Research Blog

Chapter six: “Dinoian Desert” is finally complete and ready to play!  r21 is available for download for all full game / private build backers at the researcher intranet in both SWF and APK flavors.

This build includes the release of:

Dino Chapter

At the conclusion of chapter five, you incapacitated Thornton by transforming him into a catgirl, leaving him trapped to work in Mulberry’s strip club while you steal his identity.  You’re now able to sneak into his convoy, which will allow you to cross the vast underground desert to scout out SkyCorp’s research laboratories for the rival faction, VCiV.

What should have been an easy ride across the desert turns out to be much more than you bargained for.  The convoy rides on specialized creatures that are genetically engineered to withstand the tough conditions of the desert.  These dinoians could best be described as a distant anthropomorphic cousin of a velociraptor, or perhaps some sort of wingless riding dragon.  One of them, Hanako, is planning her prison break, and you haplessly stumble into her plans.

Soon she’s stealing your identity.  She forces you to wear her old leather bindings, transforming you into a dinoian that looks just like she used to.  She had unintentionally acquired the reputation of convoy slut, and now that you have her identity, she intends to make sure you live up to her old behaviors so as to not be suspicious.  Every time you disobey her, she increases the size of your cleavage, making you hornier as you’re forced to expose your nearly-naked body to the world as she rides you.  To make matters worse, thanks to your monstrously large dinoian vagina, you won’t derive any joy from copulating with humans — so your body will work against you to force yourself to mate with your fellow beasts.  But they’re in a similar predicament, former humans trapped in lusty bodies that have no choice but to serve their riders and their base desires.

Try as you might, dinoians are forbidden from speaking thanks to their vocal cords which can only make animalistic noises.  Though you desperately want to explain your situation, no one can understand you.  Even removing the bindings themselves is impossible as they self-replicate to ensure you can never be freed.  Stick around long enough, you’ll start to enjoy serving your rider.  You may even begin to enjoy being tied up with your wrists bound, further restricting your opportunities for escaping this life.

Will you succumb to your dinoian need to be filled up and lay clutch after clutch of eggs?  Or will you find a way to escape your fate and complete the mission?

Backstory is revealed about the history of The Underworld, along with the factions that vie for power inside it.  Three endings, one for each faction, are available — each with their own puzzles to complete.  Can you find all three?

Clocking in at a massive 30,000 words, this chapter is nearly three times as long any that has come before!

Frog TF

Now the frogs in the swamp chapter can now transform you into one, too.

Frogs and slugs will leave a trail of transformative slime behind them.  As frogs naturally gain weight over time to get that nice frog belly, that can eventually cause their movement to be difficult.  At larger belly (and optionally breast) sizes, it will drag on the ground beneath them and sometimes get stuck in the slime as they travel.  If you go farther and intentionally max out belly/breast sizes… good luck moving at all.

UI Updates

The new layout is DPI-aware, and is much better for mobile devices and high-DPI PC screens.  The extra width on the buttons is easier for fingers, and gives a bit more readable button text space on PC too.  Also, when you start the game, the character stats are no longer shown until you’re in gameplay. The map and self description panels size themselves intelligently, and at low res, the self description panel becomes a separate button.

Waiting

A button now let’s you wait for the next turn, instead of having to move back and forth repeatedly to pass the time.

Finally, I’d like to say thank you for everyone’s kind words and encouragement during this massive chapter’s development, whether that be in blog comments, discord, or wherever.  I’ve never tried writing anything this huge before, and I couldn’t have pulled it off without you cheering me on.  So thank you, and I hope this chapter brings you much enjoyment.

PS – how long does it take you to complete the chapter?  Post in the comments below!

Update – r20.01 released to fix typo & load from old version bug.

WIP build 20.5 is now available.  This build contains the full set of functionality for chapter six, however, doesn’t have much of the text to go with it.  This means you can now beat chapter six with this build, but without the text to hint at the solutions, it will be very difficult to do so.

As always, it’s recommended to save to a different slot for WIP builds. Some of the text is copied into the save file, so some missing text will carry through save files if you play on WIP and then play on a Private build.

Here’s some new features of note:

Dinoian pregnancy – dinoians are highly fertile and will usually lay one set of eggs per mating session.

Alternate voice – thanks to their extra girthy tongues and saurian vocal cords, dinoians cannot speak english.  Instead, they make expressive warbling noises.  Some NPCs will try to understand from your hand gestures, while others will mistake you for a beast and shoo you away.

Wrist bindings – when your wrists are bound, you are unable to pick up or drop most objects, and will not be able to use certain other objects.

Monstrous vagina sizes – two new vagina sizes have been added.  At these monstrously large sizes, you won’t derive any satisfaction from sex with normally endowed individuals — instead you’ll need to seek out exceptionally large partners.  Not all NPCs have been updated for this system, but NPCs in chapter 6 are configured appropriately.

If you backed at the WIP backer level for the September 1 Patreon cycle, head to the employee intranet to download your copy.  Otherwise, chapter six will be done soon including a private build release.

If you backed on Patreon for the billing cycle on Sept 1st, that’s now been processed and you should have access to your builds in the employee intranet.  Thanks for your support!

There’s about six things left to complete until the ch6 functionality is complete, and then I’ll release a missing text WIP build.  Then I’ll get the remaining text written up and release the full private build.  It’s a bit ambitious, but my goal is for both builds to release in the next two weeks.

Midway through the writing phase, I might also release a teaser snippet of the writing to patreon supporters as a non-interactive text story, and then sometime after ch6 releases, post that snippet publicly (similar to the snippet from chapter 4).

Probably will also do another community feature vote at the end of the month also, so keep on brainstorming ideas and I’ll choose my favorites for the vote.

Finally got around to setting up the Discord rewards for patrons.  There’s special roles for the Supporter tier and the WIP build tier.  The roles grant you a special chat color for your name and access to a hidden chat room (#research-lab).

If you’re a patron, click here to learn how to get your role.

In future, I’d like to add a role + room for all private / full game backers – possibly one for each faction so you can represent your favorite.  But that’s all going to probably require writing a custom discord bot, so it’ll be something I worry about later.

Chapter six is coming along great and should release to all private backers either at the end of this month or the first few weeks of next month.  Prior to the private release, I plan to do a missing text release to WIP backers once the chapter is functionality complete but before I’ve written the remaining chapter text.

I realized it’s been two years since the last new chapter, and I think that has to do a lot with the scope creep for this chapter — the number of new systems implemented / to be implemented for it got a little ridiculous (ie: multiple map support, large map support, text editor, pathfinding, movable NPCs, hands being bound, ability for you to ride certain npcs, ability for certain npcs to ride you, etc)

Anyway, chapter 7 should be lighter than chapter 6, so hopefully will be able to get future chapters done faster and actually finish the story.  I do want to get to a point where this is a complete game, and most essential to that goal is completing all the story chapters.  The overarching story was mapped out years ago, but for some reason I never shared it.  So for the first time I’d like to share the final planned chapter list:

• Chapter 1: First Transformation
• Chapter 2: The Swamp
• Chapter 3: The Dragon Temple
• Chapter 4: Cowgirl Farm
• Chapter 5: The Pound
• Chapter 6: Dinoian Desert
• Chapter 7: Aquatic TF / Aquarium
• Chapter 8: Latex Doll TF
• Chapter 9: The Big Finale
• ( Chapter X / End Game )

By the end of chapter nine, all the story threads should be neatly completed.  At between 20~60 minutes per chapter, that puts one playthrough of the game probably somewhere around five hours at a guess.  I also want to have chapter 9 have one ending per faction, so depending on how you beat the chapters with faction-specific endings (Chapter 6 has three different endings, each with their own strategies for unlocking), that’ll affect which ending you get later on (note that faction points currently aren’t being tracked, so you’ll have to re-beat chapters 1~8 before 9 comes out).

If your favorite TF isn’t saurian, aquatic, or latex — don’t worry, I’m still planning to add additional non-story enemies and transformations, so keep those suggestions coming.

Chapter X is in parenthesis because it’s tentative.  It’s not a story chapter so much as it is my secret plan for adding a lot of replayability and letting you experience the content from chapter 1 ~ chapter 9 again in a different way.  It’s also a massive amount of rework, so I’m not going to guarantee it’ll happen for sure yet.  Even if chapter X doesn’t happen, you’ll still be able to replay chapters 1~9 and go for each of the three different faction endings.

There’s some other large projects, like mod support for custom TFs and areas, that I’d also like to get in — but due to their size don’t want to guarantee yet.  My goal right now is to get to a complete game and try not to let myself scope creep too much along the way.