The Veil Commission: An SCP, Control, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill inspired Weight Gain Game

Projects
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42

you could incorporate gunplay as less of a deadly outcome at larger sizes and more of a delay tactic, if an individual being shot at is fat enough they merely get knocked over by guns based on velocity and size of the associated projectiles…

this opens of avenues of strategy where players have to decide if keeping larger foes at bay with lots of low velocity rounds or potentially knocking them over with high caliber high velocity rounds is better while also doing something risky like hitting a smaller threat and having them bounce off a wall directly into your face if you use a 50 cal round for example… it would also make weight loss a factor to consider because you can play a lot more aggressively with larger rounds if there is more space for smaller foes to not hit you when blasted at 1000 meters per second

1 Like
43

Perhaps you can look into having other weapons or abilities for the player as she gets heavier. Perhaps an upgradable drone you can charge like the PDA. Telekinesis that is more powerful the larger the character is. A cloak or invisibility ability you can occasionally use that makes you harder to detect but more vulnerable to certain fattening effects. It gives something the player can learn and upgrade, and also it’s something that can be used regardless how fat the character looks.

I also see a potential for Weight Gain over Time effects (WGoT). If you have abilities that cost fat (either per ability use or constant weight loss) then too you could have situations where the character is afflicted with too much WGoT that even using her abilities can’t keep up with the weight gain. It could add some moments of tension, rushing to stop her weight gain, or find a way to burn more weight before she gets too fat to move).

1 Like
44

I might need to revisit another thing I didn’t want to do: procedural content. I was pretty wary of this project turning into Accident in the Alchemy Lab again, but the process of hand-crafting the map is taking an extremely long time. The temptation to put together smaller pieces that connect together is becoming very tempting. If SCP Containment Breach did it, perhaps it makes sense here.

6 Likes
45

To avoid working on more levels I instead decided to work on weapons and inventory. UI is hard but not as hard as level design.

thats_not_supposed_to_happen
thats_not_supposed_to_happen1920×1116 614 KB

Oops.

supposed_to_happen
supposed_to_happen1920×1116 767 KB

Getting closer.

its_fine
its_fine1920×1116 1.67 MB

There we go.

I also added a crowbar and a gun alongside the PDA, but I’m thinking that when the player is aiming the gun they won’t be able to run. It’s a compromise between combat-free and run-and-gun from Control, and feels a little closer to Resident Evil. That does necessitate some slow-moving monsters who can soak bullets, but I have some things planned for that, too.

19 Likes
46

Ah, yes, perfect, the GLOOOOOCK.

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47

ah yes, the Glock 170, chambered in 9cm

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48

The procedural offices are giving me backrooms vibes. They’re a little boring now, but I imagine that will improve as they get filled with supplies, monsters, and Anomalous Entity logs.

I also haven’t decided if I want to decrease the number of lights. Having things be shadowy would make it more creepy, but maybe a bit creepier than I’d like.

Making a list of stuff to do:

  • Fix a bug where it’s not possible to unequip things.
  • Player needs a way to heal. Finally implement the purgation ritual.
  • Player needs a way to upgrade. See also purgation ritual.
  • Need the real reason I made the game in the first place: a showcase for SCP-ish content. Change the level generation a little bit so that there are good places to drop notes.
14 Likes
49

I think decreasing the number of lights might allow for focoused in that, you use a light to indicate something or to make sure something important is ahead, and you can also use it to camouflage some entities

50

I’m not sure which I like more. I enjoy the atmospherics of the darker backrooms, but it loses a little of the “all the same” liminal space vibes from before. I think I’m going to put a pause on tweaking that for a while so I can work on the “generate report and experiment rooms” part of things.

14 Likes
51

you could compromise by having the lights be randomly on/off on generation, that way some rooms might be darker or lighter than others

1 Like
52

They are random. I have a slider that picks a percentage of the lights to be on or off when the map is generated. I could spend long time tweaking that but I think a better use of time would be getting more formal rooms and items into the map.

4 Likes
53

offices
offices1920×1116 1.84 MB

Offices are now populated with furniture, including office letters, the occasional Altered Item Report, and ever so infrequently an altered item.

The minimal to do before a private beta:

  • When the player dies we need to start at the spawn.
  • The offices need a way to end.
  • The main menu needs to actually start the game.

Good to do:

  • Prevent bad generations of the office.
  • Play the introductory sequence to show why the player isn’t wearing shoes.
  • Connect save and load to something other than debug keybindings.
  • Replace the player’s outfit with one that looks like a real outfit.
  • Monsters should spawn in hallways.
15 Likes
54

I probably spent way too much time on something that will get ignored, but why not make a vendor for general items? Basically, you trade weight/size for a special currency, you use that currency at a vendor. And instead of conventional weapons, why not make them more trap-like? Or maybe be a tool or another item to trade?
The vendor could be a speaking entity, or it could be similar to the inter-dimensional vending machine (an SCP):

As for item ideas, there’s an artist on Deviantart that has A LOT of weight gain/inflation ideas; they could either be personal gadgets, or a way to remove enemies by laying out something temptingly inconspicuous yet discreetly debilitating:

And that about sums up all the transformation lists they’ve made. There’s also a game on here called “The Inflation Rooms”, that might offer some ideas, like a machine where you can gamble your size:

And finally, there’s another Deviantartist who’s made a digital book on different inflation tropes in media (it costs money to get it, so it’s entirely up to you - I for one am planning on buying it):
https://www.deviantart.com/greyofpta/art/Inflation-Tropes-Is-Available-Now-946857893

Edit: Brief update, turns out that artist also has two more books, but they’re more specific to a sub-genre that might not be what you’re looking for:

Another Edit: Part of what inspired some of these was how you mentioned you wanted to involve puzzles in part of your game. Having some roundabout (no pun intended) ways to either inflate or further inflate some of the enemies into immobile forms or otherwise would probably help.
A reason for why guns could be excluded would probably be that either A.) some of these entities might still be humans that can be returned to normal/cured, B.) their skin is too tough to pop them, or C.) they’re never permanently popped (a good reason why some might respawn - I also just realized that an enemy that never stays permanently “gone” would probably be a bit terrifying).

And that’s about all I’ve got. Apologies if it’s too much for something that might not contribute much.

1 Like
55

I have to respect and appreciate the effort. I’m stealing from Yuki Pop Repeat! where you can keep gaining/inflating as you go through the dungeon, but if you go over the edge you lose all your gains. If you make it to the end you trade in your inflation for stat bonuses. I really like this because it gives people an incentive to deflate and inflate, and to tow the line as close to bursting as possible. The purgation ritual does this now, but I do already have the models for a vending machine…

It’s less a matter of “ideas for items” and more a matter of “ideas for items that interact with gameplay mechanically but are easy to make”. There are plenty of story items planned, but a story item, something you can pick up and observe that doesn’t really change gameplay is fairly trivial. I have a backlog of six or so items I need to write Anomalous Item Reports for. The hard part is items which need more than visuals and story, like the glock, which somewhat fundamentally changes how the player can interact with the world.

I’m not sure if I’m making sense, but it might help to contrast two items: the Idol of the Fecund God and the crowbar.

The Idol of the Fecund God can be picked up and dropped. It required a model, an image, and the text – not much more.

The rusty crowbar can be found in game, it can be picked up, dropped, equipped, used to attack. It required a model, an image, the text, character animations, new triggers for when animations complete, a damage system, logic for if the player is hit by an enemy while attacking, handling the player attacking when inflated, and on and on.

I’m going to see if I can get a demo into people’s hands before I go too much more into the new non-story items, since those will just add time.

But thank you for the long form suggestions and links. The effort doesn’t go unnoticed.

2 Likes
56

I think I might know what you’re getting at.
To re-contextualize, let’s put it into a basic context, spinning gears.
If you just have one, all you can do with it is spin it around, doesn’t do much and probably doesn’t need to.
However, if you want to use gears to do something important, say moving a conveyor belt or making things work by a mill of some sort (water or wind), then you need to put more down and figure out how it’s going to run. You have to figure out how to get the gears to interact with each other without say, two pushing one in opposite directions or losing too much momentum from overuse. The bigger and more complex the task is, the more gears you may need to put down, and the more bits, bobs, and hiccups you need to watch out for. You also may need to look for a larger power source.
The Idol is probably like a simple spinning gear or even a small water mill - it doesn’t take much and its purpose is simple, the crowbar however may not be end all, but it’s a larger operating machine functioning in a very large processing plant’s worth of gears. And the combat system’s the processing plant, with the biggest challenge is finding out how to make the small part interact with the bigger part it’s supposed to fit in.

(Note: I think I’m a little inspired for this analogy by the story of a failed industrial wheat mill. It certainly feels like it makes for a good analogy of how much complexity coding can be.)
(By the way, thanks for mentioning Yuki Pop! Repeat, I’m giving that game a go.)
(P.S. - I think people have become fascinated with the game I linked to, mainly because it’s the most clicked on link in that post. I can’t blame them, as there is some weight gain in the game. But it’s supposed to get horrifying after you go further down that route.)

57

Yeah, that’s basically it. The idol is adding a stereo to a car. The crowbar is making the car run on hydrogen instead of petrol.

Updates for everyone:

  • Finally got the main menu in and working. Could use music, but I’m pleased with how it turned out.
  • The Purgation Ritual will let you save and drain off your body mass in exchange for experience. You can only use each ritual once per level.

I’m still finding the balance of light and dark. The flashlight should be not be a required find. I realized that all the procedural generation work actually made it possible to just read ascii art maps and produce levels, which is neat.

Here’s a small map:

+---+----+
|***|....|
|*+*[..*.|
|***|.+--+
+-v-+.|   
|.*.].|   
+-^-+-+   
 +x+

Which gets converted to:

Snapshot_2025-11-23_20-58-56
Snapshot_2025-11-23_20-58-561920×1116 1.83 MB

Resetting on death is probably up next. I’ll start digging around for a small handful of folks to beta test. I’m too socially awkward to ask for an interactive session, but I’d like to find beta testers that can record their gameplay. Commentary would be great, but that feels like a lot to ask.

9 Likes
58

I have made a mistake.

It’s possible in the office to softlock yourself by getting too big to fit through the doors.

doors

I could take out the code that changes the size of the player’s collider, but then they clip through the doors on either side and that looks bad.

I could make the doors wider, but that would require a bunch of remaking assets and would look weird.

I could make a fire hose or something that lets the player drink until they burst just to reset to the docks, but players might not go for that since it means losing progress.

This isn’t the problem I wanted to work on today.

I’ll probably take one of the enemies I had who only does damage and start them towards the player when she’s sufficiently big. It’s the same as the “let the player burst themself” approach, but admittedly less voluntary. That might be okay, given it’s something of an edge case. I had figured the player would keep going through the offices repeatedly to find things, but I failed to test them well enough at larger sizes.

5 Likes
59

you could add “wall breaking” at larger sizes which allows players to get through later, most likely by adding an item that strengthens the player enough so they crack the wall forcing their way through or just having a one time event to force yourself through causing the break to occur

would mean one or a few other stages to doors depending on if you want specified stages to act as progress checkpoints (ie players need to find a strength enhancer in their current section in order to progress with multiple levels of breaking) or just have the player hit a size you thing is “reasonable” and have an event to force their way through breaking the wall in it’s entirety allowing access… could even mix them up

5 Likes
60

My recommendation would probably be a middle ground solution: adding a new asset while leaving the rest alone.

You could add a bigger door in the system while leaving the current issue as is, thus adding a possible challenge to the strategy of it; not only would players have to worry about popping, but they could also worry about being too big to fit into doors, or maybe even hallways. I personally would love this detail to be left in, since not a lot of games that deal with this ever have the consequences of mass getting out of hand in tight areas.

There’s also the fact that you could borrow from Resident Evil and create an area where certain items can be stored, like a universal base or something. That would probably soothe the whole “deliberate pop to get unstuck” issue. Speaking of deliberate popping, maybe leave the firehouse option open, possibly adding more voluntary methods. In “Yuki Pop Repeat!” I’ve certainly gotten to points where I’d deliberately pop my character just to collect the ether afterwards so I could buy the higher upgrades.

With all that being said, these options would probably make different “Modes” possible if you ever went down that route. An “Easy” mode would probably have the small doors disabled entirely while a “Hardcore” mode would disable the safe room idea.

Edit: adding to Manchura’s idea, the “break-down” mechanic probably wouldn’t have to be super detailed, just have the wall section disappear from touching the player, if the player meets a stat check. Granted, I don’t know how much overhauling your system would require to have these ideas implemented. I am unaware if you currently have a stat system or if there’s something that would require certain objects be persistent.

3 Likes
61

i don’t know if it’s possible but… what about making the character struggle to pass through the door at bigger sizes like getting stuck then unstuck or having to go sideways

3 Likes