Project Wild One v0.10: Deeds and Boons

As of this moment, mid-range supporters and up can play the new version! In around two weeks, it will open up to lower tiers, and at least a month from now, the update will go public! Most of my updates tend to involve a lot of behind-the-scenes work, but this one is almost all in your face, so I’ve got a lot to talk about! Let’s get into it!

Deeds and Boons

The centerpiece of this update is the new long-term progression system: Deeds and Boons! A new menu lets you see your progress in various achievements, or Deeds, many of which unlock new options for purchase on the Boons page. Deed progress builds across all files, and Boons unlock new options for how to alter the settings of a new game.

Your early Deeds will be quite easy, and partly serve as a tutorial for important game concepts. Gradually, they will become more challenging and more rewarding. You reveal more Deeds by completing those you have access to, though all Deeds track progress even while hidden, and if you get one to 1/3 progress, it will reveal itself automatically.

Boons can only be purchased with Divinity points, which you can earn by gaining the new Sage trait. The Boons, in turn, only benefit new characters you create. This system is meant to encourage you to play a character for a while, then take a few levels of Sage and start a new character with some new options and try playing a different way. Some Boons alter the rules of the world, some alter how NPCs behave, and some alter the PC theirself. In effect, you can create many different “game modes” to suit your own tastes as you buy more Boons to add to your list of potential modifiers.

It is my hope that these changes will make the game a much more engaging long-term experience to keep coming back to, both with more variety in gameplay and with more goals to work toward. Some Deeds should take a pretty long time indeed to complete, but hopefully you’ll find their rewards worthwhile and the time you play enjoyable.

Trailblazer

In counterpoint to these aspects encouraging you to keep starting new characters, the other major feature added in this update rewards returning to old characters– by letting you return to some of your favorite NPCs. With the new Trailblazer Trait, you can invite one NPC you’ve connected with (or up to three, with upgrades) to “follow you” when you leave this land to explore a new one (by saving and loading your game).

Since the system for controlling NPCs is still in flux, your Companions will not retain perfect memories of what came before, but the core of their feelings for you (and for each other) will persist for as long as you choose to bring them along.

Besides these major features, I’ve made a series of smaller but significant changes to the game. Let’s explore those in a roughly descending order of significance!

Expanded Satisfaction

You can now gain Satisfaction slowly from actions that give pleasure to others, and lose it from actions that cause others Pain. Both of these scale by how much you give, and by how much you care about them. Satisfaction was always meant to serve partly as a “moral compass,” and this change should help a lot with that. Also, I’ve added three new Traits that boost your Satisfaction gains in certain categories, but as a drawback, also make you lose more Satisfaction for related reasons. This should help you define what really matters to you.

Revamped Character Detail Display

I’ve changed nearly every aspect of the compact and extended displays you see in the upper left of the game for better readability. In the compact version, information is much more concise and tightly formatted, and the extended version has more room to sprawl as needed. Both versions have larger text now, and in a few cases a little more information.

Revamped Intent Menu

I always meant for the [Set Intents…] menu to be important to gameplay from one moment to the next, but it was always very fiddly and slow to get through. I’ve moved it to one of the top tabs above your action buttons, and drastically improved the quick readability of the buttons, in the hope it will make it feel more easy and natural to swap your Intents several times over an encounter.

Font Sizes

Readability has been an issue in the game for some time, especially on smaller screens, and this new entry in the Options menu should help those that have struggled with it. Not all text will scale up, but the biggest (smallest) offenders should be covered.

Balance Changes

In my testing of the various new Deeds and Boons, I was able to get much clearer information about the performance of many aspects of the game, and I made a suite of changes both to address this and a few related issues I’ve meant to get to for some time.

I’ve significantly buffed the Forager and Fluid Hoarder Traits. Also, certain Traits haven’t been showing up on NPCs for some time, and I fixed the bug preventing them from being added at generation. While I was at it, I increased the variety of names NPCs of all types can draw from.

I made many changes to how fluids, especially in the balls, are handled. All internal storages now force fluids to gush out until they’re a reasonable margin below their max capacity for comfort. It makes sense that you can be crammed full of solids to an extent without being hurt, but fluids can’t be “crammed” without something plugging the exit. However, the ability to counteract this change is part of the buff to Fluid Hoarder.

With this change, the amount your balls naturally generate had to be reduced so you weren’t constantly gushing excess, so to compensate, balls have been adjusted to be slightly larger across the board (while holding the same amount of cum as before naturally). Fluid Hoarder will also increase your natural cum production target to match your higher capacity. Along with this, I’ve bumped up your “starting stock” when starting a new game.

While messing with sizes, I found that the scaling for your “storages” like your balls or stomach can get a little crazy at the upper end. I’ve tuned this system to reduce the crazy swinginess.

I also found in testing that Essence production from all vore activities falls well behind that from sex or even combat, so I’ve buffed their production considerably. While I was at it, I tweaked the damage rate for voring prey to be more balanced between flat damage and damage scaled to the prey’s max HP. Oh, and I’ve expanded the Buggy Vore Enabled Trait to extend many of its benefits related to being alone or traveling even if only the prey has it.

Also, I found a rather significant bug from last update: the various Stop actions weren’t reading the Intent of others correctly, so Gentle Stops would succeed even if the other party didn’t want it to end yet. Should be all fixed up now!

Lastly, I’ve given the game a bit of a face-lift for when you first go in! You’ll notice there is now a screen for warning that this is an adult game, the main menu has new assets, and I’ve added a brief tutorial screen when you first start playing– or if you haven’t played in a couple months.

The Little Things

There’s still more on the list, so let’s touch on them quickly before we start talking large-scale development!

• Adjusted display of Satisfaction when Praying
• Added and adjusted Descriptions
• Adjusted NPC behavior
• Moved PC image selection to after game setup, tied to save file
• New players now go straight to character setup on first game start
• Fixed display issues related to many actions scrolling by quickly
• Fixed various minor bugs and typos

The Big Things

This update has ended up being a larger part of the development process than I expected, in several senses. The first time I tried to write this section, it turned into a pretty huge discussion of the project as a whole, but I’m going to push the full shpiel off to a dev journal and do my best to keep this concise.

I wanted this to be a quick, small update to give players what they wanted, so you could all better enjoy the game while I’m working on “the big one,” the other half of the Interp-Theory Mind. But this update has forced me to accept that adding new systems is never quick. And that’s forced me to accept that I need to let go of a lot of my big, exciting ideas for the future mechanics of this game and start to focus more on getting to the actual “content” of the game.

Project Wild One is still basically just a platform for letting a game happen, and I’ve been putting off making the “actual game” part. This update might make it feel more like a game, but to me, it’s partly just another placeholder. I know I need the ITM before I’m ready, and a few other systems are pretty crucial, but it’s clear to me now that this is all just taking too long. This update helped me accept that I can’t indulge in all the mechanics I want to add, and it’s time to push for the next stage of development.

So we’ve finally arrived at the big moment I’ve been anticipating for so long. The ITM is halfway to the completion of its most basic form. I’m going to take some time to tackle all the little things in life I’ve put on hold recently so I could hurry up and get this update out, and then I’m going to dive in and finally build a proper system for letting NPCs make their own choices.

I know this update won’t be fast. But I believe it’s going to be worth it. This system is the center of everything I want to accomplish with Project Wild One, and once it’s in place, the possibilities will unfold before me as never before. I feel like I’ve been shackled to “I can’t/shouldn’t until the ITM is in place” with so many things since nearly the beginning.

As an aside, I found a good example of that with this update. I mentioned some of the Boons alter NPC behavior, and some of those alter things governed by the ITM. That took maybe half an hour to implement, and some of that was just refreshing my memory on working with the system. Another batch of behavior Boons were handled by the old NPC control system– and that took about ten hours of working through a rat’s nest of nonsense, adding yet another layer on top in the process.

The ITM will let me make changes and additions of virtually every type far more easily. It will make NPCs more reliable and logical in choosing their actions– currently what feels like the greatest weakness in the game. And hopefully, if everything goes well, it will help create a very special feeling in you when you play the game. Something just a little like what made MVOL special, but driven by an engine that lets you make your own decisions, and weave your own stories with the characters, rather than merely follow the lines I’ve drawn.

This is why I’m still in the field. This is what I crave to see, and to create. And once it is made, with all these systems I’ve built to support it, I hope it will finally be time to start reaping the fruits of all this work. Making content that pulls you in, and sticks with you. I will finally be able to show you what I’ve wanted to show you since the beginning.

So, that’s where we’re at. Excited. Frustrated. Champing at the bit.

This is the short version, as short as I could get it. I’ll try to explain a little better in the dev journal, I know this sounds a little frantic for the condensing.

Wrapping Up

I could never have gotten this far without my supporters. I appreciate you all more than I can ever say. You’ve been very patient with all of this craziness, and if you enjoy this update, know that it was your support that made it happen.

If you’re not supporting, I hope you’ll consider it when you get the chance to try this update out. I’m on Patreon and SubscribeStar, and maintain identical rewards on both, across the board. The content added to this update was decided by their vote, in fact. I’m pretty confident players are going to like what they get with this update, but to me, this is nothing compared to what’s coming up. I could use all the help I can get.

And on that note, if you want to help out with the work itself, I can always use more testers, or Proofers, as I call them. It’s going to be a while before I call on them again, but they’re the only people keeping me sane and turning all my frantic nonsense into a game that’s actually decent for others to play. If you like rooting out problems, I’d love to have you on board. Just take a look at the new version and let me know what you can find. I’m sure there’s still plenty of oddities hidden away in there.

And if you just enjoy my work and want to connect with others that do the same, by all means, join my Discord. I try to maintain a sort of oasis of common respect in the big mess that social media tends to be.

Lastly, if you want updates on all the little things and maybe a hint here and there on what’s coming up, and are willing to put up with my sense of humor the rest of the time, maybe check out my BlueSky.

That’s everything I can think of to throw at you. After so many updates have been a lot of “I’ve added so much stuff, but you won’t be able to see the real results until later,” it feels great to ship an update that’s just a whole bunch of good stuff clearly laid out for players. Honestly, a lot of the little changes I’ve been putting off ended up going faster than expected, though maybe I’ve been tuning them in the back of my head this whole time to get there.

I’m really happy with this update, partly because I think you will be, too. And I’m excited to finally be getting to The Real Thing after this. Enjoy, and don’t forget to check back in a while.