@failmuseum The CG was great, and knowing it is outside your normal having it come out that good deserves extra praise. Plus it really helped fill in that black space with text.
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It’s a special mode for the Temple that comes with max control and max happiness. Not sure if it’s implemented yet.
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oh i see. that good to know
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I took a break from judging to satisfy my curiosity regarding the changes, and I feel the early game is a fair bit gentler now - or maybe I’m just more prepared for the challenge, heh. Making sure to spam both Reila and Malin’s powers everyday nets you +5 both Happiness and Control, plus an early guard tower really helped keep the productivity up and suddenly gold became a non-issue. I didn’t expect wood of all things to be a bottleneck but, yeah, don’t forsake it! I had about 5 lumberjacks by the end of things.
One thing to touch on is that I love the sound design! I adore the music change upon upgrading to the castle (and presumably a different theme for the manor which I’ll have to to try next) and also the tempo shifting for when you became fatter. The added stomping at higher weights was the cherry atop the cheesecake!
At the higher weights, let’s call it the “endgame”, I found it amusing how the game started to become playing keepaway from all the food temptations when you can no longer exercise. My hedonism had hastened my demise as now I was only a couple of cookie batches away from immobility, rendering the outside a no-go zone (curse you, delightful humans!). I was also needing to constantly exercise my siblings (which involved huffing my fat gut to the throne room each and every goddamn day) to stem a similar fate for them. Some minor observations about the endgame:
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I don’t mind the character slowing down, and the red faced exhaustion was cute, but it would be nice if it wasn’t quite that slow. The message is received by slowing the character down, but to become a crawl did make the last few days drag out longer than needed.
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It’s cute that the citizenry decide to feed you but +10 feels a bit much when we’re talking about a batch of cookies. Having to dodge a swarm of +1s and +2s as opposed to a single +10 would be more entertaining and feel more apropos - the single acts of generosity, so trite and harmless at first, eventually snowball into a storm of goodwill that can soon wreck a dragon’s waistline and render them victims of their own success.
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A minor subjective gripe from me, but I wasn’t quite a fan of how the dragons were described as becoming feebler and more ineffectual as their weight increased. You’d think that dragons, magical creatures who are predisposed to being large, would have a better carriage for amassing such, well, mass. Whilst I get the allegory to actual rulers in history who became soft and weak through decadent excess, it still doesn’t fit right for a dragon who’s literally all about that opulence. I have no qualms with them becoming slower and eventually immobile but I think the description of how they arrive at that point could be tweaked.
Other than that, very satisfied with my playthrough!
Edit: I was hesitant to mention my third point, chiefly for two reasons:
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I didn’t want to be that guy who’s all “Ackshually dragons are supposed to be like this…
” They’re fictional characters in a fictional world. The rules are whatever the creator deems them so. And -
Though it’s not my cup of tea, health play is a thing and having these BBWs (BBDs?) struggle against their own increasingly useless bodies is no doubt someone’s kink.
So I fully get the stance were the current descriptions to be maintained.
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I really like the set-up for this game, it has a really neat opening cutscene and sets the scene for what follows up quite nicely!
However, this game has a (IMO) incredibly sloppy tutorial that exhausted me before I could even get a feel for what the game would be about. If I get a tutorial shown that’s 12 pages long about just 1 of the meters (Of which there are 5) then I feel it’s bound to overwhelm the player and either makes them skip it, or get overwhelmed.
If you want to inform the player about the many features your game has to offer, maybe hold their hand a little and tell them what to build in the early stages to give them an idea of how things are gonna go. when I had the choice between the 3 dragon ladies, I had no idea what any of those small bonuses implied.
The idea of becoming a queen of your own village that you built from the ground up is definitely there, and it’s great reading so much positive feedback in the comments, but unfortunately for me, I was unable to get into the game due to these issues I had.
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I hear what you are saying, and would imagine that in an ideal world the game would unfold in a more structured manner, akin to most story campaigns in RTSes. Early levels or early game objectives would start with simple tasks concerning basic concepts (build up a stockpile of resources) before building up to unlocking more complex subsystems (managing Control or Opulence, for example) to tackle harder challenges.
Because of the Jam constraints I think failmuseum did what he could in providing info to the player and to bootstrap them into what is a pretty ambitious and complex game.
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So it took a lot of save scumming and value editing and trial and error for the input code screen, but I think I’ve got the majority of the secret codes for the game sorted out.
Building Codes
0789 2489 - All Resource buildings at Max Level
6545 1752 - Pre Built Wall
9845 3264 - Pre Built Town Inn
4434 4444 - Pre Built Mansion and Wall
4464 4444 - Pre Built Castle and Wall
4494 4444 - Pre Built Fortress and Wall
4444 4441 - Pre Built Grand Plaza
4444 4442 - Pre Built Center Market
4444 4447 - All Large Buildings Pre Built (w/ Mansion and Plaza)
4444 4448 - All Large Buildings Pre Built (w/ Castle and Plaza)
4444 4449 - All Large Buildings Pre Built (w/ Fortress and Plaza)
Resource Codes (Doesn't Stack, Just uses the most recent code)
0000 0001 - Debug Code from a post above, +99,999,999 Starting Resources, +9,999,999 Starting Gold
7912 3456 - +25 Starting Resources
8959 1435 - +30 Starting Resources
4139 8520 - +35 Starting Resources
2014 0654 - +40 Starting Resources
7136 8520 - +50 Starting Resources
6214 7592 - +75 Starting Resources
4144 4414 - +100 Starting Resources
Dragon Weight Codes
1444 4444 - Serrin starts at Level 2
2444 4444 - Serrin starts at Level 3
3444 4444 - Serrin starts at Level 4
4444 4444 - Serrin starts at Level 5
5444 4444 - Serrin starts at Level 6
6444 4444 - Rapid Weight Gain for Serrin
4144 4444 - Malin starts at Level 2
4244 4444 - Malin starts at Level 3
4344 4444 - Malin starts at Level 4
4544 4444 - Malin starts at Level 5
4644 4444 - Malin starts at Level 6
4744 4444 - Rapid Weight Gain for Malin
4441 4444 - Reila starts at Level 2
4442 4444 - Reila starts at Level 3
4443 4444 - Reila starts at Level 4
4445 4444 - Reila starts at Level 5
4446 4444 - Reila starts at Level 6
4447 4444 - Rapid Weight Gain for Reila
3548 7166 - Random Starting Weight Levels
Not gonna lie, some of these were really easy to guess once I recognized the pattern, particularly the weight level codes and the prebuilding codes.
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They kind of are meant to be easy to predict, since the codes that have a ton of fours in them were meant to be easier to remember to put in more quickly and are the codes that carry over progress to Heroes on a budget. It was also born from it being a real hassle to input that many passwords if I randomized it.
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I loved so much the game, amazing artwork and gameplay, and the music omg, was the top of the cherry, excelent work!
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How can I meet the cultist or is it possible in the game?
Guilty as charged, I’ll admit.
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That’s no “dragon girl”, That’s a “dragon Kemonomimi”. I know they’re a same thing, but is there any other weight gain-based games that features dragons that are, you know, not mostly human like or look like they were made by the Japanese Dr. Moreau?
I’m not a furry and I’m not big on antho stuff, but for most of the internet (and perception outside of fetish or preference) see a girl that has minimal animal features will always be called “blank girl” (myself included). Dragon, cat, cow, most common will be referred to in this way even though they are basically just a human female. The same way that we with our weight gain and fat fetish might look at someone that is commonly conceptualized as being “chubby”, “thicc”, or “fat” when they are very far from the general fetish community views on those things. We won’t change anyone’s opinion on the subject by trying to correct them so all you can do is roll with it. As most subjective things to be.
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The cultists play a bigger role in Heroes on a Budget, a lot bigger of a role. They are only mentioned in this one as a lore tidbit that only really becomes important in Heroes.
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I had a good run, fixed up a couple more bugs and issues from it too. I also fixed the typos in the game’s intro as well.
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A rather well put together game in general, the city management is interesting although it drags on a bit long, resource scarcity is an interesting challenge to overcome.
Overall I would say this game is worth playing if you have a spare few hours to go through it.
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Curiously, has anyone had success with using anything other than the grand plaza? I’m curious what combinations of big constructions (central area and den alternative) people have used.
(Call me plain jane with the plaza and castle!)
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I personally really liked the plaza and fortress when playing as Reila. It really helped with making the town practically run itself. Those last 10 months, my economy was ridiculously good. My only regret was not using the lots by the wall for guard towers for my entertainment areas, instead of the northern housing district’s lots. If I just had a few more people, the market would have been better than the plaza area too.