So I played Cowgirl Casino and was like “wow that’s really cool and also I really want to do that now”
3 days later here’s Handler Hazing. It’s a ren’py game. You’re a cow girl handler with a cow girl under your control and you need to make her as fat as possible to win a competition, but the dining hall always seems to have some kerfuffle you need to take care of. Help the dining hall by doing the match 3 minigame, get food as your reward, and watch your cow girl grow. Will you be able to win the competition and take home the massive fucking raise?
My one complaint (and it’s not really a complaint, more of a future suggestion) is to add music to the match game or just sound effects. Would really bring it alive.
Definitely gave that a thought, though my ability to find music and sound effects for games is extremely poor so I never really did more than just… Give it a thought. Maybe I’ll put in some effort for it in the future, though.
Congratulations on publishing what appears to be your first game, judging from your itch profile, which is more than most people can say on this site, myself included.
The minigame is fun enough, but the fact that the timer keeps counting down while you wait for the pieces to stop falling can be frustrating at times. It will often be the difference between a 90 point game and a 100 point game.
The cowgirls have a pleasant enough design but Victoria’s models start to fall apart around the higher weights and begin to show their vertices with the Apple and Strawberry shapes. The pear shaped Victoria appears to have the best consistency throughout its gaining process.
There’s not much to say about the writing of a game of this length, but it serves its purpose to set up the premise of the game and I’ve failed to catch any glaring mistakes or typos. The presentation in general is a very stock and basic Ren’Py game, but that is to be expected for a project of this size. Functional seems to be the word to describe it.
All in all, a very good first effort and a most welcome half hour diversion. I look forward to seeing your next project. Cue Senator Palpatine.
Woo! Big post. I love these, so I’ll try to address everything in here.
The timer counts down while the pieces are falling: Yeaa, there’s actually some code in there to count the timer up a little bit while the pieces fall. I found it to be not necessary and could reliably get 100 without it but I think weaker hardware may take longer to wait for the pieces to fall? Maybe I’ll add an option for a handicap that will count the timer up a little more.
Victoria’s models start getting quirky: Yup. Good ol’ Honey Select 2 being Honey Select 2. The program really isn’t intended to make girls very big. I can attempt to mitigate it as best as I can (the apple focus was the hardest to make for this reason because it was a mod) but at the end of the day there’s really nothing I can do about it short of, well, not making her that big, which I don’t think anyone wants ^^;
Functional Presentation: Eyup. Stock and basic. I’ve tried to use renpy maybe 3 times ever? And none of those attempts save for this one ever got far enough to even think about customizing the UI, so I wouldn’t even know where to begin, though as you say, the game isn’t really long enough to justify putting in the effort unless I really wanted to.
Thanks for such a detailed comment! I’m glad you enjoyed it for what it is!
That’s part of game dev though right. Get a project out there trying to see what works and doesn’t. And improving on what does and not making the same kind of choices or mistakes on what doesn’t. I will say going with a mini game within a VN with not much experience with renpy is more ambitious than I would expect. While I personally loathe mini games within VN’s I think the match games are common enough within porn and fetish games that it’s probably the safest choice.
I think this was a fun little experience. I would say with the multiple endings and expected replay within the game it would have been nice to have a way to skip the timer as to not have to wait it out. For anytime that you hit the target 100 points or if you were trying to score lower on purpose as to see the different endings. Having a choice with how a girl gains is always something that is asked for by at least one person on a project, so it was cool to see. And makes the most sense in a smaller scope quicker project like this. Good job this was cool to see.
Hehe, that’s why I didn’t do this project until I was able to find minigame code online to drop into Renpy.
Despite being a novice, I’m good at googling things I want to do, so a button to set the timer to 0 prematurely seems pretty easy and I found myself doing exactly as you describe here, waiting for like 30 seconds because I reached what I wanted.
I appreciate the feedback! If I ever decide to revisit it to tweak it up that button is high on the priority list!
Tip for scoring better: Vertical matches and matches that are closer to the top give you more time to make more matches because it takes less time for the pieces to fall down
I’m not sure, but it may be your hardware. If the pieces take an extremely long time to fall down, then that’s probably it and I’ll need to add a handicapped mode to account for it.
Have to admit, I cheated. I do not like these mini games and would love to have integrated way to skip. Did first run normal way and went okish, got ending 5, but second run I did not bother to try gain food in mini game at all. Went to save editor and added how much food I wanted after not doing anything for a minute. Glad I did, models are nice, though apple shape in biggest stage is a bit strange, as the belly looks to have a pointy side. And I would have to spend years practicing Match three to get there proper way
Yeah I’m getting a LOT of comments about the apple focus to the point where I need to look at it basically immediately. The plugin for making bellies in my program is SUPER janky and not exactly easy to use but I definitely need to try harder than I did.
Glad I did, models are nice, though apple shape in biggest stage is a bit strange, as the belly looks to have a pointy side. And I would have to spend years practicing Match three to get there proper way