So I’ve mentioned it in other posts, but I figured I should start my own thread to brainstorm ideas and get feedback and whatnot. Here’s the beef: I’m going to start writing a game of my own design using the Twine 2 app.
Summary
This is a choose your own adventure game where you play the protagonist, a young man or woman who joins a tour of a certain mysterious candy factory. You’ve heard rumors of interesting things happening to previous tourists. No official reports have been released, but the rumors allude to a woman who was turned into a blueberry and a man who ate so much chocolate he almost exploded. You’ve fantasized about such things happening to you since, and now you have an opportunity to see how much truth there is. The story starts where you sneak away from the tour and start exploring the factory.
Gameplay
So I picked Twine 2 (and the SugarCube format, probably) because I very much want this game to feel similar to the old Fighting Fantasy books and more modern iterations like Sorcery! Also, because I’m a beginner with programming and Twine seems very accessible. The narrative is important but I’m also planning to have some interesting game mechanics under the hood. The player will have some amount of freedom as far as exploration goes, but also have to deal with the consequences of actions that might push them in particular directions. More on that later.
The main goal of the player will be to literally have fun: the character’s motivation is to raid the different rooms of the factory, eating whatever they want and finding out if they can have the same experience as the people in the rumors. Of course, since this is fiction, interesting and impossible things with occur. At the same time, security in the factory will figure out that the protagonist is missing from the tour and start searching for them. This will probably be realized in a sort of timer mechanic, so there’s also a ‘race against the clock’ element to keep the narrative compelling.
Bulletpoints
Some concepts that I want to focus on:
The character wants to get fat/berried/inflated. Unlike a lot of other adult TF games, I want the character to be on the same page as the player. You’re not trying to escape from the factory, and you won’t be skinny at the end.
You will get caught eventually. I’m planning on having a number of endings that depend on how your playthrough goes, but basically one of two things will happen: you get too big to move (best ending? :3) or security catches up with you before then.
I’d like to have the factory have some amount of randomness in its layout, so it’s not always the same each time you play.
At the same time, I don’t want this to be a ‘egg hunt’ game. You’ll have an idea how choices will affect you before you make them, so you can push towards specific endings to an extent.
That’s about what I have so far. Gonna start writing and playing around in Twine. Can’t say when I’ll have a playable version.
I had a similar idea for a twine game but couldn’t quite get the premise straight in my head! I think in the version I was going to do, you were a winning kid’s twenty-something babysitter and you had to keep your ward out of trouble (often by taking the chocolate bullet for them).
I’m excited to see how your rendition works out, as it’s a lot simpler to implement in Twine and will probably have more replayability.
As for randomizing the room order, might I suggest that in your startup-tagged passage (which should be where you outline starting variables) you use the random number generator functions to quickly change, like, four segments between three or four alternate versions, identical passages but with the exits switched? And then the hallways that connect them can check the values generator to see which version you’re entering, and that creates the illusion of a very random layout without a ton of extra coding.
Thanks for the interest! I really want to make this happen, but I know I’m going to need some support along the way, since this is my first foray into interactive fiction development.
One thing I’m still on the fence about is how sexual the content is going to be. My inclination is to keep it mostly tame, with no blatant sexual content and only allusions to things like genitals. At the same time, I’ve decided that all the main characters will be adults, including the people from the famous Golden Tour that you hear rumors about. On top of that, I’m going to genderbend them just for the hell of it. The factory is run by Wilma Wonka and the Golden Tour winner, Charlene Bucket. The others were Victor, Michelle, Agatha, and Vernon, but I won’t spoil what state they’re in. ;3
Thanks for the suggestion about randomizing rooms. I’m not quite sure I understand how that works, though, so I’d appreciate if you could elaborate more. I get adding an RNG variable at the start of the game that will be referred to. Then would I basically have the exit of any particular room change to a different room based on that variable? I think the trick is making sure that the player can experience any of the content without coming back to a room they’ve already been in.
Well, okay: are you trying to make a big factory with set rooms in a randomly-ordered floor plan? Or a big factory where the player just keeps traveling in a linear path deeper and deeper into the factory ad infinitum, encountering rooms at random? Because there’s a deterministic different there. My previous suggestion was for the first one. For the second, you can just generate the RNG for the next room(s?) at the top of the current room, and then even put exits at the bottom that hint at what the next rooms might contain.
@Nightkey88 Thanks for the interest! I’ve pretty much finished the intro, and am mostly working on getting a few coding things worked out, learning how to use the Twine engine. Probably won’t upload anything until I have a prototype ending.
@Kostromama I think what I’m shooting for is a factory that’s more wide than it is long. I don’t intend for the player to experience all of the content on a single playthrough, which only has to be half an hour or so from start to finish. The idea is that while the beginning is rather fixed – the intro story and the first interactive room of the factory – after that the content changes both randomly and depending on what choices the player makes. So one ‘door’ might change which ‘room’ it leads to just based on RNG, another door might look and see what traits the player has and direct them based on that. I know, still very vague, but I’m still focusing more on how I want the game to feel than how it functions.
If anyone has suggestions for content that they’d like to see, feel free to post here. Here’s what I have so far:
The player’s objective is, of course, to get fat, juicy, or inflated. Bigger is better.
Those are the three types of transformation I have in mind so far: fattening, berryification, and gas/liquid inflation.
Some examples: chocolate and marshmallow will increase your ‘fat’ trait, experimental chewing gum will increase your ‘juice’ trait, and soda might increase your ‘liquid’ trait but then convert into a ‘gas’ trait over time.
The totals of all these traits determines your ‘total size.’ As you go up in size, your appearance changes but also the factory might react to you different, like being too round to fit through one door so you have to take another.
Ultimately, I want the ending to depend on these traits too. A character who is mostly ‘juice’ will have a different ending than one who is mostly ‘fat.’
The game ends when you get too big too move or security catches up with you because you stayed in one place too long. All endings are good, but the endings where you max out your total size might be more satisfying.
Other types of changes I’m thinking about are candy (like if you partake of a certain golden egg) and cow (if you spend too much time in the cream room). I assume you’ve all seen the Wonka movies, so let me know what kind of rooms, machines, maybe traps, and modifications to the character you’d like to see.
One thought could be unique bad ends as well as the usual “Grew too big” kind of thing. Mabye a bad random chance that the player’s warned about, like a gamble, 9 out of 10, it bloats you up bigger, 1 out of 10, you turn into an egg, etc. Dunno how good that would work with what you have in mind however.
Also, A friendly spirit of competition might help with a barebones plot. “The biggest inherits my factory” etc.
@max1008 Thanks for the ideas. As I mentioned, I’m planning on having epilogues based on what condition the player is in at the end. But some of the ideas, like the egg thing, might work better as a final transformation rather than a progressive one, so I’ll try that. Because the game will be keeping track of the player’s condition, it doesn’t have to be completely random either. It could be that if you’re a certain size or shape when you enter the egg room, the ending happens anyway. As for competition, since this is my game, I wanna keep the story simple and focus on solid mechanics first.
@Nightkey88 There will definitely be a soda room. :3
That does bring me back to the question: what transformations would people here (since you’ll all be the first to try it) be okay with? Obviously weight gain, but is blueberrying okay too? What about being turned into some kind of human candy egg? Or a milk-gushing cow-person?
hey i came up with an other thing for in the game.
It would become more of an challanging game if you have to be certain weight or size to be able to reach something, or not
Like if you small you could easily open an valve for sweet soda.
Or if you filled with some sort of gas you could reach a valve located some where high
Maaaaaybe. So far, I’ve made it so you can pick your character’s name, which gender they are, how their hair looks, and how their skin looks (for those transformations that turn you blue or whatever :p). So you can play a girl. Maybe not slime, per se, but what about a gelatin dessert TF?
Personally, I’d love the idea of forced WG, so perhaps bringing someone along could be an option. That, or your character accadently taking things too far and they panic. Such as being turned into a berry and wanting to change back, or being fattened to immobility and realizing you are completely helpless. Especially if you’re left at the hands of a madman/madwoman.
Thanks for the interest, everyone. So I am still working on it, albeit slowly. I haven’t done anything like this before, so I’m still learning the tools and have to learn some coding. Mainly, I keep second-guessing myself with the writing, wondering if I’m being too vague or too verbose. I want to write it in a way that I give the player a vague idea of what’s going on, and let them fill in the details. It will probably be a few more months before I have a playable version.
As for forced fattening, there will definitely be situations where your choices or just your size puts you in a sticky but sweet situation.
I don’t think I’ll be uploading anywhere except a Google Drive link here. Maybe tfgamessite.com
I wouldn’t call a project with a month of no activity a failed venture, especially considering that games can take tons of time to make.
Though if you wanted to know how far ‘The Factory’ is/isn’t into development, you could try to contact/pm the creator (fatcatche profile url: http://www.weightgaming.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=87 ), seeing as they were signed in as recent as today on the forum. (see fatcatche’s link’s ‘Last Active:’ time for the exact time)
