Mulling over ideas for a WG Rogue like... thing. Need some help deciding on exactly what I want to do.

Hey guys. I’ve been mulling around about wanting to do a game project for a while, but I haven’t said anything 'cause, well, none of my projects have gotten far enough to really show off. just a lot of concept stuff that haven’t really worked out.

This time, I think I might be on to something that can not only work, but it’s also something I could feasibly work on and finish. However, I’m having trouble fussing out some of the details on it, so I wanted some input so that I can finally get something solid off the ground.

The idea is simple, I want to make a randomly generated WG rogue-like. Now, of course, when many of you think of a rogue like, you think of an action game like Rogue Legacy or Dead Cells or an RPG. In this case, however, I want to do something a bit different.

See, there’s always been this constant problem with action games and RPGs where it’s hard to strike a good balance with fat mechanics and the action. Most people want to get fatter, yet the mechanics often make getting fatter a lose state. Of course, being a jiggling blob of flesh is an obvious lose state in a game where the character needs to fight things, but it’s just kinda counter productive to the fact that it’s a weight gain fetish game.

Of course, there have been some solutions to this over the years. Some games make sure that other characters get fat rather than yourself, and others increase power with weight and just set it so that you can’t become immobile. I could go with one of these, but neither one is all that appealing to me in this case, especially the later solution.

So, I’m going to see about making a rogue-like game that’s neither action, nor a traditional RPG (though, it could still be considered an RPG I guess).

The idea I have is for the player to control an enchanted amulet that gains power the fatter it’s owner gets (female only, 'cause I can’t do male WG, sorry to people who want that). The gameplay would consist of the player trying to nudge a randomly generated host into getting fatter and fatter through various methods of influence without accidentally killing the host (bursting) or without allowing them to figure out what’s going on. If you end up losing though, that’s fine. You’ll just get passed on to a new owner to start the process again. Though, as you make your host fatter, you’ll be able to acquire permanent upgrades that enhance your ability to fatten a host. The surrounding town the character is in would also be randomly generated, since the area the host is in would effect how you’d be able to fatten them (are there any buffets around? Cake shops? Ect).

Besides getting some feedback and brainstorming on the idea, I also wanted to ask around to see what the best development environment would be for the game. I was planning on making it 100% text (randomly generated makes having art for the host extremely difficult), and I don’t really mind exactly what I would need to use. Coding isn’t an issue, as I’m fairly experienced in C++, Java, and some C#. I was going to code it from scratch in C++ originally, but I figured it be best to use an existing engine if it’d fit what I want to do.

So yeah, what does everyone think? I’d appreciate any feedback you guys have on either general game mechanics or on where I should develop it.

–UPDATE 08/13/20–

Made another post that explains the concept in further detail. You can see it here.

–UPDATE 08/14/20–

Look at it here.

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I think the general idea is amazing! The amulet player character is a great way to skirt the issue of an immobility/bursting lose state. It also adds variety due to the randomly generated people you’re attached to!

I fully support text-only, as not only is that what I personally prefer, but also I imagine it would make development much smoother. If visuals are absolutely required, though, maybe take a page from A Piece of Cake’s book and have simple background images (a city street, a buffet, etc.) to describe where you are?

And I love the idea of a rogue-lite WG game in general! I look forward to seeing how it progresses! It seems you’ve put a lot of thought into this concept, so I’m excited to see it come to fruition eventually! :sparkling_heart:

Unfortunately though, I can’t offer advice on the programming side of things; I know only little about it. ^^;;

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I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to do with Immobility, but that’s more going to be a win state. Eventually I’m going to have to figure out exactly what I’m going to do with what happens after you get a host immobile, but that’s something to figure out and develop once the core game has a solid foundation.

Here’s an idea: the player character isn’t the adventurer running through the dungeon, but the final boss. She sits around, either defending a settlement or her evil lair (it depends on what you want the story to be), and the enemies come to her. Immobility doesn’t matter in this case because you don’t really have to move. Dunno how compatible this is with your “amulet” idea, but if you’re not too committed to that, this route could be worth considering.

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Perhaps when the host gets immobile, you’re given some sort of currency for permanent upgrades? Sorta like what 20XX did.

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That’s definitely an idea worth exploring at some point, but I don’t think it’s something I’m going to focus on here.

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The permanent upgrade resource is going to be based on how much fat you make any host gain. It wouldn’t be exclusively for getting immobile. I’m thinking that Immobility would be something very hard to get to at first.

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Ohh this tickles my thinking noodle…

There is quite a bit of potential here for a long type of game play here. Since you’re thinking about “influencing” the character then you can just have a massive plethora of different routes and tracks to push someone to immobility, say for instance having them drink quite a bit of water to expand their capacity while leaving the character not knowing they are more hungry then ever. Some other idea to throw out there could be:

  1. Hunger spikes- this can be a multi type of spell influence where the lowest level may work for say eating a cupcake rather an apple, while the highest will have them opp for an actual meal. This can have a variety of effects, say for instance the highest spell will also incur the host being more mindful that something is influencing them and may get rid of the amulet in that case.
  2. Mind/personality shifts- what if the host decides to lose weight or commit to a healthier choice, then you influence them to go against better health choices. If they want to go to a gym or pick up some physical labor you can have them op for something easy like desk work or nothing at all. A possible side effect however is the host may lose some weight to help them feel they made the “right choice”.
  3. If you are willing to go for possibly a bit of darker pushes then perhaps have the host suffer some injury or illness by using some of your power so they don’t commit to certain choices. The immediate effect is no weight gain, but later they may think they are still recovering and may overeat during that stage (though they will become suspicious over such a sudden change in health).
  4. Not sure if this is a good idea but perhaps you can influence relationship choices for the host, by making them go for possible feeders or supportive feedees which will influence the person for a long while. This can even go for finding an enabler that will help in the host gaining even more weight, even past the point of immobility (might even be part of the win condition).
  5. At some point once you make someone immobile they may be able to remove the necklace (stuck perhaps under a fat fold or they lack the strength to remove it) at some point you can maybe copy the amulet and have someone else be infected while your previous host stays at their weight (this will most likely be done when the host has accepted being fat and loves it or where they are immobile and lack the power to reverse it). Once the copy occurs you retain some of the power so the next person is easier to convert to the fat side. This could maybe turn into a sort of conquest where the amulet plans to turn every female fat in the town.

Sorry for the laundry list, saw the post and had to leave quite a bit. Hopefully some of the ideas here may work.

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when a character gets immobile the game could do a bit of a shift so instead of adventuring the character is spending the money they got until it runs out. the player could then do some planning ahead (like spend some money to make famines less common) so that you can maximize the weight gained in the immobile state.

making your own game engine is probably a waste of time since you are basically reinventing the wheel for no good reason. I don’t know of any that would be better/faster than a normal engine though.

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No problem, seeing new ideas is why I posted this to begin with.

Currently, I’m thinking about doing a fairly simple cycle system to just get development going. So, any character you get would go through a pretty standard routine with random events in between. The routine and events would be built so that elements of the character, as well as your own influence would be relevant towards making the character fatter. I also want to implement them in a way that makes the events a bit more active, but that’s something I still need to think of.

I’m already thinking about making the host’s money relevant, the only issue with the idea of putting money into the town is that I want towns to be somewhat random as well, but If I feel like it’s a good trade off, I might consider an element like that.

Oh I forgot on my post that maybe using Twine could be an option, as you can add images and set up how the text will flow.
Quest is also a good option, but be prepared for possible crashes and having the game not be too long (due to some of the text games being timed for some reason).

I suggest looking at Gaining Perspective and Fatty Text Adventure (warning though the Fatty Text Adventure was done on Adobe so you browser may not be able to play it).

I’ve tried working in quest before, and I don’t think it would go over very well. I can just imagine it being a nightmare. Besides, I don’t need the stuff that it provides. As for twine, I haven’t played around with it enough to know if it supports the kind of randomness I want.

As for the two games, I’ve played both. Good stuff in their own way, but not sure if it’ll end up helping me achieve what I’m looking for.

Ha! What a coincidence, I’ve been fiddling with exactly the same thing. I took a lot of influence from Trap Quest and wanted to focus on something rather similar, but with more of an inflation / weight gain kick.

It’s early days, but I’m kinda’ happy with how it’s working now architecturally. It’s still light on content, but I’ve got the background built. As much as I’m focusing on WG/Inflation for the main character, I’d like there to be secondary interactions with one or two NPCs per level that you can grow in different ways.

As for preexisting engines, there are a whole bunch completely dedicated to roguelikes. /r/roguelikedev on reddit is pretty awesome and I think the space for interesting interactions is underutilized. With a focus on the main player doing the weight gain I think you might lose out on some of the benefits to the Roguelike formula, but it could still work.

Sound really well thought out though I’m sad to hear male WG is off the table. Maybe NonBinary would be an option to widen the audience a bit?

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Unfortunately no. It’s less of me having a problem with it and more being that there’s no way I’d have the motivation to develop it and write it in. If someone would, say, be willing to edit all the content to work for males, I’d have no issues putting it in the game, but I would never be willing to do it myself.

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Alright, so, I finished up writing a overall concept for the game and how it would work overall, 'cause I think some people were getting the wrong idea about exactly what I had in mind. That makes sense, given that I wasn’t too specific in the first place. So, hopefully this will clear some things up.

Though, before that, I’d like to note that this wouldn’t necessarily be a dungeon crawler. Based on what some people here are saying, I think that could also be an interesting concept, and if what I have in mind doesn’t pan out, I might to that. However, it’s just not what I’m thinking about right now. I want to try making something more simple.

Also, I’ll be attaching this to the OP just to make it more visible in the future without making the OP gigantic.

So, without further ado, here’s a more detailed idea of the concept:

Concept

Player controls a magical amulet that has laid dormant for decades. Its power has been drained; however, it may be regained by making women fatter. The player then moves from one host to another, fattening each one as much as possible.

Setting

The game’s world is a near-modern fantasy world. This makes magic items fairly well known, but somewhat uncommon. This is what makes it possible for the host to realize what the amulet does. I’ll be building out the world and the story more once the game’s basic mechanics are built, but this should be enough to get the basic idea for now.

Primary Gameplay Loop

Each “run” of the game starts with a randomly generated girl who purchases the amulet. After this, the game cycles through a day’s events for that girl. The cycle goes like this:

Early Morning → Breakfast → Late Afternoon → Lunch → Early Afternoon → Late Afternoon → Dinner → Evening → Nighttime

During each time point, certain events can occur depending on various attributes that the host can have, such as their job, residential area, and more. Most of these events will allow for some sort of player input, wherein resources can be expended to nudge the host towards gaining more weight.

Event Specifications

All events in the game will work in much the same way. The game will check all events to see which event should be picked based on the conditions for that event. Then, the description of the event will display, the player will choose an option if given one, then a result will display, and effects will be distributed. These events draw conditions from the amulet’s traits, the host’s traits, the host’s statistics and the town’s traits.

The conditions for events include:

  • Time. The time the event can take place.
  • Boolean conditions. Basically, any condition that must be true for the event to occur. For example, in order for a buffet event to occur, the host must live near a buffet.
  • Chance conditions. These conditions make the event even more likely to occur. Each one of these conditions that the host meets adds a weight of 1 onto the event. All events start at a weight of 1, up to some maximum (to make sure events don’t get stale)
  • Anti-redunancy. To make absolutely sure things don’t get too stale, events will have a condition that reduces the weight of the condition by 1 every time that stat is picked. When it is not picked, 1 weight is restored. Note: for certain events that should be incredibly common (like meals), this can be disabled.

Host Statistics

Primary:

Stomach – Stomach’s capacity. Eating beyond this limit to some amount will cause the host’s stomach to burst. This may seem easy to avoid, but a host can accidently go beyond their limits depending on what you do to them, particularly if their gluttony is too high.

Suspicion – The Host’s suspicion of you. If this reaches 100, the host will get rid of the amulet, forcing you to move to a new host and ending the run.

Weight – The host’s weight. Simple enough. The fatter they get, the higher this goes.

Wealth – The host’s current wealth. This is essentially a currency that is lost upon ending a run. Will this, a host can buy more food and other such helpful things.

Secondary:

Appetite – The host’s appetite. This is different from gluttony in that it determines how much the host has to eat before they’re satisfied. For example, a host with high appetite may feel like they’re starving even though they’ve eaten enough for a normal person.

Digestion – Effect’s a host’s rate of digestion, which makes them able to eat more food sooner.

Energy – Host’s available energy to perform actions. As this goes down, they become lazier and lazier

Fitness – How fit the host is. This can determine factors like how much weight a host loses when going to the gym, and when they hit immobility.

Gluttony – A host’s willingness to eat more food.

Happiness – How happy the host is. Low values tend to cause hosts to be more suspicious of the amulet.

Hygiene – How clean the host keeps themselves. This is mostly for flavor to create slop scenarios. Will make this a togglable thing.

Metabolism – How easily the host gains or loses weight.

It should be noted that later on I want to make a more detailed account of the host’s size, like calculating size of individual body parts, as well as weight distribution. However, that’s something I’m going to focus on later.

Host Traits

Traits that determine who the host is and what events are going to appear. Each trait is rated depending on how beneficial it is to make the host fat. I might make sure that the host’s traits total 0, but I’m not 100% sure. That’s a question for game balancing. Examples of these traits include:

Aristocrat – Host starts with increased wealth.

Natural Slob – Host starts with lower hygiene

Baker – Host works at a bakery.

Hobbit-minded – Host has a high chance to eat meals outside of the normal mealtimes

Second stomach for sweets – Host’s stomach will fill less from eating sweets.

Cat nap – Host’s feline race makes them more likely to take naps, thus digesting food faster.

You may have noticed that the last example mentions races. Since this is a type of fantasy world, there are races besides humans. A host’s race is determined as their first trait, which sets their base statistics. After that, further traits modify them more. I’m not sure what races I’m going to have yet, but it should be noted that they won’t be “furry.” I don’t mind furry, but I don’t have any intention to write descriptions of it either.

Another thing worth noting is that traits can be added or removed after the host’s generation. This is through performing certain actions that causes major changes in the host’s life. This could include the host losing their job or it could be the host being nudged towards a very different lifestyle. In many cases, these changes are quite hard to make, but they can lead to discarding traits that prevent weight gain in favor of traits that aid it.

Towns

In addition to the host’s traits, the town they live in is a vital part of the game. I might make a set number of towns and randomize which one you get instead of randomly generating them in order to build a more coherent world. However, regardless of what I do with that, each town will have it’s own set of traits that solely determine different events that can occur. Most of these traits simply detail what places exist in the town, like gyms, buffets, cake shops, ect. Though, some traits detail the town’s overall mindset towards certain things that create unique events.

The Amulet

And of course, finally, there’s the player character. The amulet is the only part of the game that the player has direct effect on, and through it, they can make changes to the host’s life. This is done through passive and active skills that the amulet has. At the start of the game, the player character only has a few skills available, such as the ability to nudge the host into eating a bit more. As the amulet makes it’s host fatter, it will accumulate power, and that power can be spent on more skills. I still need to hammer out the details of exactly what skills will be available, but this is a pretty important part of the game, since it’s the main source of player interaction.

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There’s a lot here that is really interesting. I will admit, though, I’m not a fan of bursting. Are there any plans to add an option to disable that particular feature, if desired?

Yeah, just like the slob thing I noted, I have no issues with adding an option to disable it. I would probably do some sort of “they passed out and died” sort of thing, or maybe just gravely injured if people don’t want the death. It’s one of my two failure states, so I can’t just remove it completely. I can make it more palatable for the people that don’t want it. Same goes for the slob stuff I’m thinking about. Though, that’s a lot easier to disable completely.

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Hmm maybe the hygiene could be a situation where if the host is smelly or slobbish that certain places won’t allow you in. This could mean that places like gyms may turn you down over hygiene and may limit avenues for the host to find ways to lose weight, however this will also mean that the better restaurants won’t allow you in as well (could even be applied to potential partners if you are too gross to approach with).
Another idea perhaps for the fail state (if popping is too gruesome) is like what you said where they fall down and pass out but that when the medical team approaches they have to remove some of the clothing and objects the host is wearing (thinking it is a heart attack or choking), and the amulet has to be removed due to it being in the way.

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