Pacing of the game?

Well, one hour to go at the time of writing this, but it's clear what the winner is. The vast majority of you think the pacing is okay. So, I won't be making any major adjustments to the pacing! However, for V0.4, I will look into slowing the transition rate down a little as Alice gets larger, to compensate for any increased appetite that she 'may' develop :) Thanks to everyone who voted and/or commented!

I feel as it is currently I can control the pace of the game. Some run troughs I'll just work a few weeks with minimal other interaction until I'm rich, then I'll do whatever I want to and explore. Or on the normal ones I feel like you can either inflate Alice like a beach ball, or you can take your time. If anything changes maybe you could slow her gain down just a tad, but any significant change and I fear it may get a bit 'farmy' for some. It certainly works as is.

That would complicate things. A lot. At the moment, everything is paced so that (theoretically) not too much will happen at once. Some of the events in the game are triggered by more than one factor and/or rely on other events happening beforehand. If I add more variables to these events, it's almost inevitable that bugs would creep in, and they would be a nightmare to track down as everyone would be playing the game at different paces.

To be honest, I haven't tested the new versions with old save games. Mostly because I simply don't have the time. A single playthrough takes me four or five hours as I'm constantly spotting things to tweak. You're welcome to try it, but I'm all but certain you'll get errors due to the huge amount of new content in each new version.

A few of you have suggested increasing the threshold slightly for each stage. This is a really good idea and I'll try and get that added into the game soon. I did think about a size stage inbetween sizes 2 and 3. But in my test images, it was often hard to notice the difference. I'm aiming for the size increase to be realtively obvious between each stage and If I'd made stage three much smaller, it would have hardly been noticeable. Hmmm, another reason to increase each stage by a few pounds :)

Bear in mind that everything is work in progress. I'm constantly adding more detail to the game. Even at this stage, greed affects a lot more than just how much chocolate she eats and this will be expanded upon as things develop further.

Wow, that's a lot of answers! From the poll results so far, plus the comments, it seems as though the vast majority of you are fairly happy with the current pacing. So I won't be making any dramatic adjustments. I think the best way forward would be to leave things as they are for now, and possibly slow the rate down a little at each stage of the game. I'll look into doing that for 0.4. I already have way too much still to do on 0.3 :)

I agree that the current pacing is ideal. Missed scenes can always be found during replays (I assume), and players get a fairly good control on the pacing, given the variety of activities available and the "dieting" option.

Voca Labs

Do you have the capacity to add a temporal multiplier taken from the player at game start? Either pre-set values or a manual entry between, say, .25 (4 times longer game) and 2 (half as long game)?

Schattenjäger

Strongly prefer the current pacing. The fact that there's stuff that I haven't seen yet makes it possible for me to play the new versions as they come out and not get bored or frustrated waiting to get to the new content. That could be fixed if previous saves worked with new games, but the last note I read about that seemed to indicate that there was no backwards compatibility (although that could easily have changed, as I think I read that months ago). But, honestly, even if you made save games backwards compatible, or even if you waited to adjust the pacing until you had a final version, I still think I would prefer this pacing. It feels right to me.

HPab

The pacing is somewhat fine. It starts off really well paced, which is good. But it does speed up like a whole lot really quickly, around the time she gains 40 lbs. She'll start gaining 2-4 lbs a day if you eat with her all day and things go really fast unless you try and slow it down. (Huge meal at cafe, doughnut, dinner, and chocolates haha) Maybe make the weight threshold for the next stage increase by 5 lbs each stage? So like 20, 25, 30, etc. But then it might also get out of hand really quick. Typically people gain weight more slowly as they get heavier, so maybe increasing the amount her weight goes down daily with each stage would help (since the body needs more calorie surplus to continue gaining). Also I might suggest adding in another stage between 2 and 3, because at stage 3 she looks to be about 190 lbs, not 160 (I think she's 5' 4" which is the same as my wife haha). Though that's more of a personal preference of mine because I would like that thick/borderline chubby look where she has bigger hips and butt and a slight belly a lot. I'm sure you'll find a way to balance it out well as you get further along and see how it goes when she gets even greedier!

Ducky

I think the pacing is more or less right, if anything it could probably be a slight bit slower and I'd still be fine. As it is it feels like I can get through a lot of the different scenes and lines without worrying about missing it from going too fast.

BigSoftMommyMilkers

I like the current pacing, but I worry about it maybe going too quickly once you hit higher weights and Alice starts getting greedier.

Aftermath

I think that the pacing might feel off just on the simple basis of the daily events. If you made the current events grindy that'd just make the game worse, making it less grindy would make it too easy. I think ultimately if I had to nit pick I think I'd like to see more events that target specific aspects of the gain. Like increasing acceptance/desire of it, and having a greed factor not based purely in chocolate squares.

moonslashx

I probably won't create a play guide myself. It's never a good idea to write a guide to your own game...

There will be more one-off stuff added to the game as time allows. I've already started doing this in the upcoming demo (although not along the lines of what you suggest here) and there will be more added at a later date :)

I think the pacing is fine now. I think the first time I played through it, it felt like it took forever to progress, but I think I was just not hitting a triggering event or something. Personally, I think its good now, but maybe come up with a "playthrough" guide to better help the players know, if you do x y z, you'll see something, if you do y,x,z you'll see something else" I'm now worried I missed something and didn't even know it XD

CinnaSticks

I like it how it is now, I made it a little more realistic timewise in my play by just spamming the wait button some days to skip some weeks. You could also make events like the main character has to travel for work for a week, or Alice goes on a holiday with her family to make time go faster without her gaining so much.

Gooobooo

You'll never see all the content in one playthrough no matter how much I slow the game down. There are too many variables affecting how some scenes pan out.

In an ideal world, I'd agree with you. But the longer I leave it, the more stuff I'm going to have to change, and if I leave it until the game is finished that'll mean me having to go through probably at least 50k lines of code

In my opinion, I would rather have the pacing a bit too slow rather than too fast as I would like to see all the content in one playthrough.

Pretty much good at the moment. I did miss one or two encounters but I chalk that up to being too focus on one or two activities.

Nonzie

I think the current pacing adds to the replay value. If I realize I missed something, I just go back to an earlier save or play it again. As of right now, I keep enjoying the game and its story progression more with every playthrough.

I think the final game should be slower but things move fine for the demos where we want to experience the new content sooner.

ThirdShifter