Idle manager game

[hafef55792]

Hi everyone,
New here. I’m interested in making a idle manager style game but trying to nail down some details. So looking for ideas or feedback. If you have ideas I’d love to hear them.

Essentially, I’m thinking of an app (targeted towards mobile) where the player feeds a character in order for them to gain weight.

This is targeted towards the more realistic side, so it would take a realistic time for this weight gain to happen. Like think short play sessions where the player jumps in, adds some items (food, drink etc) to a queue (maybe) and then jumps out. Over a realistic period of time, the character would gain weight. Maybe a short play session in the morning and throughout the day. Consistent play sessions over a long period of time (1-2 years) could create a dramatic change in the character.

I’m thinking there could a job system where the character works for a daily income (not requiring player input except to initiate it). Money could buy different food, drinks or items. Different jobs could provide more money or other bonues (working in a restaurant could provide cheaper food).

I’m interested in keeping it a reasonable scope. I’m envisioning 1 character but 3d character models (multiple models required for shapekeys/morph targets at various weights). Maybe some animations showing the character performing different animations. The character would be in a limited 3d environment (think a Warhammer figure on a round base with some limited environment assets to potentially interact with). Even still it is a large amount of work for 1 person. I do have experience with Unity, Godot, Zbrush, blender etc.

Essentially, I could make something but I can’t see how to make it fun.

Does anyone have ideas for making it more interactive or interesting?

How do you make adding items to a queue fun?

For game you play for so long, how would you keep it fresh?

Would love any input you have.

[leifwarfer]

So excited for you! You seem really invested and like you put a lot of thought into this. As a mobile gamer, I have a few opinions about how such a game could work. Let me recap what you’re planning on implementing out loud so we can understand the game loop together:

• This will be a tamagotchi-like digital friend management game. The player will be expected to open their app at least 1-2 times per day. The interactive game elements are:

1. Adding food you want to feed your character to a queue which they will consume when they get hungry enough.
2. Directing actions for your character to do, including work.
3. Shopping and budgeting for food and items.

• I think the act of queuing up food would just be the work in order to get the pay-off. Perhaps you can create flows where food is automatically queued from inventory under certain circumstances to mirror other idle games where player interaction peters out.

Immediately, I can see a ton of potential in such a concept. I would hate to see it flounder because it lacks features and becomes boring / unrewarding. Your question about keeping it fresh is valid. Let me suggest some features off the top of my head:

Features:

• The character might be on a regimented schedule, or at least have a timed hunger bar that lets you know when the next time the character will eat.

  • Perhaps you can increase their digestion rate, decrease their metabolism, etc. through in-game items / food choices.
  • This allows the player to know roughly when they have to log back on, even without notifications, and plan ahead.
  • You might want to include a time estimate feature for how long the queue is expected to last.
  • Some foods might need more time to digest than others.

• Personalization options.

  • The character’s appearance is probably fully customizable, including skin tone, hair style, eye color, etc.
  • The player may have control over the character’s preferred hobby. They may even want to set their character’s personality, since a lot of games like this try to be sort of parasocial by making the feedee say quips in-character.
  • Some players may want to customize the character’s willingness to gain weight. Does the character adore being fat? Do they despise it? Are they completely neutral to it?
  • The WGaming community is pretty diverse. They may want to edit their character’s body proportions, which could be a lot of work for you and is always a challenge in 3D modeling.

• Dress-up system (and thus begins the scope-creep - but not necessarily you could keep this simple at the beginning and only have a small variety of attire).

  • Would clothes be dynamic and have physics or be painted over their body?
  • Can the character outgrow their clothes? If so, that enables a lot more engaging opportunities for the next feature.

• There should be a system for milestone progressions. The People of WGaming will probably want to be present for some milestones and wouldn’t like to miss them.

  • Some milestones I can think of include:

    • The character reaching a certain weight. Perhaps this threshold is set by the player.
    • The character outgrowing their current clothes or realizing they need to size up their wardrobe. This could include wardrobe malfunctions like button pops, ripped seams, or really tight constraints, but maybe not the shirt riding up or weight consciousness (this could be a separate feature).

  • Perhaps you will want to implement a feature that shows a preview of the last milestone reached when the player opens the app, then visually speeds up the character’s weight gain to the point at which they currently are.

    • Maybe there should be a way to save these milestones to view later? Or to see the character’s weight gain journey in retrospect?

  • Let me make a case for push notifications: Triple your DAU & MAU as a gaming app

    • I may want to be alerted when my character is nearing a certain size milestone or a wardrobe milestone.
    • I may want to periodically know what my character is thinking about themselves.
    • I may want to periodically know what my character is up to. You mentioned there could be other animations in the game, so I would think that includes other activities like sports, hobbies, etc. Perhaps we can check in on our character when they’re out with their friends.
    • If I don’t like notifications, I can turn them off in the app settings.

• Is this game going to implement social elements?

  • Is there going to be an opportunity to share your character’s weight gain journey? Or to hang out with other characters?
  • They don’t necessarily have to be multiplayer. Will the character have any NPC friends? Even if in name only, I think it would add to the engagement. For instance: “Christina is hanging out with Emily and Dan.” would be a nice message to read.
  • If other NPCs have an impact on the character, perhaps they could have an effect on the character (i.e. confidence buffs / debuffs, weight gain validation / invalidation, …).

• Will the character experience mood changes?

  • Being in certain moods could impact dialogue (i.e. “She’s feeling crabby today.”). Knowing why might be cool, too, like “She’s feeling crabby because she made a mistake at work today.”
  • Mood might also impact decision-making (i.e. “Taylor is upset so she’s eating an entire tub of ice cream.”).
  • Alternatively, to simplify things, a character might be in a different mood each day. For instance, they may switch their mood at 9AM local time every day.

Let’s say you theoretically implemented ALL of the above compatible suggestions. At the minimum, the work you are looking at would include:

Systems:

• Keeping variables for the character’s weight gain attributes (digestion rate, metabolism, …), their customizations (hair color, eye color, skin color, …), their decision-making attributes (hobbies, personality, …), their clothes (current size, stretch limit?, …)
• Built-in triggers for when a milestone is reached. These milestones may be further stratified into Weight and Event subcategories, for example. That way, their notifications can be separately managed.
  • The player might have access to a chart that shows their character’s weight change overtime. When the player clicks on a milestone, represented as a data point on the chart, they can review that milestone (replay animation, show appropriate dialogue, recall what day it happened, etc.). This would all need to be saved.
• Keep separate scripts for different personalities in different situations (i.e. a feedee with lots of fattening foods queued up would think and act differently than an embarrassed ex-runner for instance).
  • And, you would have some mood-based dialogue.
• Implement logic for different decision-making trees.
  • While waiting for the hunger bar to reset, a character may choose to do their hobby, watch TV, maybe doomscroll a bit, etc.
  • If in certain moods, there’s a possibility that some decisions may be impacted. For instance, perhaps food isn’t as filling if the character is Sad. Or, certain mood-based decisions might proc with some % chance (i.e. eating a whole tub of ice cream as discussed).
• Each food item will confer different caloric content, have different capacity, might induce more satiety, etc.
• Remember important NPCs to the character (i.e. their boss, their friend, their coworker, …). These NPCs may have their own personalities, dispositions to the player character, and weight gain journeys (probably unrealistic if you are avoiding scope creep).

Assets:

• 3D models of:
  • all the different body proportions
  • clothes, as well as physics / graphics changes depending on weight vs. attributes of the worn clothing
  • other NPCs
  • certain environmental assets, such as a basketball and hoop for when the character is playing basketball in a diorama format.
• Animations of:
  • The character at multiple different weight thresholds doing every kind of activity. These could be shared with the NPCs.
  • Certain environmental assets interacting with the character.
  • Whatever UI graphics you decide to implement, which are typically important for creating a finished experience.

Settings:

• There would be separate toggles for the various trigger-contingent push notifications for: weight threshold, wardrobe malfunctions, income threshold, event attendance, running out of food in queue, etc.
• There would be a toggle for timed push notifications: internal thoughts (might be random by limited to 1 per day), clothes are becoming tight, when the character wakes up, + other info that’s just for flavor and engagement.
• There may be an option to reset your character or to undo certain events tucked away in the settings for players who didn’t like what happened to their character.
• If you are catering to every player’s interest, there may be different body shapes or a body slider that can represent fat depositing in different areas of the body (breasts, belly, arms, neck/face, hips, butt, legs, …).

This may not be comprehensive, but I did want it to be helpful! Hopefully it achieved that. Also, a lot of this information can and should probably be culled to limit scope creep like you were saying.

[SRP]

Getting someone to play a single phone game for 1+ years is something really only the big dogs do, I think your timescale is just a BIT too long. Fetish games in particular don’t seem to keep people playing for extended periods of time either since the dick gets bored of repetition/tedium and waiting a year for the payoff is just too long.
Skimming the OP post, the game feels like it’d be a lot more catered to being just some simulator you find on an app store rather than something you’d find on Weight Gaming.
Heck, with effort, someone could probably find themselves an actual gainer GF and “play the game” IRL faster than the game itself would, and you wouldn’t have the risk of a corrupted SD card ruining a year of work, ha.

Anyway, I think at the very minimum, the game would need stuffing mechanics, stomach capacity, stretch rate, that kind of thing, that way the player has an immediate reward: playing the game a little bit every day gets you the view of your character stuffed full and bloated.
After that, if you want to keep this longer time frame in the span of years, I’m definitely feeling the vibe of it being a “WG Tamagotchi” that works in realtime and you need to check in on a couple times a day.
Also there has to be something more granular in the systems, maybe a nutrition system. Too much fatty food makes her feel ill and runs the risk of heart issues that take her to the in-game hospital for like a day. Not enough B vitamins in her diet and she’ll get tired more often. Too much food and not enough exercise and she’ll become an immobile blob. Feed her tons of carrots and she’ll get an orange tint to her skin.
Could also be simplified as “fat, meat, veggies, hydration, carbs” or something.

Maybe every week or so you get an event that earns special currency for more “special” rewards, like jumping ahead in time or adjusting her metabolism or so on. Weekly challenges like “pat belly 0/50 times” or “have sex 3/15 times” or whatever instead of the events.

Dunno, just spitballing. I don’t know your skill level and I don’t really know what your goals are with this game, so I’m practically just guessing randomly, ha.

[leifwarfer]

Dunno, just spitballing. I don’t know your skill level and I don’t really know what your goals are with this game, so I’m practically just guessing randomly, ha.

True, without knowing what’s a reasonable scope for your skill level + your level of commitment + whether you’d like to monetize it or not, we are just spitballing.

OP: Reflecting on it, waiting a year for significant progress is very long. Even in real life, significant weight gain can happen within a few months. You might want to adjust your timeframes down for casual audiences. Maybe they’d like to see results within a week or a few months. Maybe that infringes on your original idea, but you could easily give the player a few options during app initialization that decide weight gain rate (Very Fast, Fast, Realistic, Slow, etc.). Or, maybe this is reflected in a Resistance trait, where the player’s character might resist eating too much before their self-control is brought down.

I agree stuffing mechanics would be a good immediate reward. A nutrition system adds more game elements as well, although you’ll probably be doing a lot of research and adjusting values back and forth trying to get that game element to “feel right” if that’s within your scope.

I like the idea that feeding too much of one food has some sort of effect or counter, like a health system could work - or you could implement it in an unrealistic, gamified way like I’ve seen some other games here do. For example, excess dairy leads to breast weight gain, excess fat leads to lower body weight gain, and carbs lead to belly weight gain, although that might also infringe on your realism focus. After all, in these sorts of games, you have to use your resource management skills to balance what you need with what you can afford (i.e. in Indulgences, you balance Affection, Income, Stomach Capacity, each character’s Stamina, and Time). If it’s not designed with all use cases in mind, though, players will easily be able to find the path of least resistance to make the fattest character.

[JakobY]

I’ve been toying around with a very, very similar idea. In fact, I have an ~almost~ working model, although there are some major differences (I’m aiming for ~ a month, 2D pre-rendered, etc). Here’s what I’ve got, take or leave whatever you want.

• Metric based bespoke interactions. “Did Ashley cross the halfway point between weight stage 3 and 4? Then the next time the player interacts with her, this one-time-only scene plays out.”
• Repeatable interactions that only trigger under a combination of conditions. “Is Ashley over 4/5ths full, AND the player brought her food, AND they did it between 10pm and 5am when she would normally be asleep, AND she’s at weight level 5? Okay, run this interaction…”
• Play “The Game”, narratively. Keep scaling up, to the limits of the realism you’re looking to maintain, physically and psychologically. “Ashley’s super athletic! She’s actually more athletic now that she’s well fed! She’s getting a little chubby, but she’s still a go-getter. She’s sleeping during her shift?.. well, she had a hard night. She didn’t even show up to work? She’s just eating cheetos on the couch all day? She’s a ‘welfare queen’ now? Who are these guys - is Ashley running a cult that just shoves food in her face 24/7? Why is there a guy from Guiness World Records here? Etcetera (maybe aliens show up, impressed by her almost unique corpulence? She’s offended by “almost” and redoubles her efforts?)”
• A thing I’ve noticed playing a lot of idles / clickers / incrementals is that you ought to advertise when the next bit unlocks, either explictly (“Reach 1.5e75 fatty points to unlock Feature Omega”, “Eat four more hotdogs to get a discount on future hotdogs”, “78,521 more calories until the next visible weight gain”) or implicitly (“There’s an item in the shop labeled ‘conveyer belt’, which doesn’t sync with any of the features I’ve seen so far… I wonder what happens if I buy it?”)
• Juice. This is my personal weak point, and why I like Ren’Py (it has easy juice-cheats built in). When you click the Sausage, does it just appear in the queue? Does it fly across the screen to the queue? Does it fly across, AND wiggles a little once it reaches the queue, AND the MC stops what she’s doing to look at it and lick her lips / rub her belly / smile?) I have little advice to give here - in theory, this is the thing you skip to reach Minimum Viable Product stage. In practice, for me, it’s the thing that you skipped that you don’t technically have to go back to so you never do.
• Branching narratives… are hard. Maybe worth while? Maybe not? Maybe you don’t want a ‘narrative’ or ‘story’ game at all in your WG Simulator? I think you can get a lot of mileage / 8-5thsKilometerage out of having a few multiple choice options and then, much later, callbacks.