Here's what I've worked on since the previous release:
(Forgive the typos)
Okay now I have 2 big-ish features I could work on next.
The first is a grid based map using icons (the icons may not be there next release. It depends on how far i get). Here are some examples of what I'm talking about from famous textbased games:
You're probably going to move by clicking, but I might also/instead make it so you move with the keyboard. I think this feature will make the game easier to use and take it a step towards looking professional.
The second choice is to improve upon the current battle system. Namely, to give monster girls relevant reactions to your care activities. Right now, all they do is return random content.
If you think there are more important things to work on than these two things, I'd love to hear what they are. Unfortunately, I might have to do it after I complete the one chosen here; Patreon doesn't let you edit polls ><
Instead of forcing you to choose one choice, you can choose both if you want. I guess if you don't like either ideas, you could skip the poll.
Hope you're doing well!
2021-03-24 04:16:31 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone!
First of all, I hope you all liked that snake girl scene that Deos wrote. I'd like for her to write another scene, but unfortunately, she's too busy and she will be for an indefinite amount of time.
I'd love to get back to writing my own content, but I've got a long laundry list of improvements I want to make to the latest release. Can any of you recommend some authors you like that may be interested in writing a scene for Monster Girl Farmer? Please let me know!
2021-03-23 04:19:12 +0000 UTC
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Normally I don't create new posts for minor releases, but I think this one might be worth informing people about: if you were experiencing performance issues when changing from passage to passage, that has been fixed.
It was caused by auto saving too frequently. Now autosaves only happen after "battles" (I really want to think of a better term then this) and after you sleep.
2021-03-13 09:08:05 +0000 UTC
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* There will be some very minor changes to this picture before it's added to the game, but I figured it's close enough to share.
I've updated the cheats to allow you to jump straight to the snake girl scene. Note, this is for five dollar pledges and above, but I didn't want to bug you with three emails in one day, so I included it here.
Have a great day!
2021-03-10 22:06:27 +0000 UTC
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I haven't been this excited about a Monster Girl Farmer release since the first public announcement! The old gameplay has been completely ripped out and replaced by a far more entertaining and fun system. I truly believe it's been improved by an order of magnitude.
That said, there's a lot of opportunity for growth, almost certainly in ways I'm not even seeing. That's why I need your feedback! Reply to this post, message me on discord, send me an email, whatever -- I love interacting with players.
Besides the new gameplay, there's new artwork of Eva the Dog Girl and a new scene with a nameless Snake Girl. Actually, the new scene is another huge milestone for me because it's the first story in any of my games written by a guest author! Deos is her name, and she's a wonderful writer. I think you'll love her scene as much as I do! If you want to know how to unlock it, you'll find that information in the change log.
Most importantly (and I know I'm repeating myself), I really want your feedback on this new system. It's like a whole new game!
2021-03-09 21:24:47 +0000 UTC
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I'm so excited about this release, and I hope you are too! As a teaser, here's a tutorial that should explain how the new gameplay system works. You could help me out a lot by letting me know if any part of it left you confused.
Also, I'd love to know if--based on what you've seen in this tutorial--the new gameplay seems better than the old.
2021-03-06 09:09:19 +0000 UTC
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Hopefully this looks better from last time! I swear there is a screen shake happening, but for some reason, it's not visible in the GIF. It's 60fps, maybe the screen capture software is stabilizing the image? Whatever. To me, this looks much better. How about you?
Here's the one from the last post so you can compare:
Here's what's left on my list:
- balance system
- edit tutorials
- **************** Edit the new scene ****************
Let me tell you about that last one: You see--and this is a major milestone for me--I am not the author of this scene. It was written by summerslegato. I haven't proofread it yet, but I already know it's going to be great; she's literally the best erotica writer I've ever read. I do have to wrap it in code, but that shouldn't take long.
The scene is about a snake-girl (not a lamia) you find while exploring. It's 4k-ish words and it's going to be awesome.
Hope you're all doing great! I'm off to balance the new system.
2021-03-01 22:43:45 +0000 UTC
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I want to let you all know I've been working really hard on this release for weeks and weeks. Apparently, tearing out the guts of a game's most complex system and replacing it takes more time than I thought. I hope you can bear with me until it's finished. Good news is, I think it's better than the original gameplay! This is what I've got to do before I'm comfortable releasing:
- Give monster girls similar "attacks" to what they used to have
- Balance system
- Edit tutorials
- Provide background info of monster girls (I'll probably skip this to get it in your hands sooner)
How soon will it be released? Hard to say. Maybe a week, maybe more; the apartment against our wall flooded and slowly leaked into ours. Nobody told us about the flood, and a few days later, our bedroom smelled like farts. After a long day of finger-pointing, we finally discovered a corner of our mattress was wet and stinky.
Maintenance will be tearing out the soaked drywall and wet carpet. It'll probably take over a week for them to fix everything, and it'll make a ton of noise that might interfere with my concentration. That makes estimating difficult.
I'm trying to keep a positive attitude about this. I live an in apartment complex, so I don't have to pay for this. That's good.
Hm. What else? Oh, I know: normally when I fart, I blame it on the dog. Now I can blame it on the wall. The more options, the better.
Last but certainly not least, this is a wonderful opportunity to meet new people. The best part is they'll come to me. You know, like, a gathering? Yes. A group of strangers will be gathering in my house! During a deadly pandemic...
Yay?
Well, I hope you're all doing well! I just finished the UI -- for this release, improvements will come -- so I wanted to give you a sneak peek. Ignore the text, it doesn't make sense. If you have any feedback or suggestions on how to improve it, let me know. I'll put it in my backlog to work on next release.
Hope you're all doing great!
2021-02-26 08:56:26 +0000 UTC
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Let me know what you think!
2021-02-24 03:43:15 +0000 UTC
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Hello all! I plan to make a small change to the $10 tier reward. Right now it says:
Exclusive access to sketches, black & white line art, and any drawings that are work in progress. This artwork won't be in the final game!
I'm going to change this to:
Exclusive access to full-sized sketches, black & white line art, and any drawings that are works in progress. This artwork won't be in the final game! (Heavily cropped versions may be shared with the public for promotional purposes.)
Let me know your thoughts! I'm (always) open to ideas.
2021-02-04 02:39:32 +0000 UTC
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In my last post, I mentioned I received this feedback:
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, and according to the previous poll, most of you agree. So I've been working on improving the system. Last night, my girlfriend had a genius idea: "Maybe you should just make a picture of the care activity system instead of making it first." Seems obvious -- almost objectively the right way of going about it, if you ask me.
So I did just that: Here's a screenshot of one of the screens:
This is actually an interactive PDF. You can click around on (some of) those buttons, and it'll take you to a different page. e.g., clicking on "Care Activities" jumps you here:
Anyway, I encourage you to download the PDF and try it out. It should only take a minute to click through (seriously), but your feedback could save me weeks of effort and make the game significantly more entertaining! Answering the poll is fine, but I'd prefer comments on it so I could ask clarifying questions. As always, feel free to chat with me on Discord: https://discord.gg/kpEFKft
2021-02-01 01:55:37 +0000 UTC
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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!
2021-01-23 23:14:18 +0000 UTC
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Woo! Thank you for your patience on this release, hopefully the amount of content it adds makes it worth it. Normally, each release adds 4 new scenes. This one adds 8! But there are plenty of other features worth mentioning:
- There is a new wonderful(ly mean) harpy girl added to the game. She'll randomly show up if you have Hanako and sleep.
- A new image has been added of the spider girl.
- You can purchase a chicken coop.
- There are three new items in the game.
- And lots more! For more information about this release, check out the change log.
For the next release, I'm going to focus on a bunch of little quality of life improvements for both you and me. For example, more artwork, gameplay balance, maybe a scene where the town opens up to more monster girl shops, etc. There's a ton of things in my backlog that are quick and would improve gameplay. I'd like to make time to address them.
Enjoy this release! Let me know what you think.
2021-01-13 01:40:23 +0000 UTC
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I'm sorry all: this release is going to take a few days longer. Rest assured, I'm working my ass off. *Ahem* Excuse time *Ahem* If this had been any of the previous releases with a new monster girl, I wouldn't have miscalculated. You see, most characters have 4 scenes: An intro, and 3 scenes per Affection Level. But this release adds 8 new scenes, and I stupidly estimated how much time it would take to edit if it had the typical 4. Also, this <expletive deleted> Olivia required so many little features I never anticipated... Boring stuff like, it should be possible to prevent a monster girl from leveling up if you haven't purchased a farm upgrade yet. And, there should be a way to inform the player that's why she isn't leveling up. etc.
Anyway, enough excuses. Really sorry for the extended delay, but it shouldn't be long now. I think you're all going to like Olivia. I know I do. I'm having a lot of fun writing her scenes.
2021-01-09 09:47:16 +0000 UTC
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There's two versions here: one with her name on it and one with her name unknown. Let me know what you think.
2021-01-06 23:24:39 +0000 UTC
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hello all! I just wanted to update you that I have finished the rough drafts of all of Olivia's content. Now I have to make a few editing passes and write her care activity content. I was expecting to complete this by tomorrow, but I'm not certain that's gonna happen. I might need another day or two, thank you for understanding. I want to do right by Olivia/harpy girl, instead of rushing her.
There will be a new picture in this release too! I'll post that for the $1/$10 pledges after this.
I hope you're all doing well!
2021-01-06 22:49:56 +0000 UTC
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Hello all! I wanted to let you know that the next release should be in the first week of January. I try to have two releases per month, but this is an exception for a couple of reasons:
- I think most people will be busy from now to January 1st, given the holidays. Even if I finished this month, I wouldn't want to promote it when no one's around to see it.
- Olivia (the harpy) has a very complex introduction. It's more of a quest, really. This is going to take more effort and require more scenes than any other monster girl I've written to date. She'll need 6+ scenes instead of the typical 4.
Hope this makes sense! Thanks for your patience.
2020-12-26 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Let me know which monster girl(s) you want me to work on next!
Unicorn:
The unicorn will have two legs and be trans, loosely based on Luna from my previous game.
Bee girl:
Might be fun if she is a little chubby. You know, a BeeBeeW?
Satyr:
She'll be like a goat, and probably be trans, but I haven't decided yet. Either way, goat milk.
Harpy:
She'll lay eggs. Loosely based on Olivia from my previous game.
2020-12-19 02:03:24 +0000 UTC
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I'm really excited about this release because it's jam packed with new features! There's a journal that shows you how many monster girls exist and their levels, AP, and more. As requested by many people in the in-game surveys, tasks are shorter and require less AP. The Journal shows you how much time until the task ends, and you can sell task items at the General Store (oh yeah, did I mention there's a General Store now?) Let's not forget Amy's shop allows you to buy the first farm upgrade. Hm, what else? New cheats for $5 pledges: add any item to your inventory at the button. This is like half of the new features, so check out the change list to learn more!
What's next? A survey for pledges to decide the upcoming monster girl. If there is time left over, I'm gonna add more farm upgrades to Amy's shop. And hopefully there'll be new images!
2020-12-19 01:57:48 +0000 UTC
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Hello all! The release is in a good spot, but there was one major feature I didn't have quite enough time to complete: Amy's Shop working. I could release without this feature and then work on a new monster girl, or I could spend a few extra days and give you all a functional Shop. I don't know how much function will be there, but at least one way of upgrading your farm. I think that much would take me an additional 2-3 days. Let me know what you think by voting below!
2020-12-15 01:22:44 +0000 UTC
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2020-12-13 02:26:26 +0000 UTC
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Your feedback can really help me. I want to make this as convenient as possible.
Here's the direction I was going until I decided to do the above instead:
2020-12-10 10:01:35 +0000 UTC
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There is no good way to sugarcoat this, so I won't even try. Today Pride the artist told me-- Wait, I just thought of something. Good news everyone! I've reduced my game development costs to zero. Yay!
Sigh.
OK, the real deal is something came up and Pride will not be able to follow through on our contract "for a while." She said she may be able to start again in January, but that's a long time to wait for a maybe. Therefore, I will continue my search for a Monster Girl Farmer artist. If you know any that would be a good fit for the game, please let me know, as that saves me a bunch of time.
In the release notes, I said there would be new artwork this month, but given these circumstances, I'm no longer able to guarantee that. Actually, no. I'll stand by that promise. I'll draw you some peens and boobies if I have to. But I must warn you, you're going to have to use your imagination; like, you may not be able to tell which is which. As always, thanks for your patience on this matter.
2020-12-02 21:47:42 +0000 UTC
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Hello all! The main focus of this release is the concept of tasks. See, in the previous versions, if you wanted to receive items from monster girls, you spent affection points and received an item immediately -- kind of like you were buying something from a shop. Now, you assign them a task, and when they return from it, you'll receive their items.
The idea is to make the game more management-like. Once you've assigned a girl a task (which still costs affection points), you'll need to spend your energy elsewhere before the task completes. I think the shortest task in the game is 150 energy, or about 2.5 full energy bars. The reason I made it so big is I didn't want the player to feel like as soon as they sent one character on a task, another one returns. With so much time in between, you'll have plenty of time to explore the forest while you wait for them to return.
Anyway, as a famous philosopher once said, "Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth." And with this release, I want you to punch me in the mouth... I had a plan for tasks, but I don't know how it will be received, so please leave me feedback by filling out an in-game survey at any time.
There are other features to talk about, but this post is already too long, so I will refer you to the official change log.
The last thing I want to talk about is what to expect in the next release. Artwork! Pride -- my new artist -- is starting, so there will finally be some new artwork! Thank you for your patience on the matter. As for me, I think it's still worthwhile to work on new features. You should be able to sell items and purchase upgrades in Amy's shop. The release after that will add new story content. I know I'm personally looking forward to Fairies moving in and setting up a magic shop. But I don't decide that: it's the pledges that choose the next character. If you'd like to influence the vote, it only costs a dollar.
As always -- enjoy! And don't forget to tell me what you think. Good or bad, it really helps me improve the game.
PS: A special shout out to Coomer Bear. They worked really hard at finding typos that needed fixing.
2020-12-01 20:35:41 +0000 UTC
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Hope you're all doing great. I wanted to let you know that tomorrow there will be a new release of Monster Girl Farmer. Keep an eye out for it!
2020-12-01 03:46:19 +0000 UTC
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As the terrible title suggests, Sophie the Centaur is the biggest addition of this version, but there were a lot of other features too:
- Care activities require less clicks to perform
- The energy bars animate when you lose/gain energy
- The map was moved to the top of the screen
- Added a barn and stable location
If you want more details, including spoilers of how to unlock Sophie, check out the change log. And if you want cheats to streamline your gameplay, you can find them here ($5 tier and above).
Here are some miscellaneous things that will be coming soon:
- New artwork starting next month, unless something unexpected happens. Contract's signed, but she has to drain her queue before she can start. (Man, I'm starting to type like Sophie talks.)
- You get the barn and stable automatically, but I think this is something you should have to buy from Amy's shop instead.
- Sophie's ability to hunt for you is not yet implemented.
- You should be able to sell items.
At least one of those things will be in the next release, so keep your eyes peeled in about 10 days.
Enjoy!
2020-11-21 02:37:04 +0000 UTC
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# 0.36.01
## Bug Fixes:
⦁ Charact
2020-11-16 03:05:26 +0000 UTC
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edit-patreon-post-content rrne9
2020-11-16 03:05:26 +0000 UTC
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Hello all! First the bad news:
I haven't really been posting artwork updates lately. The reason for that is, Zraxi and I have decided to part ways. She's a great artist, and if you like her style like I do, I recommend you check out her twitter (I'd link to it here, but it contains NSFW content) and commission some artwork of your own. We're on good terms. In fact, she's still active on the discord server. It was simply a matter of wanting more pictures than she was capable of producing in a month, given that she isn't a full-time artist.
That leads into the good news: I've been searching for a full-time artist, and although we're still inking up the contracts, Ahnei is highly interested. The best part is, they are a full-time artist and can produce 3+ images a month. As I type this, they're trying to wrap up their commission backlog so they can focus on Monster Girl Farmer. They might be able to start in the middle of the month, and they think they can produce two pictures with the time left.
I'm also thinking about doing something strange for the artwork direction as an experiment: instead of a few fully rendered pictures, a lot of sketches. The pictures would have a storyboard look, feel, and function--visual aids to help you imagine the scene. The best part is, if everyone hates this idea, I'm comfortable taking some sketches, turning them into full renders, and throwing the rest away. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a big deal.
Here's an example sketch of Amy:
I wanted to know what you think about this experiment.
2020-11-09 23:58:41 +0000 UTC
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