Swelladia [Alpha Demo Available Now!]

[Verblimp]

[Caution! This game heavily focuses on themes of inflation and perma-popping! If you don’t like these themes then this game might not be for you!]

Try the game here!

Swelladia [Demo Available] by Verblimp

Swelladia is an RPG Maker game that focuses entirely around inflation! The game is sort of a mix between an RPG like Skyrim and the sandboxy elements of a game like Stardew Valley!

Combat revolves around trying to inflate and burst your enemies before they can pop you! As you adventure around the world going on quests you’ll run into tougher and tougher enemies, so you’ll need to grow in power to explore more of the world’s diverse range of areas!

Come join the game’s discord!

Join the Swelladia Official Server Discord Server!

A tentative list of planned features includes:

• A wide list of races to play as! This will include things such as elfs, goblins, humans, gnolls, demons, etc. There will be both a male and female variant of almost every race!

• A calendar and day/night cycle! Certain events will occur depending on what time of year it is in game, or even the time of day! Expect villages to throw cultural festivals to celebrate holidays!

• Purchaseable and upgradable housing! Get a wife or husband to move in with you, and build the house of your dreams (Or just inflate each other all day)!

• Puzzles! Many puzzles will require you to be inflated at a different size or different method (Ex: Blueberry to weigh down a button or air to float over a gap)!

• Inflating almost every NPC you meet! (You can even pop some important NPCs!)

• Parading inflated NPCs around! This will be limited to followers and certain story-related NPCs, but you can bring them around to show off to the world!

• Lots of dungeons to explore with randomized rooms and bosses every 10 or so floors with special rewards!

• Different types of inflation! These include methods like air, liquid, blueberry, etc. These states will have different properties and interact with the world around you differently!

• Crafting systems for items and gear to help you in combat!

• Map interactions! Ever been so thirsty you wish you could just dip your head in a river and chug and chug… well probably not. But you can! Steal fruit from the trees! Drink from the river! At your waistline’s peril, of course!

• Romancing NPCs! Certain NPCs will be fully romanceable, with the character eventually being able to marry and have NPCs move into their home, and join you on adventures!

• Questlines! Each unique region of the world will have its own independent questline, so you can pick and choose what areas of the world you wish to play in any order! (Note: Regions will vary in difficulty tiers with multiple options available for each difficulty!)

• Possibly a bounty system. This one depends on if I can pull it off, but I’d like for blowing up characters or stealing objects to cause settlement’s guards to teach you an explosive lesson.

Below are some screenshots of the game!

[Verblimp]

Here’s an example of one of the male character’s air inflation stages:

[Theunknown1776]

Am definitely looking forward to this and curious to see what you come up with

[Errornulll]

Consider my curiosity piqued, moreso regarding the sprites than the game proper. I’ll be watching with a cautious eye.

[pornucopia]

Hell yeah, I’ve been wanting more inflation-based games, so this is very exciting! I can’t wait to see how this turns out!

Though I do hope the enemy used in the POV inflation example is a placeholder.

[Verblimp]

Yes it is lmao, I meant to take it out before I took the screengrab but I hadn’t made an enemy sprite to replace it yet

[pornucopia]

The list of planned features is quite long already. I hope you’ll focus on the primary gameplay loop to get a minimum viable product working before you start expanding (heh) on the idea. It’s far too easy to start tinkering with a dozen ideas simultaneously, only for none of them to get actually finished.

[Verblimp]

That’s wise indeed. Most of the time I just work a little on the side mechanics when I get bored of messing with the sprites. A lot of the progress so far has just been me getting the sprites to a shape I like.

I’ve spent basically all day messing with the stage of inflation between a big belly and floating blimp. Most of the stuff on the list is pretty easy to impliment using RPG maker, so a lot of it is sort of like (ex: Here’s a town! Put someone you can inflate and drag around in x building), and stuff like that since the base mechanics are so easy to make

Once I finish messing around with the basics like the templates for the male and female characters, I’m going to start delving into the combat more in depth (I already have the actually inflating in combat along with the image mechanic done, just need to work with stats and stuff to make the combat somewhat interesting!)

TLDR: Ye u rite

[bustyvixen]

i am very insterested in is project you have going and hope to see it grow! (pun intended)

[Gumxily]

Finally, an inflation game that actually focuses on it (and on popping). Good luck with the development!

[Nepzel]

This looks based as fuck, can’t wait to see how the game progresses!

[Prism7]

I love inflation as much as I love weight gain, so this is an exciting addition to the projects list! I will definitely be keeping track! also I hope there will be complimentary sound effects .w.

[Verblimp]

Yep! Sound is half the appeal to me of inflation stuff, so there’s plenty of it in the game!

[Verblimp]

Hello all! Sorry for the delay on the log, I ended up having to redo a lot of the base inflation system today in order to make it scale with level (more on that later!)

So, as promised, here are the three other character designs who won the polls!

I will likely add more playable characters in the future, likely along side bigger updates to the game since I don’t plan on having an official “release”, rather than just a few demos, then a full build, then big updates to the game spaced out afterwards adding new systems and such!

Also these designs are temporary, and may be changed in the future. I made the human boy while testing the systems originally, so I didn’t account much for the fantasy setting. I plan on changing his outfit to fit the vibe of the game a bit better, and I made his hair brown instead of blue to stand out more from the slime gal!

For those curious, here’s an explanation for how the game’s progression will work! Aside from a few areas, the majority of the game’s areas will be available from the start of the game, provided you have the resources and or waistline to survive the trip to them! This will be both by traveling there on foot, and some areas such as other island regions being locked behind things like repairing a boat to get there with resources from the map!

As for personal character level, as you level up by blowing up your foes. you’ll gradually gain stats such as elasticity (how big you can inflate before the big KABOOM!), speed (which determines turn order), etc. Items help of course, and equipment such as better tools to inflate your foes (pumps, magical tomes, tossable flasks, etc.) will also be a major factor determining the outcome of battle. These can be both crafted, and special items/equipment can be found as rewards for NPC questlines and dungeons!

Enemies in tougher areas will naturally be able to take more of a blimping before they burst to bits, so you’ll want to make sure you’re prepared or else you might find yourself being used as party confetti by an ogre!

Aside from possibly specific story missions, I don’t plan on party members being a feature in the game (aside from things such as “pets” like inflated NPCs that you take prisoner), so it will primarily be exp, equipment, and items to make the difference in combat!

Here’s a preview of what you can expect most of the areas out in the wild to vaguely look like!

All of the labeled resources (which won’t be labeled in game, because it’s ugly :P) are things that the player can harvest to craft housing goods, potions, food, weapons, etc. I plan to fill in the areas in between with more grass and such, this is just a tech demo! The gaps in the forest lining mean to indicate the edges of each area that will take you to a different zone when you step into them.

I plan to show off the villages in one of the next few devlogs, as well as a more in depth view of the first person combat system! I still need to flesh out and create some more mechanics for the core combat, but the primary system will be trying to blow up your opponent before they can pop you! There is a meter indicating how close you are to exploding, and of course you could just look at your tummy!

Your most reliable method of deflating early on will be burping, which is a zero cost method of letting out some of the pressure building up in your belly. (For those who don’t want to hear it, I plan on making the sfx for this toggleable, dont worry!). Some skills will require you to be inflated to a certain extent, and locked behind different stages (Ex: If you are full of water you can try and spew it at enemies!).

Stay tuned for the next devlog in a few days where I’ll show off some of the first village, combat, and inflating enemies! The support for this project so far has been incredibly positive, so I’m eager to make this game the best it can be!

[pornucopia]

Exciting stuff! Not sure about the more playable characters though (at least not yet). Unless you’ve made a very thorough game design document to cross-reference, there’ll probably be a lot of things you need to tweak and fix for it. Probably best to just focus on the main game mechanics first (unless they’re already done).

I’m sorry if I’m being really backseat-y, it’s just I know from experience how easy it is to fall into the trap of scope creep.

[Verblimp]

It’s actually pretty simple! Basically all that differentiates them in the engine is a switch based on which you picked in the opening. Consequently, all I have to do for anything that is different is like “Here’s the male switch, it’s checked so say x” or a more specific one for each character.

As for spriting them I will probably wait a bit to finish all their other stages, I just wanted to show off designs since I closed up the poll on DeviantArt!

[Gumxily]

I am so excited! Love the way you made this dev log, can’t wait for more

[Verblimp]

MWAHAHAHAHHA! This totally doesn’t count as Dev Log #2, because… I said so.

Anyway here is a link to a video showing off the blueberry inflation in the game. It’s still very unpolished and needs a lot more sfx as you inflate, and I sped it up using commands. I also want to have blueberry juice splatter all over the camera when you blow, but that will be a task for the near future.

Blueberry inflation in the game serves as a debuff that continually inflates you over time, slowly turning you blue and filling you too! You can use things like herbal remidies and burping to let out some juice, but the only way to permanently cure the blue bloat is to visit a juicer in town and ask for their services. (Assuming you can fit through the door in time, fufufufu~).

Swelladia [Alpha]- Blueberry Inflation Preview

The main sources of it will be eating unprocessed blueberries, or any specific items intended to induce the bloat in the player. Enemies can also inflict you with the blue bloat by cramming your gaping maw full of berries, magic, etc!

I hear it’s contagious, so if you get blown up at least you might take someone out with you…

Also you can see in the video the new design for the forest, and now it is much closer to resembling the final design. I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming along all things considered! Until next time!

[pornucopia]

That is looking fantastic! This whole project seems to be right up my alley.

Have you considered setting up a Discord server for it?

[Verblimp]

I might set one up in the near future, but I’m not sure what all I’d post in it since I post updates here and on DeviantArt. If I do make one I might just end up using it for smaller polls for non-essential features in the game. That and/or for smaller feature showcases between updates