Grow on Me v0.2.0

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Hello, Noelle here.

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I hope this past year was good to you all. As some of you might’ve probably noticed, I’ve been gone for a looooong time. I sincerely apologize for dropping off the face of the earth without telling you anything.

This is not an apology, because I don’t think a simple ‘sorry’ would be enough. But let me try to explain.

I started making these games out of a genuine interest in games (and this kink, obviously) and got really into it. I didn’t have any prior experience when I participated in the gain jam that led to ‘Return to Sender’. Those two weeks were the most fun and intense weeks I had in a while. I slept very little, worked the whole day and basically ran on caffeine, willpower and japanese indie-rock. I learned coding, using virtamate and storyboarding on the fly, while also trying to have a complete product at the end of it.

And it worked ^-^

(…kinda…)

When those two weeks were over I felt like I was on a high. Like I was able to do anything I wanted. And I wanted to do way more. So I immediately started to work on ‘Grow on me’. It’s very much inspired by a lot of games coming out of this community. And every time I played them I had a lot of ideas I’d like to see included in a project sometime in the future, so I figured this game would be a good opportunity to do that. I immediately tried to implement everything simultaneously and just got more and more ideas, putting more and more on my plate and making a lot of promises.

Originally, I wanted every update to be huge. At least 2 new stages for every character, introducing new ones, new mechanics, locations, routes etc.

That, of course, was a lot of pressure. But I was confident.

And then life happened. Multiple things that just derailed my physical health and mental stability. I did try to push through at the beginning, but I realized the quality was taking a huge hit, forcing me to redo a lot of stuff and making me question my own abilities. I started to spiral.

So I took a step back and prioritized my physical and mental health.

I deeply apologize for not responding and informing you. And thank you all for your kind messages. I’m sorry for making you worry about me.

I’m doing much better currently and I got my life back in order. However, I did decide to take it easy for now and do more frequent smaller updates, instead of large ones.

So this update doesn’t nearly contain as much as I initially promised.

This update contains 2 new stages and events for the player character, some quality of life improvements, and a little more small things I sprinkled in.

Please let me know if there’s any issues and I’ll upload a bugfix update asap.

Also, please share all your opinions with me. I want to make this game as good as I can, and I need your criticism to be able to do that.

That’s basically all I wanted to say. I’m back, I’m doing good and the game is back in active development.

New update:

~Peace, Noelle :bear::orange_heart:

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Grow on me is a visual novel, created with renpy and virtamate.

You play as a girl who lives with her best friend from highschool. She’s fed up with you doing absolutely nothing with your life and you’re forced to get it back in order! Personal growth and shenaningans insue!

Here it is:

Grow on Me on Itch.io

Also, if you’d like to support the game’s development and have some loose change lying around please consider joining my Patreon! Your support helps me release regular updates as soon as possible and keep improving the experience.

I hope you have a little fun with it and have a nice day! :3

-Noelle :bear:

70 Likes
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Really enjoyed the start! Great characters, cant wait to see where their stories go and what else you add

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Awesome! Thank you so much :blush:

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Really nice start. Although in the beginning if you choose to talk instead of stay silent, it gives an error. I chose Wretch at the start, not sure if that made a difference.

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
  File "game/script.rpy", line 274, in script
    lola "Suuure"
Exception: Sayer 'lola' is not defined.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
  File "game/script.rpy", line 274, in script
    lola "Suuure"
  File "I:\MegaSync\GrowonMe-0.1.0-pc\renpy\ast.py", line 2579, in execute
    Say.execute(self)
  File "I:\MegaSync\GrowonMe-0.1.0-pc\renpy\ast.py", line 581, in execute
    who = eval_who(self.who, self.who_fast)
  File "I:\MegaSync\GrowonMe-0.1.0-pc\renpy\ast.py", line 470, in eval_who
    raise Exception("Sayer '%s' is not defined." % who)
Exception: Sayer 'lola' is not defined.

Windows-10-10.0.19045 AMD64
Ren'Py 8.3.4.24120703
Grow on Me 0.1.0
Mon Apr  7 12:55:18 2025
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Oh shoot. Thank you for telling me! I just released a new version, fixing it. Sorry about that!

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cute nod to the restaurant, looking forward to more bigger things.

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Souls references spotted. Only just started the game but I am already so amused by this, thank you :rofl:

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Nice start.
My suggestions:

  • Remove sound from the screamer when the event turns repetitive, it’s just super annoying.
  • Izzy model looks like a broken doll. Mabe her face should be remade to move it away from uncanny valley. All the other girls - look excellent and believable.
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Hi, I wanted to start by saying I enjoyed your game overall and I’m interested to see what you do with it going forward. Here’s my initial thoughts from one play through.

The job is bearable, it actually feels like you’re making coffee, and thankfully you only need to make 4. But the cost of items vs income is a little frustrating. Playing this through I’d say going to work daily for at least one shift is unavoidable. I’d suggest making the pay a little better, starting with a full fridge or starting with some savings. Then I could focus more on exploring the game than immediately grinding for food funds. I even paused to restart to see if I could get around becoming a barista. But sadly there’s no stay at home option.

The food system seems complex and I’m not sure there’s any additional affects beyond increasing fullness. I’m no stranger to hospitalizing myself in ‘A Piece of Cake’ through unhealthy choices but that game does hint a lot about the effects your choices are having (I really hate this mechanic in wg games). I chose the most filling and fattening options from the store and tried to calculate how to reach max fullness. It helped the character progress which is what we want.

Jealous Lola gets to have fast food delivered.
Disappointed Vivi goes into diet-mode upon moving in (you’d think our influence would have a fattening effect on her).
I’d like the whipped cream to make a whipped cream sound.

3 Likes
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You make some good points especially on the income vs cost of food. The one thing I will dispute is that we(the MC) doesn’t really have a “fattening effect” on anyone outside of Izzy and ourselves. Rather it seems from the limited signs we have so far is that the MC does have FA characteristics, but also that Vivi seems to have some feeder tendencies. I think it’s more likely that she’s gonna be kinda like Erica from Fill Me Up in some way or another. At least that’s my take on what we’ve seen so far.

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Definitely got Erika vibes from Vivi too

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This game is dope :+1:

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Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Thank you, I appreciate the pointers! :blush:

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Fill me up is definitely one of the inspirations for this game ^^

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Yeah, I’ll definitely improve the barista job in the next update. I don’t know how but I ended up with way too much clams in the playtest, and that’s why i reduced the pay. I’ll try finding a middleground ^^’
Starting with a stocked fridge is definitely something I’m gonna implement. Starting with savings on the other hand wouldn’t really fit into the narrative i think, because the player character not having a job or anything going for them, is what triggers the story, if you know what i mean. :blush:
Thank you for the great advice! I’ll try to make the most of it!

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I have no advice but I like everything I have seen thus far. Slow and steady progress, and keep up the fine work

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I Love it !!! The main character is so pretty I need to draw her :)))))

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Aww thank you!
Oooo I’d love to see it :3

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I really like it so far!

The character designs were really well done :slight_smile:

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Thoughts on the current 3 girls>
Lola: Very fun, grew on me much quicker than I thought she would. The denial aspect is interesting and the teasing feels much more light hearted than I was expecting. She works way better than I thought she would most likely because it is very obvious that she isn’t that serious and genuinely cares for the MC, even while she is constantly making digs at her.

Izzy: I hope we can be the wingwoman in her story cause honestly the little bits of her and Sam pining after each other is both hilarious and heart warming. She’s cute in a ‘I must protect this small bean’ kind of way if that makes sense.

Vivi: While I share some disappointment that she loses weight at the get go, her being an Erika like character does work for me. I really hope she gets some more events to flesh out her moving in and adjusting to living with you and Lola. I also find that it would be more interesting if she only started trying to push the MC once she starts gaining weight. It feels a little more natural to have Vivi be willing to push once it is established that the other girls are letting themselves go a bit, as opposed to Vivi coming back and immediately fattening her friends. Granted I would also like that interpretation but just based off the vibes I am getting from the writing so far.

Scenes I would like to see for each of the girls:

Lola: Having her complain about being hungry on stream and the MC coming to the rescue by getting her food. Mc and her playing video games together, maybe the house has a ddr pad that Lola slowly gets worse at as she gains weight.

Izzy: More confidence building stuff. Having her get dropped off/picked up by her mother to truly show how abusive she is. Showing her drinking an insanely sugary coffee.

Vivi: Having her cook the MC and Lola meals. Having her invite the MC to go on a run or a walk. Maybe having her invite MC out to eat like Lola but have her ‘accidently’ order you more food or extra dessert. (I would find it highly amusing to have an NPC use that logic given that many games have it reversed.)

Generally speaking, more scenes with Lola and Vivi make the most sense given you all live together. Them asking if MC wants to go out for drinks. Game/Movie night. Heck even some slice of life stuff. Bickering about chores, everyone hanging out in the living room, maybe sending one of them to get food from the store so MC doesn’t have to.

Beyond all that, I did like what was here so far. Only ran into one bug with the text of Lola asking you out to eat while the MC was at stage 3 weight and asking for a full meal.

While higher weights are always the thing everyone here wants, I would like to see some more things to do gameplay loop wise. I was very surprised you couldn’t choose to play games given that is how the intro presents MC. (even just replacing the “do nothing” action with “play video game” would have worked) More events but also some activities to break up the gameplay a bit.

Kudos, great start

5 Likes