expanding the Business Portfolio vibes, which is a good thing. I enjoy being able to choose if the MC is into gaining or not and not just having it be tied directly to progression and having some branching paths.

It’s a really simple thing but with so much text on a screen with something like Twine I really enjoy your use of color and format that helps break up text. Too much text in passages at once can be off putting depending on how the formatting is, and the way you’ve done it is a nice touch.

I figure you have plenty of content yet to come, but it would be nice to see some more events or ways to hang out with your roommates. Maybe dates, group events, running into girls at locations, or more random pop ups of things per weight stage. I like the background npc stuff, although I’m not as big into magic or instant weight gain. So, I wouldn’t mind the idea of having some of the side girls, or roommates pop up at locations or being able to directly take them out in a similar way. Also hoping to see some weight gain content for the cafe owner .

I didn’t get to play through all of it but from what I did check out I noticed some issues. The first time you meet Dream there’s just some text errors. General text errors, a few due to format/coding issues, and either a bug or oversight on day two at the cafe.

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There are periods outside of the quotations.

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I assume this should say “Well, I feed off of desires.”

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“Me” should be changed to “my.”

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Missing periods at the end of sentences.

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There’s a single quotation mark used at the end of this sentence.

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Fattened has an extra ‘t.’

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Both cases of the word ‘don’t’ are missing apostrophes.

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Some text errors related to coding.

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Isabel is used here where it should be Amy. Also audible is misspelled.

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The formatting is off on the text here.

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On day two the first time you can work at the cafe I had the same npc show up back-to-back when working with Eva. It was the fat girl in the gray hoodie.

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Overall seems like a good foundation I like what you have here, I’m interested to see where you take if from there. Good luck with future development.

[gckoch]

Thank you for all the kind words! Im really glad to hear that people are enjoying what I have but it looks like I have a decent amount of proof reading to do. I really appreciate the in depth review and pointers on where formatting, grammar and bugs can be fixed. I think I got a bit excited to release my game and ended up releasing something that should have recieved a little bit more care. Hopefully I can get some proof reading done quickly on V1.0, release a final version 1 without those issues, and then down the line when version 2.0 comes out I’ll try to make it’s initial release a bit more polished.

[Parnash]

Assuming - and hoping - the girls will get bigger in later updates?

[gckoch]

Definitely. They are only getting started

[Hekler]

Don’t beat yourself up too much about the typos lol, these things tend to slip by when proofreading several paragraphs at a time, especially when excited to get the project out. Even Big Aspirations and Albero Verde still have a couple typos here and there.

As the old saying goes, don’t let perfection get in the way of h̶o̶r̶n̶y̶ good enough. Though if you really want to avoid them, it may be worth finding a proof reader or two somehow.

[danget]

Really enjoyed what I have seen so far and the main complaints I have are just lack of content/options that aren’t really problems for how early into development this is. The story lines are fun, Nat specifically has a lot of potential as your pseudo rival. I really like the turn the tables story line because I find the idea of Amy joining the feeding side to be appealing as an actual storyline. I do hope for more variation later if the MC gets chunky on the feedee Nat route.
On that note while I have the same wants as most on here, (more stages ect.) I do think the game could use some more options to help pace the gains better. Buying chocolates or icecream for the other girls as an example or more options on dates to join in the eating for MC gaining route. While the pace for the actual weight gain isn’t to bad in terms of Eve or Mila; Nat, Amy and MC could use some more events so that the player isn’t hammering order food or go out to eat solo more than 10 times in a row. I am mixed on the decision to make MC feeder/feedee routes togglable because while I like that it helps separate that choice (and the MC weight) from progression, it also feels less fluid and cuts off the choices later. This is probably more person preference talking but it feels a bit hollow later on when Nat talks about the MC losing control or when she talks about the house being filled with junk food because Nat has all of one event to tempt the MC and all the other events that would end in the MC eating at all are turned off. There are two ways to lose a good chunk of weight and nothing really that passively pushes the weight gain for MC. Nothing is really wrong as such but it clashes a bit for a feeder to feedee MC playthrough which seems to be an option given how Nat is talking during the MC weight up scenes.

Don’t get me wrong I like a lot of the game, even the bit I am complaining about is minor and really only there because it distracted me as the one issue I had with it. The characters a pretty well written and I hope to see more of them bouncing off each other and not just with MC. More events are also the want for these kinds of games in my opinion.

Also one bug I found is that there isn’t a way to continue after slacking off at the gym. (sucked when I was on feedee route and trying to use potions)

[PlusParsnips]

You have a critical softlock bug when Nat hits Stage 4 Fat on the feedee route. Completely breaks the entire game and can’t progress. Save provided to prove such.

Appetite for growth.zip (37.0 KB)

[gckoch]

I think I might have already addressed this issue with the hotfix I posted about 13 hours ago. If you downloaded it after that time you should have the fixed file and I think your game folder would have hotfix in the title. If so then my hotfix was missing the fix

[Wulf_Diomhaireachd]

I’ll check this out in a bit, but you can drastically reduce the file size of this game with just a few minutes’ work. If you use a tool like XnConvert to change all of the images from .png to .webp you can reduce the total size to ~6% of what it is currently (I’ve dropped it from 726MB to 46MB).

All you have to do is add the images folder to the input tab, then copy these settings in the output tab:

The maximum cores will depend on your CPU, and the extra panel is from the format settings. Then with the code you just run a find + replace of all references to .png to .webp and everything will work.

As a point of comparison, here’s the title card before and after conversion:

I find the .webp version to be slightly warmer, but otherwise identical. Itch has a 1GB upload limit iirc so if you add much more to the game you’ll have to host it elsewhere. With this your game could have 20x the images and still be uploaded to Itch.

[gckoch]

Thanks for all the input!

I’m glad you like the Nat feedee route. I plan on having 2 parallel (Nat feeder/Nat feedee) branches in Nat and Amys story after stage 4. Keeping Amy at stage 1 to obtain the Nat feedee route also allows for easy implementation of some weight contrast sex scenes without me having to make a ridiculous amount of images so if you are into that then be sure to come back for future updates. Some other characters might get branching stories like that later on too, but no promises.

I think I agree with every complaint you have and I think a lot of them are things I will be able to address in future updates. I do plan on adding more events with the main cast which should be able to alleviate some of the constant order food mashing you were talking about. I have also considered adding an inventory system that would allow for other methods of eating/feeding, again no promises on that but I think it should be feasible.

The feeder/feedee choices are also something that I would like to spend a bit more time fleshing out and making more relevant to the gameplay.

I am trying to find the bug you are describing and haven’t had any luck yet. What point in the potion process were you at? Did you have the level 2 potions yet? Had you started on the special potion for white haired girl and if so had you got a part specific potion from Rea?

[gckoch]

Looking over the topic it looks like some of my responses maybe just posted as their own comment and not a reply to the person I was attempting to respond to. Might be that I was on mobile? I am new to posting on forums. I have attempted to respond to everyone though so sorry if things are confusing or if it looks like I ignored your comments

[gckoch]

I think I might have already addressed this issue with the hotfix I posted about 13 hours ago. If you downloaded it after that time you should have the fixed file and I think your game folder would have hotfix in the title. If so then my hotfix was missing the fix

[danget]

@gckoch

I am trying to find the bug you are describing and haven’t had any luck yet. What point in the potion process were you at?

I mean the page that appears after I picked the slack off option just didn’t have a way to continue. It just said I slacked off and then I couldn’t progress without going back and hitting work hard instead. I might have been in feeder route for the MC when it happened.

[gckoch]

I think I figured it out. Thank you for reporting it. I’ll get a hotfix #2 out in a bit.

[gckoch]

Thank you for the info! I was unsure of how I would release future versions given Itch.io’s 1 gb limit but this solves it.

[nep2nia]

Just wanted to bring up a couple bugs that I didn’t see mentioned:

Some images don’t show up in-game on operating systems besides Windows due to case sensitivity on filenames. “WT” vs “wt” is a common issue. There are a few references to files on an “A:” drive as well, which obviously won’t work for anyone else.

Eating “Italian” changes the player’s weight back to the first stage, at least visually.

[gckoch]

Hotfix 2 is out now on Itch.io. Should have working gym, some more proofreading (fixed punctuation, general typos, error messages) and a system in place so that customers at the café don’t repeat directly after one another.