NPC Simulator

So, I’ve been floating around for a minute here, and figured this would be a good chance for me to actually contribute for once. Had a little idea pop into my head and it had too much potential at the time for me to not actually follow through with it. Finally got it banged out short the inevitable bugs, but I’m too tired to do any more bug testing. It was mostly functional before I compressed it. But I never did trust computers. SMITE ME NOW DIGITAL OVERLORD!!!
Since I am still alive after challenging man made gods, I would like to present to you the NPC Simulator. Nothing complicated, might be an hour’s worth of content. Get food, feed your adventurers so they have the stamina to adventure, they adventure and try to stop a demon overlord. Blah blah blah, tropes tropes tropes. I never claimed to be creative, only that I’m too tired to care otherwise.
Here’s the link to the final game jam submission
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ahe7msyi4rifd32/NPC_simulator.exe/file
Play it, Don’t play it. Noodles, Don’t Noodles. Here’s hoping it lives up to the potential I thought it had last week before I started working on it. Enjoy.
Edit: Fixed the bug where the adventurers will march forever if they are fed too much.
Added some dialogue for when they are fed too much before you start marching while I was at it. And added a puppy when you decide to set up camp before entering the demon’s castle. Because dogs are amazing.
Edit 2: Added music. I always keep my laptop audio off because I like to listen to music whenever I am doing work, research, etc. Never occurred to me that I needed to add music. Not alot of options for music with RPGMaker Ace, or at least the lite version I’ve been using (I’m a broke college student and couldn’t justify that expense when got it).
Second was I added some directional names to the foraging woods. Hopefully that will help with people not knowing where they are at.
Also went ahead and did a crash course on sprite work today, since I had yesterday and today off. This version now has sprites that actually look like the characters! And also changed the titular NPC’s sprite to better match some in game jokes.
Last change to version 1.2 was some text clean-up. The narrator is indeed an asshole. Can’t blame him, he learned from me, and the ugly grammar was intentional for him. Everyone else though is not supposed to be that way, so I made sure to try and clean it up. My grammar is horrible, so… No promises on that front.
Final Edit: This is a buzzer beater. But got a little surprise for this game. This is the definitive version. Special thanks to cj-x4 for redoing all my original character images. He is amazing. Make sure to check out his deviantart to see his work if you are impressed. I know I was. Maybe you can talk him into doing some commisions, if your keen on it. For that message him through discord (also by the same name). Fixed some grammar as well and slightly changed some dialogue. As well as an indicator (and new picture) for when the girls can’t move anymore.
Keeping the original here in case I royally fucked up any of these patches. Or if you really like anything from before. [NPC_simulator_1.0] .(NPC_simulator_1.0)

33 Likes

I will say this THE FIRST time I ever played an fetish game laughed so hard that I my “excitement “ killed its self due to it
I FUCKING LOVE IT
Funny as well Fucking worth It due to amount of grinding In it you MEED TO PLAYTHIS!
This is how I felt when playing this
image

4 Likes

Honestly, short, simple, and sweet. There wasn’t any errors that came up. It was enjoyable to play and kind of silly but still focused on what was being looked for. The multiple personalities each one had was also pretty great and I loved the little quips that were involved. So thank you for your work and effort it really amazing!

This game’s narrator is easy to hate, the characters are idiots, and all the NPC’s are, ironically enough, not even worth remembering. It’s awesome.

A nice game, although one bug I encountered was on Day 2 we never stopped and ended up walking 48 miles straight. Thankfully you had the means to set up camp indefinitely so I could catch up the characters - a good call!

One small gripe: the writing at the end, whilst superb, scrolls by too fast! Could you slow it down or give player manual control please?

I hope this game have 1 hours gameplay…but I liked to much.Is very rare found game using RPG VX ACE.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. This was also my first post on any forum or website. I’m fairly confident IRL, but for some reason I go online and I lose all confidence in myself and am always too scared to post. I woke up this morning extremely anxious to check out the reception. Terrified actually, but it had to be done. Thank you all for the kind words. Does wonders to build my online confidence.

I forgot to include this in my top edit. I did slow down the scrolling text abit. I don’t know if I slowed it down enough, but it now should scroll as slow as it can. I don’t think there is a function in RPG Ace that will allow me to have a user input for scroll speed, other than user input to speed it up. Here’s hoping it helps. I did find that you can pause the scrolling if that helps. Clicking outside the game window will freeze the game until you click back on the window. It ain’t a perfect fix, but maybe it will help you out.

4 Likes

Oh jeez, this sounds really similar to what I was working on for the jam :sweat_smile: Well, not gonna look until mine’s done, but here’s hoping they end up being pretty different from each other

Alright I played and I’ll give some my comments, criticism, and suggestions. You commented about the art being bad, but It’s passible at least. I’d suggest you to recolor+edit the map sprites so the characters better fit their drawn appearance with the weight gain potentially also for immersion purposes. That way the pictures match the sprites on the screen. Right now they… don’t (look like entirely different people) and I feel that could be a good fix for immersion and continuality. I also feel that might help make the trio feel a bit less samey because they sort of blended all together at points for me.

Maybe the protagonist character can be made a little more unisex in appearance to mirror the game’s implementation of the npc being made ambiguous. Right now the played character definitely looks too male to pull that off.

The strength of this project is the comedic writing and tone. I appreciate how much of an asshole the narrator is. Foraging is made purposefully tedious to fit the narrator’s scorn.

On the subject of the typos and grammatical errors being on purpose, I can’t really comment favorably towards them. I get they’re intentional and they’re meant to piss the player off but it just gives me unpolished vibes, and the poor spelling and grammar weakens my experience for me.

Another aspect that bothers me a lot, is the absolute lack of background music anywhere. The lack of music doesn’t contribute to the presentation and gives me unfinished vibes. The forest foraging portion could still have nature sounds or what not and still have a tedious tone attached to it.

Each area should stand out as being unique: original store, the campsite, the forgeable forest, the trail… different music would really go a long way to help with this. Even the default rpgmaker music contributes. I’m only familiar with RPGMV, so I can’t say for sure, but if Ace has default music, just slap some in that fits the mood.

The dog is a huge great QoL addition for the player to remove the tedium of excessive foraging. Maybe have different variations of it so the items it gives you scale based off your mile progress rather than statically at mile 49. Potentially have it show up at different sets of 10 mile thresholds?

I know that I’ve sounded mostly negative in this comment but I don’t mean to come off as such. Overall I had fun despite these minor gripes and just sharing suggestions that can improve the game’s quality.

1 Like

Short-ish, sweet, super good! Here’s my review:

  • The art, while crude, is super cute and I do enjoy each of the character’s differences and appearances. I would recommend a bit more focusing in on Jenny, as it was hard to tell her body type due to mention of love handles, and a potbelly that just appeared similar but smaller than Elba, and a big butt that was a smaller version of Lucy’s.
  • Adored the writing, very charming and funny, but perhaps a bit too much at the beginning, especially with the addittion of shopkeep dude. Felt very Bennet Foddy, almost wanted the game’s end to be a final boss lmao where we kill the narrator
  • I accidentally traveled 49 miles on day 1 and 1 mile on day 2. This led to the longest chain of dialogue on God’s green Earth lmao and I warn anyone NOT to do that.
  • If possible for future projects, just a bit more reactionary content, the dialogue between the girls about each other was my favorite part, and I would love to see more of it. Or, other characters! A shame the final sizes really only get the demon dude’s epilogues and individual conversations. And of course, wouldn’t hurt to have em get even bigger.

All in all, very enjoyable and unique experience, and I really hope you continue to make more games! Whether this style or others, your art or otherwise, and heck maybe even bringing these girls back to double their size. Whatever happens, good luck and kick butt!

3 Likes

My only real issue with the game(haven’t played through it all yet) is that the art leaves something to be desired.
Also, any specific reason why they’re Doug colored?

1 Like

Finish the game, honestly recommend, for both the good content of it, and also the fact that the dev explicitly says the know the art isn’t the highest quality lol.

Sounds similar to what happened to me. Did you overstuff the adventurers as well? I assume that when they’re stuffed that stamina for travelling should be at a minimum, so I’m wondering if there is “negative” stamina that the game isn’t recognising, causing this travelling bug to occur.

1 Like

Honestly, my one piece of critique is that the first foraging maps don’t retain your exit direction, all the time. That’s kind of confusing for navigation, and it makes it a bit hard to remember where you’ve been.

“Because fuck you that’s why”
- The Narrator (probably)

5 Likes

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Went ahead and tried to implement some of the suggestions. Went ahead and added new music for each of the different maps. TRIED to fix up most of the non-narrator poor grammar, though I did fix a few unintentional grammar mix ups with the narrator. My grammar is horrible.

Blockquote
Honestly, my one piece of critique is that the first foraging maps don’t retain your exit direction, all the time. That’s kind of confusing for navigation, and it makes it a bit hard to remember where you’ve been.

I put some ‘directional’ map names in this last patch. Hopefully that will help abit. Hopefully that will help with your issue there. It was not meant to be intentionally confusing. At the time, I thought it would make things easier to navigate, but I was wrong. Sorry about that.

As for the 49 mile day. Yes, it was an oversight on my part. Used an = = instead of <= 0. And if the stamina drops below 0… Welp that happens. I thought I fixed it in v1.1. Which version were yall using to get that to happen?

4 Likes

Ha! I really enjoyed this, damn. Writing was fantastic; I love how Elba is set up as the only sane woman only to slowly fall into a pit of kinks and degeneracy, with the role then getting shoved onto Lucia. Great stuff.

Now for my own thoughts ‘n’ stuff:

  • The Narrator states a few times that the MC has no weapons… except they do, an ax. Was this part of the “hints” or just an oversight?
  • The art isn’t too bad in my opinion, aside from the blue lines around characters and those circle things next to Jenny’s head. It gets the job done.
  • I actually quite like how Jenny’s the most “even” of the girls, and that even at her final weight she’s a bit smaller to reference how she’s the most active.

This post was originally a bit longer as I was putting my own thoughts on what @loveiswhat69, but you edited the op while I was typing that basically addresses everything – even a point I was going to make that it’d be funnier if the Narrator and only the narrator wrote like that :laughing:

All in all, great game, especially one made in a week and what I assume to be one of your first projects. If this was your first, I you’re already off to a great start!

1 Like

Blockquote
Also, any specific reason why they’re Doug colored?

Shortest answer to Doug color: Because I am partially colorblind and I figured instead of trying to get skin tones just right, I’ll just pick a random color on the color wheel. A color theorist I am not. Elba was originally gonna be human, but I thought ‘why not red’ since I can see that’. Lucia was also supposed to be human, but in an attempt to make pale skin, i accidentally chose green. And thats how Lucy became a goblin.

I still don’t know if Jenny is blue-skinned or purple.

1 Like

Yeah, I didn’t notice the blue ovals beside Jenny’s head until after I started playtesting. Unfortunately, I messed something up when I was moving the drawings from my tablet to my computer and I can’t access the drawing files on my tablet anymore. So, the floating circles are there to stay. Unless I can figure how to fix that in MS paint.

At the time I posted the original, I had no idea how to change the (non) player character sprite. So to answer your question, kinda both. I couldn’t fix it, so I incorporated it into the overlying story as one of the many hints. I did figure out how to fix it a few hours ago, so now it is just a lost hint. If’n that makes any semblance of sense

Side note: Has anyone been able to find the bad end yet?

1 Like

Jenny I imagined to have blue tattoos or war paint like a Norse berserker. Honestly the colouring doesn’t bother me given the explanations. The art could be improved, sure, but it’s not terrible at the end of the day.

I think conceptually you’ve set a pretty decent bar for the contest! :+1:

3 Likes