I don't usually comment on games I've played on itch.io but after reading the other comments I just wanted to say I think the game has a lot of potential considering its still a work in progress! I'm hoping other comments are taken into consideration as constructive criticism because I do agree with a lot of points made but I think maybe some people have been a little too harsh. I think the art style is super cool and creepy and I cant wait to see what else is added to the game!
Came here after watching Manly's video. Really don't want to join the complaint squad.
This game is built very solid. Very very solid.
This game has a very cool art direction.
I love the idea and the story is somewhat simple but all good stories should be simple.
My issue is... This game was not sanity checked nor peer reviewed.
Manly takes his gaming very seriously and did a lot of work to try to figure out what was the poitn and made an entertaining yet mediocre video. i thought to myself "this can't be all..."
I've spent around 7 hours by now trying to blackbox this... And this isn't an idle game, its Fnaf level of micromanaging the hunger bar, because you litterally have to polish every single coin to get anywhere.
This game has no respect for your time. Hours of progress can be reset to zero in an instant, and there's no leeway for getting experience to learn the mechanics. You either work towards the mutations you want, or you make negative progress towards it. And the RNG can reset all of your progress buy just giving you bad coins or dropping you bad items in a row, and the stages take too much effort.
So yeah. This was uterly miserable to play because there's no skill involved. Its just rolling till you roll snakeyes and have to restart. A game with this big of a time and no save function is just waiting for a PC or browser hickup to make you just leave.
If you thinking about playing. i don't recommend.
Stage recuirements need to be halved, Money increase, more obvious hunger mechanic.
I wish i could like this game more, but its way too much and i've spent too much time of it. This is just rude.
ultimately very boring and tedious. i had no idea what i was doing and had no direction or anything, just sat for like 40 minutes watching a video on my second monitor while occassionally putting like 150 into the machine and feeding the character. The concept is there, though. It's really interesting but it needs more work.
Very nice little game, the art style is charming and it's very simple, but still enjoyable for a few hours. It is somewhat tedious, I often found myself doing other things while waiting after the first hour has passed. The game does have potential and I'd love to see some new updates coming out soon :D
Also, it inspired me to consume a lot of apple seeds from now on
And there is a muscle girl so this is definitely getting a good score
I really like the concept of the game with the involvement of the vending machine and the food affecting you, in either really good or really bad ways. I do have some complains which I feel might need improvement:
- Increasing the coin gathering. Someone said to have something like a fast-forward and while maybe not that exactly, I def feel the speed of money collecting is a must. - Hints at what amount does what. I am aware SCP-261 is blank but I don't think I'm alone when I say it's difficult to figure out the cost of what items. Those apple seeds are gonna haunt me. -Hunger and Thirst meter need to slow down. Given how slow the money collecting can be and how often you'll get apple seeds, these need to adjusted if different outcomes can be seen. -Also just extra hints as whatelse to do can help out.
Aside from those, I'm super interested in this game and I hope to see more from it!
Here’s a small tip for anyone who needs it. , if you're trying to get any transformation, it seems to work like a point system.
example: If you were to eat a seed you gain hunger and a point towards the seed transformation, but if you were to eat anything else, it would decrease that point, meaning if you're looking for a transformation you need to stock up on that type of food/drink.
I extracted the game files (version 0.1.00, which was up-to-date when you wrote the comment but no longer is) and it seems you are right. I don't fully understand all of it yet but I think
There is an oversight that you can survive without drinking, probably will be fixed
There are six transformation paths:
"anorexia" (starving): 3 levels then death
"unhealthy" (sweet, fatty or rotten food, some is also anomalous such as choco shapes or donuts): 5 levels
"perfect" (healthy food): 5 levels ranging from beautiful to muscular to space being; contrary to popular belief all healthy food counts but apple seeds are easiest. I think only number of items counts, so 10 apple seeds are as good as 50
"parasite" (worms and bugs including giant alien ones, bees, maggots, earthworms, wasps, crickets, scorpions, but not fried roaches, tadpole soup, snail skewers, milk spiders, rat on stick or dog feet): 3 levels, ranging from maggot-infested to insect queen
"anomaly" (SCP food: human body parts, spiced candy, leeches, bag of colorful apples, lemon clams, fluffy alien box, pyramids, choco dildo/floppy/chess/robot/bullets, Ponari Sweat, swimmer bottle, Xocolatl, can with alien language): 3 levels
"liquid" (drinks): makes your belly and head very round and full of ulcers, idk if it even works: 3 levels
Starving or eating/drinking non-category-specific food will decrease level in category
Idk if you need to return to normal to change categories
Costs:
¥1-¥10, ¥50 only gives corresponding amount of seeds
¥150 only gives unhealthy liquids
nothing costs over ¥1000
no parasites above ¥300
seeds are best satiation for your buck:
theoretically best is 1 seed = ¥1 = 1 satiation point (but you'll spend too much dispensing them they're not worth it)
likely best is 10 seeds = ¥10 = 5 satiation points
also good is 50 seeds = ¥50 = 10 satiation points
best parasite chance: ¥100 (26 %), same as ¥300 but that's not worth it
best anomaly chance: ¥500 (59 %), or ¥100 (22 %) for best value
best healthy liquid chance: ¥100 (11 %) (needed for "liquid" route, presumably)
I'm guessing that your best chance at surviving, making money and staying normal is by eating 10-packs of apple seeds and occasionally ¥150 junk drinks to reduce healthiness and thirst (if a thirst consequences get patched in a future version). You'll save up to fill the inventory with various things. Eat a selected category at once to transform as you wish. Only eat on the street to waste less time not begging, although looking into your inventory next to the vending machine is the only place to see the front standing sprite.
In the game files, you'll also see unused sprite versions with an open mouth (perhaps for eating animation that didn't really work, may be fixed later), traces of a "mother" mechanic and the script for a little VN I don't think was released.
Hi! I'm an English teacher from Brazil offering free PT-BR localization for indie games. I just ask for a short recommendation after the work’s done. If you're interested, feel free to check out my portfolio: https://www.notion.so/Teacher-Eduardo-s-Game-Localization-2005ffab6f748092b633e7a4b30faa9b Would love to help if you're looking to reach Brazilian players! :)
As somebody who played for a few hours, here's my experience and honestly the biggest problems i saw (warning, a lot of text):
I discovered this game thanks to manlybadasshero, I loved the concept and looked at the comment section to see if any comments advice would get me anywhere, I saw the one that anything below 100 is just really seeds mostly and it gave me the idea to just only ever spend either 100 or anything over it
This was pretty much the loop for the first hour, I felt pretty intrigued, not because she was really changing or anything but because I liked seeing what the vending machine would give for the price range I was going for at first with each item (100), I got to a pretty solid point to where I was keeping her alive while also getting a lot more of coins (I think the most I got were around almost 4000, that's because I kind of neglected her needs and just kept going with the items I had to see how much I would get before she started looking thin like how she did in manly's video for most of the time, it was mostly so i could do a massive spending on items to see what would change her)
By hour 2, i was feeling kind of down because I realized that no matter what I did, she wasn't really evolving and I started thinking it might had to do to with letting her starve after all those items like how manly did to see if it would give some kind of different art, but I left tha option out because it just felt risky and like a waste of time to let her be close to dying for it, but things got pretty interesting when I just said "fuck it" and consumed all the seeds I had randomly gotten before during the 100 price point, that's where I got my first phase of the evolution (I'm guessing most endings have phases, I got through like 3 but we'll get into that right now, back when I downloaded it didn't have as much comments so I didn't have much to go on)
Instead of the phase being something scary or weird, it was actually pretty cute, it's like she looked happier and honestly it had me thinking I was finally going somewhere visibly, and then she evolved again and I thought I had finally discovered what it was (I have no idea what could have been I think maybe the seeds because the gameplay doesn't really tell you much unless something happens and you kind of gotta guess what changed it)
And I was like that for a while because she would be almost starving, like at 10% and that's where I would immediately feed her something before it actually affected her for her to de-evolve, but by giving her food she went back to phase 1, I have her some food again and she went to phase 2 again, and it just felt like a loop of decisions of trying to go somewhere with basically no info and just me guessing but also taking no notes because I wasn't really sure what was doing it
Until I consumed a certain item and she evolve into phase 3, she had these muscles and it felt like once again I was onto something and I thought maybe it had to be just consuming the exact same item all the time, but here's where I realized the first major issue:
If going by one certain item all the time is the clue to it, it's not really the best because you gotta get lucky with the wide variety of items there is and how getting some of them feels like 1-100 chance sometimes, I spent a lot of coins trying to get the same item with no result and I was going by the same exact point of coins I got it before for (either 200 or 300), and while this may be the way to finally find out, you gotta keep in mind she keeps starving and could de-evolve any time by herself so it feels like a race in between you and actually getting somewhere with the food before you gotta do twice what you had to do once
And that's really what at most I got because she just completely de-evolved by herself when I tried to give her rare items because she got back to phase 1 and I tried to keep going but it didn't really go anywhere, so I went by the seeds (I held onto them in the first hour because I thought they would do somewhere at some point and that's why by hour 2 I just gave them to her because it didn't really do anything and i wasn't gonna spend more time if the seeds were the thing)
So the main criticism is that the game feels really slow, like painfully slow even for players who have a lot of patience, getting an ending feels difficult (i didn't get one because by the time she went to her normal self i just knew it would be 2 extra hours of trying many things to just get to one point and then nowhere), and you're kind of lost most of the time despite trying different strategies, I was even more lost back then since there were only like 3 comments and two were criticism to how slow the game went
Nothing really happens to you if you just try to keep her alive so it just feels like a constant waiting of time for nothing because like I said, I was for like 2 hours with the same exact appearance because I just was keeping her alive hoping at some point something would change her, so maybe that was on me because I held onto the seeds because of her dialogues saying she maybe should hold onto them to see what would happen
And the biggest issue, the game is like a back and forth of trying. To the point I had gotten, I just had seen 3 appearances and with a lot of luck because I kept trying different things and none of them worked out for me (consuming A LOT of seeds, trying to go for the same item, it took too long and she would de-evolve, and others), it feels like you really gotta try to go somewhere and even then it feels like the only possible endings you could get are either her starving, the police catching you or you continuing for who knows how long and you don't really get access to the library (I'm guessing because I haven't died yet, i can still continue, but i was hoping that while I was still alive maybe the gallery could give me some clues, so I have no idea what that looks like)
And this is all for my massive yap session covering my own experience, I feel like the game has potential, the artwork is pretty interesting and that itself can keep you playing because of the intriguing sensation of when or what is gonna make something happen, of hoping for something massive to change after a certain amount of time of just being alive, but the issue is that it just doesn't, at least not for somebody who started with not much information other than 3 comments and this game page itself, I feel like it needs some major changes for it to actually thrive with the concept it has without feeling like way too much time spent for nothing, I'm honestly gonna keep checking just in case it gets that update because I still have high hopes for it and I feel like since it just released it can still get some pretty good changes :D
The short read of my comment is: I agree with many of the other comments here, and find this initial concept interesting. When it has a significant update I would greatly appreciate coming back to see more.
That said, I have some thoughts I'd like to share.
I echo the same sentiments as most others in the comments: apple seed RNG feels too high and gameplay loop has a lot left to be desired. I would like to throw out some suggestions for what could help change up the gameplay. These may already be ideas in consideration, so take this instead as "things I would look forward to seeing!"
In the beggar sections, I think being given some sort of choice options would be a bit more engaging. Like how you are forced to leave because of the police warning, maybe other random encounters could happen. I see the people dialogue having some people make "offers", I don't know how explicit you plan for this game to be, but having a choice in maybe taking up one of these offers could be a way that either helps you to earn more money or potentially lose money. I don't think it needs to necessarily be involving "sexual favors", and if it did then we don't need graphic detail. The game has an obvious vibe it's going for and it should try to keep in line with the desperation and the despair.
Some examples of various choice sections could be: someone asking the MC to do something that could potentially land her in trouble (ie. go throw a brick through the window of this place, like cruel and degrading pranks that have chances for consequences with the police), having someone she knows from school or work or family that maybe pities her or uses the opportunity to bully her, or having someone actually give her food instead which could maybe improve her health in a minor way (more on this in the vending machine section).
While you feel more helpless just sitting and waiting for people to give you money, I think that sense of desperation can still come through with more engaging moments like this. Certainly would help break up the waiting and make it feel all the more special if used sparingly.
In the vending machine sections, I think instead of tying the RNG purely to the amount of money punched in, it could also rely on the inputs of numbers put on the numpad. I see the vending machine art has a bunch of buttons, so it might be a case where a certain amount of money + a certain code combination could help you in getting a specific type of food (bugs, body parts, "normal" foods) and it may help to also make it so you can discern whether the item is a food or a drink.
I played through and only got food why my MC was dehydrated. Which actually, in real life, you would survive far less without water. So I feel like if the MC is dehydrated for too long, then that itself could be an ending where she dies to that rather than just starvation. But the idea of putting in money and punching in a code could have you making the choice to help your thirst meter or your hunger meter. (For example: 200 coins with the code 1234 gives you a food item, but 200 coins with 6789 gives you a drink, determined by food starting with odd numbers and drinks starting with even numbers, this could be more randomized to your discretion but it would be nice to have a little more control over just what you could possibly get).
I'm not familiar with the original SCP story so maybe that isn't how it works, but having this addition could then mean you could hide codes in areas or have hints that can steer people to try things and thus get special food items that could lead to rare endings.
As for food intake, I think there should be more immediate responses from the MC to certain foods. If a certain food is conventionally repulsive (rats on a stick or eyeballs in a jug) then I think there should be a more immediate chance of the MC becoming sick or even refusing to eat it. Maybe she will only eat it if she has 0% in her stats, but I also think there should be chances of success that then increase the more that she eats a specific food type. The more successes she gets, it could also become more filling and allow her to sit and beg more without worry of immediately starving.
Maybe it can also psychologically effect her as she may become dependent on a specific type of food. This is where the food RNG can come back into play because as you focus on a certain food group, for example: bugs, then anything that isn't a bug can be more repulsive or be something she refuses to eat.
Additional gameplay elements, I think this game would greatly benefit from an in-game clock or calendar system. It would help to have a limited amount of time day-to-day or to have certain times of day better spent at various places. Sitting and waiting in real time can become quickly disengaging and tiresome if you're doing nothing else to engage with the game. Which is where many folks would like to ask for some sort of additional gameplay feature or for the begging sessions to be shorter.
And what might be nice to go in tandem with this is to choose a location to beg at. So depending on the time of day, maybe you can go to different places to either have more chances for earning or to decrease your chances of getting into trouble. Whether that be by the law or unkind and cruel people.
So maybe during midday, you can go to a park to beg. This can come with advantages and disadvantages, so:
advantage=Police won't bother you for being in the public park
disadvantage=being out in the sun has a chance of causing sunburn and makes you thirsty faster.
Then at night, you can beg by the street near the fancy restaurants:
advantage=more chances for earning money and potentially receiving safe food
disadvantage=police are more likely to catch you. Then rather than have a window pop-up asking if you want to wrap up, maybe have one of the random dialogues in the corner say "That's so despicable, someone should call the cops" the dialogue bubble could be a different color just to help make it more accessible for people to pick up on it being important dialogue to pay attention to.
Now for some very nitpicky, small quality of life changes I think could be useful in just polish and feel of the game:
when in the inventory, I would like it if I could click outside the window of it to exit or to immediately jump to begging on the streets, my natural inclination because I was trying to outpace the timers was to stock up on eating food and then immediately go back to begging
sidenote: might help if the timers weren't so fast, this was a complaint I saw brought up and I can agree that it feels difficult to keep up when this game essentially doesn't have a pause screen to allow you a break or give you access to settings in case you wanted to adjust volume or text speed
dialogue for receiving types of food should not repeat, it also feels like there was an intended order for how many appleseeds you get (at getting 1 the MC comments how she doesn't know if it's an apple seed or not, but if you got a baggy of 100 before then she would comment exasperatedly over the large amount of apple seeds not being enough) maybe there just needs to be a flag for noting when a food item has been previously discovered so she doesn't repeat dialogue OR some way to stack the variable so the first time she gets seeds, she can wonder what they are, but next time she only gets one seed she can comment "more seeds? Really? Does this thing have anything else?" really just to build on that exasperation rather than tie it to individual items.
capability to skip intro cutscene/tutorial for new games, even if you are starting the game for the first time, some people might be coming to this project from seeing another play it. This isn't necessarily the only reason for it, but I think having the option there to say his ESC and get a popup asking "Are you sure you want to skip the tutorial?" just to ensure players don't hit it by accident and miss out if they DO want a tutorial
Having a clear indicator that shows up to say "click to continue" would be helpful, could be some text that fades in at a corner or little icon that blinks to show it requires an input from the player to continue
Overall, I see you have a few other games that I am interested in checking out! This could be just a small project that you don't plan to go further, but the concept is neat so I'd love to see an update that further explores it. This is a great start and the polish you do have is wonderful: good art, the music is thematically nice, and a fairly clean and easy to navigate UI! This has an incredible start, don't take all the criticism too harshly as understandably, it is in a proof of concept phase that I see having the potential to build to a good resource management game. As well as tell a twisted narrative involving the psychological effects around food from an unknown source with dubious effects.
I'm currently making a video, which will include all the references I was able to understand, but the dialpad isn't how the original SCP worked. It was based on 3 things in the story: The amount put in (more the 500 yen is bad), the amount of times used (more then 10 times in a day is bad), and whether it's powered or unpowered (unpowered is bad). With that being said, the developer could do a ton with that alone.
I haven't reached any endings but been noticing some transformations
Easiest one is the appleseed transformation, having 5 different stages. You can just pay 10 constantly to get 10 seeds, or pay 50 to get 50 seeds. It happens everytime from my experience and I've been playing for about 5h straight now (help)
Then's the bug/insect transformation, it's tricky and I've only seen one stage of it. Been slowly eating appleseeds so I remain normal and not starved while saving up insect foods. Leeches don't seem to count toward this, idk about snails. Worms do. I've only seen 1 stage of this transformation
Idk about rest, only drinking sodas leads nowhere from what I've seen
If you pay 500 you often get objects?... I feel like eating multiple objects in a short time period might give some new transformation path
Then there's human related items like the baby looking thing and eyes. Could also lead somewhere, I haven't gotten enough of those items to dare and try (edit: doesn't seem to lead anywhere, ate about 6 of these items. Maybe they negate each other somehow or just don't have transformation path)
I've been decompiling the code and I can confirm that there are 6 paths! There's the anorexia line (starving), perfect line (eating healthy food), unhealthy line (eating unhealthy food), anomalous line (eating anomaly-type food), parasite line (eating bugs), and the "hollow bride" line (consuming a lot of liquid).
The healthy and unhealthy lines have 5 transformations, while the others only have 3 transformations. This is the snippet of code I found about the requirements.
I've been working on a spreadsheet listing what food counts towards what transformation!
Agree! I also decompiled it and I think the ideal strategy (in version 0.1.00 at least) is
At first, only eat ¥10 packs of apple seeds and drink ¥150 unhealthy liquids (100% chance for each). This grind will let you survive, stay normal and save a lot of money or food items. You can even go down all 5 steps of the healthy route or fat route by varying the ratio between seeds and sodas. You can always starve to return to normal.
Only other price point worth bothering with besides the aforementioned ¥10 and ¥150 is ¥100 (and ¥500 if you have that coin). This gives a good value-for-money of anomalies, healthy liquids and parasites. Healthy seeds and unhealthy liquids are best obtained in the previous point.
After saving up enough items from it, eat a selected category at once to transform as you wish to the 3 stages of the other routes.
Minor optimizations:
Only eat on the street to waste less time not begging, although looking into your inventory next to the vending machine is the only place to see the front standing sprite.
First operate the coin slot as many times as you need, then collect everything from the output tray by spam-clicking.
The game needs dome QoL and bug updates, but otherwise seems like a good little game.
QoL:
- A fastfoward button would be great. Too much idle time waiting for coins
- Maybe some new dialogue that hints to you what ending you are currently on
Bugs:
- The gallery (I didn't bother to play too long because I don't see the point until this is fixed. Which I am guessing this is to keep track and see which endings/food items you have gotten? Or at the very least I hope it is the food items. I would love to keep track of that.)
This is honestly a really neat little concept for a game. The simple scarcity and desperation of I-will-eat-basically-anything feels novel. Unfortunately, as it currently is, I've been at this for 3 hours trying to see anything other than just steady starvation by attrition, to no avail, and this has resulted in the gameplay loop wearing out its welcome. I feel like the tedium is an intentional part of the experience, and I can appreciate that, but there's such a thing as overdoing it (which, although I know the game isn't in its finished state, is how the experience currently plays). Would come back to this if it were a little less arbitrary in how long it takes to achieve the payoff.
Still, to stress again, solid concept! But really needs some fixing up so that I can actually find the content you put into the game.
Yeah same as all other comments. Beyond the apple seed apotheosis, achieving anything else is far too difficult. wanted to see the bug ending, but if you can't see the hidden values that determine how the character transforms, the RNG just holds this thing back far too much. it would take Hours just to farm the bug food and then you would have to stave to reset your values and then hope you have saved up enough.
compounding that with the lack of the galery feature surry i can onyl give a thumbs down.
What a neat little game. I think I'm gonna make a video on it, just to document all the items currently in the game. I love the fact that there is a mobile version too?? I thought that was absolutely awesome, I've never seen a game do that before. When I post the video, I'll be sure to upload it here. Looking forward to seeing the full game.
I really wanted to play this game myself but it eats away way too much time to reach an ending that I just don't have, It's a cool concept but past the hour mark it starts to overstay its welcome and since your hunger drains so fast you can't experiment at all, the seeds you sometimes get for a 100 is the finishing gut punch to my patience. it either needs more to its gameplay loop or a slashed run time but I genuinely hope to see more from you as I think this is still a step in the right direction.
Interesting, but needs a lot more direction. Closer to an idle game than anything but you don't know what the number going up can really be used for. If there was a way to manipulate the rate you get money I think that'd make things better. Unfortunately right now it feels like a more tedious version of the other vending machine game.
I played for at least 2 hours, and twice she got fat. That's it. Maybe I'm missing something, but I have no idea how to get something to happen. I'm not invested enough to warrant more time and experimentation put into figuring this out, so I'm leaving it at that.
I really like the idea but I feel like after playing for an hour I feel like I should have been able to see something past basic starvation and getting caught by the police (starving barely having a scene and the police just being a basic game over). I suppose the items that actually... do anything? Are rare? Which is really too bad I liked what i was seeing in the previews. I suspect some of the actually fun food and items are at a higher money tier but the meters go down so fast I wasn't good enough or lucky enough to save up enough money to test.
I don't know, in it's current state it's too hard to find an actual payoff in my opinion. The ghoul you get before dying is kind of fun but it doesn't really do anything. Hell the girl's hand turns back to normal when you starve lmao.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is I'm intrigued by the potential but the game just does not give enough in a timely manner to keep people interested.
Please make a pause feature. had 64% hunger meter. Stopped to respond to a text a friend sent requesting advice. Was on the vending machine screen. Two minutes later I look back to see I am at 0% Hunger. Even worse, started a new game. Trying to speed through the tutorial text and notice that the hunger meter is rapidly declining before I even can insert coins. You can literally begin with 0 hunger and food if you took too long to read or click off the tutorial's text blocks! Furthermore, the liquids are too scarce. I only got a bottle of water and a bottle of soda once each out of the 38 minutes I played, and I tried everything from 50-400 coin increments.
MC is kind of a dumb bitch. Should be taking her money to a 7-11 rather than risking it on a machine that enjoys handing her apple seeds in weed bags. lol
So, good concept, but over a half an hour of sitting there watching meters go down or staying at 0% and nothing even remotely interesting ever happened. No transformations except thinning. Boring game currently, and way too unforgiving with an RNG seemingly designed to troll the player. Ate an alien chest burster that cost me 300-400 and fed my hunger 0%, so that kind of pissed me off too. :/
what a miserable game 😞 not in the sense of being bad or difficult but more in the sense of being very sad, reality is cruel, I really hope this never happens to me, my God, unfortunately she died of hunger and poor health, it really was a very sad death
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I don't usually comment on games I've played on itch.io but after reading the other comments I just wanted to say I think the game has a lot of potential considering its still a work in progress! I'm hoping other comments are taken into consideration as constructive criticism because I do agree with a lot of points made but I think maybe some people have been a little too harsh. I think the art style is super cool and creepy and I cant wait to see what else is added to the game!
VERY GOOD!
Came here after watching Manly's video. Really don't want to join the complaint squad.
This game is built very solid. Very very solid.
This game has a very cool art direction.
I love the idea and the story is somewhat simple but all good stories should be simple.
My issue is... This game was not sanity checked nor peer reviewed.
Manly takes his gaming very seriously and did a lot of work to try to figure out what was the poitn and made an entertaining yet mediocre video. i thought to myself "this can't be all..."
I've spent around 7 hours by now trying to blackbox this... And this isn't an idle game, its Fnaf level of micromanaging the hunger bar, because you litterally have to polish every single coin to get anywhere.
This game has no respect for your time. Hours of progress can be reset to zero in an instant, and there's no leeway for getting experience to learn the mechanics. You either work towards the mutations you want, or you make negative progress towards it. And the RNG can reset all of your progress buy just giving you bad coins or dropping you bad items in a row, and the stages take too much effort.
So yeah. This was uterly miserable to play because there's no skill involved. Its just rolling till you roll snakeyes and have to restart. A game with this big of a time and no save function is just waiting for a PC or browser hickup to make you just leave.
If you thinking about playing. i don't recommend.
Stage recuirements need to be halved, Money increase, more obvious hunger mechanic.
I wish i could like this game more, but its way too much and i've spent too much time of it. This is just rude.
what items lead to the rainbow transformation?
140 unique items is deceitful . After 8 hours i found 4 unique items. Insects, weird demons, apple seeds and filling food. thats ur.
It took me a lot of time to become like this, and then I realized that my only screenshot was partially blocked by someone. QAQ
Black cock jumpscare
Your comment sounds like a shitpost but it's an actual item in the game
There is also the "Bull's Penis" item
Edit: Removed photos because I don't want to get in trouble
Yeah, i saw it in the page's pictures, it was...very surprising to say the least.
ultimately very boring and tedious. i had no idea what i was doing and had no direction or anything, just sat for like 40 minutes watching a video on my second monitor while occassionally putting like 150 into the machine and feeding the character. The concept is there, though. It's really interesting but it needs more work.
Very nice little game, the art style is charming and it's very simple, but still enjoyable for a few hours. It is somewhat tedious, I often found myself doing other things while waiting after the first hour has passed. The game does have potential and I'd love to see some new updates coming out soon :D
Also, it inspired me to consume a lot of apple seeds from now on
And there is a muscle girl so this is definitely getting a good score
I really like the concept of the game with the involvement of the vending machine and the food affecting you, in either really good or really bad ways.
I do have some complains which I feel might need improvement:
- Increasing the coin gathering. Someone said to have something like a fast-forward and while maybe not that exactly, I def feel the speed of money collecting is a must.
- Hints at what amount does what. I am aware SCP-261 is blank but I don't think I'm alone when I say it's difficult to figure out the cost of what items. Those apple seeds are gonna haunt me.
-Hunger and Thirst meter need to slow down. Given how slow the money collecting can be and how often you'll get apple seeds, these need to adjusted if different outcomes can be seen.
-Also just extra hints as whatelse to do can help out.
Aside from those, I'm super interested in this game and I hope to see more from it!
Here’s a small tip for anyone who needs it. , if you're trying to get any transformation, it seems to work like a point system.
example: If you were to eat a seed you gain hunger and a point towards the seed transformation, but if you were to eat anything else, it would decrease that point, meaning if you're looking for a transformation you need to stock up on that type of food/drink.
hope this helps
I extracted the game files (version 0.1.00, which was up-to-date when you wrote the comment but no longer is) and it seems you are right. I don't fully understand all of it yet but I think
Costs:
I'm guessing that your best chance at surviving, making money and staying normal is by eating 10-packs of apple seeds and occasionally ¥150 junk drinks to reduce healthiness and thirst (if a thirst consequences get patched in a future version). You'll save up to fill the inventory with various things. Eat a selected category at once to transform as you wish. Only eat on the street to waste less time not begging, although looking into your inventory next to the vending machine is the only place to see the front standing sprite.
In the game files, you'll also see unused sprite versions with an open mouth (perhaps for eating animation that didn't really work, may be fixed later), traces of a "mother" mechanic and the script for a little VN I don't think was released.
Hi! I'm an English teacher from Brazil offering free PT-BR localization for indie games. I just ask for a short recommendation after the work’s done.
If you're interested, feel free to check out my portfolio:
https://www.notion.so/Teacher-Eduardo-s-Game-Localization-2005ffab6f748092b633e7a4b30faa9b
Would love to help if you're looking to reach Brazilian players! :)
As somebody who played for a few hours, here's my experience and honestly the biggest problems i saw (warning, a lot of text):
I discovered this game thanks to manlybadasshero, I loved the concept and looked at the comment section to see if any comments advice would get me anywhere, I saw the one that anything below 100 is just really seeds mostly and it gave me the idea to just only ever spend either 100 or anything over it
This was pretty much the loop for the first hour, I felt pretty intrigued, not because she was really changing or anything but because I liked seeing what the vending machine would give for the price range I was going for at first with each item (100), I got to a pretty solid point to where I was keeping her alive while also getting a lot more of coins (I think the most I got were around almost 4000, that's because I kind of neglected her needs and just kept going with the items I had to see how much I would get before she started looking thin like how she did in manly's video for most of the time, it was mostly so i could do a massive spending on items to see what would change her)
By hour 2, i was feeling kind of down because I realized that no matter what I did, she wasn't really evolving and I started thinking it might had to do to with letting her starve after all those items like how manly did to see if it would give some kind of different art, but I left tha option out because it just felt risky and like a waste of time to let her be close to dying for it, but things got pretty interesting when I just said "fuck it" and consumed all the seeds I had randomly gotten before during the 100 price point, that's where I got my first phase of the evolution (I'm guessing most endings have phases, I got through like 3 but we'll get into that right now, back when I downloaded it didn't have as much comments so I didn't have much to go on)
Instead of the phase being something scary or weird, it was actually pretty cute, it's like she looked happier and honestly it had me thinking I was finally going somewhere visibly, and then she evolved again and I thought I had finally discovered what it was (I have no idea what could have been I think maybe the seeds because the gameplay doesn't really tell you much unless something happens and you kind of gotta guess what changed it)
And I was like that for a while because she would be almost starving, like at 10% and that's where I would immediately feed her something before it actually affected her for her to de-evolve, but by giving her food she went back to phase 1, I have her some food again and she went to phase 2 again, and it just felt like a loop of decisions of trying to go somewhere with basically no info and just me guessing but also taking no notes because I wasn't really sure what was doing it
Until I consumed a certain item and she evolve into phase 3, she had these muscles and it felt like once again I was onto something and I thought maybe it had to be just consuming the exact same item all the time, but here's where I realized the first major issue:
If going by one certain item all the time is the clue to it, it's not really the best because you gotta get lucky with the wide variety of items there is and how getting some of them feels like 1-100 chance sometimes, I spent a lot of coins trying to get the same item with no result and I was going by the same exact point of coins I got it before for (either 200 or 300), and while this may be the way to finally find out, you gotta keep in mind she keeps starving and could de-evolve any time by herself so it feels like a race in between you and actually getting somewhere with the food before you gotta do twice what you had to do once
And that's really what at most I got because she just completely de-evolved by herself when I tried to give her rare items because she got back to phase 1 and I tried to keep going but it didn't really go anywhere, so I went by the seeds (I held onto them in the first hour because I thought they would do somewhere at some point and that's why by hour 2 I just gave them to her because it didn't really do anything and i wasn't gonna spend more time if the seeds were the thing)
So the main criticism is that the game feels really slow, like painfully slow even for players who have a lot of patience, getting an ending feels difficult (i didn't get one because by the time she went to her normal self i just knew it would be 2 extra hours of trying many things to just get to one point and then nowhere), and you're kind of lost most of the time despite trying different strategies, I was even more lost back then since there were only like 3 comments and two were criticism to how slow the game went
Nothing really happens to you if you just try to keep her alive so it just feels like a constant waiting of time for nothing because like I said, I was for like 2 hours with the same exact appearance because I just was keeping her alive hoping at some point something would change her, so maybe that was on me because I held onto the seeds because of her dialogues saying she maybe should hold onto them to see what would happen
And the biggest issue, the game is like a back and forth of trying. To the point I had gotten, I just had seen 3 appearances and with a lot of luck because I kept trying different things and none of them worked out for me (consuming A LOT of seeds, trying to go for the same item, it took too long and she would de-evolve, and others), it feels like you really gotta try to go somewhere and even then it feels like the only possible endings you could get are either her starving, the police catching you or you continuing for who knows how long and you don't really get access to the library (I'm guessing because I haven't died yet, i can still continue, but i was hoping that while I was still alive maybe the gallery could give me some clues, so I have no idea what that looks like)
And this is all for my massive yap session covering my own experience, I feel like the game has potential, the artwork is pretty interesting and that itself can keep you playing because of the intriguing sensation of when or what is gonna make something happen, of hoping for something massive to change after a certain amount of time of just being alive, but the issue is that it just doesn't, at least not for somebody who started with not much information other than 3 comments and this game page itself, I feel like it needs some major changes for it to actually thrive with the concept it has without feeling like way too much time spent for nothing, I'm honestly gonna keep checking just in case it gets that update because I still have high hopes for it and I feel like since it just released it can still get some pretty good changes :D
The short read of my comment is: I agree with many of the other comments here, and find this initial concept interesting. When it has a significant update I would greatly appreciate coming back to see more.
That said, I have some thoughts I'd like to share.
I echo the same sentiments as most others in the comments: apple seed RNG feels too high and gameplay loop has a lot left to be desired. I would like to throw out some suggestions for what could help change up the gameplay. These may already be ideas in consideration, so take this instead as "things I would look forward to seeing!"
In the beggar sections, I think being given some sort of choice options would be a bit more engaging. Like how you are forced to leave because of the police warning, maybe other random encounters could happen. I see the people dialogue having some people make "offers", I don't know how explicit you plan for this game to be, but having a choice in maybe taking up one of these offers could be a way that either helps you to earn more money or potentially lose money. I don't think it needs to necessarily be involving "sexual favors", and if it did then we don't need graphic detail. The game has an obvious vibe it's going for and it should try to keep in line with the desperation and the despair.
Some examples of various choice sections could be: someone asking the MC to do something that could potentially land her in trouble (ie. go throw a brick through the window of this place, like cruel and degrading pranks that have chances for consequences with the police), having someone she knows from school or work or family that maybe pities her or uses the opportunity to bully her, or having someone actually give her food instead which could maybe improve her health in a minor way (more on this in the vending machine section).
While you feel more helpless just sitting and waiting for people to give you money, I think that sense of desperation can still come through with more engaging moments like this. Certainly would help break up the waiting and make it feel all the more special if used sparingly.
In the vending machine sections, I think instead of tying the RNG purely to the amount of money punched in, it could also rely on the inputs of numbers put on the numpad. I see the vending machine art has a bunch of buttons, so it might be a case where a certain amount of money + a certain code combination could help you in getting a specific type of food (bugs, body parts, "normal" foods) and it may help to also make it so you can discern whether the item is a food or a drink.
I played through and only got food why my MC was dehydrated. Which actually, in real life, you would survive far less without water. So I feel like if the MC is dehydrated for too long, then that itself could be an ending where she dies to that rather than just starvation. But the idea of putting in money and punching in a code could have you making the choice to help your thirst meter or your hunger meter. (For example: 200 coins with the code 1234 gives you a food item, but 200 coins with 6789 gives you a drink, determined by food starting with odd numbers and drinks starting with even numbers, this could be more randomized to your discretion but it would be nice to have a little more control over just what you could possibly get).
I'm not familiar with the original SCP story so maybe that isn't how it works, but having this addition could then mean you could hide codes in areas or have hints that can steer people to try things and thus get special food items that could lead to rare endings.
As for food intake, I think there should be more immediate responses from the MC to certain foods. If a certain food is conventionally repulsive (rats on a stick or eyeballs in a jug) then I think there should be a more immediate chance of the MC becoming sick or even refusing to eat it. Maybe she will only eat it if she has 0% in her stats, but I also think there should be chances of success that then increase the more that she eats a specific food type. The more successes she gets, it could also become more filling and allow her to sit and beg more without worry of immediately starving.
Maybe it can also psychologically effect her as she may become dependent on a specific type of food. This is where the food RNG can come back into play because as you focus on a certain food group, for example: bugs, then anything that isn't a bug can be more repulsive or be something she refuses to eat.
Additional gameplay elements, I think this game would greatly benefit from an in-game clock or calendar system. It would help to have a limited amount of time day-to-day or to have certain times of day better spent at various places. Sitting and waiting in real time can become quickly disengaging and tiresome if you're doing nothing else to engage with the game. Which is where many folks would like to ask for some sort of additional gameplay feature or for the begging sessions to be shorter.
And what might be nice to go in tandem with this is to choose a location to beg at. So depending on the time of day, maybe you can go to different places to either have more chances for earning or to decrease your chances of getting into trouble. Whether that be by the law or unkind and cruel people.
So maybe during midday, you can go to a park to beg. This can come with advantages and disadvantages, so:
advantage=Police won't bother you for being in the public park
disadvantage=being out in the sun has a chance of causing sunburn and makes you thirsty faster.
Then at night, you can beg by the street near the fancy restaurants:
advantage=more chances for earning money and potentially receiving safe food
disadvantage=police are more likely to catch you. Then rather than have a window pop-up asking if you want to wrap up, maybe have one of the random dialogues in the corner say "That's so despicable, someone should call the cops" the dialogue bubble could be a different color just to help make it more accessible for people to pick up on it being important dialogue to pay attention to.
Now for some very nitpicky, small quality of life changes I think could be useful in just polish and feel of the game:
Overall, I see you have a few other games that I am interested in checking out! This could be just a small project that you don't plan to go further, but the concept is neat so I'd love to see an update that further explores it. This is a great start and the polish you do have is wonderful: good art, the music is thematically nice, and a fairly clean and easy to navigate UI! This has an incredible start, don't take all the criticism too harshly as understandably, it is in a proof of concept phase that I see having the potential to build to a good resource management game. As well as tell a twisted narrative involving the psychological effects around food from an unknown source with dubious effects.
I'm currently making a video, which will include all the references I was able to understand, but the dialpad isn't how the original SCP worked. It was based on 3 things in the story: The amount put in (more the 500 yen is bad), the amount of times used (more then 10 times in a day is bad), and whether it's powered or unpowered (unpowered is bad). With that being said, the developer could do a ton with that alone.
What do I need to do to get each ending? what is the requirements for each transformation/path?
I haven't reached any endings but been noticing some transformations
Easiest one is the appleseed transformation, having 5 different stages. You can just pay 10 constantly to get 10 seeds, or pay 50 to get 50 seeds. It happens everytime from my experience and I've been playing for about 5h straight now (help)
Then's the bug/insect transformation, it's tricky and I've only seen one stage of it. Been slowly eating appleseeds so I remain normal and not starved while saving up insect foods. Leeches don't seem to count toward this, idk about snails. Worms do. I've only seen 1 stage of this transformation
Idk about rest, only drinking sodas leads nowhere from what I've seen
If you pay 500 you often get objects?... I feel like eating multiple objects in a short time period might give some new transformation path
Then there's human related items like the baby looking thing and eyes. Could also lead somewhere, I haven't gotten enough of those items to dare and try (edit: doesn't seem to lead anywhere, ate about 6 of these items. Maybe they negate each other somehow or just don't have transformation path)
I've been decompiling the code and I can confirm that there are 6 paths! There's the anorexia line (starving), perfect line (eating healthy food), unhealthy line (eating unhealthy food), anomalous line (eating anomaly-type food), parasite line (eating bugs), and the "hollow bride" line (consuming a lot of liquid).
The healthy and unhealthy lines have 5 transformations, while the others only have 3 transformations. This is the snippet of code I found about the requirements.
I've been working on a spreadsheet listing what food counts towards what transformation!
Agree! I also decompiled it and I think the ideal strategy (in version 0.1.00 at least) is
Minor optimizations:
takes a lot of insect and bug foods to get there, got this after she looked fat (fat is an unrelated stage to this)
saved up bug and insect foods and ate 10yen seeds to grind
note: leeches don't count toward this
How do you get anything other than starving to death
appleseeds
paying 10 or 50 gives them, 10 feels to be better value
just spamming those and waiting for money to build up
I see, then when i have like 20 000 money ho do you advise to spend it? What should i avoid?
Like 200 at a time, 1000 or what?
from what I've seen 500 gives object related items a lot of the times, 1000 gives either "KFC" or 1000seeds
100 seems to give a variety of items (esp insect related) anything below it gives seeds
10 and 50 always give seeds
idk about rest honestly anything over 1000 is just pain to insert into the vending machine you starve in the process lol
Eating enough bugs makes you into one apparently...
holy shit
That kinda cool ngl damn
How exactly do I get any endings other than getting arrested or starving to death?
The game needs dome QoL and bug updates, but otherwise seems like a good little game.
QoL:
- A fastfoward button would be great. Too much idle time waiting for coins
- Maybe some new dialogue that hints to you what ending you are currently on
Bugs:
- The gallery (I didn't bother to play too long because I don't see the point until this is fixed. Which I am guessing this is to keep track and see which endings/food items you have gotten? Or at the very least I hope it is the food items. I would love to keep track of that.)
giving 10 000 to the machine doesn't give anything special
adding proof pics soon if itch.io allows me to, struggling to post a comment with pictures
strategy for saving for me were 50 and 10 yan apple seeds (mainly 10yan)
takes too many hours tho lol
idk why I was left with 105 money, I know I inserted 10000 to the vending machine
haven't seen this item before but it didn't seem that special that it'd be worth 10k, I'll test later how much food it gives
it's worthless. about 5-10% food, 0% thirst
very tedious to collect and isnert coins, hopefully rng gets reduced or improved and some sort of fast forward is implemented :'D
cool arts and concept though
This is honestly a really neat little concept for a game. The simple scarcity and desperation of I-will-eat-basically-anything feels novel. Unfortunately, as it currently is, I've been at this for 3 hours trying to see anything other than just steady starvation by attrition, to no avail, and this has resulted in the gameplay loop wearing out its welcome. I feel like the tedium is an intentional part of the experience, and I can appreciate that, but there's such a thing as overdoing it (which, although I know the game isn't in its finished state, is how the experience currently plays). Would come back to this if it were a little less arbitrary in how long it takes to achieve the payoff.
Still, to stress again, solid concept! But really needs some fixing up so that I can actually find the content you put into the game.
welcome back anomalous coffee machine...
Yeah same as all other comments. Beyond the apple seed apotheosis, achieving anything else is far too difficult. wanted to see the bug ending, but if you can't see the hidden values that determine how the character transforms, the RNG just holds this thing back far too much. it would take Hours just to farm the bug food and then you would have to stave to reset your values and then hope you have saved up enough.
compounding that with the lack of the galery feature surry i can onyl give a thumbs down.
chocolate penis? we gonna get a sex update?
P̷̯͙͈̟̉̚̚Ŕ̶̢̩̰̻̳̙̞̺͛̏͝a̵̢̗̥̔͂̾͊s̵̠̀͋̔͌̃í̸͎̼̹̺͉̙̖̦̈́͑̔́͂̇͘͝͝e̴͎̟͙͑͑̈́͐̈́̃̈́́̚ ̴͕͍͌͂̈́̈́̌̔̊ͅT̵̡̳͖̱̠̜̻̖̉̋͛̈́͘͜H̷̢̝̣̥̱͔́̓͋͆͘e̷̝̽͑̉̊̿ ̷̛̖̗͇̂̈́̇̓Å̸̠̯̤̮͙̪͔͛p̸̨̛͉͎̙̩̲̯͇̥̠̊̅̾̑͒̋͠͝p̴̻͎̏̃͑̃́̂͠͝l̴̪̙̊̐́͊̈́͗̇́̕Ë̴̠̖͕͎̻͉́͊́͛͆͆̓ ̴̲̩̳̲̣̀͛̋̒̒̕S̷̗͍̞͍̙̩͇̭̰͊̆̓̉̐́e̸̜̺͔͓̣͍̦͕̯̱͂̾Ȩ̵̛̝̹̤̫̗̻̰̹̳̏̄̈͊̊D̶̖͙̤͍̠͇̟͋̒s̵̡̛̳͕̱͕̩͇̗͚͉̆̉̐̀̃̾
ꉣꋪꍏꌗꀤꍟ ꓄ꃅꍟ ꍏꉣꉣ꒒ꍟ ꌗꍟꍟꀸꌗ
What a neat little game. I think I'm gonna make a video on it, just to document all the items currently in the game. I love the fact that there is a mobile version too?? I thought that was absolutely awesome, I've never seen a game do that before. When I post the video, I'll be sure to upload it here. Looking forward to seeing the full game.
PRasie THe ApplE SeEDs
im gona try this haha
Praise the Apple Seeds
I really wanted to play this game myself but it eats away way too much time to reach an ending that I just don't have, It's a cool concept but past the hour mark it starts to overstay its welcome and since your hunger drains so fast you can't experiment at all, the seeds you sometimes get for a 100 is the finishing gut punch to my patience.
it either needs more to its gameplay loop or a slashed run time but I genuinely hope to see more from you as I think this is still a step in the right direction.
Interesting, but needs a lot more direction. Closer to an idle game than anything but you don't know what the number going up can really be used for. If there was a way to manipulate the rate you get money I think that'd make things better. Unfortunately right now it feels like a more tedious version of the other vending machine game.
I can't get anything aside from bugs and apple seeds
try putting in rounded values such as 100, 200 etc to not get apple seeds... or at least a way smaller chance of them. that worked for me.
I played for at least 2 hours, and twice she got fat. That's it. Maybe I'm missing something, but I have no idea how to get something to happen. I'm not invested enough to warrant more time and experimentation put into figuring this out, so I'm leaving it at that.
How did you even get that she just dies of starvation or becomes an athlete all the time for me
How do you actually attain an ending?
I really like the idea but I feel like after playing for an hour I feel like I should have been able to see something past basic starvation and getting caught by the police (starving barely having a scene and the police just being a basic game over). I suppose the items that actually... do anything? Are rare? Which is really too bad I liked what i was seeing in the previews. I suspect some of the actually fun food and items are at a higher money tier but the meters go down so fast I wasn't good enough or lucky enough to save up enough money to test.
I don't know, in it's current state it's too hard to find an actual payoff in my opinion. The ghoul you get before dying is kind of fun but it doesn't really do anything. Hell the girl's hand turns back to normal when you starve lmao.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is I'm intrigued by the potential but the game just does not give enough in a timely manner to keep people interested.
Interesting game but desperately needs some features to help it out.
A. pause menu.
B. less rng.
C. some proper display for hunger and water as they are widely inaccurate.
D. fixed gallery.
E. hints.
There is a pause button. When you press the button on the top left it pauses the game.
Please make a pause feature. had 64% hunger meter. Stopped to respond to a text a friend sent requesting advice. Was on the vending machine screen. Two minutes later I look back to see I am at 0% Hunger. Even worse, started a new game. Trying to speed through the tutorial text and notice that the hunger meter is rapidly declining before I even can insert coins. You can literally begin with 0 hunger and food if you took too long to read or click off the tutorial's text blocks! Furthermore, the liquids are too scarce. I only got a bottle of water and a bottle of soda once each out of the 38 minutes I played, and I tried everything from 50-400 coin increments.
MC is kind of a dumb bitch. Should be taking her money to a 7-11 rather than risking it on a machine that enjoys handing her apple seeds in weed bags. lol
So, good concept, but over a half an hour of sitting there watching meters go down or staying at 0% and nothing even remotely interesting ever happened. No transformations except thinning. Boring game currently, and way too unforgiving with an RNG seemingly designed to troll the player. Ate an alien chest burster that cost me 300-400 and fed my hunger 0%, so that kind of pissed me off too. :/
meh its a cool concept but i really dont like the waiting or idle for too long, maybe fast foward feature is needed
what a miserable game 😞 not in the sense of being bad or difficult but more in the sense of being very sad, reality is cruel, I really hope this never happens to me, my God, unfortunately she died of hunger and poor health, it really was a very sad death
10/10