How do I make a text-based game?

Forum How to/Help
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Hey! I’ve been lurking here for like 2-ish years without making an account. I know that this forum has way more female protag. weight gain games-- and even when there is a male protag, they’re almost always feeders. I know of a couple m/m weight gain games, but they’re all either incomplete or extremely short.

I know almost nothing about coding. The only thing I’ve done is console modding, and I have a feeling they’re nothing alike, which scares me.

So, my idea is to make a text based weight gain game with a male protagonist. My idea is more of a slice of life game. I’m a huge fan of force-feeding and praise… that, and more taboo kinks. If people are genuinely interested in helping me, I can add the kinks you guys suggest.

I’m not sure if this is possible, but if so, I’d love to add sound effects as well. Burping, belly slapping, stomach sounds (gurgling, stretching, growling), farts, hiccups-- and hopefully, have them line up with what’s happening in the game. Like, if you chug soda, you can press the next option and you can hear it fizzing up and your gut swelling.

And, unlike most text based wg games, if you get huge, you don’t automatically loose. I’m planning on making like a cheat code tab where you can enable certain health risks, but you don’t like. die from it. That, and possibly an option for a caregiver-of-sorts that helps you do things once you get immobile.

I’m unsure about what the main plot should be, but I would also like if I could create different feeders you could interact with. Some more forceful, some more passive/submissive, and maybe some that makes you gain without your knowledge.

I’d also be willing to include mutual gaining/revenge weight gain on your feeder.

I know this sounds like a big project, but I’d be willing to take this on if people are interested and could assist me.

Thank you for reading!

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I think most, for an inaugural attempt at a text-based game, tend to use Twine as their engine of choice. I imagine you could probably dm a few twine game devs on their experience.

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Seconding the use of Twine. It’s got a lot of customization too, so you can keep it pretty standard or customize a bit. There’s also the optional ability to code too. It’s great to start out with and leaves a lot of room to expand on.

https://www.motoslave.net/sugarcube/2/docs/

This is the full documentation of Sugarcube, the layout of Twine that I believe most people here use. I’d say just start a project and see how it feels, then learn what you need as you go.

And as for the project itself, it definitely sounds interesting. I’m always interested in projects with darker themes, and I know there are plenty of people who want more m/m games. I’d say go for it!

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As others have said Twine is a good first shout for doing a text based game. It has a lot of built in tools that support that. Though HTML and jscript can be tricky for the more advanced features that you’ve mentioned you’d like to incorporate into the game. Not impossible - but if you don’t come from a coding/programming background its pretty tricky to wrap your head round from what I’ve seen.

An alternative option would be to use Ren’Py. I’ve found python (on which renpy is built) is much easier to wrap my head around the code for. You can pretty easily have sound effects with lines like play sound “audio/sfx/bellyrub.mp3”. Whilst it is primarily used for visual novels - you can use it to create games that are purely text based - see Tramp for a great example of this. If you’re not familiar with renpy games the default text box is a small-ish one along the bottom of the screen - but you can adjust the size of that default text box to fill the screen to make it appear like a more traditional pure-text game. Its also relatively easy to change the fonts and text styles.

And whilst Sugarcube Twine does provide a save option, renpy has greater integrated support for this. Its also pretty good at handling player choice menus for branching narrative.

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Personally I really liked using RenPy but I come from more of a programming background so that may not be the route for you. But I will say that using RenPy is more about learning how to use RenPy than it is about coding or python. Happy to help provide a sort of template project and pointers if you decide to go with RenPy