Unity Lethal Fantasy (Giantess, Rougelite) [Game Dev Diary + Alpha v1]

[LadyEbony]

I don't necessarily need a destruction -> growth loop (although I did suggest it a while ago since it is pretty intuitive), but there is a solution to solve the exponentiality of it. Like with any RPG having scaling XP-per-level costs, you can have your cake and eat it too by having the destruction of each house fill a meter for her which, when it caps out, causes her to get bigger. But the bigger she is, the more it takes to fill the meter, which counters the exponential gains. Besides, I honestly really don't like it when a project will basically just instantly scale up the girl's model a tiny fraction every time she so much as destroys a single polygon -- it needs more fanfare than that. Seen a couple of projects take that route...

I like your concept for the trapped shrinking house. It can certainly be lethal for now, since you probably don't want the player running around the whole map as a tiny, but I think it'd be nice if the "final blow" you're talking about didn't end your run, but simply destroyed the house (and your shrink-curing item), forcing you to craft an expensive cure for yourself which means you'll have to collect plenty of crafting stones while running around while shrunk.

And speaking of crafting, you can loop in the village reconstruction into your crafting system by having a "reconstruction beacon" or something like that be one of the craftables. Would create some interesting gameplay to have to place it in the center of a village tile, then run away from it as that tile is reconstituted (maybe the giant shoe from the shoe trap falls down on it to flatten the whole area and make it ripe for reconstruction? Just tossing out ideas here).

Either way, love the direction you're taking. Good luck with all your gamedevving.

EDIT: Completely random suggestion that I thought of after I made my post, but maybe it'd be cool for the drop zones to be giant baskets (or plates) that physically fill with the food you put into them, that the giantess walks over, picks up, and physically tosses into her mouth. Dunno if that's something you'd take interest in, but I think the idea of the visual seems cute.

What you are suggesting with an exponential xp bar to counter the exponential gains, sounds like to me that we want the growth to be linear. And a set timer is very linear. True it's not the same as house destruction but perhaps we can meet halfway. Growth is a bar that fills up slowly over time, along with building destruction (scales with her size), and completing the loot zone. And when the bar fills up, she has a growth spurt.

Once the outside map is properly designed for a small character, I'll be happy to let the player survive if they don't get the shrink-craft potion. Perhaps through quick testing, a small character can navigate the map without being soft locked, but it's best to be safe at first.

I will create crafting items to force reconstruction since that's an easy way to prevent soft-locks.

As for the giant basket, that's my goal ultimately. However I couldn't find good enough animations online and I simply ran out of time. The teleport wasn't even meant to be a teleport originally. It was a test see if having the giantess be next to you after each completed drop zone was interesting/challenging/etc. And it was a test to see if it was visually cool for a giantess to jump right in front of you. During the mad dash of finishing the update, the test became a feature and I gave it some quick visuals/sounds so it made somewhat sense.

 

[LadyEbony]

I'll attach this preview of the improved stomp impacts. Grass sways, tree sways, a small shockwave, leaves turn pink since I messed up the shader somehow.

Spoiler: Video

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[CattyFruit]

I have been watching this thread for a while and was not able to play the other play test due to being busy with course work, but i was really interested in your game. i love lethal likes and gts so i thought it was up my alley and your progress reports looked really good. I thought i was going to like the game but after playing this alpha i was blown away. it feels so well done and a lot of the features added so far feel polished. I love how you implemented the gts mechanics, like the tremors from walking, the cute smug expressions, and the gts animations. the little details like her idle toe wiggles and itching animations makes it feel so much more immersive, like shes actually alive and playing with you. Also, i think the lethal mechanics are looking good so far, its funny how these genres mesh together well, i feel like they could be tweaked later on after the gts and other enemies are fully implemented when we have a better idea on how things play out.


here is a list of things that i think should be added or changed:

1. i definitely agree with what a lot of others are saying, the gts should grow with destruction, i think it would work better then the tp then grow when completing your objective. whats in now could still be used somewhere (maybe a trap) or in tandem but i think the gts having a second goal other than crushing the player would add more depth to her sometimes hunting the player then wandering or idling. This way you have more of a reason to periodically bait her to an emptier area to slow her down and she has more of a reason to be wandering around. (i now know about the exponential growth concern but as someone else stated it can be toned down with a size to growth gained formula or she might need to switch to a different "mode" for more efficient growth, a middle ground is a good too. I also like this idea, " create visuals so it appears that she's getting some kind of power as she destroys houses ")

2. i like the idea of more growth animations/effects, will have to come later i know.

3. I also like the idea that's been going around for cute enemies that shrink you. I agree that fairy or imp girls fit this role well or something similar. for the method of shrinking maybe either a short ranged magic attack/projectile or a hugging grab attack (i like this one). (its good that the statue turrets are gonna get reskinned, the loud man grunt really puts me off lol).

4. I love the idea of the shrinking debuff and the route your going is smart, good idea to test it small scale first. i think it can be a very fun mechanic.

5. all of the bug/oversight issues i encountered seems to be on the radar already. although i would like to comment on the footprint traversal, i like that as she gets bigger it gets harder to tread through her footprints and it works well with the jumping stamina and crystal system where there is a risk reward to it. its fun seeing the map be replaced with foot shaped craters increasing in size, turning into a wasteland from her trampling then figuring out how to traverse it the best.

6. an idea for the future i want to jot down, some sort of event that happens where a special item appears randomly. if you get it you can get a bunch of crafting materials or a special buff but if the gts gets it she gets a boost in her growth power ect.. of course some tweaking would be done to make it more of a fair fight for it but could be fun.


Ill stop here for now, there is enough on the plate already. overall im loving the game and excited about what is planned so far, you have some serious talent and it shows in this game. honestly i think its quickly becoming contender for one of the best gts games in the future. ill see if i can contribute to the project and i hope for the best. I also want to thank the community for all their respective great ideas.

(while i was making this comment LadyEbony made a statement for the next update, sorry if there is any overlap or redundancy)

 

[PvtRyan96]

What you are suggesting with an exponential xp bar to counter the exponential gains, sounds like to me that we want the growth to be linear. And a set timer is very linear. True it's not the same as house destruction but perhaps we can meet halfway. Growth is a bar that fills up slowly over time, along with building destruction (scales with her size), and completing the loot zone. And when the bar fills up, she has a growth spurt.

Once the outside map is properly designed for a small character, I'll be happy to let the player survive if they don't get the shrink-craft potion. Perhaps through quick testing, a small character can navigate the map without being soft locked, but it's best to be safe at first.

I will create crafting items to force reconstruction since that's an easy way to prevent soft-locks.

As for the giant basket, that's my goal ultimately. However I couldn't find good enough animations online and I simply ran out of time. The teleport wasn't even meant to be a teleport originally. It was a test see if having the giantess be next to you after each completed drop zone was interesting/challenging/etc. And it was a test to see if it was visually cool for a giantess to jump right in front of you. During the mad dash of finishing the update, the test became a feature and I gave it some quick visuals/sounds so it made somewhat sense.

The idea of reformatting any and all growth into basically "XP" had crossed my mind as an elegant solution, but I felt like it was asking for too much to the point of being annoying on my end. But I needn't have worried, considering you had the same idea. I think it makes for a nice way to not only solve all the current problems but *also* allow future additions to be able to contribute to the growth, if desired. It's pretty modular in concept, so that's neat.

Also, I went to go re-try the most recent demo to refresh my opinion, and I have to say that it does sometimes feel like complete random chance whether or not a singular stomp ends in just a scratch or getting absolutely combo'd by getting knocked down and stepped on multiple times. When you do implement the crouching feature (if you end up doing so like you commented in your little roadmap), might I suggest making the player resistant to being knocked down while in that state? It'd help make it feel more skill-based to be able to take a knee, absorb one stomp, then quickly get back up and run to safety, I think.

 

[LadyEbony]

The idea of reformatting any and all growth into basically "XP" had crossed my mind as an elegant solution, but I felt like it was asking for too much to the point of being annoying on my end. But I needn't have worried, considering you had the same idea. I think it makes for a nice way to not only solve all the current problems but *also* allow future additions to be able to contribute to the growth, if desired. It's pretty modular in concept, so that's neat.

Also, I went to go re-try the most recent demo to refresh my opinion, and I have to say that it does sometimes feel like complete random chance whether or not a singular stomp ends in just a scratch or getting absolutely combo'd by getting knocked down and stepped on multiple times. When you do implement the crouching feature (if you end up doing so like you commented in your little roadmap), might I suggest making the player resistant to being knocked down while in that state? It'd help make it feel more skill-based to be able to take a knee, absorb one stomp, then quickly get back up and run to safety, I think.

Ahh yes. I forgot about that. I'm doing three things:
Reduce recovery time from half.
Remove her player foot tracking when the player is stunned, or heavily reduce the range. I thought getting combo'd was cool at first, but it's too brutal I agree.
And add an internal cooldown on her player foot tracking, like 5 seconds or something.

 

[PvtRyan96]

Ahh yes. I forgot about that. I'm doing three things:
Reduce recovery time from half.
Remove her player foot tracking when the player is stunned, or heavily reduce the range. I thought getting combo'd was cool at first, but it's too brutal I agree.
And add an internal cooldown on her player foot tracking, like 5 seconds or something.

I know it doesn't exactly make logical sense diagetically, but it's probably just that the targeting range should scale more slowly than the giantess's size (probably logarithmically). The targeting range feels pretty fair in normal mode, but starting with double-size makes it feel pretty oppressive (particularly because it's when you have the fewest speed/shield upgrades).

All that said, you could probably retool that stomp-happiness into a modifier for the people who want it. I imagine there's probably at least one person here who'd love nothing more than seeing a giant socked foot absolutely unfairly going *stomp stomp stomp stomp* on them until their shield breaks as soon as they slip up even once.

 

[wikee]

I hope to add a movement that can move at high speed to deal with larger girls, such as hook claws, wings, etc.

 

[s0936596123]

Dear Developer,

Hello! I had the chance to try your game, and I think it's absolutely amazing. The design is incredibly immersive. After reading some of the earlier comments, I wanted to share a few suggestions that might be helpful:

1.As others have mentioned, when the giantess grows too large and destroys all the houses, it becomes difficult to gather resources. Maybe you could try placing an even larger giantess on a distant mountain. When there are no houses left, she could use her fingers to pick up houses from elsewhere and place them back into the player’s area.

2.Perhaps you could add a game mode where the player becomes the giantess. The win condition could be to destroy all the little people's houses, while the AI-tiny characters try to gather a certain amount of resources to win(similar to how players win in the current version.)

These are just a few ideas I had. Please forgive me if my English isn't very good. Wishing you all the best and continued success—keep up the great work!

 

[Rygrt]

Great improvement from the previous demo. Got to this later than expected, apologies, but here's my QoL/Gameplay suggestions with most of the redundant ones removed. Definitely too much for the scope of a single update, but some of the changes could help make the destruction a little more manageable.

Spoiler: Core Gameplay

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Spoiler: Shop/Crafting upgrades

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Spoiler: Loot and Dungeon Generation/Progression

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Spoiler: Difficulty Selection

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Spoiler: For after core gameplay/style is further along

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[LadyEbony]

Great improvement from the previous demo. Got to this later than expected, apologies, but here's my QoL/Gameplay suggestions with most of the redundant ones removed. Definitely too much for the scope of a single update, but some of the changes could help make the destruction a little more manageable.

Spoiler: Core Gameplay

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Spoiler: Shop/Crafting upgrades

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Spoiler: Loot and Dungeon Generation/Progression

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Spoiler: Difficulty Selection

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Spoiler: Misc

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Spoiler: Modifiers

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Spoiler: Behaviors

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Spoiler: Traps

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Spoiler: For after core gameplay/style is further along

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Lot of feedback. You opened my game with Bepinex or some shit did you?

Spoiler: My Response

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[LadyEbony]

I would like to also have a quick vibe check for the statue's new look and visuals. Feel free to respond or

Spoiler: New Statue

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[PvtRyan96]

I would like to also have a quick vibe check for the statue's new look and visuals. Feel free to respond or

Spoiler: New Statue

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That's exactly the kind of cuteness I was looking to see (the confetti is perfect too). Great job.

 

[CattyFruit]

I would like to also have a quick vibe check for the statue's new look and visuals. Feel free to respond or

Spoiler: New Statue

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This is so much better. the look is much more fitting, the alert sound is now much easier on the ears but still enough to acknowledge it activating, and the effect on the GTS is cute and funny but still intimidating cause now shes pissed at you for a reason.

 

[CattyFruit]

Not sure if anyone else mentioned this yet but i wanted to ask, have you thought about making a Trello to do list or something like that? would be useful for organizing ideas, plans for future updates, and bug reports that anyone can check and see whats going on currently.

 

[LadyEbony]

Not sure if anyone else mentioned this yet but i wanted to ask, have you thought about making a Trello to do list or something like that? would be useful for organizing ideas, plans for future updates, and bug reports that anyone can check and see whats going on currently.

I don't use Trello boards. I have a discord bot where I send dms of my ideas/plans to, which I cross out as they are completed. I prefer posting my progress here since I can include video and receive feedback as well.

 

[defnotalt]

I would like to also have a quick vibe check for the statue's new look and visuals. Feel free to respond or

Spoiler: New Statue

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Agree with the others, this one is much more fitting for the game theme. The previous one was maybe more imposing but kind of out of place for the general vibe of the game.

 

[LadyEbony]

An update post.

Keybinds + one-handed mode. Added fog effect to the sock environment, added sound reverbs and echos as well so it sounds more like a cave. Experimented with a cheap/quick method to make the socks look fluffy (it's very easy to break the illusion). Added more height elevation patterns to the tiles. Added visual effects if you are about to stomped on + fake shadow to where the giantess is going to step on + a shell-shock like effect after being launched (muffles your ears a bit). Experimenting with Gran Turismo's tonemapper, which seems to make the brighter areas brighter, and darker areas darker.

Spoiler: Update Screenshots

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Spoiler: Environments

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[CattyFruit]

An update post.

Keybinds + one-handed mode. Added fog effect to the sock environment, added sound reverbs and echos as well so it sounds more like a cave. Experimented with a cheap/quick method to make the socks look fluffy (it's very easy to break the illusion). Added more height elevation patterns to the tiles. Added visual effects if you are about to stomped on + fake shadow to where the giantess is going to step on + a shell-shock like effect after being launched (muffles your ears a bit). Experimenting with Gran Turismo's tonemapper, which seems to make the brighter areas brighter, and darker areas darker.

Spoiler: Update Screenshots

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Spoiler: Environments

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are the images on this not loading for anyone else?

Edit: ok i figured out it has something to do with my network, i can only see them with mobile data. i tried different browsers and devices but still wont load, not sure whats up.

 

[PvtRyan96]

An update post.

Keybinds + one-handed mode. Added fog effect to the sock environment, added sound reverbs and echos as well so it sounds more like a cave. Experimented with a cheap/quick method to make the socks look fluffy (it's very easy to break the illusion). Added more height elevation patterns to the tiles. Added visual effects if you are about to stomped on + fake shadow to where the giantess is going to step on + a shell-shock like effect after being launched (muffles your ears a bit). Experimenting with Gran Turismo's tonemapper, which seems to make the brighter areas brighter, and darker areas darker.

Spoiler: Update Screenshots

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Thank goodness. I can't stress this enough -- I really really do not like smell stuff. So that's nothing but good news to me.

As for your underwear-environment problem, I think the simplest idea would be that sometimes the giantess just gets distracted looking off at the bigger girl's panties (maybe every few minutes, the panties emit a pulse of light sort of like a charm spell, which takes control of the giantess's AI for a moment), with little hearts coming off of her. Provides an extra-long gap of time for the player to run around unaccosted. Maybe she even sits or lays down while admiring them. Of course, since she's getting excited from it, maybe it helps fill up her growth meter, too. Anyway, that'd be my suggestion.

Also, semi-relatedly, one idea for any humid environment would be to have little water droplets accumulate and grow bigger on the ground as minor traps to avoid (perhaps they burst open and slow you a small amount for a few seconds).

 

[CattyFruit]

An update post.

Keybinds + one-handed mode. Added fog effect to the sock environment, added sound reverbs and echos as well so it sounds more like a cave. Experimented with a cheap/quick method to make the socks look fluffy (it's very easy to break the illusion). Added more height elevation patterns to the tiles. Added visual effects if you are about to stomped on + fake shadow to where the giantess is going to step on + a shell-shock like effect after being launched (muffles your ears a bit). Experimenting with Gran Turismo's tonemapper, which seems to make the brighter areas brighter, and darker areas darker.

Spoiler: Update Screenshots

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Spoiler: Environments

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Now that i can view them, i like the new additions, the one handed mode will be nice to try... for gaming reasons. The fluffy socks looked like a cute alternative, if you can get them to work, but from far away it was kinda hard to notice as of right now.

I like the sock and tabi ideas. as for the underwear one, if you want to do the greenery/picnic theme you could make it so the big girl outside the village is eating sloppy so it rains down food periodically but also could drop traps, power ups for the GTS, or later enemies around the map.
alternatively you could make the outside girl periodically close her legs around the city, sealing in the village, making it dark and humid (the effects from the other environments) so it changes between fine and hazardous over time.
One last idea i have is you could have the outside girl "contaminate" the part of the village shes sitting closest to making it humid in that area then she could rotate/tp around the village every so often "contaminating" another area.

Tried to list ideas of varying complexity, hope this can help.