I want to introduce you all to my first attempt at game dev. Initially inspired by: Queen Sized and influenced by Big Aspirations
It is still in development but thought I may as well try to capitalise on some of the the fallout hype going around and have a fairly stable build at this point.
Waistlands is a text adventure rpg centred around weight gain and survival. You are involved in a military experiment gone wrong and as a result are flung far into the future of a dystopian wasteland. You must fight, scavenge and forage to survive as you build up your base and help feed the survivors of the wasteland.
You can find the link to the game on itch here:
I have also setup a discord channel for anyone who wants to help by reporting (the likely numerous) bugs, giving suggestions or wants to offer assistance to the project.
Some notes for players:
This game is mainly based around a more realistic pace of a gain with a current max stage limit at 250lbs, you can gain more but there will be no effects currently. (More planned)
There are currently two NPCs to be found and recruited.
There is a debug in the options if you get stuck, it will be removed in future non test versions!
There are currently 10 Tasks to finish (I have had to remove task 9 temporarily in this build)
I want to thank all the play testers who have assisted in the initial build for this game.
Also a special shoutout to Jupitarian for his guidance on all things table diffusion, he has a new game coming up so show him some love and check it out!
This was fun, it feels like you have a really solid basis for the game here with easy routes for expanding on it if you continue with the project. I didnāt find any glaring typos but Iām not particularly sensitive to them so sharper eyes may find some. I did get a few errors:
The snails attack gives an error message instead of text
Lions and golems in the mountains have their announcement page mixed up (it says youāve come across a lion when itās a golem and vice versa)
The cave in the mountains locks you out when youāre presented with the Left path/Right path choice
Two āinfrastructureā modifications that I think the game would benefit from are making it clear when companion content is over for the update (e.g. I donāt know if Vivian has further content after the caravan, itās been a while and sheās gone up additional stages but maybe I missed the flags) and changing the way that you handle companion food consumption from being a button you press to a selections of options similar to the canteen choices but for their daily diet with the amount of food consumed per level shown so you can budget accordingly. Maybe show consumption level in their relationship section.
Areas that I think could be expanded on:
Adding text to the mirror description based on whether youāre stuffed or not
Adding flavor text to exploration based on weight level/fullness
Expanded dining text with companions
Having optional other descriptors for more niche aspects like in Abducted+ (cellulite, stretch marks, sweat) that are togglable options (this would obviously be a lot of additional work for content that some may not like)
This is a really strong initial showing and Iām excited to see where it goes. Big Aspirations has done a phenomenal job of starting from a core loop and building on that with a large amount of content and I hope to see this do the same.
I have invested a lot of time in building up a framework for the base and the daily systems with your NPCs so far, a lot of that is paying off now to make it quite easy to expand on any of the aspects of the game without them interfering too much with other content. I.E. the combats would be pretty easy to expand on and add complexity to or past tasks can have additional routes added.
The next updates will be adding new tasks after stage ups and continuing on each of the story lines with each of the NPCs. I have plans for a couple major NPCs still and a few minor ones with a quicker pay off. A full list of current planned features to the next release is on the discord.
Yes, I wanted it to be quite harsh at first where you actually have to survive at first and have a real chance of losing if you arenāt wise with your time at first or over extend yourself too quickly. For first runs though I have been debating adding in a āStarvation failsafeā event and top up your food a bit the first time you run out, definitely putting it on the list now
Can someone tell me how to get the rabbit to get out of its crate? No matter how many times I give it a carrot, it just gives the same dialogue and I worry Iām wasting my carrots.
The typing is only really present only in the intro sequence, there are disclaimers and an instruction on how to skip them or instantly progress them at the beginning. Past that it is only ever used selectively when I am trying to get a particular feel across in a passage.
Itās in the plan but I want to add a lot of depth and it takes time. Keep an eye out for the next update that adds back in task 9 to give you a taste
Gave it a try, and so far it feels like a decent game. All-around better implementation of āQueen Sizedā ideas without a million bugs (spotted probably only around 10 bugs) and inconsistencies. Very nice.
I have it set up so that there are a few small one off passages here and there that only trigger in certain conditions. The bulk of it can be accessed through the 9 tasks that can be started by either by progressing the tutorial tasks or by feeding Vivian and Lily up one stage.
once you have found Vivian, explore the farm and there is a chance of finding her scurrying into the barn. She will hide there until you feed her carrots until she opens up to you and can be recruited.
fishing may be bugged, when you click go fishing it pops up the next bit of text, whites out the go fishing text, and you can only returnā¦ but upon doing so the garden is locked for the rest of the day, with clicking it doing nothing
side note, task 6 and onwards is very weirdly open and unidirectionalā¦ I accidently came across task 8 but neither 6 nor 7 so far
Fishing is a newer mechanic so that does not surprise me! I will see if I can find the bug there. The first few tasks were designed around getting people used to the mechanics of the game in place of a tutorial of sorts. After that it gets more into what I want the quests to be like with some variation to the endings. Numbering them was more of an internal thing that may be confusing in the long run so I may end up taking them out.
