Weightcraft Chronicles: New Dawn - Act 1 Chapter 1 now available

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Download on itch.io

If you like the game, please consider supporting me on Patreon Genesis Productions on Patreon

This is a reboot of my previous game Weightcraft Chronicles: Genesis. This version is much closer to my original vision for the game. If I’d realised how quickly I could get the prologue done I wouldn’t have bothered with a teaser yesterday. But its done, the first prologue chapter is fully playable and feature complete. Check the devlog on Itch for further details.

As before, this is going to be a game about romance, adventure and fattening up hot girls. There will be transforms. There will be various WG related fetishes catered to. I’m still on the fence about having male characters to fatten up but for now a token number of them are still in the plan. I have big things in mind for this game and not having to write pages and pages of text should help move things along better than the last time around.

Chapter 1 is now out! I hope everyone enjoys it. I think I’ve caught all the bugs, but please let me know if I missed any.

Feedback on progression would also be handy. I don’t want to make it too fast…but I don’t want it too slow either. In theory, you shouldn’t be able to reach level 5 relationship with Lyra (or any character) until nearing the end of the game - but since its still in development it would be a bit boring if no content was unlockable in its current state.

Here’s the change log:

29/9/24 - + Created music for the 2 taverns and added to the soundtrack page

29/9/24 - + Created City exploration menu and scenes for exploring Dawn’s Edge

29/9/24 - + Did scenes in the Arcane Emporium

30/9/24 - + Did scenes in the Trading Post

30/9/24 - + Did scenes for Delilah’s Food Store

30/9/24 - + Added a random chance to find some shards in the fountain in the courtyard.

30/9/24 - + Implemented day and time

30/9/24 - + Updated quests page

30/9/24 - + Added a time and player stats tracker accessed by hovering the mouse at the top of the screen. XP required to level up scales with each level.

30/9/24 - + Added XP rewards for completing the prologue and finding the main locations in Dawn’s Edge

30/9/24 - * Fixed bug with the theatre night scene handling

30/9/24 - * Fixed a bug with city exploration resulting in “finding” “set” locations multiple times, and/or not adding them to the locations menu

30/9/24 - * Fixed a bug with repeated visits to “set” location granting XP on each visit - now only awards on first visit as intended.

30/9/24 - - Removed testing XP from meeting Delilah for the second time.

30/9/24 - * Fixed a design oversight (not really a bug - it worked as it should, just not as intended) where menu items such as inventory and

quests were transparent overlays on the screen.

30/9/24 - * Fixed a bug that was making the Return button in the character grid loop through all the characters before it would return to the

game.

1/10/24 - + Updated stat tracking to handle increase in max health, and once availabale, max mana.

1/10/24 - + Added a bedroom that can be used at Lyra’s - in the evening you can sleep til morning and restore your health. In the day time you

can wait until evening. Both will restore mana - when available - but only sleeping lets you heal up. Not that there’s anything yet that will damage your health.

1/10/24 - + Added function to handle Weightcraft and Fleshcrafting skills once available.

1/10/24 - + Added a chance encounter of meeting Morrigan in the plaza during the day - place holder scene. Implemented now as part

of city navigation set up.

1/10/24 - * Fixed a few bugs with Morrigan’s introduction - mainly timing issues.

1/10/24 - * Adjusted the City Menu music so that it doesn’t annoyingly restart with every scene. Overzealous music calling.

1/10/24 - * Fixed a bug with sleeping/waiting not updating the time of day properly.

1/10/24 - * Fixed a bug/design oversight with the quest menu layout

1/10/24 - + Time of day effects the view of the city menu. But not doing 4 variations for every other location. Just day and night for them.

1/10/24 - + Added a chance encounter of meeting Kaida at night - place holder scene. Implemented for the same reason as Morrigan.

1/10/24 - + Added placeholder/initial meeting with Aurelia in the Wandering Wyvern in the evening. As above.

1/10/24 - + Added placeholder/initial meeting with Calista in the Black Rose tavern in the evening. As above.

1/10/24 - + Added relationship tracking system

1/10/24 - * Fixed a bug that let you meet Morrigan at night.

1/10/24 - + Added Lyra greeting the player based on their relationship level

1/10/24 - + Added some flavour text about Lyra commenting on her weight gain - if she gains. It will be entirely possible to play the

entire game without making any of the characters gain weight if you so choose. Makes it a generic fantasy game for those not into that I suppose. Accessibility! Mass appeal! (lol)

1/10/24 - + Added scenes for feeding Lyra with variations for relationship level

1/10/24 - + Lyra’s weight stages capped at stage 3 until completing Act 1.

3/10/24 - + Completed artwork for Lyra - 209 images

3/10/24 - + Implemented basic economy - weapons can be purchased at the Trading Post

3/10/24 - + Implemented basic economy - food can be purchased at Delilah’s Treats

3/10/24 - * Fixed some bugs with the inventory system.

3/10/24 - * Fixed a bug that wouldn’t let you progress Lyra’s relationship wihtout crashing - forgot to initialise the tracking

variable - whoops!

3/10/24 - * Fixed a bug that was crashing the game if you got shards - accidently changed the variable name while implementing the

economy.

3/10/24 - + Added a brief scene where if you and Lyra have started a relationship, and you sleep at her place you can encounter her

in bed asleep.

3/10/24 - + Added the option to leave Lyra’s apothecary without interacting with her/going to the bedroom.

3/10/24 - + Added unique gift for Lyra to the Trading Post inventory. It can only be purchased once (but can’t be missed just to

make that clear).

3/10/24 - + Added gift giving scenes with Lyra.

3/10/24 - + Added sex scenes with Lyra up to stage 6 - might go back to them and tweak them a bit later. New to ren’py format so

not quite sure how to implement sex scenes best.

4/10/24 - + Sex scenes v1 complete.

4/10/24 - + Chapter 1 complte subject to play testing

4/10/24 - + Added XP reward for completing chapter 1.

4/10/24 - + Added music for Lyra’s quest scenes.

4/10/24 - * Fixed some bugs with the potential combat encounter in Lyra’s quest.

4/10/24 - * Fixed a bug that was preventing Lyra gaining weight.

4/10/24 - * Though functional - may need to adjust the weighting on Lyra’s relationship progress and gaining speed.

4/10/24 - + Added a monetary reward for winning the combat encounter.

4/10/24 - * Restructured the scripting to make it more efficient. Tested OK. Ongoing process - will shunt as part of Chapter 2 Dev

time.

5/10/24 - * Adjusted scene handling for the Trading Post

5/10/24 - * Modified Lyra’s relationship and weight gain rates. Further adjustments may be required subject to feedback.

5/10/24 - * Tweaked some Lyra scenes that should have made her gain weight but I’d forgotten to add the code for.

5/10/24 - + Both pathways through Lyra’s quest now grant xp for dealing with the encounter instead of just at the end of the quest.

5/10/24 - * Fixed a bug with Lyra’s necklace not displaying in the inventory.

5/10/24 - * Modified the Trading Post and Food stall menus so you stay in the menu until you leave instead of being dumped to the

start of the scene after each purchase.

5/10/24 - * Fixed a bug that meant for each single item purchased you could give Lyra infinite gifts of that item.

5/10/24 - * Fixed a bug that was letting Lyra gain numeric weight after reaching her Act 1 cap (but not going up a stage because

stage was capped as intended)

5/10/24 - * Fixed a bug that wasn’t updating Lyra’s relationship progress correctly.

5/10/24 - + Added a difficulty setting

5/10/24 - * Fixed some bugs with Lyra’s displayables

5/10/24 - * Miscellaneous bug fixes

5/10/24 - - Removed shake effect from sex scenes - it wasn’t working.

5/10/24 - + ACT ONE CHAPTER ONE RELEASED

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I’m looking forward to playing this, I loved WCG. I’m excited to see what’s to come

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When you say this is just a teaser, how much content should there actually be? When I start it all I get is an old man waking me up before I’m back at the title screen. Is this a bug or is there nothing else here yet?

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That’s it for the “narrative”. There’s the soundtrack and character pages too. Its pretty basic as teasers go I admit. In hindsight I should have left the character grid open to make it more of a tease showing off other characters but it was a bit broken when I decided to do the teaser so put it in “release” mode with all the characters you won’t meet in the opening scenes hidden. I hope you don’t feel cheated with the teaser - I did try to make it clear there was almost nothing to it.

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It’s okay, I wasn’t frustrated, just confused. I think for people who played your previous version of the game It’s probably sufficient, but because I didn’t I still don’t know what to expect from this new project. I think if you’re going to allow the option to tip you on itch for this download you should make it clear how bare it is right now. The introductory description in your first post makes it sound like there is much more here than this.

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Ironically, the prologue is now out and complete. I had no idea when I put out the teaser that I’d be able to do it so quickly or I’d not have bothered with the teaser. It should be much less confusing now. Beyond the confusion inherent in the narrative of playing as an amnesiac.

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I just played through the prologue and I’m much more interested now. I hope I didn’t come across as overly critical before, I just wanted something that would tell me a little more about what to expect. You definitely laid the groundwork for the setting and tone of this story, and introducing us better to some characters was nice too. Now that I’m curious, I’m going to check out the previous version of the game!

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No, it was a fair criticism. Thanks for your feedback. Glad you enjoyed the prologue, and I hope you’ll enjoy Genesis too, what there is of it (though it goes a lot further than ND does just now). Its a bit more fleshed out (pun not intended) than New Dawn. But its also a bit of a mess in places. In some ways ND has/will have a lot more features and just generally better QOL over WCG, but in some ways its more stripped down.

For instance WCG has a lot of player customisation that I’m just not doing for ND. I want to focus on a tighter narrative and having a default male protagonist with a customisable name makes it easier to do that. Maybe after I finish the game if there’s enough demand I’ll go back and add in some player customisation options, or at least gender. But my plans are already pretty big in terms of narrative without going into that.

Anyway, happy gaming.

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​Now that WCG is defunct and production is now well underway on the (if I say it myself) far superior version in New Dawn I’m thinking I might de-list it for download on Itch.

What’s everyone’s thoughts? If it helps you decide a LOT of the content from WCG is going straight into ND. I put a lot of work into WCG and it seems a waste to discard it all. ND is a reboot after all, not a sequel.

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I’m assuming you’d promote the remake prominently on the original’s page.

I think the original version should remain up as long as possible - some people might prefer it, and what does it cost you to leave it there?

If you don’t want to do that, but do want to leave it up until some point, I would say until the remake has as much content as the original, so that it functions as a replacement.

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I agree with Bad, keep it up at least until ND is at the same level. That way people can get a teaser of whats most likely going to come by playing the older content. Plus, you will always find someone who prefers one way over another.

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Been working my socks off this past week - and while I could release chapter 1 today I’m going to hold off until tomorrow. It’s 100% functional as far as I could find in my play tests but I want to tidy up the script a bit and pop in a couple more refinements (and a final play test after the scripting changes to make sure I don’t break it “fixing” it. I’m really excited to see what everyone thinks of chapter one. Though don’t expect the next one to be out anywhere near this quickly. I really pushed hard in my week off to see if I could do it.

TLDR - update due tomorrow.

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when you first dropped the teaser for this game I checked out the old version Weightcraft Chronicles: Genesis and I played it for a bit, I looked at the stored images you have in the prologue version and see that you have the same characters and transformations again.

What I hope is that you speed up the character interactions, I found in Genesis you had to increase the affection stat of npc’s and I only got it to increase by looking at them and it only went up by 1 point each time, so to get a npc to max affection to start the transformation it took me having to look at each npc about 600 times

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Thanks for the feedback. No one ever told me that I recall - that sounds like a bug. There were meant to be a few ways to increase it and different characters would respond more or less to different things.

I was aiming for a slow build up but maybe it’s not quite the game for that. May need to tweak the stats a bit before I release tomorrow. I think this is going to take a bit of tinkering to get the right balance between too slow and the girls going up like balloons. I suppose while it’s still early days I could make the gain/relationship rates artificially high and tone them back down a bit when complete.