Realm of Darkness - Starting the Farm Edition

Welcome back to my semi-irregular updates. Today I'd like to discuss the so-called 'dungeon' I'm working on, called 'The Farm.'

For the first pass, I'm planning on allowing you to choose which type of animal you're in danger of being converted into - a humanoid cow, horse, or pig - futa or female.

A large part of the farm will circle around the main gameplay loop of being taken care of by the farmhands and getting milked. The longer you given in to their demands, the more animal-like you'll become. If your intelligence drops too low, you're going to experience a bad end.

There will be other ways to experience a bad end too, of course, some of them more challenging and difficult to find than others. Today I wrote a bad end which has very similar themes to Tabico's 'Herd Instinct,' which fans of that work should enjoy.

There are several NPCs you'll meet at the farm, and whether you help them (or not) will affect their fates and yours. You may even be able to recruit one or two of them to escape and live with you outside the Farm, if you're careful.

Depending on how much the farm staff trust you, you'll be more or less free to roam The Farm. The more you defy them, the more restrained you'll be. For example, if you try to bite them, you'll be muzzled with a bit gag or another suitable implement. These 'debuffs' will make it more difficult for you to perform certain actions at The Farm and to find a way to escape.

Currently, I am working on the introductory area for The Farm, which by itself is somewhat complicated since I need to introduce all the characters and provide choices that allow you to figure out which animal you wish to become (see below picture for a sample of that game flow). Ideally all paths would be just as attractive, but that's probably not realistic, since I'm the biggest fan of the female bovine paths. Still, I'll do my best with the other paths as well.

In addition to what I'm writing, I've also fleshed out various areas you'll be able to visit while trapped on The Farm (subject to change). See a sample below:

There needs to be a way to escape, of course, but it shouldn't be too easy. And I'm planning for there to be more than one way to 'win' your way out of The Farm. Some of them will be more morally gray than others.

My first goal is to get the main gameplay loop working. Then, I will be working on adding sufficient random events to make the game seem fresh as well as unlockable events based on the stats you have. After that, I'll focus on the adventure mechanics in the farm as well as implementing various ways and means to escape.

Big plans, I know. I'm turning into Peter Molyneux here with the promises. We'll see how much is actually reasonable to complete, since I don't even have a way currently of getting your main character from the central town to The Farm without using the debug menu.

I'm thinking tentatively version one of the game should probably include a fleshed out central town as well as a completely playable Farm dungeon. If I get that far, I think that's probably a sufficient vertical slice to show off what I have and get some feedback. It still seems reasonable to get there by the end of the year, but things could always change... I'll keep ya'll up to date here.

That's a wrap for now. Here's the count of bad ends currently in the game: 13. Many more to come - especially at The Farm, which has 15 more already stubbed out! Not to mention the town, which will definitely need quite a few as well!