Burden - Text RPG about demons (and weight gain)

Oh no, you are correct in thinking this is a bit too unnecessarily obtuse as it is right now. I hoped the boar would teach it, but there really should be a tooltip/description that says “defensive stance negates offensive stance attacks!” There should be one of those for each attack, which is something I am adding next major update, as well as a better combat tutorial. It would have been here in this update, but it is not because I was impatient from sitting on this game demo for so long – my bad! I really appreciate your thoughts, and I will probably look at them again when I get to writing a tutorial. I want the stances to make intuitive sense, which I admit they sorta do not right now.

I do want to say your original conception of the stances is otherwise correct: the way the stances work is actually mostly not rock paper scissors. Offensive stance really does increase attack by a large margin, and will shred things. The interaction with the defensive stance is there to discourage just staying in that stance all the time, and make changing stances a bit more strategic. Defensive stance really does increase defense, and neutral stance does not interact in any special way with anything else. I think there are fights later on that will be interesting with this system, and hopefully should better justify it.

Playing around on 0.1.3, I might have found an infinite experience glitch? After defeating bellflowers and going back to the church to rest, if I spend all my xp increasing stats, then save, close the program, relaunch and load the save, I no longer have 0 xp. To top it off, doing this process (spend, save, close, open, load) also appears to to give increasing amounts of xp? When I noticed it, I went from [don’t remember] to 85, then 115, then 160. Not sure if it depends on world-state or location; I’ve talked to all the NPCs I can find but haven’t fattened the dryad (I originally quit and reloaded to see if the more you fattened the dryad the more got shifted on to you / if it was dependent on your previous weight, as I about doubled from the 300 and change I had from fighting the bellflower before I actually understood the combat; I guess I got lucky on the boar).
Pretty fun so far; cheers!

I saw something similar in 0.1.2 as well. At the start of the game, after boar before forest. The resting place at the start of the game, you could level up for the first time ever, save, quit, load, and then level up further.

I just didn’t exploit it, so I didn’t bother to mention it, my bad.

So, played a bit further, getting past that damn plant, and then proceeded to trounce it a few more times for good measure.

I have a suggestion for an encounter after the Dryad

With the Lust demon, there should be an option to just, as a knee-jerk reaction, toss more of the tainted honey at her, maybe even a whole bunch.
Just straight up ruin that toned sexlord body

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And I have reproduced it on my copy. It must be something to do with how I initialize the player’s state. I will give it another glance next update, after I add the first real dungeon to the game. For now, enjoy the free levels!

I like the way you think! There will be content along this vein in the future, but on that particular encounter, I might keep it as-is for narrative reasons, although, you should check out the other ending to the update, for no particular reason…

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So, there’s mention of two endings, it’s probably my mental density, but I can’t seem to find the other one.
It seems you can’t deny the gift of Cait.

I have yet to do the other ending, and I don’t have any constructive feedback on the gameplay, but I must say… I really loved that whole sequence with the Lust Demon and Dryad. Probably one of my favourite things I’ve read in a Text Game/WG Story in a loooong time.

Keep up the good work! I am very much looking forward to what comes next/whatever new mechanics or encounters you may add.

edit: Just thought I’d spoiler text that little bit of text. Just in case someone comes along and reads it or something.

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You are correct in that you can’t refuse Cait’s deal at the beginning, but the branching endings happen later on based on player choices in other dialogues. The way to get it is to (major spoilers!) make a bold statement in dialogue whenever possible – e.g. when the old man in Rime asks if you know how to use your sword, reply of course you do, you trained your whole life with it. In general, acting meek will lock you out of the other ending, as the game tracks dialogue choices for a certain check at the branching point. Additionally, if you choose to talk with her, the dryad will tell you some unsettling information, which you can ask the priest about. Exhausting the priest’s new dialogue will open a couple new dialogue options – one from the dryad, which I recommend you check first, and then one with Maria.

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Hello everyone! I wanted to give two minor updates on the game.

First, I have been working on the next version of the game, and it will include the first true mapped, multilevel dungeon thus far. Exciting! It will also introduce wearable armor and swappable weapons that provide buffs and… sometimes not buffs! Alongside that, I am looking at ways of making the loot system more robust, so I can include a meaningful sidequest which has rewards aside from introducing an NPC whom you can talk to, and so that exploration has a nice payoff in the dungeon.

I also intend to make a few edits to the earlier sections of narration and dialogue, and include some QoL things brought up in the preceding posts that are less exciting to relate.

This will all be a month or two off, though. I do move pretty slow between releases, since I infrequently decide I am not going to open the project file for a couple weeks, so apologies for the wait, but I have no excuse – God made me like this. Once I am almost done with the update and bugtesting, I will post some teaser stuff here.

I won’t be posting any minor updates here, but I have dusted off my twitter account (this one, right here) to post about what I am doing every few days. The whole feed on that account will be solely game info if you want more frequent, gradual updates, and you can comment on there to ask me about minor stuff without fear of pinging this thread to the top of the list for no reason.

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What do you have planned so far? I’m really curious since I enjoyed a lot the game with how it seems to work with the choices

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All the gameplay additions are well and good, but is there any thought about adding in the player descriptions?

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First, thanks for playing! As for plans, I have a bunch, long term and very short (as in, next update short), and it’s a bit hard to answer the question without knowing what sorts of things you want to hear. If you are just talking about the next update, there will be different content available depending on how you got out of Lost Hope. The standard ending will lock you out of part of the dungeon, but in turn has a different way to enter the regular locales I will be adding, along with special interactions due to your particular state you’ll be in.

In addition, the gluttony stat, which has just been a quasi-hidden stat that has existed for no reason up until now, occasionally popping up when you eat too much, will begin to matter this update, opening up new choices at certain branch points and locking the player in to others depending on how the stat. It will also gain some combat utility if you decide to “comsumptionmaxx” as they say on the forums, but nothing like vore – I do not like it at all and could not be forced to add it to my game.

Of course, if you’re still playing the game, you likely want the juicy scenes, and those will be there, but I am going to be more secretive about those until the update drops. However, there may be longer content related to getting unlucky with unidentified pieces of armor, among other things…

There is not just thought, but a guarantee that they will be there – though I have put a lot of thought into how I would like to do them. Player descriptions will be dependent on current weight, certain stats, and choices made. For a simple example, being 300 pounds at the start of the game is different from being 300 pounds after getting the standard ending to the current content, and you will sweat a bit at higher weights only if you get that standard ending. Resolving encounters with corruptive influences at play in certain ways can also do things like change proportions slightly, or other things as I decide they amuse me.

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Really enjoyed what’s in the game so far. Obviously the weight gain scenes are the highlight of the game, and what’s included so far are some of the best descriptions I’ve seen in a text adventure game. The combat leaves a bit to be desired, but the stance system adds a good amount of depth and keeps fights from devolving into mindless attacking. I also thought that the little tile-based dungeons were a neat addition, and that they could significantly set the game apart from others like it in the future.

Overall, I think this game has tons of potential and I’m super excited to see where it goes in the future.

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I enjoyed the game and i cannot wait for the update. I also hope the character descriptions get implemented soon so i get an idea of what PC looks like at their current weight.

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The combat is such a pain in the ass. Enemies ALWAYS guard and block EVERYTHING when you use offensive stance, but YOUR defensive stance makes you too weak to hurt them and they can just beat the shit out of you with impunity. I’d rather it be simple and easy than just mashing attack in neutral stance and hoping I don’t lose just because the RNG wasn’t perfect for me.

Also, put the hotkeys for all the commands somewhere on the screen, or at least in the intro before the game starts or something, I had to dig through the posts here to find out it had even been added. The Rest option by the church was hidden under the scroll bar too, so I only found out about that after it was way too late.

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the salt boar doesn’t actually block a whole lot of attacks, if any, and the flower in the dark forest reacts in a very specific way to each stance. Just don’t use the defensive stance.

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The hotkeys point is a good one, I had forgotten that they are not mentioned in the game, whoops. It’ll be in the intro in the next update. Meanwhile, the issue with options being hidden by the scrolling is something that I have thought about, but there is not really much I can do about it: the UI was a struggle for me to figure out in terms of layout and design, and that version that is in the game is the only one I was able to generate that was even remotely usable, so I am probably just going to have to “solve” that issue by putting yet another notice on the intro, along the lines of “the options menu can scroll, so check whenever you find a new area!”

For combat: as the poster below you mentioned, there is a single enemy that will always guard in response to an offensive stance, and it is the flower. The easier enemy to defeat (the boar) is the only enemy that selects moves at random, and indeed, the selection of the boar’s move is the only one of the three RNG calls in the entire game which is not related to deciding exact amounts of damage. The RNG in the flower fight is only in deciding how much damage it does, as it can do from 10 to 16 depending on the roll of the dice. If you have not leveled, getting bad rolls can be lethal, but putting the points from the boar into attack means that sitting in neutral and attacking the flower is pretty consistently a win with at least 20HP from my testing.

The defensive stance complaints, I am more sympathetic to. It is a tad bit weak currently, but that is because it is an inclusion for later on in the game, when players actually have spare levels to put into defense, as well as armor which will passively buff defense. The stance is a raw multiplier on defense, so since you currently start out with 0 defense, it is a strict negative to enter defensive stance at level 1. This is something that will make more sense when I add tooltips to moves in combat, and have more utility in the next update, when there is more content and more levels available.

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I think I somehow skipped the big boss fight at the end. I died, reloaded, went to the church, went to fight a flower, then went to boss again. The boss was no longer there, the dryad was no longer there.

Also waiting for descriptions before really diving into it.

I would like to see more of the game with more of a corruption mechanic woven in.
It is in there but I would like to see the charachter develop loving the extra wheight gain and becoming a demon of glutony herself.