20230304 update

tl;dr

Story and mechanics update.

No new monster or scenes.

Next dream area isn't done yet. Probably need another month to cook.

20230403v6

Removed a duplicate venus. My bad, left it in after testing in the last update

Fixed potential softlock from the venus scene

Reduced health degradation from going to bed. Further health consumption and restoration rebalancing will be done after more activities are added

20230403v5

Fixed crash when leaving the hedge maze after encountering the green ghost

Fixed crash when pausing with venus on the map

Tweaked venus behavior a bit

Fixed clothes reseting to dream state if red ghost effect expires after waking up

Fixed crash if game is paused when red ghost effect expires

If you didn't find Kari the initial time, talking to her next dream would crash the game. Fixed

Canned soda is now drinkable

Fruit salad doesn't stack with lettuce

20230403v4

Fixed crash from second option during slime tsf dream

Fixed Jessica outfit and bunny outfit being invisible from waist up

Removed shower check on exit.

Clothing check is more elaborate now. Basically requires wearing something that is plausibly decent.

Void maze exit now works as intended

Forgot to enable back garden in the mansion. Fixed

20230403v3

Stocked store with missing ingredients, fixed names

"Store All" for fridge and storage will now store last inventory slot as well

Fixed invisible items and wrong sprites in the Lab area

Fixed unintended wall collisions

20230403v2

Fixed crash that occurs when talking to Yuri or Kari in dreams

Pastebin version, because this format takes too much time:
https://pastebin.com/KmnqLqkv

External Download:
https://mega.nz/folder/g3oRzRLA#vhSJ99eV4Xrrz0r1ouJyxw

Story

The story was always meant to have feminization and genderswap for its basis. If it wasn't apparent before, it will be now.

Pregnancy is not yet implemented for story purposes. I haven't removed anything since the demo(s) nor made it foolproof, so if you try hard enough you can probably break the game. This principle applies to almost everything though - if you try enough you can most likely break it.

If you've seen the previous story update, most of it has been restructured, reordered and rewritten.

Story now goes up to day 4, without any gaps. After that the story transitions into the loop from the last update + non dream interactions. There is still some story interactions after visiting the manor and lab for the first time, as well as finding Yuri and Kari, but this will not progress the plot further.

Either way, you can go out of the house, and are required to do so, in order to cycle the day. Unfortunately there's nothing substantial to do yet, so it's largely a framework filler. Probably top priority to work on now. Hopefully, this describes the intended gameplay loop and why dream areas are built the way they are.

Day 2 has a decision that will either cause a complete gender swap or start off with crossdressing. This will slightly change what happens on day 3 and which nightmare occurs.

Why crossdress?

I thought it would be more interesting for the swap to happen "naturally" through one of the encounters, if you so choose.

Secondly, MC will always remain feminine, simply because secondary male characteristics don't interest me enough for the sheer volume of sprite variations that would need to be made. Sorry if you were expecting otherwise, but a feminine MC is as close as it will get. The core content happens with female characteristics in mind anyway.

Currently there are 4 ways (Squidrabbit, mirror, default nightmare if still male, Venus). In the future, the story won't progress until PC is female.

I also absolutely want to make a purist story branch eventually. This is the first step towards it. That said, I have little interest in drawing male physiology.

Mechanics

Time management

As a reminder, this is set up as follows: each day period has 5 time units. There are 6 periods (Dawn, Morning, Day, Dusk, Evening, Night) + unaffected dream period. When all 5 time units are used up, or an activity triggers the next period, the period advances and time units are restored. Interactables can be used once per day, or per period, or reset at certain period, or only during certain periods, or aren't affected by time passage at all. i.e the shower can be used one, after which it resets at dawn and in the evening.

I myself had to rediscover what the hell was going on, as it's been a while since I've touched this mechanic. Why is the system so contrived? I wanted to simulate time passage based on action and restrict the players on what they can do at what time periods and where they can go.

I.e in the morning, you will run out of things to do before you run out of the time units, forcing you to leave the house, to progress the day. At least in theory, as I haven't set up much to do yet. Of course you can advance the period by interacting with the bed, when appropriate.

At night anything that would tip the period over will set stamina to 1 instead, which in turn will prevent interacting with anything that would do so.

There is a counter that keeps track whether it's a weekend, as well as how many days have passed altogether. I've decided on 2 weekends in a week system. Probably not very accurate for the setting, but will be preferable for the sake of variety.

Stats

"Body" and "Mind" are now utilized. "Will" is still mostly a filler, with a few interactions that do a check. To be blunt, I'm not sure I've made it possible to even access those checks at the moment, but as I said before, if you aim to break something you can probably do it. Stamina has also been reworked a bit. More in depth on stats in a bit.

Food system

There is now a hunger and thirst stat. These are measured in 4 phases: grey, yellow, orange, red

Currently both advance every other period.

If a period passes while either is in red, Body decreases by 10 point for each.

Eating or drinking different types of food/liquids restores different stats.

You cannot eat/drink if the bar is grey.

What this means is you need to eat a minimum of 2 times a day to avoid stat penalties, and a maximum of 3.

You can cook by interacting with the stove or the kitchen counter. Ingredients need to be in the inventory.

The fridge is now functional storage.

As a side effect, I've added general storage to the living room.

As another side effect, I think I've ironed out the crashes and bugs of the wardrobe, which is now functional clothes storage again, after Day 3.

At the moment there is enough food to last a several cycles. Visits to the store are available, but I'm not confident that it's bug free.

Stamina

Stamina is now utilized in some interactables. If there isn't enough, you can't interact. This is in order to prevent potentially sequence  This will likely change in the future once everything is more stable. In dreams this restriction does not apply to waking up from dreams, where Stamina functions as per previous updates.

Body

Body degrades 30 points every time you go to bed.

There should be enough mundane elements to keep this topped up relatively easily(i.e taking showers, eating, toilet)

Some dream encounters will hurt. There is also a story related item that takes off 50 health for restoring sanity. But I'll have Rin explain that.

Finally, when Body reaches 0, next dream will bring you to a unique area. First time is just for the narrative. Future "visits" will require going through a precision maze. Once more story content is ready, sequential visits will remove events from the game. I don't like "bad ends" so this is as close to a fail state as it will get.

Anyway, once out, body and mind is set to 50, will is set to 0

Mind

As with body, some interactables will restore it. Some dream encounter may also either restore or hurt it.

Unlike Body, this degrades 10 x nightmare counter every time you go to bed. Every time you do the counter goes up by 1, up to 5.

Most dream encounters will decrease it. If Mind goes to 0, the next dream is a "nightmare". So I guess the concept here is to choose between encounters and nightmares.

Now I understand given the nature of the game, both might be desirable, which is counterintuitive treating it as punishment. But this is a much general issue with adult games that I don't know how to solve. I guess overindulgence will degrade Body fast, which will be less desirable. And if you intend to... ugh, roleplay? Well, it's probably impossible to avoid both completely.

Finally, I do also intend to implement a purist route as mentioned before.

Nightmare event types depend on the location where mind dropped to 0. In the lab it's either of the 2 tube scene, in the manor it's the spider hugger scene for now.

The first nightmare scene is scripted and is automatically triggered at the ends of day 2, depending on your choice.

If the character is still male, this is the default nightmare regardless, however without Yuri present.

Various changes.

"Haircut" area has changed.

A few puzzles were altered. Some may be more difficult to solve now.  There will be more changes like this as the game is transitioning from a showcase state to continuous play.

Green Ghost was placed in the mansion's back garden(affects are mostly unused). Venus will take it's place. Altered what effect Venus has from the original demo, but you won't know that until pregnancy story line is implemented.

Certain things, activities and scenes that were previously only affecting stamina now affect body, mind or will as well. It will take some time to find a proper balance and will likely be changed as new interactions are added.

Added a couple new interactables

Can now visit the store

Dream intro is now skipable

I generally tried to keep dream areas intact to avoid further bugs. But this also means they haven't been thoroughly tested.

As always, I will be testing and making hotfixes for anything I run into in throughout week. If you want to accelerate the process message me or post any bugs you find. Without doubt it's a huge mess. A reminder the game saves between transitioning from a dream area.

Roadmap

I think the highest priority right now is to expand what you can do outside of dreams. Current goal is to set up the 3 girls with random conversations based on MC stats and place them throughout the day in several locations. Some basic activities will be nice. Maybe I can add a part time job. Should they be mini-game based or just text? Suggestions are welcome.

Do note that as I add more things that affect body/mind/will/stamina, stat expenditure will increase as well, to encourage necessity to interact with them.

Here are some of the things planned.

Areas

The alien world will be accessed through the lab. Originally, the intention was to make a fully organic fleshy looking location, but there simply aren't enough assets for that, so it will be a mix of weird flora. I don't think making my own tilesets is a good use of my time.

The forest area is closest to completion, so that one's second. This will be accessed through the painting in the mansion. I estimate a month for this to be finished

Likewise, the strange flora world will be connected to the forest area, forming a loop of 4 areas.

A world hub will be last.

Following that, unconnected, smaller areas, unrelated or branch off the 4 main ones.

Story

I would like to make story segment order interchangeable.

With that in mind there are 3 priorities:

Pregnancy. This is kinda important, this is what it's all about, right? Probably why people care about this game. Not having it locks content etc. Until it's done, some creatures like broodmaiden and harlequin are disabled and others don't function fully. The reason why it's ok outside of dreams, how the world reacts and what the post effects are need to be established. While I look forward to this, it's also the most difficult one to do.

Seamless gender swap.

The intention was always to let MC change back, or more specifically, keep changing back, as the nature of the world and its encounters lead to the same outcome anyway. So mechanically the only thing missing is a more aggressive rate of transformations and thorough bug testing (there are sprite clipping, depth order problems and just general lack of confidence male genitalia works as intended).

I think there should also be a written event for each type of swap in the future.

Story-wise, establishing why MC would have to keep crossdressing is already there. So it's mostly implementing more scenes for it.

The only reason I'm even considering doing this before pregnancy is because it's kinda hard to go back once that line is crossed. Maybe it's just me, but I'd really struggle writing slice of life content after that.

I do have a solution for this, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

More characters.

There is another character that hasn't been introduced yet. The longer she is out of the picture, the harder it will be to will her into existence organically.

There also needs to be some explanations and reactions to Jessica's form. For now it remains an unacknowledged transformation. This will be major event in the future.

Yuri's, Kari's, Nanami's and Rin's personal story are last in line.

As I don't have any strong preference I think this is a fine opportunity for a poll. I will be running a few polls in the next week on what' important

Seggs

Sorry to say I have been neglecting the spritework and animation side of things.

There aren't enough nightmares. Here are some of the ones planned They are in different stages of completion:

Broodmaiden's reproductive cycle. Spoiler: there's a reason she's a "maiden".

This is going to be a long and complicated one. I'm rather unhappy with how generic she looks as well, so that will need a change. Will require pregnancy story progress prior to actually appearing in game.

Harlequin swarm. Is what it sounds like. Will also require pregnancy story progress.

Next creature is the slime. The scene uses the birth pose. Expect it added in the next few weeks(days?) or so.

Otherwise, there is a lack of generic monster and obstacle fodder, particularly ones that don't cause a bloated belly.

Traps are easy to make and I can use fancy effects. But I don't really know what there's to do other than strip PC or force clothes on. If you have any suggestion or requests, let me know.

Humanoid NPCs just require some alteration. Would some alternatives to the Banshee be a good idea? These are incredibly easy to do and I already have a few generic animations available.

On a side note, I'm absolutely amazed some of you stuck around for this long. I'm sorry for the glacial pace. It's very inspiring.