Weekly devlog!

Hello all! I'm excited to announce some big news for Monster Girl Farmer. That probably sounds scary, so let me just say, if you haven't played the game before, you'll probably think, "Oh, that's the game I thought he was making the whole time." And if you have played the game before, you'll probably think, "Oh, good. That sounds more fun than what he was making." I base these statements on the fact that every time I let someone try the game, they said it wasn't what they expected.

First, let's talk about what's going to stay the same: I'm still going to be making a game called "Monster Girl Farmer." It's still going to be about transforming human women into monster girls. You're still going to own a farm. I'm going to be able to reuse all the assets I've already paid for (the one exception to that is I may throw out some of the UI, but fortunately, that was the cheapest asset anyway).

So, what is "Monster Girl Farmer" going to become? It's a mouthful. I'd describe it as "An open world, point and click, quest based game that focuses on narrative," whereas what I was building was a, "fast paced video game focused on Quick Time Events." I think the former will have much wider appeal. Here's my vision for it:

Imagine you wake up on a farm without animals. You can click on your map to visit the field and grow some crops, or you can visit the many locations of the nearby town and complete a multitude of quests that the citizens (mainly monster girls) give you. Each time you complete a quest or give a character a gift, your friendship with that character grows. If that character is a monster girl, eventually you can convince her to move to your farm, transform into her monster girl form, and then sell her product to make even more money or unlock new quests.

This last week I even mapped out what I've got planned on this really cool website called arcweave. You can check it out even if you don't have an account by clicking this link: https://arcweave.com/app#/project/nzr63Ov6ZR If you start at the upper left hand corner, you'll notice you can visit the field and decide to grow catnip. Once it's grown, you can go to the alley and give it to Mia to gain some friendship. But, instead you could grow some wheat, sell it at the bar, use that money to buy cat food at the pet store, and give it to Mia to gain even more friendship. Of course, selling wheat at the bar unlocks another item: Once you sell wheat to the bar, you can now buy vodka from them, and that vodka can be given to Amy to gain her friendship.

These are what I'd describe as "non-narrative quests." If you look at the lower left hand corner of arcweave, you'll see there are also "narrative quests." For example, there's a quest called "Finding Mia's ring." I'll summarize one:

Once Mia lives on your farm, Eva will tell you that Mia's always complaining about her lost ring and asks if you can find it. Eva will give you a clue that you may be able to find it in the alley where you found Mia. Instead, you can talk to Mia next and she'll tell you it's not a big deal. If you agree and don't search for it, your friendship with Mia will increase (I bet that doesn't make sense yet, but it will), but your friendship with Eva will decrease. Alternatively, you can go to the alley, but you won't find a ring there. If you talk to Mia and tell her you couldn't find it even after looking, she'll admit that she never had a ring in the first place and she was just saying that because whenever she makes Eva feel guilty, Eva gives her more food.

Now you have a choice: Do you tell Mia what she's doing is wrong and you won't keep her secret? Do you keep Mia's secret? Do you tell Mia you will keep her secret but secretly tell Eva the truth? All of these choices will affect your friendship with these characters, and the higher your friendship, the more lewd scenes you'll unlock. I hope that sounds interesting!

OK, now let's talk about what I was making before this change in direction. It was a game that was heavily inspired by "Cook, Serve, Delicious!" You can see a video of that game here: https://youtu.be/ItTM08_zFKE?t=154 The reason I've decided to pivot is because whenever I got feedback, a lot of it was encouraging, a lot of people said they were intrigued, but nobody ever said, "Wow! This is fun!" That's to be expected in early development, but I think I got past the stage of "early development," and I still wasn't getting that feedback. Whenever I asked for feedback about what I could change to make the game fun, I was always indirectly told, "Maybe make a different kind of game?" So that's what I'm doing now :)

Hopefully the game I've described above sounds fun to you. I'd love to know your thoughts. By the way, I never made the current/previous version of Monster Girl Farmer public because I never felt it was good enough to show, but since I'm changing directions, I see no harm in that now. Feel free to download and try it here: https://academyoffetishes.com/newgame/MonsterGirlFarmer-0.036.2-4ee861f.zip