Others Monster Girl Rehab/Research [Development Thread]

[rolypolyloli]

New developer here, this is basically intended to be a creative outlet for me. Thought I'd at least share my ideas here as they come instead of frequenting the same discord servers asking for help or telling people about my ideas, I'm sure they're sick of me by this point lmfao.

The name of the thread is sort of close to what I'm aiming for with my game. The general concept is a mostly narrative-focused game where you discover monster girls in the middle of or just following perilous situations. Your job is to research how these monster girls work and how best to rehabilitate them. I'm still figuring out how much focus I want to put on rehabilitation and/or research.

I should probably clarify that "monster girl" is more of a catch-all phrase to refer to monster people in general. There will be monster boys as well, though the level of male content may be more limited compared to female.

The idea for this game is inspired by a number of H-games such as:
Monster Girl Quest for its wide variety of monster girls
The Last Sovereign for its political intrigue and generally well structured story and world (imo)
Degrees of Lewdity for player freedom (and as the primary game format at the moment, I'm using DoL's code for reference with permission from Vrelnir)
PinkTea's Slave Lord games for their kinda sorta dynamic relationship outcomes based on training.
And likely many more that I can't immediately think of at the moment.

I'm unsure how best to structure this thread so i'll likely just keep the gist of the concept in this post and use replies to provide more information on the game's world, monster girl ideas, maybe some art, and code.


(also I've mostly only lurked in F95zone so we'll see how regularly I find myself posting updates. I will post updates, I'm mostly just gauging interest and possibly getting ideas here.)

 

[rolypolyloli]

The first thing I should probably do is set expectations:

I've toyed around with this idea for a while and most of my endeavors into attempting to make a proper "game" have been unsuccessful.

I have finally settled on the current medium, a Twine game similar to (actually basically identical to) Degrees of Lewdity. The narrative structure is likely as follows:
[MSQ#] - Main Story Quest, some kind of overarching plot.
[CSQ#-#] - Character Story Quests, basically the quests for each monster girl. This will probably include the process of rehabilitating.

[MSQ1] -> [CSQ1-3] -> [MSQ2] -> [CSQ1-6] -> etc.

As I'm still in the process of writing the story and building the world, it remains to be seen if all CSQs will be accessible after progressing MSQ. It is likely some (if not, all) of any skipped CSQs will become inaccessible after progressing through an MSQ. There may be stopgaps to prevent the player from outright missing CSQs accidentally (in the form of a "hey, you may miss content" message or something) by progressing through MSQ consistently.

All that said, at the moment I'm just looking to start small and build on this idea consistently over time. My goal for the initial release is basically a relatively flat "rehab sim" with one character, a goblin girl, and probably no overarching plot to start.

Post-release goals include:
- turn-based combat involving your rehabilitated mon girls
- overarching plot and a (hopefully) pretty interesting world to explore
- some amount of dynamic quest interactions based on past actions
- multiple areas, possibly even a whole world to explore
- many, many monster girls

That's all I've got for now, thanks for reading all my babbling. I'm gonna get back to coding.

 

[golrim]

I had an idea of a monster girl care center game where your objective is to help women transition into monster girls. Originally it was a curse, then later on I changed the idea to where all female humans transform into a random monster girl based on their mother or grandmothers sub species. The goal of the game was about you getting clients, you study and research their genetics, and then find a way to transform them into the monster girl they desired. You would then help them get used to their new form which sounds like your concept so that they can go back to their normal life. So a girl who used to paint for a living was turned into a mantis monster girl so now she makes art out of cutting stuff, or turned into an octopus girl and could paint and mix colors at the same time on the canvas.

I’m not interested in this idea no more so take anything you find useful. Also don’t try and feature creep yourself. Focus on just producing a small story first with 1 chapter that a throw away project. What you have sounds like a nightmare already and can kills your creative pursuit.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Also don’t try and feature creep yourself. Focus on just producing a small story first with 1 chapter that a throw away project. What you have sounds like a nightmare already and can kills your creative pursuit.

100% agreed, I realized a week or two into coding that i was introducing concepts and ideas that weren't even necessary for the first chapter, let alone the initial release (stuff like combat). I decided to take a break from coding after that to evaluate some game design features i want, ones i need, and ones that'll make it to the 0.1 release, which is to say not a lot lmao.

I've had a number of previous projects fail right out the gate for that exact reason and I'm looking to limit myself as much as possible for 0.1, basically just making it a small isolated section of the actual first chapter.

As for your idea, I think it sounds really interesting! My story is more leaning towards low/high fantasy where monster girls are a fact of life that they are born into, with each monster type being at odds with another for whatever reason. Those conflicts are supposed to be the sort of lead up to you discovering a monster girl who's been injured or traumatized or both. Your job is to then nurse them back to health (or provide therapy lol) meanwhile discovering facts about their societies and such.

For the 0.1 release, It is basically just going to be you in a cabin with a snow goblin girl (species name yet to be confirmed) name Gira. You're stuck in the cabin for a few days because of a blizzard and have to treat Gira's frostbite and learn why she was in your predominantly human (and possibly very anti-monster) village in the first place. plus segs, there will be segs at some point.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Progress report:
~~~~Activities~~~~
Complete: Framework coded (activities are there but they're empty and don't check/change stats).
TODO: Implement stat checks and changes. Add story segments to actions (last step).
~~~~~Stats~~~~~
Complete: Half of the widgets are coded, initialization of stats is coded.
TODO: Code the other half. Also implement fatigue tied to hourly progression.
~~~~~Story~~~~~
Complete: nothing solid, mostly just first-drafts and ideas
TODO: Finish first-drafts and determine what goes where. Only implement story once code foundation is complete.

Estimated time to complete:
No promises but I want to complete 0.1 before April ends, as early as possible.

Reminder that 0.1 is going to be VERY bare-bones, basically just the foundation for stat checks and adjustments, UI design, and experimenting with things. There will only be one area and the in-game time frame is like a week. After 0.1 is released, I plan to focus my attention to expanding on chapter 1 and areas the player can explore to the village (this'll be 0.2). Combat comes after that at around 0.3.

As for visuals, they're not a high priority but I would like to have at least minimal visuals, and there will likely be placeholder images in places over the course of development.

Also segs will likely be minimal in 0.1. I'm saving it for 0.2 when the story for chapter 1 is more fleshed out. I may have some sex scenes written out for people to read after completing 0.1's content, We'll see. That's all for today

 

[rolypolyloli]

Progress report:
- Fatigue, sleep, and time checks are implemented.
- Reorganized some stats codes for better consolidation.
- Implemented a bunch of tests for incrementing/decrementing stat values, health, and so on.
- Some other stuff related to stats that I can't remember.

Tomorrow's plans:
- Biting the bullet and finally setting up the scenes and placeholder/empty events code alongside their proper calls to value changes.
- Writing the intro scenes and putting them to code once the prev step is complete.
- If i get that done in a reasonable amount of time, will consider populating some preexisting UIs that i already created empty frameworks for.

Save/load framework is the highest priority for menu/UI implementation.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Progress report:
- finally got most of the empty/placeholder event scenes coded in. just need to write the scenes now, and finish the remaining event scene codes.
- added the first (and most obvious) "bad end". This one is still a first draft and there will be more, I may end up dedicating a file to bad ends.
- started the (now realizing) sorta monolithic task of getting save/load infrastructure coded up using DoL as reference.

Today evening/tomorrow's plans:
- today i want to write up some scenes that are now just waiting on content (and take a break from coding).
- tomorrow im going to probably end up dedicating it solely to save/load code. DoL uses compression algorithms and dictionaries so ill likely have to parse through a lot of "what does what" before i can get something even remotely operable. Could take a couple days to do, if ever i don't want to work on that then ill probably just default to writing events and/or organizing other parts of the code.

Welp, see ya tomorrow.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Didn't work on MGR/R yesterday, had other stuff to do. Today I'll likely just restore the default save system Twine uses while i don't have a meaningful way to work on save/load or importing/exporting. I'll probably just save that for 0.2 or 0.3.

Also, I am likely going to partake in the Josei Jam starting May 1st. It'll be within the same universe as MGR/R and the characters in the Josei Jam game might show up in MGR/R. This is not me attempting to abandon this project but i do want to make a smaller side-project to count as a "first game release". It'll be a traditional VN, likely using renpy and my goal is 30 minutes to an hour of playtime. I'm just in the brainstorming phase for it atm and the jam starts May 1st so progress on MGR/R is still a priority until then.

I'll post a proper progress report later today for anybody who runs into this thread in the future.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Progress report:
- set aside implementing the same save features as the reference game (DoL). Realized that task would push the release further back. I'll work on it once I finish 0.1 and have some time to read through how SugarCube's save systems work and how DoL does their saves.
- first draft of the intro sequence is partially written, will finish the draft and consider any rewrites tomorrow.
- reintroduced the default SugarCube save system, that's what I'll use while the other save system is incomplete.

Tomorrow's plans:
- finish intro draft, start rewrites/edits
- implement the intro sequence
- finish implementing goblin events framework
- draft cooking events

ETA to completion: let's just say maybe 2 weeks for now. I'll aim for April 27th.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Progress report:
- coded up partial functionality for relationship display (in monsters menu). Currently displays a monster girl's name and job title (if they have one) if a monster girl has been introduced.
(edit) - brainstorming for 15 or so events, and outline planned for another 40 or so? i don't remember exactly. Will finish brainstorming as many as i can tomorrow, and start drafting/finishing preexisting drafts.

Tomorrow's plans:
- finish/edit intro draft
- implement intro sequence
- draft cooking events
- finish implementing goblin events framework (will likely need some establishing scenes and whatnot)
- finish relationship display, should display all stats related to the goblin girl; love, lust, trauma, trust, and possibly injury.

had to work on something else that took longer than expected to complete so didn't get to spend much time on MGR/R today. ETA remains unchanged. ill likely spend the rest of today dividing up the total workload into time chunks over the next couple weeks so I can make the (arbitrarily set) release deadline.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Progress report:
- continued coding functionality for events related to interacting with the goblin girl.
- completed brainstorming for all planned events for 0.1 (not including sex scenes, if they make it to 0.1 then they'll be implemented last.). there are around 56 total events, a number of them are short/random events though.

Tomorrow's plans:
- finish/edit intro draft
- implement intro sequence
- begin drafting treatment events
- continue/finish coding event functionality for goblin girl.
- finish relationship display

 

[rolypolyloli]

Progress report (2 days late):
Have basically been overhauling the story's intro sequence. I'm effectively past the "intro" part and am just writing the main narrative now. The story overhaul does mean i'll have to reconfigure the events though as locations that will eventually exist aren't a part of the intro story. Functionality with the goblin girl will remain the same, it's basically just gonna be me re-coding the activities which isn't difficult.

I am also currently deciding at what point i'll hand off 'control' to the player, it'll likely be once the goblin girl isn't trying to kill you lol.

Tomorrow's plans:
- Continue writing the main story
- move the current activity codes that still apply to the new intro sequence to an appropriate file, basically empty out the cabin file. Or at least re-word it to not pertain specifically to the storm. This place is where the player and the goblin will be living for a while while they figure out how to proceed/what to do about the player's discovery.
- Still need to finish the relationship display

 

[rolypolyloli]

Update:
May have overlooked finals week in my arbitrary release deadline. I'll be working on the game between finals and last assignments but getting 0.1 released before the 27th is looking unlikely. Will still provide updates on progress as it comes, even if it's minimal.

Today's plans:
Probably just write some more story. if i have time i'll code some more of the intro sequence.

Tomorrow's plans:
STILL need to finish that relationship display.
Also need to re-evaluate events/activities since the intro changed some context to the location so I may be dropping or at least adjusting some activities.

 

[rolypolyloli]

Update:
Finals done, classes over. Have a couple weeks before summer classes to work on MGR. Arbitrary release deadline is not gonna be met, ill just focus on getting it done for the time being. once i get to a point where i can reasonably see it being finished, ill announce a release date. I would like to get it done before summer ends but we'll see.

Gonna take a break from it today since i was writing between finals and stuff. will continue back up tomorrow.

Tomorrow's plans:
continue writing the story. First draft is almost complete, but some overhauls may be necessary. there are too many overly emotional scenes happening with too little time to let it sink in so ill have to rework it a little. mostly just changing mental phrasing and stuff.

Also coding will continue once i get the first draft completed and i start editing. The edited text will go straight to code.

Also also, for those interested, im looking to get spritework done by Naju. Got the goblin girl done a while ago but changes were made to her character and i need to get the sprite changed. Art is the last and longest step of this process so don't expect it all to be there on release. For now here's a bit of the first iteration of the goblin girl sprite.