I’m going to preface this criticism by saying I really like this game and the stuff you can do, but there is one very annoying thing in it that always makes me want to just cheat, the fact that you have to just instant end days knowing that you are in a net negative in a lot of stats cause, early game, you can only make money passively without shaking the town down which has a very large cooldown without upgrades
3 Likes
When you are right, you are right though.
I cannot wait for next udate, i hope it finally do with the building with the “!” mark and the cult
5 Likes
I had enormus problems with a population of 35. With max farms and farmers (at productivity 3) it was not enough to substain the village.
Iron income was so low that I could not substain more than 3 guards (no iron sold).
I used the grand project with the two entertaiment areas. That way I used less plots for them and generated enough to send one dragon each week into the village.
With the foreigner giving money the game has gotten a LOT easier.
Were you putting the farm’s workload on “run them ragged”? That should be enough even with the middling productivity stat to feed a town with maxed out farms and population.
Iron Income is currently bugged a bit, it is checking for stone miners sometimes. I have fixed this bug for the upcoming version, but you will still have it.
ok take your time, i am not rushing you, and i hope other are not too
1 Like
no worries, you weren’t doing that. I’m just happy people like my game enough to look forward to the next update 
I have not run them ragged as I need the points to increase productivity. Productivity seems to stay at 2 with high control and happieness. Productivity under 0 is easy to get but at that point the village is actively failing.
Are there any ways to increase productivity further? If it is above 2/3 it starts to lower FAST.
Might be a weird question, but how did you make the girls’ hair multicolored? I’m buying RPGMaker since it’s on sale and I was debating on grabbing a few packs as well.
High Happiness and High Control does have some positive effect on Productivity but the main factors that seem to influence productivity are the Town’s Weight and their Wealth.
Basically, the more wealthy they are the less they feel the need to work and the further they are from Weight 0 (in either direction) the less they are able to work. So don’t let them get too rich, fat or thin.
Edit: Also productivity doesn’t seem to have much of an effect in the mid range. The main thresholds for when Productivity makes a difference are when it’s between 6 and 9 or over 9 or -6 to -9 and under -10.
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I have never managed to get productivity that high or low(-6/6). The highest weight for the town was around 60 in the initial stage.
Even after ransacking the village to below 25 wealth the highest productivity was shown as 5.
Any other tricks?
Edit1: Cleared things up a bit
I’ve enjoyed this game a lot.
It was a fun ride. First it was a race to build the wall, and then it was a consistent effort to build up enough farms to run the operations smoothly.
Selling excess food supply without turning the dragon girls into some sort of movable grain silo and keeping village weight in check by doing so was a decent way to handle things for me.
I’ve also noticed indirect costs linked to each construction site, as they required additional manpower and food to complete the building.
My control and productivity stayed around the median numbers most of the time for a solid chunk of the gameplay, and I guess it is OK. Also, rushing with the wall pushed my notoriety up, I should’ve invested in entertainment a bit more.
There is the most efficient way to run things, and there is a fun one. That doesn’t mean the efficient way shouldn’t be fun, really.
As for the possible suggestions:
(Please forgive my inattentiveness if I’ve messed something up, please take whatever the idea you are willing to implement, but don’t overburden yourself more than it is necessary)
-
Expansion of the trade and barter system
I thought that adding the expanded trade and barter system with the nearby towns could be useful, both for accessing the necessary resources early in-game and some other weight gain options. To clarify, you can exchange raw resources for manpower, or any other raw resource exchange. Loan system with wandering merchants can also be a neat addition. It would be interesting to know how the dragons would pay out that loan… -
Defense expansion module (non-canon renditions?)
Mercenaries — help with defense in exchange for gold and notoriety. Can be used to keep up with the ever-increasing invasion force; hopefully, the economic growth limiter will prevent a Shonen-tier power escalation.
Expanded rooms with more stuff to interact with? Escape timers in case your defenses were crushed?
Rival dragon villages that you may capture if the knights have forced you out of your first settlement? It may be possible to use mercenaries for assistance, but lose in stats and get some nasty debuffs. Please note that this doesn’t aim to remove the canon locked up in the cave ending. Basically, it is more likely if there is a quite a bit of time between the storyline of Heroes On A Budget and Draconic Expansion. A neat piece of lore, I’d say? First dragon War, per se. -
Travel options, diplomacy, and the game of disguise (uhh, hello cult?)
Imagine if the cult isn’t that bad, and you can even bargain with them, getting your hands on some special stuff (like illusionary items, dietary and exercise equipment) with unobvious drawbacks. You can either bluff, appearing thinner than you are, or use human-morphing disguise to visit nearby lordship to purchase the title of nobility in exchange for cyclic vassal tributes (stalls notoriety growth, decreases reputation among the dragon court). And if your disguise would shatter under your weight, expect nothing good of this. A jump in the size of invasion force, for example.
3.1 While on the visit to the local lord, a player may encounter Sir Rodrick, who as a knight, I presume, will show no hesitation to help a noble lady. Classic lady and knight trope with some room for a plot twist, so quirky, I know. Love drama included, if you are into that.
3.2 Self focus
3.2.1 More options to spend time alone or in a company, unlocking with weight/decadence (punct 4.2.1).
3.2.2 Expanded interactive enviroment responding to your weight, can be both interpersonal and non-personal, plainly your physical interactions with the environment (housing components, like floors, doors, furniture, etc.)
3.2.3 Passive dietary system improvements (whatever the dragons eat “off the cam” when you aren’t actively managing them), with a choice to “resist” the temptation and lose some weight, but it will become ever harder to overcome with the growing decadence/opulence, which decreases “willpower” stat.
The guess is to roll the dice, and see if you have success with changing diet via common event. Meaning it’s easy to change it to a luxury diet, and quite hard to change it back to the spartan one at a certain weight. Low-tier diets can stall or reverse the weight climb when you aren’t too decadent. However, when you cross the Rubicon, there is no way you can go back.
3.2.3 Exercise system improvements (active management) with more variety to it, and some weight loss items with curious backfiring effects from the wandering mage/cultists. Here can be the “willpower” stat will come into play, affecting your workout diligence and availability of workout options for a certain character and their weight level. So being said, Malin would give up later on hard workouts than Serrin/Relia.
3.2.4 Gradual personality change with changing weight/opulence. It has already been reflected in the mirror, so why not deepen this little thing and reflect it in the management stats?
- Civil law, tax policy, and general government administration
So you tell me the dragons are smart enough to build a prosperous city but not smart enough to level-up their game? With a taxation system, advisory and ministry institutions (shoutout to the court), and respective government departments it is possible ease the workload put on those poor dragons.
It may come in handy during the so-called endgame.
4.1 Introduce research points to modernize the administration, in matters of its efficiency and some bonuses that may come with it. Some dragon girls will perform better in such tasks, I think.
4.2 Corruption mechanic, it increases whenever you don’t manage things personally, have low control, and excess wealth (both town and personal). It is mainly about how much money passes by you, never to be in your hands. Tied to the decadence, to put it right, it’s averse and reverse of the same wider concept.
4.2.1 Decadence mechanic (determined by opulence and weight, with weight being more important), which unlocks exclusive dialogue and interactions (reputation management with other dragons).
Let’s say you can make someone less angry by offering them a cake 
It’s even better when they have a sweet tooth. Or you can upgrade their chambers, or come up with different offers or activities to pass the time together. Speaking of it, this can be useful during the endgame, to help you occupy yourself and not waste your time on the mundane tasks.
4.2.2 As some may guess, your ministers and advisors at your court have their own motivations (selfish desires and not quite so). You can select them based on their perceived qualities as an employee, but that doesn’t imply them trying to feed you (maybe they are horny? maybe they have conspired against you with other dragon(s)?) or pickpocket your money based on that corruption mechanic.
4.2.3 Hard choices. And love-hate relationships.
If you really need a dragon to stay operational, or if you are really paranoid, you can “enforce” some dietary or exercise choices onto them. Let’s say you’ve told Serrin (or Relia) to lay off the snacks, but she won’t do so, and after a number of pantry raids you’d get a random event, when you can confront her about it. You can leave her be, or lock her into her chambers and forcefully put her on the diet. Obviously, this is not good for the relationships, but it can be useful for your business.
- The wandering mages
Who knows what they have come to offer?
5 Likes
The multicolor hair was done by myself in Krita. For the sprites, I made a sprite in the character creator, edited it in Krita (including the multicolored hair), and then copied that edited sprite over the rest of the sprite sheet.
For the portraits, I again used the character generator for portraits, very carefully drew the streaks of color over one of the portraits on a layer above the portrait sheet, and then copied that layer and placed it exactly in the same spot on each additional portrait picture.
4 Likes
Yeah, I can report that Productivity was being a little weird for me, staying low in the early game despite high Happiness and Control. It was only when I engineered a food surplus so that the town weight rose from -20 to 0 that Productivity spiked to 9 and then I was away with it.
At a peak I managed to get to 11 Productivity which amused me since I had assumed 10 to be the cap. Serrin approves of Dragon Gate denizens giving 110% (to her). Final pop count of 38.
Happy to have seen all the endings now, and so without further features to explore I’ll look forward to seeing what this experience will bring to Heroes On A Budget going forward.
1 Like
I will be adding more content to this game (as well as more non canonical endings), so I’m not done yet.
I did fix the productivity issue where it goes to 11, not that it really mattered since all of the checks were looking for >= 10, but I still felt like fixing it. Just been busy this last week.
13 Likes
It was a surprise for me to see you at this year Gain Jam. I have 3 things to say about your game 
First of all, it’s a good game, although it was a bit complicated for me at first, but, I understood it after a while. 
The second would be that there are some things to fix, polish and add (But Its understandable becuase it is one of the first versions).
And finally, I consider that it has been something unusual from what I am used to play in WeightGaming, I liked that 
but anyway this is just my opinion
It’s been a while since I entered WeightGaming so I don’t know if they still do that post about the Gain Jam winners like the other years, but if they do I hope to see you among the winners 
Lucky B out 
1 Like
So one of the ideas I had that you might have noticed in the last update that you can’t do anything with is I want to add another large structure to the game. I want to add a wizard’s tower and add a hirable wizard NPC to staff it. Basically it would be used to spend gold to make the wizard perform certain tasks, whether that is studying magic/magical artifacts or using said spells/artifacts.
I want the wizards to add a bit of randomness to the game depending on which one you hire. One is an ethically good mage that isn’t very competent. She does every research and procurement job slower, and can mess up spells. Naturally, she can gain weight if you use the lipomancy spells and she messes it up. The other one is an evil wizard that is much more competent (can’t mess up spells, and researches faster), but will preform his own experiments without you telling him to do it, causing a random negative effect on the town. There will be an extra ending that comes from the wizard tower.
I also want the magical artifacts to have a low chance to appear when receiving gifts, instead of the wizards just looking for them. I intend to have the base functionality of the wizard’s tower and the court system in place for the next update, whenever that will be.
14 Likes
Won’t lie, I love the idea of having a fat witch in town.
5 Likes
Got some additional cg for the immobility cutscenes, this time for when they need to get through the door.
18 Likes
First Round Scores
Jux Score
| Category | Total |
|---|---|
| Game Runs: | 50.0 |
| Use of Theme: | 50.0 |
| Art: | 5.9 |
| Writing: | 7.3 |
| Music & Sound: | 5.6 |
| Mechanics: | 7.5 |
| Game Concept | 8.6 |
| Use of Fetish | 6.5 |
| Judge Preference: | 8.1 |
| Wild Cards Attempted: | 3.0 |
| Admin Wild Card: | 3.5 |
| Patreon Wild Card: | 2.0 |
| Community Wild Card: | 3.0 |
| Total: | 161.0 |
Alex Score
| Category | Total |
|---|---|
| Game Runs: | 50.0 |
| Use of Theme: | 50.0 |
| Art: | 7.5 |
| Writing: | 6.5 |
| Music & Sound: | 7.0 |
| Mechanics: | 9.5 |
| Game Concept | 9.0 |
| Use of Fetish | 9.0 |
| Judge Preference: | 9.0 |
| Wild Cards Attempted: | 3.0 |
| Admin Wild Card: | 5.0 |
| Patreon Wild Card: | 5.0 |
| Community Wild Card: | 5.0 |
| Total: | 173.0 |
Roops Score
| Category | Total |
|---|---|
| Game Runs: | 50.0 |
| Use of Theme: | 50.0 |
| Art: | 5.0 |
| Writing: | 7.0 |
| Music & Sound: | 7.0 |
| Mechanics: | 5.0 |
| Game Concept | 7.0 |
| Use of Fetish | 7.0 |
| Judge Preference: | 0.0 |
| Wild Cards Attempted: | 3.0 |
| Admin Wild Card: | 2.0 |
| Patreon Wild Card: | 2.0 |
| Community Wild Card: | 2.0 |
| Total: | 147.0 |
Final Score: 481.0
4 Likes