There’s always the classics like being able to break through walls/floors, pushing heavy buttons, resistance to being pushed, more hp/mana. Being able to hit harder is pretty common too. Cold resistance could be one, but that doesn’t apply to some games.
Depends a lot on the type of game one makes. Platformers will have most certainly a harder time. But here is some stuff that can be interesting:
Reduce knockback if a game pushes stuff around
a mix of muscle + fat to say that a character is bulkier and stronger (imagine sumo)
If the gain is magical, it could be an alternative form related to any kind of buff even if it does not make much sense at first when relating to their general form.
Ultimately, it can even be charisma based boon if it is a standard of beauty/renown/ high class in a given setting
Increased health and/or defense is a pretty common one. Also, the idea of fat being good for storing or strengthing magic powers has been tossed around from time to time, by myself included. And even Metal Slug lets you get fat from picking up too much health items(food) and gives you a damage bonus!
Basically everything obvious has already been said in this thread, heh.
I’ll see what less-obvious stuff I can think of:
Tribal community values body size as a sign of power; the fatter YOU get, the higher they view you, and if you’re big enough, you can become their leader.
Increased inventory storage, holding things in your fat rolls and maybe your navel.
The fatter you are, the longer you can go without food, the longer it takes for you to starve to death
You’re a spooky creature that can absorb souls. The fatter you are, the more souls you can hold.
Medieval game: you can fire yourself into the enemy castle using a trebuchet, as a way to bypass all their walls and armies, BUT if you’re fat enough, you can do damage where you impact, maybe even destroy a wall or two.
There’s a tattoo system in the game, each tattoo can give you different powers and buffs. The fatter you are, the more room for tattoos you have.
You’re a healer, but magic takes a lot out of you. You researched ways to increase your MP, but there’s only so much you can do. One of the abilities in your skill tree is to use HP for mana when your MP is out, but HP is for bulky tank characters, so what the player can do is stuff them with every HP-increasing piece of food you have access to, increase your max HP (and fat) tenfold, then become a very effective healer with a massive MP pool for a while.
Anyone here play Boogerman? Imagine if your character (not Boogerman himself, some kind of legal knockoff) could gain weight. The bigger you are, the bigger (and more destructive) your farts and burps are, but you move slower on land.
Fat characters give a warmth AoE buff to nearby party members, and said fatty is immune to cold themselves.
If you’re fat enough compared to your opponent, you unlock a body slam move that pins them to the floor, making both you and the enemy unable to do anything until you get off them. If it fits the game’s overall feel, this could also suffocate them to death, IDK.
Fat can be converted to other things. The bigger you are, the more you have to work with. Imagine it’s like Scribblenauts, but instead of being limited by the object limit, you’re limited by how much fat you have. Large objects take more fat, small objects don’t affect you as much. When the object is deleted by you, you get your fat back, but if it’s destroyed or lost, the fat goes permanently.
Related to the last idea, imagine the fat converts inside of you and the game isn’t a Scribblenauts clone. Convert your fat to helium to reach a high platform. Convert the fat to water so you can walk around and blast enemies with geysers of water. Fill yourself with fire to burn things down. Stone/lead to crush things, etc. The more fat you have, the more raw material you have to work with.
More fat means of course higher beauty/charisma
It increases the resistance against certain threads like hunger, cold, strong wind, damage (giving armor points), blood drain, may be even poison.
In fantasy I expect it to heavily increase the mana capacity (I’m sure if magic would exist, that is true!)
can eat more healing and buff items (also better at vore)
if stuff like rocket jumping is a thing then you could do damage to enemies when you land and/or launch enemies in the air that are close to where you landed
take less fall damage (because fat ass = soft landing)
bouncier (probably need to be a silly setting to make sense)
resistance to being drunk
can be over-healed more (a healer can give a temporary health buff that decays over time)
less recoil on guns or similar
easier to trip/throw opponents when wrestling/grappling and harder to be tripped/thrown
for a character that can split self into smaller clones of self, fatter = more clones
in a restaurant management type game, fatter customer = eats more = more money
in an arcade type game where you play for score, fatness = score multiplier
similar to fat = mana storage but, fat = bio-battery (for mechs/power armor)
