Hello and welcome to the Alchemy Lab Adventures - Justide Ranch! This will (eventually) be a game about a young man, Kislo Thatcher, who is hired by a mysterious alchemists guild and sent to a very out of the way ranch to farm exotic ingredients from tamed monster girls and create potions from those ingredients! It's a farm management simulator, though I've elected to make it turn-based, rather than time based. Also, I'm a writer, so don't expect visuals or music, text only! It is also a mouse only game.
Before you read further, please remember that this VERY early in development, and most things that are implemented are only there as a proof of concept. There's very little in the way of 'writing' or 'story', most would call this a 'mechanical demonstration. The bare bones. The muscles and skin will come later. If you're willing to help me by play testing things a little bit, read below, I'll be explaining everything I've built so far and why. There's also no tutorial, so you may want to read just so you know what you're doing if you do try it.
How to find the game:
Currently I'm hosting it
HERE, but if you have a better suggestion, I'm all ears. Password is: Brotherhood
You should be able to just click it to start. I will make this page more interesting as the project goes on. This was also a test of how I would create and share the project.
My ideas are presented in a sort of tour of the game. I may come up with a better explanation later, but for now, this is what you get!
Opening Screen = Title and Buttons:Continue-New Game-Options-Exit
Continue: Load a saved game
New Game: Start a new file
Options: Nothing in this yet. If you'd like to suggest some options for the game, I'm open to suggestions.
Exit: Closes the game, although this was there for the game to be stand alone and I converted it into a browser game, so this may not be necessary.
Selecting New Game will take you into an intro that is a few pages of setting babble. I may expand this, will likely reword it, and will probably put the tutorial here with some pictures. Open to suggestions.
Intro Speech: After the 'intro' screen, the game begins properly with an introduction to our main character Kislo! Again, I only began writing this, and moved on to other coding elements, so it's only the bare bones. It'll be longer and have more scenes, but you get the idea of what will happen there. Click Next twice and then "1" to close the speech screen and move on to the main game!
MAIN GAME: Phew, there's a lot to look at right? Well, important things first, you begin the game with 100 Gold and 1 Monster Girl, Nilpera. She is a Drider and she's on the verge of starvation after being left alone for a while before the protagonist arrived. Eventually, nine other monster girls will be available, but for now, only Nilpera is programmed as the test case.
Screenshot BelowDetailed DescriptionNow, the main screen mostly just gives you an overview of your holdings. It displays some quick stats on Nilpera on the left, current gold balance at the top of the screen, and your current resources in the middle. Consumables are what you feed the monster girls, and that's displayed in the bottom left. The game date is displayed in the top right, which will be more important as I implement story events, but for now, all you need to know is that the game works by 1 week increments. Weather will change eventually, but for now it's a placeholder. There's also empty space on the right, so keep that in mind and if you have suggestions on what to put there after playing this 'demo' please tell me. For now, ignore the buttons 'interact' and 'Finish Week', and direct your attention to the buttons at the bottom of the screen. Each of these buttons changes the screen to a different menu, one where you make decisions on how to run the ranch for the week.
From Left to right: Monster Menu-Slave Menu-Shop Menu-Guild Menu-Alchemy Menu-Save-Load
: OK! Lots to look at! Please, tell me if you think there's a better way to show all this, because I tried a few different things and ended up with this mess, which looked best but still...meh?
Screenshot BelowDetailed Description:Basically this screen displays all the info about your monster girls. When there is more than one monster girl, it will have buttons to switch between them. It is also the screen where one FEEDS the monster girls.
All the Info on the left indicates basic facts about Nilpera. I'll define them quickly;
Rarity: Each monster girl will begin as a 'Common' species, but through alchemy, they can be evolved into more advanced species three times to Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary. Each evolution improves their stats and allows them to produce better quality products.
Species: Current Species. The basic monster will never change, but Nilpera is a 'Forest' subspecies of Drider in her common form.
Gender: Female (there may or may not be plans to include potions which allow for gender swapping and such)
Happiness: A simple percentage of how happy Nilpera is. A happier monster girl (70+) has a chance to produce better quality product. Happiness will affect interactions too, but I'll get to that later.
Loyalty: Determines how much a monster girl likes and trusts Kislo, the main character, and how much he can trust them. Less loyalty means the monster girls may lash out or do something dangerous if Kislo gives them the chance. Nilpera is eternally loyal, but this will be more important for new, more wild monster girls.
Health: A measurement of the monster girls vitality. If this dips to zero, the monster girl dies and you lose! Currently, the only way to decrease the health of a girl is to have less food in her stomach than metabolism out (Starvation/overproduction). More on that later. A monster girl will recover half of her max health a week if properly fed and taken care of.
Produces: Each Monster Girl produces a unique alchemical ingredient. This shows the name. For Nilpera, it's Drider Silk. Evolving doesn't change the product, but it does improve the quality she makes.
Maximum: Maximum production per week in units. For Nilpera, this mean she can make 20 units of Drider Silk a week. This number will be different for the different girls, along with many of the other values.
Items produced per unit food: A 'Unit Food' is basically how I decided to measure food intake and product output. Nilpera can make two units of Drider Silk PER unit of food.
Goods Price: This is the price that you can sell her current quality of product for at the guild menu. This price will go up as the quality of her product does.
Happiness Lost Per Item: Each time a monster Girls product is gathered, it costs them some happiness. Either it's painful, tiring, or annoying, none of them like being commodities, so it reduces their happiness a little to be harvested. I'll explain ways later to increase happiness, but the best way 'currently' is to simply NOT harvest anything for a week, and it will increase Nilpera's happiness by 10.
Upgrade Requirements: To upgrade a monster girl, you will need five times their standard items per unit food of the next grade up in quality from what they make passively. This comes from a random chance when they are above 70 happiness. Keep them happy to get better product. Get enough and combine it with an "Evolution Potion" and a button will appear under this to allow one to instantly upgrade the monster girl.
Moving up to the top right, current monster's name, along with a basic description which I'll put in later. Now, below that is some interesting stats.
Hunger & Stomach Space: Each monster girl has a different among of nutrition their body can hold (Hunger) and a raw stomach capacity (Stomach Space). Basically, Stomach space is what a monster girl can digest every week, while Hunger is a measurement of how much nutritional value a monster girl has stored up. It'll make more sense once I get to food.
Metabolism : Each monster girl has a certain amount of nutrition they need per week or they'll start taking damage from malnutrition. This number will usually go up as they evolve into rarer monsters, so be careful. Production metabolism is a number that changes based on how much you have set the monster girl to produce this week. Total is simply the sum of the other two numbers.
Feeding Menu Here's an important bit, the feeding menu. There are currently four types of food available to your monster girls, vegetables, raw meat, slaves, and elf slaves. All monster girls are predators, so vegetables give limited nutrition for the amount of space they take up in a monster girl's stomach. It takes 10 units of vegetables to make 1 unit of monster girl nutrition, makes sense? For raw meat, it's a little better, but still not very efficient, 4 to 1. Now, a full slave is a much better ratio, 4:4. This is because a full slave takes up 4 units of space, imagine how much room a person would take compared to a chicken or a rack of ribs, but they give that much nutrition too! Elves are even better and give 6 units of food while taking up only 3 stomach space, probably due to the magic in their blood! Food can be bought in the Shop Menu, and when you have consumables/food, the buttons to increase or decrease how much of each you're feeding a monster girl THAT WEEK will pop up here.
Finally, underneath those feeding numbers is the planned production control. This is where you decide how much the monster girl will produce during the current week. It is controlled in total metabolism points, so for Nilpera, you can go from zero up to twenty units of spider silk in increments of two.
Honestly, there's not much to look at here. Slaves, besides being edible for monster girls, can also be put to work at various jobs around the ranch, some of which will need to be 'unlocked' as the story progresses. For now, there is only one job, and it's picking up murk weed, a common weed that has some use as an alchemical solution base. Buy a slave in the Shop Menu and assign them to work on this screen. The amount generated by human and elven slaves will be different (elves are just generally better at things), and there will be ways to improve how much each slave generates later on, like buying tools, bringing in experts/overseers or magical assistance for the slaves.
Shop Menu: Gregor's Shop! This is where you'll be buying all the food you need for Nilpera and the other monster girls! simply load up on what you want and click buy at the bottom. I would advise not to spend all your money on slaves at the beginning, since Nilpera's silk isn't cost efficient to feed her slaves at the beginning of the game! Once you've bought to food here, pop over to the monster menu to actually feed it to Nilpera! make sure to pay attention to how the numbers change! Food that doesn't quite make the line for a full unit of nutrition doesn't carry over, so be careful to only feed vegetables in groups of 10 and meat in groups of 4!
Eventually, there will be a second page and third page to Gregor's shop, maybe more. He'll also be selling some alchemical ingredients, as well as upgrades for jobs and for the ranch itself, and possibly even potions and alchemist equipment too!
Guild Menu: This is where you'll be selling all the goods you produce. Currently, you can only sell the Drider Silk, as Murk Weed is so common it has no real market price, BUT, eventually you'll also be able to sell the potions Kislo produces!
Alchemy Menu: This is the menu where potions are researched and crafted! First, a potion needs to be available for research, usually by unlocking the appropriate monster girl or buying the right equipment to properly research it. Then, once Kislo has enough research points, he can research the necessary ingredients for that potion. Finally, the screen will show what ingredients are required to make the potion and viola, Kislo can craft the potion once he's got those ingredients.
Currently there are only two potions, and only the test potion is actually craft able. Try making a few! While they don't have any use YET, they will be sell-able, AND likely usable with the Monster Girls themselves as the game progresses in development. Things like shrinking or growing potions, potions of lust or sleep, anti-digestion and healing! Give me some suggestions for potions you want to see! Bonus points for how far along the game you think the potion should be, with the first girl(Nilpera) or closer to the final girl to be unlocked?
Lastly across the bottom,
Save and
Load. I trust you all know what those do. Don't be afraid that the menu doesn't actually show much info yet, it should save all important info. If you find something it doesn't save that it should, tell me so I can fix it!
INTERACT: Aha! Now here's a very important button, though it doesn't have much use yet. Each week, Kislo will have the option to interact with each Monster Girl once, between his and her other duties. This can be as simple as a friendly chat to get to know her better, or as far off the deep end as ordering her to
eat Kislo! Seriously. There'll also be sex, taking them for walks, and more, some of which will have a chance, depending on loyalty, to end badly for Kislo. You'll even be able to use potions with the girls and on Kislo! This will be where a lot of the 'story' takes place, as Kislo talks with and learns more about each girl. Also important, most interactions will have some effect, like increasing a monster girl's happiness and loyalty, or something else. Currently all options fall into the basic 'talk' function and increase Nilpera's happiness by 5 and her loyalty by 1. Later, they'll be a LOT more.
Keep in mind that interactions, like purchases, selling, and potion making, are instant and unchangeable once they're locked in, Kislo can't go back and change his mind about talking with Nilpera. Once you use your interaction for the week, it's gone, so use it wisely!(again, once there's more that one option, Haha)
Finish Week: And Finally, when you're happy with how you want the week to proceed, click the 'finish week' button and the end of week will pop up to summarize what happened! This should show all the decision you made that week, minus purchases, selling, and potion making.
And that's the game! Again, there will be more girls, some that are bought, some that are discovered in other ways, but that's the premise! Get girls, farm them for alchemy stuff, sell the stuff, upgrade the girls, win!
Thank you all for your time and I hope you all leave comments about how I can improve this game and what you want to see! the more attention I get, the harder I'll drive to make this project a success! I'll also make a 'future development goals' section below this soon.
Surviving is such a terrible game of chance. No matter how many times you happen to win, it only takes once, and you lose forever.
