Recommending I played every Breeding Season's successor game so you don't have to

[Axato]

INTRODUCTION

I have a soft spot for Breeding Season.
It's one of the first h-games I ever played, longbefore I knew F95. I stumbled upon it while on some shady website, and from there I arrived to the blog of the developer: Hbomb.
The premise was so simple it was brilliant: you own a farm, you build barns where you keep monsters and monstergirls and you breed them to fulfill monster requests on a board. There were 9 different species+ the main character (m or f) and most of them had their own male or female version. In fact, it didn't stop at that. Every individual had its own color scheme and traits which also sometimes changed its appearance, like neoteny, futanari or feral. The combinations were endless.
The requests would be about a certain monster, of a certain level with a certain trait and you had to fulfill it before time ran out to earn money to pay a church soldier who came every now and then to collect taxes.
It seems simple, nothing special, runs on flash, the resolution is not that great and coming back to the game now gives you that feeling of old abandoned project. But nonetheless, we LOVED it. I don't know what Breeding Season had. Maybe it was the various combinations a single character could have, maybe it was the beautiful pixel-art and animations made by S-Purple, but at its peak, its Patron allegedly made around 40k $ per month.

Unfortunately, in mid July 2016 a post on the game's blog revealed that the main artist, S-Purple, had left the game along with his art and started a new project with a similar concept: Cloud Meadow. Breeding Season was left crippled and the remaining developers decided to abandon the idea and move on with their lives. That post is now gone from the blog but the game has never been updated since, The last version was the hotfix 7.7.2 from July 8 2016.

Still, the concept was very good and people loved the idea of running a farm with monster girls, so over the years a lot of games with similar mechanics have been released or are in the making, and even if I don't particularly love pregnancy and furries fethishes I decided to rank the games that I have found and the ones that will be released out of love for this long gone game.


But, before starting I have to make some notes:


WHAT CLASSIFIES AS A BS SUCCESSOR?
Well this is pretty easy. It has to be a management game of some sort, have monster girls and some kind of farming feature, meaning that you either run a farm or you're literally farming monsters for a living. Lastly it has to have some breeding element.


SCORING SYSTEM:
I will divide the score in this categories:
GAMEPLAY: How it feels to play the game.
STORY: How well written it's.
GRAPHICS: Well, graphics.
UPDATE PROGRESSION: How fast the updates are coming.
PERFORMANCE: How well it runs on PC.
SPIRIT OF BREEDING SEASON: How faithful or not it's to the original project. A low score here is not bad, it means that although the game has some breeding season influence is doing it's own thing which is good, I'm not ranking this on how close they are to the original, but how good of a game they are.


WHAT ABOUT NEW UPDATES OR NEW GAMES?
I will update this post from time to time with my opinions on the development of the games I already listed and new ones I've found out. I'll also leave old reviews visible for transparency and to let you guys go and check how my opinions changed
Lastly, if you know about a game that fits the criteria of a BS successor game, let me know and I'll take a look to it

So, without further ado, let's start with my rankings for the Breeding Season's successor games.


BREEDING FARM v.0.5.2

Spoiler: BREEDING FARM

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BREEDERS OF NEPHELYM v.0.755.2

Spoiler: BREEDERS OF NEPHELYM

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MONSTER BLACK MARKET v.1.2.10.0

Spoiler: MONSTER BLACK MARKET

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CLOUD MEADOW v.1.2.6k

Spoiler: CLOUD MEADOW

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MATING SEASON v.0.0.12f

Spoiler: Mating Season

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CORRUPTION RANCH v1.0.2

Spoiler: Corruption Ranch

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So this concludes my ranking and review of the Breeding Season's successor games. I've probably missed some, so let me know, I'll play them and add them here, maybe i'll even do a tier list. In any case, I intend to keep this post updated.

Also, let me know if you find any typos, english is not my mothertoungue so I probably made a few.

So long,
Axato


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NOT BS SUCCESSOR GAMES:

Spoiler: NO BS SUCCESSOR GAMES

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OLD REVIEWS:

Spoiler: Old Reviews

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[Lerd0]

 

[Deleted member 3213346]

Thank you for sharing this wonderful, well thought out post. I've been a lurker here for ages and this is one of the rare occasions I felt compelled to make a post. You really answered everything I wanted to know. I like that you didn't just compare the games to Breeding Season, but also reviewed them in their own right. I personally don't care much for stories in these games, I'm much more interested in the games ability to integrate gameplay and decision making with the artwork. So when I read reviews that read like a synopsis of the plot, I get nothing out of it, so I'm glad you didn't make that mistake.

I never got over S-Purple's betrayal. Its like something out of Kick Scammers, where someone promises the moon and then runs away with the money. I remember reading an in-depth post by the other devs who were just left holding the bag, because they didn't have the artwork. It sounds like him and his team were habitual procrastinators, who'd sit on their asses and rake in that money. I know artwork is extremely hard to produce, and they do good work, but there's no excusing making promises to paying customers that you don't bother fulfilling.

The only game on this list, besides Breeding Season, that I've played is Breeders of the Nephilim. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I found the character creator at the beginning offered an unprecedented amount of customization. Unfortunately the world felt really dead. It was like they made all of these elaborate 3D models and their game engine, but wrote the most bare-bones dialogue I've ever seen. However I'll take good gameplay and poor dialogue over the reverse any day. The real downfall for me was, like you, I just really didn't like how most of the characters looked. The bunny, cat, and even cows were great but most of the rest were kinda uncanny valley for me. Also catching some of the later game monsters was a real pain in the ass. That was a few years ago so I may take a second look to see how its been developed since then.

Monster Black Market and Breeding Farm look interesting, I might have to check them out based on your recommendation.

 

[zapzero]

All I know is for a game "in development" since 2016 with close to a million in funding(or more), Cloud meadow has less results than a small indie Japanese team did in 2022.

Might as well give 1/10 of that, say 100k to those Japanese devs for them to expand their game features and hire a competent translator. Pretty sure we'll get more than 10 times the return in a quality product.

No wonder monster black market took off as quick as it did despite the bugs, so much underlying demand.
Hopefully people realize there are better devs out. Cloud meadow has proven some creatives types should never be left in charge of projects.

 

[Axato]

Thank you for sharing this wonderful, well thought out post. I've been a lurker here for ages and this is one of the rare occasions I felt compelled to make a post. You really answered everything I wanted to know. I like that you didn't just compare the games to Breeding Season, but also reviewed them in their own right. I personally don't care much for stories in these games, I'm much more interested in the games ability to integrate gameplay and decision making with the artwork. So when I read reviews that read like a synopsis of the plot, I get nothing out of it, so I'm glad you didn't make that mistake.

I never got over S-Purple's betrayal. Its like something out of Kick Scammers, where someone promises the moon and then runs away with the money. I remember reading an in-depth post by the other devs who were just left holding the bag, because they didn't have the artwork. It sounds like him and his team were habitual procrastinators, who'd sit on their asses and rake in that money. I know artwork is extremely hard to produce, and they do good work, but there's no excusing making promises to paying customers that you don't bother fulfilling.

The only game on this list, besides Breeding Season, that I've played is Breeders of the Nephilim. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I found the character creator at the beginning offered an unprecedented amount of customization. Unfortunately the world felt really dead. It was like they made all of these elaborate 3D models and their game engine, but wrote the most bare-bones dialogue I've ever seen. However I'll take good gameplay and poor dialogue over the reverse any day. The real downfall for me was, like you, I just really didn't like how most of the characters looked. The bunny, cat, and even cows were great but most of the rest were kinda uncanny valley for me. Also catching some of the later game monsters was a real pain in the ass. That was a few years ago so I may take a second look to see how its been developed since then.

Monster Black Market and Breeding Farm look interesting, I might have to check them out based on your recommendation.

Oh wow, this is a very nice first post. I agree with you, for years I refuse to play Cloud Medow just out of spite but at the end I decided to give it a chance. Of course is a different game and should not be review on the basis of its past but even as a stand alone project the simple fact that it's not complete after al this time it's the proof that is another patreon scam.
Really try Breeding Farm, it's the best out there at the moment and really gives you BS vibes.

All I know is for a game "in development" since 2016 with close to a million in funding(or more), Cloud meadow has less results than a small indie Japanese team did in 2022.

Might as well give 1/10 of that, say 100k to those Japanese devs for them to expand their game features and hire a competent translator. Pretty sure we'll get more than 10 times the return in a quality product.

No wonder monster black market took off as quick as it did despite the bugs, so much underlying demand.
Hopefully people realize there are better devs out. Cloud meadow has proven some creatives types should never be left in charge of projects.

Yeah, again, i'm deeply disappointed. I remember reading the post on the blog announcing the end of Breeding Season back in 2016, 6 years ago. I remember people saying S-Purple had done this before but also that Hbomb wasn't the best project leader. I didn't have an opinion back then I was just sad that one of favorites games was getting cancelled.
But a lot of people gave S-Purple the benefit of the doubt and supported him on patreon. His team also did the right thing and gave privileges to ex-supporters of Breeding Season, at least for a while until Patreon changed something and they could access the list of old supporters (at least is what i heard).
The fact is that S-Purple had all the time to prove that he was in the right, that it wasn't totally his fault that the development of BS stopped and things were actually more complicated. But he didn't. Instead he delivered half a product and kept the money.
It truly is a shame because he is a very talented artist.

In any case I thought about adding some of this drama, or a bigger recap, in the op but at the end of the day I feel a review based on facts and the status of the game right now, after 6 years, is more valuable than one based one the drama that happend back in 2016.

 

[FaceMP]

I signed up just so I could thank you for doing this. Past searches for something to bring back the fun of Breeding Season have only brought up Cloud Meadow or some dead-in-the-water projects. I'd even enjoy something without nsfw aspects at all, honestly. I just like the idea of breeding up cool monsters or pets and having fun short-term goals, while also exploring a little.

Seriously though, once again thank you!

 

[raynarnab]

@Axato Have you tried Elf Sex Farm? What would your thoughts been on that game if you have?

 

[Axato]

@Axato Have you tried Elf Sex Farm? What would your thoughts been on that game if you have?

Hii, sorry for the late response. No I haven't tried it but i'll add it to my list of games and soon i'll update this post with all the games I've tried in this months.

 

[Axato]

EDIT 11/01/2023

-Added WHAT CLASSIFIES AS A BS SUCCESSOR? and WHAT ABOUT NEW UPDATES OR NEW GAMES? in the introduction section of the post.
-Added NOT BS SUCCESSOR GAMES and OLD REVIEWS at the end of the post.
-Added Monster Girl Farm to the Not BS successor games list.
-Added review for CORRUPTION RANCH v1.0.2.

Spoiler: Corruption Ranch

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-Edited review for MATING SEASON v.0.0.12f.

Spoiler: Mating Season

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-Fixed some typos.
-Made some typos.

 

[Dolorem.Ipsum]

Which version of Breeding Season would you say is your favorite, Axato?

 

[PootisPenser76]

INTRODUCTION

I have a soft spot for Breeding Season.
[/SPOILER][/SPOILER]

I think KoboldKare could be a nice addition to your list, it is very derpy and fun

 

[Axato]

I think KoboldKare could be a nice addition to your list, it is very derpy and fun

Thanks, I'll take a look at it. I'm also keeping an eye on all the developments happening with Breeding Farm, Mating Season and the return of hbomb with breeding season estrus. I'll update the post once there're enough material to justify an new review.

Which version of Breeding Season would you say is your favorite, Axato?

I suppose you mean which of this games is my favorite? If yes I would say Breeding Farm but apparently there're some troubles with the development of it so probably Mating Season is the one more promising.