Research Blog

Public (Demo) and Private (Full Game) flavors of r22 are now available.

Updates for public players since r20:

Frog TF

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

4000+ words of chapter 2 content including different scenes when the Naga Queen defeats you based on what form you’re in. The minions are a bit smarter too, and won’t try to transform you if you’re already a frog or slug (unless you’re not 100% in that form, in which case they’ll try to re-transform you if you’re of the matching species). Frogs and slugs also now leave a slime trail wherever they go, which can re-transform you if you use it (it’ll eventually evaporate). If you track slime into Nixie’s shack during the swamp quest, she’ll comment on you making a mess of her place.

Frog form is another in the all-fours category, since frogs can’t stand upright. 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.

Wait Button

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

For private build players, here’s the changes since r21.03:

Save/Load Fixes

Entity Selector

Finally a way to look at more than three entities in a room! If there’s more entities in a room to look at then free button slots available, a dropdown button will be displayed. The new dropdown menu supports touch scrolling as well as hotkeys (1-5, Q-T, and ESC).

Dragon Queen Tuning

Dragon queen pregnancy is now more closely tied to having the body of a dragon queen. Now even if you lose the collar, your body will still continue to produce eggs. Conversely, if your body becomes almost entirely non-draconic, you’ll no longer produce eggs.

Misc

• New post-TF Mark spawning code.  Should more reliably spawn Mark after he’s TF’ed.
• Added Patreon link to splash page.
• Added legal page with necessary lib attributions.
• More clearly indicating ‘public build’ -> ‘public demo’ versus ‘private build’ -> ‘full game’ in various places.  Not a policy change, and doesn’t indicate any change to content release plans, it just more clearly indicates what the builds are.
• Fixed various texts.
• Slightly different way of receiving hotkeys, may make hotkeys more reliable.

Known issues

• If you’re milky and start chapter 6, bad things will happen.

Please report bugs!  Almost all of the the bug fixes above are from player bug reports.  Thanks for all the reports so far.

I plan to share the public build out to e6, FA, TFGS, etc tomorrow if there aren’t any major bugs found, so any testing you can do is very helpful.

I’m back!  To get started I’ve tuned up the web site so it should be easier to use on phones.  As more and more are playing on phone, today’s tweaks will hopefully make it easier to download APKs and see the latest news about the game.

Just a heads up, I’ll be offline until Sept 26th with limited / no internet access.

In the meanwhile, I’ve prepped a FAQ for the more common questions I get.

Thanks for all the bug reports in comments and Discord!

Private build r21.03 includes these fixes since r21.01:

• Added Thornton Clothes Pile to prevent getting stuck in strip club.
• Save/load dinoian pregnancy state.
• Adjusted Doc Nalf text.
• Fixed bug where beating chapter 3 crashed the game.
• Added reduce cream to hospital shop, and as an item occasionally dropped by foxgirls.

Backers may download it at the researcher intranet.

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.