I've been trying this game a fair few times over its development and there is a lot about it I enjoy. I primarily play it fetishizing the bimbofication and for the most part that part of the game is very fun. The main character has some really erotic descriptions, and their exaggerated body type and hyper femininity is very appealing, there is a lot of flavour and variance for being a bimbo in a large amount of activities with an emphasis on sexual talent, stamina, empathetic positivity, and seduction. Having so much special content and locales around the city for bimbo's is a lot of fun.
I also enjoy the undercurrent lore and insinuations that becoming a bimbo doesn't actually impact a Ooze Wizard's "Intelligence", and can in fact make them a much more powerful sorceress. As a part of the fetish I don't personally enjoy, it's much easier to have fun with when its likened to a cloud of pink thoughts and bliss that can be subverted or minimized in important moments, or utilized to enhance your being and mind in an indirect way as hinted at with trancing and the bimbo sisterhood. Momo's lessons that teach you spells and abilities that let you read books and navigate around whilst still being bubbly and giggly is a great touch, and I hope that gets fleshed out more.
First off, thank you for going so in depth on this game. I'm glad you enjoy the bimbofication aspect of the game and the sex positivity that seems to go along with it. I do have plans on incorporating Trancing as a staple of an "Ooze Bimbo Run" and expanding the Bimbo Sisterhood into something more fully realized. A lot of Momo's lessons are in fact about getting around some of the handicaps of having a head full of cotton candy, but they're also there to help reinforce the bimbo aesthetic (Remote Vision's Snapshots are essentially Selfies that Phaera can take of herself). I'm hoping to continue to broaden the Bimbo aspects of the game because it's one of my favorite fetishes.
Mechanically, I find it a bit frustrating how the game seems to penalize you for leaning into sex positivity, femininity, and bimbohood.
Part of the game is supposed to be about balance. Being a sex positive slut has its fun, but it does come with a lack of restraint where the character tends toward being constantly sex starved. The aspect was supposed to show that while you can embrace the slut within, it does come with consequences, albeit I suppose it can come off as heavy handed enough that it becomes suffocating. I can understand the frustration with the stun lock that comes with the perils of high sensitivity and sluttiness and have included a number of ways of mitigating it from baths, lust stone, potions, and other avenues (though I could do with explaining them better). A lot of the mechanics do need streamlining and the game could do with cutting the bloat to offer a better paced game.
Being locked out of Odette and Amira's content if you go down that path is frustrating, and the mechanic where the longer you are bimbofied, the higher the default state to eventually lead to where-in you can never "turn it off" at the sisterhood temporarily in order to experience other events is irritating and stifling.
I'm actually thinking about reworking Odette's content to be compatible with Bimbo Runs, considering that one of the hidden paths for her includes having you be her Bimbo Escort, it seems like the pragmatic choice. As for Amira, I think I will plan on making her content more accessible the further into development I get. The real problem that exists is that Bimbo content essentially doubles the workload for any particular scenario I intend to work on. Don't get me wrong, I like working on it, but it's considerably time consuming to create a path where Phaera is in control of herself and another where she is a complete ditz.
The "turning off" Bimbohood is sort of a placeholder at the moment. There is supposed to be a very real danger of permanently becoming a Bimbo associated with the Bimbo State that I hope to explore at a later point, but the event at the Sisterhood acts as a bit of step between. When I get into the mechanics of it, I intend to make it more clear if a character is getting close to the edge of their chosen vocation, with ways of balancing it out should the time come.
It would be a nice touch if you could "trance" and tune into your primal mind in order to pass intelligence checks like playing chess or spending time with partners who want a more serious conversation or relationship.
The time system that restricts what you can do each day is incredibly tedious and makes learning skills an absolute chore, especially since it's incredibly unclear where and how to improve certain things, how many false choices there are, and how incredibly opaque the alchemy, enchantment and transmutation stations are in the cellar.
Trancing is generally something that should enable certain activities better than others. Sure, it can increase your concentration enough so that you don't get lost and can read the words on a sign, but there should be some trade off in what you can and can't do while in a Trance State. I plan on weaving it more closely with some of the Ooze Bimbo activities so that it can play a bigger part in developing that caste of Ooze Wizards in the end without making it a complete get out of jail free card for being a ditz.
I can understand the Time System being restrictive and tedious. I think that's partly because of how slow my development cycles tend to be. I want to revamp it so that it allows more actions per day for certain events (bathing, reading, etc.), but still acts as a way of corralling players into certain routines and schedules that they develop as a result. I understand how some of the activities aren't exactly player friendly, so I hope to revise the game to walk players through things like Alchemy and the like to better explain their purpose. But in the end, I still want to have a day night cycle, and that means having some structure that tracks time, and thus imposes some limitations. I might do away with the monthly forced quests, which should open up the game for players who feel as if they're on a time crunch.
With such limited time slots and how finicky it is navigating around the city and finding places without placeholder content, being stunlocked by random sexual encounters once you embrace slut-hood is very inconvenient and counter productive to players who want to embrace it. It would be nice if you could receive chronicles of your sexual exploits, encounters and number of partners whilst traveling without actively taking away player control and stopping you from doing other things.
I created the game as a sandbox so that I could throw a bunch of things in to eventually fill up the world. I have plans on revising things and bringing them down to more manageable levels. As for the Stun Locking, I have plans for revamping how those sexual encounters are done and how they can get resolved. There should still be a mechanic where you need to conserve something to be able to operate at least somewhat normally, but it should become less oppressive with time. I find that part of the fun is the protagonist attempting to resist the slut within and eventually overcoming or giving in to that aspect. This is sort of how I try to embody that struggle, which comes with some pitfalls, I'll admit. So while they won't disappear, I could see it being mitigated somewhat (either through explaining the mechanics behind it or perhaps difficulty settings).
I haven't played much in the way of the quests, partly because they are hidden away in one specific tavern out of many, and also partly because wanting to learn spells, abilities and improving my attributes before I try the quests takes up so much time it's very difficult to know what is worth doing.
Putting the game on a per month time limit, and locking content as time goes by, is a really bad design point for the game in my opinion, a emphasis on the sandbox approach that lets you bimbo and slut around in the city to your hearts content, and then allows you to progress the main story and side quests at your own pace would minimize a lot of the frustration and tedium. There is a constant feeling that you are wasting time and being punished by trying to have fun at the strip club instead of constantly grinding attributes with no indication on if its actually working or not. Only being able to read very small parts of a book per time slot, and no clear way to "master" a lore is another example of how inexhaustibly obtuse the game can be.
I believe I addressed the monthly time limit in an earlier quote response here. I can see your point and probably will open things up to players when I get around to revising the game again. I want a more complete feeling for the game and will probably try to ratchet down the scope of the game so that it can fit on a smaller scale.
As for the book reading, that's probably going to always be a problem for me to balance. I either feed people small bits for progress, or give everything for the barest of attempts. I hope that the plans for the new time system should ameliorate this experience, but it's probably going to be nagging me for some time.
Contrary to popular belief, the time at the Strip Club is not a complete waste. There are some events that are associated with it already (like the posters, marquee, and billboard) and I have plans on focusing more on it in the future.
I had a lot of fun reading the journal of an ooze wizard in your room, and liked the part near the ending where the "protagonist" embraces hyper femininity, sex positivity, slut-hood and empathetic positivity. The complete one eighty in the final chapter where the journal suddenly turns into a lovecraftian nihilistic story with a nondescript bad ending was a huge turn off. It raises a bunch of confusing questions like:
"Why does your tutor have this persons journal in their library which is apparently magically cursed, and why can't I ask them about it."
"Why is there insinuation of a catalyst event where an Ooze Wizards soul is horrifyingly destroyed and they are actively punished for embracing a positive consensual sexuality that actively ruins any of the fun, wonder or excitement of the story."
"Why is this biological doom clock not mentioned anywhere except this random journal, and is it actively going to impact gameplay and punish the player for trying to have fun."
"Why was the need felt to ruin the fantasy of becoming a gorgeous magical ageless woman with this bizarre eldritch turnaround."
Firstly, thank you for actually going through that! I did a lot of work on it and am glad that someone got something out of it as a result. The journal was supposed to be integrating the revision mechanics and some of the story plot that I have planned in the future. To be honest, I'm thinking of revising the journal in the future, as I did like writing the character and it might be criminal to have them meet such a horrible end without meeting them in the game first...
Secondly, your mentor having the journal was probably to show the perils of a lack of self restraint or an object lesson in what an Ooze Wizard falling could look like. Becoming an Ooze Wizard has some connotations that aren't immediately evident and there is some horror to the condition that isn't quite let on in the beginning. To be honest, I may need to rethink where this journal goes and what lessons it teaches.
I do hope that it's just a early story or project that doesn't embody the direction of the game and its story, because I think letting the player embrace the fun bimbofication and fleshing it out would be an absolute joy. I'm excited to see what happens with the bimbo sisterhood, and when that transformation is going to be implemented.
I feel like the game has a lot of fantastic writing, lore building, character and relationship building, and erotica, stifled by a lot of bloated unfinished mechanics and a mass of useless empty locations and hotlinks. Apparently you can only develop your relationship with your teacher on a specific time-slot on a specific day that is not mentioned absolutely anywhere in the game, and I feel that embodies how the game is at odds with itself.
The game could hugely benefit from streamlining and minimizing the filler and bloat, and making it easier for the player to find and experience the fleshed out writing and content.
As mentioned, I want to cut down on the bloat and get this game more streamlined so that it reads better and plays smoothly for people. I've been picking some people's brains and find that a more focused game would probably play better for the audience. The teacher relationship paths are probably going to get cannibalized by the focused lessons each has for the player, as they will probably be how the player increases their relationship with their mentors.
I hope I don't sound too critical, because I think this game has a lot of fun and unique things going for it that are very rare in the writing space. I would love to see more content and perhaps sapphic and futa scenes and flavour to complement or replace the hetero scenes around the city. I wish the dev the absolute best.
No offense taken. I actually welcome a good critique of the game and I appreciate you going over this in depth. I can't really improve the game if I don't know what points I'm not hitting right in it.