So I’m making this Topic for a game I’m currently working on involving Weight Gain, Expansion, Stuffing and other themes of the likes. It’s a Card game inspired pretty heavily by Voracious Riches, a game by Someoneinflative but I am to flesh out the idea a bit more since although that game was fun, It hasn’t been updated since shortly after it’s 2022 Gainjam version. If you haven’t seen my Project discussion topic, you can find the game here: Voracious Riches by SomeoneInflative .
I’m going to be using this spot as a place to update on progress as I go, and to receive feedback or ideas for the game so feel free to shoot some ideas! As of now, I’ll mainly be using this topic for any updates, etc.
Currently I have the Main Menu working and a few other things, here’s how the current progress is looking:
Progress update June 4th:
Haven’t done much in terms of visual changes so I’ll just dot down what I’ve finished as of tonight while I had time:
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Added drawing cards function along with card randomness.
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Added ability to actually use the cards on the Player or Monsters (Currently does nothing beyond that.)
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Added card animations when drawing a card.
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Redid and aligned all of the sprites on their sprite sheets so the card deck is cleaner
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Created a chunky Hash map containing each individual card and their respective values.
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Other things like Optimizations and probably some other things I’m forgetting.
I was thinking about taking some inspiration from Across the Obelisk too regarding player equipment like rings, clothing, amulets, etc but that stuff would come later on once I get the general game loop finished.
Progress update June 5th:
Small progress update time!
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Finished up the card functionality and tied it to the cards hash map.
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Depending on player’s card level they’re able to pull higher level cards with better stats.
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Card deck looks much better now and fixed a few issues it was having.
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Set up buffs and debuffs to appear on the UI now along with how many stacks of each the player has.
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Tied other player variables to the UI.
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Added a whopping 2 placeholder sound effects.
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Added variables to the monsters that will control size, hp and stuff like debuffs.
Later today I’ll add card usage on monsters, set up a randomizer to pick different monsters with different abilities that effect the player and add a turn mechanic to skip or end turns.
What the cards and buffs look like right now : (pretty similar I know but status effects actually show up instead of being physically placed under the size bar now)
I’ll improve visuals a bit later on when the general combat code is finished.
Progress update June 13th:
Been awhile since my last progress update, things have been a little slow since I decided to redo stuff for optimization reasons but here’s my current progress.
Sound
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Added 3 card sound effects, placing card, drawing card, and cant play card.
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Added 4 other sound effects, Berrying sound cue, physical attack sounds, and some slime sounds for slime monster along with a sound cueto indicate when it is the player’s turn.
Combat
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Overhauled the combat code and finished monsters abilities, slimes have 3 they can choose from, slime slam, friendly feed and self replicate. While the blue slimes have an additional ability, berrying which applies berrying debuff to the player.
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Auto draw & Slight UI Changes. Cards now auto draw when it’s the player’s turn allowing for the draw card button to be removed (when I’m done working on the game) Not much else has changed in the visual department apart from that, still looks pretty similar.
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Added a second monster, succubus. Lacks a sprite right now will but focuses on temptation and damage to the player.
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Implemented an Energy mechanic (for now). Cards cost energy to use and the player will gain energy each time their turn starts. Higher level cards cost more energy with a max energy cap of 15. (Highest card cost being ~4. Might lower the energy cap later and have the equipment handle energy cap once I get around to adding that down the line.
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Added End turn functionality, once the player has used their choice of cards they can end their turn initiating the enemies turn, they cycle through then goes back to the player’s turn granting energy. At the start of the players turn it also adds all active size debuffs to the players size if it’s not an immediate effect attack.
Other
- Added a title screen for the game along with a settings section. Doesn’t look super snazzy, but it works for now.
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Added a preference setting in the settings menu where the player can choose between Weight gain, Stuffing or Inflation, the game then stores the preference for encounters. Currently, the card deck will still give all three types but that will be fixed soon.
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Decided on a name for the game, BIG BIG DUNGEON! (sounds intimidating i know)
- Began on building the procedurally generated map, however I might settle on something a little more simplistic for the time being since I’m building everything from scratch and procedural generation sounds like a nightmare to work on currently this would also save on time for other things.
Let me know thoughts and opinions! Things I should add, remove, change, etc. Being that this is the first game I’m actually working on I know it isn’t perfect but it’s definitely a learning process, feedback will definitely help a ton!
SMALL Progress update July 11th:
Haven’t had much time to work on the game cuz work and a whole lot of back and fourth travel, but I got a few things done and I felt like posting an update on my progress.
Sound
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Added a couple more sounds and redid other sounds, berry sound has been tweaked.
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Attack sounds have been redone and properly play on cue now.
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Two game over sounds have been added to the inflation variation of the game, they play at random pitch and speed to add variety.
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One game over sound has been added to the weight gain variation of the game which plays at random pitch and speed for variety.
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Card hovering sound as been added when looking through card hand.
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Added one song for the game outside of combat encounters.
Loot
As you explore the dungeon, you will encounter treasure, it will be either a trap or grant you something valuable to aid you.
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Added 15 Potions with different effects. Drinking potions grants an effect for one encounter.
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Added 5 Amulets with different effects. Equipping an amulet grants an effect as long as it’s worn. You can only wear one amulet at a time.
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Added 5 Rings with different effects. Works the same as amulets. You can only wear one ring at a time.
Changes
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Removed antidote card, shrinking card, Removed cure card.
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Potions will now take over for the previous cards along with some other things.
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Added debuffs: Doom, Poison
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Added buffs: Luck, Resistance, Elasticity, Agility, Strength and probably a few others
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Added a player LUCK stat which may increase odds.
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Added a white dot cursor instead of the boring old mouse pointer.
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UI Changes.
Other
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Continuing to explore development of procedural generation however I have an idea that I’ll roll with in the meantime for traveling through the dungeon. After combat you will be introduced with a random 2-4 paths to choose from, each path icon hinting toward what may lie ahead. Such as a skull door for boss, a cave path for treasure or monsters, etc. This way is significantly less difficult and will allow me to focus on other things then add the actual map version near the end of development.
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Added an all items section in the menu which includes a dictionary of all current items and what they do. For now, it just looks like this:
Hopefully I’ll be more active on the project, partially I might have just lost a bit of motivation for it so I was putting it off in my free time but I’m feeling much better now!
Progress update August 25th:
Got some good work done code wise so decided I should post an update since it’s been about a month and some. It’s not as much as I wanted to have done unfortunately, I expected to have a much bigger update but here’s the current progress regardless!
General
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Overhauled in game UI
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Rebuilt the card database and drawing system from the ground up
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Added a couple more sounds
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Overhauled Combat system so now it works without any issues
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Added data saving (Currently only saves for the currently running .exe file.
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Removed previous dungeon traveling mechanic and swapped it with a linear one that I liked
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Added weighted chances for loot, room types and bonuses
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Added Escape room, this replaces escape button to add to the risk/reward of the game, the player can only escape if they get an Escape room then can re enter the dungeon to start at the first room again to stack up more items and cards to use against the final boss in the dungeon. If people arent a fan of this idea let me know! I can scrap it and keep the handy Escape button for players to flee if they’re sure to lose a battle.
Other
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Added 2 (practically) finished game over UI animations, one for the weight gain preference option and one for the inflation preference option.
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Inflation type cards and Weight gain cards are now only drawn when the specific preference is selected (can only pick one)
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Added a (non gore) popping game over for Inflation preference, this can be enabled and disabled in the settings, disabled by default.
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Removed the all items tab from the title screen
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Room chances are as follows: Encounter (60% Chance), Loot room (20% Chance), Escape room (15% Chance) and Fountain (5% Chance).
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Removed the “Flee” / “Escape” button
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Implemented player level mechanic, each level unlocks higher tier of cards up to level 6 but game over sets your level back to 1.
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Rings and Amulets can now be equipped and effect player Stats such as increased size, Luck, Damage resistance or applying nonstop berrying, etc.
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Added a loot chest and animation for opening it and revealing the item.
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Added “view deck” button which shows all cards that the player can possibly draw at their current level
Art
- Removed the ugly purple weakness icon titlescreen background to settle with a static gray for now.
Good news regarding the art department of the game, while currently its still utilizing placeholder sprites, Im happy to say that the art will be done in collaboration with Hefty Totem! You can find them here!
Game loop
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Progression from the start of the game to the end is nearly finished! Id like to add more monsters and create the first final boss soon along with a vast amount of monster abilities then i can officially say the gameplay loop is finished!
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For now, the game will include 4 separate dungeons, Flora, Depths and 2 others that the player can choose from. I’ll definitely chanve this once im closer to actually releasing the game but will focus on fleshing everything’s out more first.
Sound
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Separated Growth sounds, Music volume and master Volume into 3 seperate volume sliders along with a mute all button.
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Added Heal, Weakness, Flirt and Loot sound effects.
Upcoming / Planning
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3 additional monsters (Floral, Golem & Water Elemental)
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Monster drops, monsters dropping Gold, XP, rarely items & new cards for you.
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Teammates! Loved the little angel and devil allies in Voracious Riches so teammates will work similarly, with some small tweaks and changes so Im not blatantly stealing game mechanics.
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Limited starting card pool, more cards can be bought and acquired via shop rooms, loot chests, monster drops or fountain.
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Depths final boss
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Screen resolution settings. (Fullscreen, Windowed, Windowed Borderless, 1920x1080, etc.)
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Trapped chests
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Enchanted and/or Cursed versions of equipment
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Proper Save / Load functionality
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Different backgrounds for the other dungeons
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Difficulty modes (Easy, Medium, Hard, Chaos)
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Parallax backgrounds which interact with mouse positions.
Wasn’t as big of a progress update as i hoped since some things I spent awhile on ended up being scrapped. Next progress update should at least include some pictures/snapshots of the game. The UI is still a mess since I overhauled it then decided to redo it a third or fourth time.
Im still more focused on functionality over Graphics until I get more things worked out and finalized. However, i think once everything in the Planned section is added, ill be close to having an actual game ready! I’ll likely stick to smaller frequent progress updates (when i remember.)
Feedback, Questions and Concerns are welcome! Have a great week!
Progress update September 7th:
Snippets and stuff
I Havent gotten around to doing many major changes to visuals so i decided to add and show a few things that ive added so its not always just a wall of text each update so instead, heres a few visual changes. Just keep in mind that most of these will be improved when im at the polishing and refining phase of development. 
I’m doing this update via phone so I apologize if this update looks weird format wise
Loot
We now have somewhat fancy loot opening, loot is randomly given out at different rarities with different outline color representing each rarity as well! Item modifiers are as follows:
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Common: +1 or 0.5% for each modifier stat that the item increases
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Uncommon: +1.5 or 0.8% for each modifier stat that the item increases
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Rare: +2.5 or 1.3% for each modifier stat that the item increases
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Legendary: +5 or 2.5% for each modifier stat that the item increases
These may seem confusing since i have yet to explain the stat and item system entirely but essentially, items that give bonus integer of float values will increase by the first value of each item plus the rarity modifier, items that give bonus percentage based values will increase by the second.
Parallax, UI and Outline
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Added parallax background for the depths.
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Added a setting to disable parallax
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Added window resolution and borderless, etc settings.
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Parallax: I was pretty happy with how the parallax turned out, although its all still temporary art as i plan to overhaul the art all at once so the project will likely do a 180 in appearance, primarily, the visuals will likely change from pixel to drawn at some point i still like it in the mean time! Took a bunch of tweaking but i aim to keep the same feel of a blueish massive underground of the Depths, which is the first of four Dungeons which will house Slimes, Blue slimes, Golems and Succubi with the occasional appearance of other monsters not native to the dungeon for a bit more variety.
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UI: As development slowly continues inch by inch, I got distracted for the 4th time changing the UI. Slowly its turning to something I’ll hopefully be happy with come release time, I’ll probably aim for a sleeker less bulky way to display all the players information since I’ll also need to display teammates information as well and make it look good, next thing ill probably change is the cards as well as how they’re displayed. As much as i enjoy them popping up when hovering, i think a simple highlight and shine animation would make them look better while reducing the amount of screenspace they take up.
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Outline: The outline is more or less to indicated whos being targeted and will be changed with more of a faint glow style of highlighting once i get to polishing the game.
Linear Progression [For now]
As a temporary option ive decided on a linear map progression, from room 1 to room 10, 10 being the boss and each room between those are either an encounter, loot room, escape or fountain room. Because theres so little rooms, (although this version wont ever be im the released game) escape and return is a big part of being strong enough to fight the planned boss. Its a very bland way to handle this, but I’ll just call it minimalistic. I’ll add UP or DOWN paths you can choose so it wont just be a straight bar once i get around to preparing a boss for room 10 and that way the “map” actually has a big more randomness to it visually at least while the rest is being built and eventually entirely strung together.
Other
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Fixed most UI scaling issues with different screen resolutions and window size.
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Added new background for Depths (Dungeon 1)
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Added XP per monster kill. Currently, 8XP per slime, 15XP per succubus.
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Level 2 requires 25xp, Level 3 requires 50xp, Level 4 requires 100xp, Level 5 requires 200xp and Level 6 requires 350xp. They are quite the grind currently, but they will be changed as i go to find a good balance between monsters, xp, levels and progression.
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Begun working on Player stats page, which will show all stats and modifier bonuses.
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Begun making bonuses to stats per level:
Level 1: 50 Hp, 15 Energy, 25 Max Size
Level 2: 55 Hp, 18 Energy, 28 Max Size
Level 3: 60 Hp, 21 Energy, 31 Max Size
Level 4: 65 Hp, 24 Energy, 34 Max Size
Level 5: 70 Hp, 27 Energy, 37 Max Size
Level 6: 75 Hp, 30 Energy, 40 Max Size
Next goals
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Sprite size variations [temp art]
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Trap chest variation
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Stat menu
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Revamp card visuals
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Balance xp and card Pool
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Currency & Shop
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Depths boss
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Probably more overhauling UI and mechanics
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Player visual size being handled by size stat
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Add more sound effects
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Add more animations for interactions
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Expand linear progression to slightly less linear (if that makes any sense at all)
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Complete gameplay loop with boss
Planned at some point
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Proper Sprite Art
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Dungeon 2, 3 and 4
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More monsters & Items
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Entire visual overhaul
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A ton of optimizations and UI improvements
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Game difficulty
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Probably other things that im forgetting but I’ll add those next progress update.
That’s all i have to update on for the time being, things are slowly coming together and I’ve been having a blast with working on this project. (even though i probably only have around 1-2 hours of downtime to work on it every few days)
Feedback or questions are welcome! Until next time!
