Changing the care system

Hello all! After I promoted the last release, I received some feedback that really resonated with me:

I've gotta say, lobotomy corporation is an odd choice of game to base the mechanics of a monster girl rancher game on, but it kind of works here. The only problem is that in that game doing the wrong sort of work with a subject could have disastrous consequences, whereas here it just means you need to click an extra time or two. This effects other mechanics too, as learning more information about how to successfully interact with the monster girls doesn't feel as meaningful, since there's not really much difference between having a poor interaction versus a good one. You can just try every interaction until you find the one that gets the most points then spam it until you max out her affection. Having items that improve your interactions with specific monster girls is an interesting idea but there's no real reason to do that in the game as it stands.  

I don't want this to sound too negative because I really do think this has the potential to be great. The writing is engaging and the premise has a lot of promise. The core concept of growing your ranch by working to understand and recruit new monster girls, which give you the tools to find and recruit even more monster girls, etc is a very satisfying loop. Comparatively my complaints are minor but I do think it is a problem you'll need to address eventually. Either way I'll be keeping an eye on this, there really aren't any successful monster girl rancher style games out there and this one could end up amazing.

I think this feedback is spot on. I'd like to know what you think about this feedback in the poll below. Since receiving it, I thought really hard about how to improve the care system. I'll walk you through that process (feel free to skip if this bores you):

• I should have a much cooler system. A card-based system like Slay The Spire! Every girl you interact with will give you a choice of one of three cards. But I'll build my own system. One with blackjack and hookers...
• Actually, screw this new system. It might be cool, but it rips out the foundation of the game. I don't want to rewrite that much code; it could take months. Plus, it may not even solve the problem.
• "I should probably hunker down and think about how to modify the current system to achieve more agency." The theme that kept popping up were variations on, "what if you could lose?" I don't think that would make the game fun. If you were even willing to restart, you'd have to read the same old scenes again. And who's to say you'd get further next time? Would you really restart twice?
  
  For me, that left "what if choices decide if you see scene x or scene y?" Now, don't get me wrong, there will be choices like this in the game, but the more choices there are, the more permutations of scenes need to be written; this idea simply can't scale enough to give a feeling of agency. I mean it could if I really water down the scenes and keep them short, but for me, that's out of the question; I think the scenes are the game's biggest strength.
  
  (By the way, if you see something I don't -- a way of tweaking the current system to add agency without lose conditions or unscalable writing effort, I'm all ears! This would be an ideal solution.)
• From this, I concluded that the current system can't work, and the fancy card system is too much work. So, there has to be a middle ground: Something that changes the system, but not so much that I've got to rewrite a majority of code.
• I came up with something I think is going to be a good fit: it'll add strategy and agency to the game without lose conditions or additional writing effort. The idea is based off of some JRPGs I enjoy. Unfortunately, I've noticed I suck at explaining the idea. Every time I try, people say, "So it's a battle system?" No, it's not a battle system. It's... well, as I said, it's hard to explain. For that reason, I'm going to try to build something that people can play. If you'd like more info about what I'm planning, I'd feel much more comfortable discussing it on my discord, because it's so much easier to reply.
  
  I'm going to be upfront and say I don't think I can complete this this month. It should be available sometime in February.

This isn't all I've been doing, in fact, it's been more of a background thread in my mind. Since the last release, I've spent most of my time searching for a reliable artist. Finding such an artist is like a full-time job; I've sent out at least 100 messages, and some replies are very promising. At this point, I've realized it's just a numbers game. But it feels close, you know? Like I might be able to find an amazing artist before the month ends (keep your fingers crossed)!

One of these artists was kind enough to make a few mockups of how the UI could look:

I think those ideas are definitely improvements over the current UI, and I hope to be making some changes soon!

Hope you're all doing great!