Twine based space voyage game with fatties and health issues

Project Ideas & Discussion
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So, I was browsing BBW chan, on elite, a few months back, and I stumbled onto a link for Gaining Perspective.
I was quite impressed by it and amazed for how mechanically simple it was.
So then I scrolled a bit around and found this (scroll down to nr.2041)
Its a pretty good outline for a nice story, its just a shame that the author never followed up on it. That was the point where I realized that this would make a really good twine game, which im going to make.
Im going to make the game much longer though, starting at the point where your character boards the ship (and is still thin).
I need ideas for why stuff happens, specifically:
-Why the crew is undertaking this voyage and what their goal is
-An excuse for why the crew is all-female
-Why the crew gets so fat
-Why they dont hyperspace and cryosleep it in the beginning
-A reason for the protagonist to join the crew
-And other stuff I conveniently forgot :slight_smile:

For some of this I already have come up with a few ideas, like the crew transporting the blueprints for a food synthesizer to a far off colony, which they also have set up in the cafeteria.

But thats about the gist of it and id like to have a second opinion on all of this.
That would be all!
(Ignore my comments on the thread, for the love of god, dont look at my replies on the thread)

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This is a concept I’ve become attatched to. Trying to find new material in this genre of Sci-Fi + WG + Space Themed (+ Furry) is near impossible. I love the idea and I hope that someone will pick it up and develop it because I’d certainly play it.

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I think the most reasonable plot outline I can think of is that the ship was originally only going to travel a short distance, but under orders they need to take a longer detour in order to pick up “the player” and the food making device you have (the colony or whatever wants it). But like a cement factory you can’t actually turn the machine off or else it breaks. They only had enough food for the short journey (plus emergency rations), but figured they could just take advantage of the food machine instead (the food machine may have something sinister going on with it). The crew is all-female because most are basically just passengers with small amount of training moving to a different colony (or whatever) and it just turned out that way.

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Well, you have the reason why the crew is undertaking the voyage (delivering blueprints) and that they are trying to set up some sort of food manufacturer at their destination (or that they are transporting the final component, whatever catches your eye).

An idea for why the crew is all female could be for weight management, that having several men onboard may compromise the integrity of the ship (in conjunction with the rest of the heavy equipment), having females would be a cost-effective way to not have so much food rations on board while also giving them tech to do just about everything more than any men could do (like that power loader Ripley used in Aliens, maybe something that only females can use). The question is how many; by going by the idea you have you’d need a captain, engineer, scientist, a worker or two, and a medic at least for the ship and crew to function, so how many are involved is up to you.

A reason why they don’t use cryosleep or hyperspace could a few reasons. Hyperspace in Star Wars, despite them not showing it, is a very dangerous form of travel. One wrong move and the whole ship could be ripped in half, or if the hyperspace isn’t shut off in time you could ram into a star or planet (resulting in a massive explosion which could wipe a whole system), lastly there are things that exist in hyperspace that are nearly unkillable, so plenty to pull from here as to why tech like this isn’t implemented. Cryosleep, and by extension hyperspace if need be, could be that tech isn’t that far along to allow for such ease, the crew has to stay awake and maintain the ship until they reach their destination. In a way, this can allow for the ship to have plenty of things to do since there will be a ton of downtime, just to kill the boredom until the mission is complete. If none of these work for you, maybe go for the ship is traveling to Europa (Jupiter moon) so none are required to reach it. Still, that would leave a ton of downtime that would require facilities to pass the time.

The protag joining could be to fill one of the jobs I listed in the crew section, or that they have their own particular job only they can do, like maybe the ship’s mechanic. This would make the character vital to the mission’s success (since they keep the ship running) but can allow for some scenes once the weight begins to pile on (fighting with their breasts getting into vents, belly and hips getting wedged in a panel opening, etc.) Not to mention they would have decent physicality that can handle higher weight levels.

For why they are gaining weight, if we go with the Europa idea maybe as they pass through the asteroid field (or take an unusual way through it instead of the normal routes) that the ship is hit with an asteroid and a fungus gets on board. The fungus requires fat to survive so it influences the crew to slowly fatten up as it gains power, even using the food synthesizer to speed up the gain.

Just a few ideas here, maybe they could help. The concept sounds good and I hope its well made.

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first of all i gotta ask: please dont make the story, descriptions, and health problems as dark and gritty as gaining perspective. while i did enjoy it i gotta say that its a bit of buzz kill, especially near the end.
or at least provide a toggle/alt version for darker descriptions.

why the crew is undertaking this voyage

like the greentext, probably because the company they work for is after something. that something could be a rival company’s abandoned base or a artifact discovered on a planet.

an excuse for why the crew is all female

the thing they are going for can only be safely interacted with/approached by females.
such as for example: if the ship is going for another company’s abandoned base, that company hired primarily females and made their base security fire on men. effectively cutting invading forces forces in at least half.
or if its something like a artifact, it causes negative effects in males (if you want ironic humor: make it so that the artifact causes XWG in males)

why the crew gets so fat

ship goes through a radiation anomaly that conveniently, rewired everyone’s brains to be total gluttons. and the on ship food printers are capable of keeping up with the new demands, at the cost of some of the ship energy accumulation (further amplifying the cryo and hyperspace problem)

why they dont have cryo and hyperspace

possibly because getting the ship to space with enough energy for either is a risk, and said energy has to be gotten from the sun while in space.

reason for protaganist to join crew

same as reason for why the crew is all female, and the protag is either a freelancer or works for the company.

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yoo not quite what yall are looking for but yall might like this Rolls of Dice to Flesh: Space Edition by Atlya

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Another reason the crew could be mostly females? Ship safety regulations. Let me explain.

If an accident happens mid voyage and the crew are stranded in space or on a planet for more than a generation (which would be highly likely in a universe with limited FTL travel), a minimum number of females will be required on hand to breed a sustainable population on the unintended colony. Male genetic material could be stored as cargo in case of emergency, but most of the things required for gestation (eggs, womb, milk, etc.) would require someone with those attributes to be physically present on the ship.

Most larger vessels could easily meet these requirements while having a more representative mix of genders (or possibly an overcorrected mix to compensate for their smaller vessels), but the craft you’re on has a minimal space, meaning there’s not enough room for to have as many non-breedable passengers.

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Thank you guys for all of your responses, I am now pretty sure of what id like to do now and some of my choices will reflect what you guys have suggested.

Now, for the solutions, which I will now spoil:

The starship is going to be an ancient type of freighter, which uses centrifugal force to create gravity (see 2001 Space Odysseys starships and space stations) instead of some kind of sci-fi thingamajig, so FTL travel and the such werent a part of it to begin with and would tear the ship to shreds if added.
Because its just that old.
And what im going to do with the food synthesizer is the following: when it got installed, the “corporate technicians”, with the allowance of the captain, calibrated the main production of the synthesizer to a “caloric goop” for its “highly nutritious value” so that they could save costs and avoid overuse of the machine, which in turn reduces the chance for malfunctions.
For what this is leading up to is your guys guess :slight_smile:
And yeah, for why the protag joins the crew was tbh quite clear from the get go and that was to join the ship for a relatively good pay as a mechanic in maintanance.
Oh and for the all female crew… eh ill just go for it being a coincidence that never gets explained.

But even though not everything you guys said made the cut, nigh most of your suggestions wouldve been plausible in a sci-fi setting, which I really like. Its just a shame that you dont see this kind of stuff as much as others, but I ehhh might just be completly wrong

first of all i gotta ask: please dont make the story, descriptions, and health problems as dark and gritty as gaining perspective. while i did enjoy it i gotta say that its a bit of buzz kill, especially near the end.
or at least provide a toggle/alt version for darker descriptions.

Yeah I get what you mean, it definetly got quite extreme at the end, even for me, so ill probably just keep it to regular medic checkups to keep health/mood up and with some aids like with an oxygen tank or even a secondary cyborg heart. But im still not entirely sure for how im going to tackle that subject

…buuuuuut that would be all for now, ill give you guys an update… hopefully before christmas.

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I’m a little late coming to this party, but the basic theme is solid. This could be Expanse-like level of tech - there’s no FTL drives, and only spin gravity like you said. They’re not even travelling to another star system. There’s plenty of larger asteroids or moons in our own solar system that would take a supply freighter months to reach as sublight speeds.

"Crew is part of a freighter transporting equipment and supplies to a colony on Titan (the largest moon of Saturn). An accident (or sabotage) damages the ship’s engines and forces the trip to take much longer than planned (there’s several scientific ways to explain that).

The crew, not having enough normal food or supplies for the trip now, have to carefully tap into the concentrated nutritional and caloric foodstuffs intended for the colony. Of course the crew lacks the equipment and/or expertise to be able to process it properly, forcing them to “drink it from the tap”, which is dangerous with how fattening the stuff can be.

This opens up other gameplay as well. Crewmembers working on the ship to try and repair systems damaged in the accidents, like trying to improve engine efficiency to speed up their trip, battling random malfunctions on the ship, or even clearing wreckage from parts of the ship to be able to access parts of the ship’s massive cargo holds for parts and supplies, all
the while battling with rapidly-fattening crewmembers having a harder and harder time with their duties.

And as for why the crew is all female? It could purely be coincidence, especially if you’re not dealing with a large crew. You could put a Lampshade on it (i.e. just have a brief comment on it), and you’re good to go. Otherwise, the one thing I could think of would be that they deliberately keep crews mono-gendered to avoid the risk of pregnancy amongst the crew without resorting to invasive contraceptives procedures (the only way to guarantee 100% protection from pregnancy).

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Thanks for the reply!
I was going to opt for a voyage between our solar system to something… ehhh relatively close like Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti or Proxima Centauri, but then I found it takes about 4 lightyears at a minimum to reach them. (Dammit, if System Shock was allowed to do it, I should be too)
So yeah, going interstellar is not an option.
Ill probably just go with Titan, it really makes the most sense in terms of the setting.
Oh also for malfunctions and the such; ill do this at past the midpoint, where the crew are too fat to operate their own ship in an effective manner anymore, where the player feels their effects of their past choices come to fruition.
But thats about the gist of it
(Also, production is temporarily halted, I just found out what a Total War: Medieval II is)

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So very few games and movies do space travel right, so it’s easy to forget just how big space is. Elite: Dangerous and The Expanse are a couple of the rare instances that actually get things right.

However, a “Warp Drive” isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I read an article just the other day that talks about real-world study on FTL travel, and very recently a group of scientists studying some new nanomaterials may have accidently created a Warp Bubble. It was on a microscopic scale, and they still need to do more tests to validate the findings, but it was interesting nonetheless that the possibility even exists.

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