ALPHA v. 0.2.08

This patch adds the 100^th event! Glory to the Prince of Pleasure!

Authorship is an odd thing when it comes to sexual content. If I cannot find anything about a scene that appeals, it's invariably awful. Appealing to a wider audience is therefore frequently an exercise in consciously finding something to like. For example, my brain is not wired to find testicles (that aren't mine) sexually relevant, so this patch has been a game of finding ways to approach such content from surgical fetish, domination, and corruption angles, which are things that do appeal.

Since players seem to be actively thinking about this world I'm creating, I'm trying to flesh it out more in events. The Free Cities are so anarchic that the only real law in the arcology is what the PC chooses to enforce. Three new random events allow the player to mete out harsh justice to criminal tenants: always with the option to enslave, of course.

You know you're /k/ when you describe a machine pistol as lovingly as a naked breast.

Pre-0.2.08 saves are not compatible.

Download: Mega.

Tip jar: Patreon.

0.2.08 Patch Notes:

• Balls, and various mean things to do to them.
• New random events.
• New non-random event.
• Further balance to reputation: gains and decay have both been reduced further, so it is again harder to get but easier to keep. This has indirectly made reputation from events more important.
• Minor UI improvements, especially to the surgery.
• Revisions to descriptions to better explain some stat effects.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA v. 0.2.07

I usually refrain from pointing out the effects of changes on the story structure depicted above, but this update is an absolute holocaust for event passages. Every preexisting nickname event has been collapsed down to a single huge passage with code to apply any nickname for which a slave qualifies. This will make adding new nicknames much easier, so much so that I am now willing to take suggestions. If you have nickname suggestions, please post them in the comments here.

Certain types of rough treatment will now add minor, cosmetic injuries like bruises. These will heal naturally.

This patch also adds makeup and nails. The player's ability to amuse themselves with My Slave Dress-Up has advanced to a new level. The new variables to support this mean that pre-0.2.07 saves are no longer compatible.

Download: Mega. Unfortunately, the new nickname code has some bugs which will not be fixed until 0.2.08.

Tip jar: Patreon.

0.2.07 Patch Notes:

• Total recode of nicknames. Nickname events will be less common, but will consider all nickname-worthy elements of a slave.
• Nicknames for submissive, well-endowed, amputee, humiliation fetishist, and pregnant slaves.
• The Auto Salon, which includes several options transferred from the studio and several new options.
• Buffed the rents the PC receives from arcology tenants to make upgrades less of a pointless money pit. The change is conservative and rents may be increased again.
• Two new random events.
• Minor cosmetic injuries.
• Negative quirks now impede slave breaking; to balance this, fixing them is now easier.
• More descriptions.
• More FCNN.
• Bugfixes.

Nicknames

After many requests for a way to submit nicknames, here we are.

With update 0.2.07 the code will be capable of accepting new nicknames and new categories of nickname with comparative ease. If you have any ideas for slave nicknames you would like to see in the game, please submit them in the comments below. I will winnow submissions down to what I consider consistent with the tone of the game. Un-inventive, overused present-day racial slurs are an example of something I will not include.

To work in-game, nickname submissions must make sense when they appear before a slave's name. For example, a bodyguard named Anna who received the nickname Terminatrix would appear as 'Terminatrix' Anna. If it is not immediately obvious what sort of slave your submission should apply to, please include that as well.

ALPHA v. 0.2.06

This patch includes additions spurred by two good requests. First, there is now a harsher variant of the "break her will" personal training. And second, there is now a maid-like variant of the "serve other slaves" assignment.

Due to 0.2.05 requiring some new variables, saves from 0.2.04 and earlier will be bugged in 0.2.06.

Download: Mega. Patch 0.2.06.1 fixes the surgery bug in 0.2.06.

Tip jar: Patreon.

0.2.06 Patch Notes:

• One new random event.
• Another service assignment to complement the one already in game: this one is less sexual and primarily works to cut upkeep costs.
• New personal attention setting, a variant of breaking that increases the breaking effect but sacrifices health.
• Balance improvements, mostly concerning obedience gains for slaves at Fearful and below.
• Incomplete review of surgery reactions.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA v. 0.2.05

The major change in this update is the start of an update to the toy assignment. I added this on request by throwing together descriptions and code from other sources, and have always intended to improve it. It is now possible to focus the PC's attention on specific parts of a slave assigned to that duty, with a high chance to improve relevant skills and fix relevant quirks over the week. I certainly intend to expand these options further.

Due to this update requiring some new variables, saves from previous versions will be bugged in 0.2.05.

One intrepid playtester has gone so far as to examine the code, and building on his reports, this patch includes a fairly thorough upgrade to how random events affect virginity.

Download: Mega.

Tip jar: Patreon.

0.2.05 Patch Notes:

• Added ability to focus the PC's attentions towards toys.
• New random and non-random events.
• Review of random events that would logically affect virginity.
• Fixed major bugs that prevented a few random events from ever appearing.
• Other bugfixes.

ALPHA v. 0.2.04

This patch includes several minor updates to balance, content, and scenes. To clarify save compatibility: 0.2.0 saves are not forward-compatible; 0.2.01, 0.2.02, and 0.2.03 saves should all work in 0.2.04. This will probably stop being the case with 0.2.05 or 0.2.06.

Download: Mega.

Tip jar: Patreon.

0.2.04 Patch Notes:

• One new game over, which is sufficiently rare that I won't spoil it. If the player ever sees it they richly deserve the game over, that's all I'll say.
• Two new random events.
• Increased the difference between slave vendors by giving them different chances of selling slaves with bad traits; the School is best for this and the Market worst.
• Expanded descriptions here and there.
• More references to stats in scenes: for example, most appearances of a slave's skin will now mention if she's pale, tanned, etc.
• Patch for an amusing oversight that could lead to infinite pregnancy.
• Review of fetish changes to 'protect' full nymphos from losing their superior state.
• Other bugfixes.

ALPHA v. 0.2.03

Today's patch is relatively minor. I have a 24-hour athletic challenge to complete, starting tonight, and winning takes precedence over coding.

After some experimentation, saves do seem to be working between all 0.2+ releases. So, until patch notes say otherwise, starting a new game for a new release is not necessary.

Download: Mega.

Tip jar: Patreon.

0.2.03 Patch Notes:

• Two new events.
• Improvements to the updated descriptions introduced with 0.2.02.
• Updates to the new assignments introduced since 0.1.09.
• Minor content rewrites.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA v. 0.2.02

Every time I sit down to write more random events, I get distracted and make other content instead. So for today, we have more nicknames, slaves who like having their nipples tugged, and an overhaul of the descriptions.

According to Twine, word count is closing in on The Return of the King, because I am a lunatic.

Download: Mega.

Tip jar: Patreon.

0.2.02 Patch Notes:

• Nipple fixation as a fetish. This fetish doesn't have all its content yet, notably when serviced by sub-slaves.
• Nicknames for slaves with big nipples or girlish figures, slaves serving as bodyguards, slaves serving other slaves, and head girls.
• Huge balance change in that head girls now cannot do other work. A properly trained head girl on reputation duty simplified things way too much.
• Major update to the long form slave description that appears in a slave's individual menu. Old content was condensed, new content was added, and everything is reorganized for better flow.
• Ethnicity now appears on the main menu if racial descriptions are enabled.
• Bugfixes. Notably, the new event coding system introduced with 0.2 seems have fewer bugs, and fixing those that appear is much easier.

ALPHA v. 0.2.01

Fewer additions than yesterday, but I'm pretty confident I did more coding for this yesterday than I will again. I hear all the feedback about difficulty and about all the many scenes that should be in the game and aren't. I plan to make the game gradually harder as I move towards 1.0, and I plan to be adding more scenes to this game as the fancy strikes long after 1.0.

It is now possible to nominate a bodyguard once certain conditions are fulfilled. After some thought, I decided that the PC's slave girl bodyguard would be for sexy intimidation as much as for combat effectiveness. So, she will be described as wielding a straight ceramic sword more or less like this, and a machine pistol like this or this. For those who prefer muscular slaves, there is now something at which your preferred slaves excel.

I've found some horribly obvious and unreported errors in playtests that suggest that some events aren't being seen much. I won't spoil them, but the wider a variety of things you try, the wider the variety of events you will see.

Download: Mega.

Tip jar: Patreon.

I have an important question I need feedback on. How long do you want a full game of Free Cities to last? To be clear, there will always be the option to just keep playing, but the scheduled events will run out at some point. I get the impression some are playing a single game for much longer than I thought. I had originally intended that a playthrough would reach the endgame (where the player is drowning in money and has seen all major non-random events) after not more than an hour or two. If this is not so, I will space my planned events out farther.

v. 0.2.01 Patch Notes:

• Bodyguards. As usual, this version adds bodyguard mechanics while future versions will give them events and interactions, so for now they have relatively little to do other than stand around and look intimidating.
• Addition of an option to discard a slave (not sell her). This may preserve games in which a bugged slave appears.
• Significant update to obedience changes: there is now a limit to how much a slave's mental state can change weekly. This should not be a noticeable difference 95% of the time; it mostly covers a couple of exploits.
• Rebalance of milk production. Notably, slaves born male can still lactate via drugs, but will always produce less due to having less natural mammary tissue for the drugs to affect.
• Review of cash reporting; reported profits and actual cash increases should match up better. Milking was absolutely wretched at this.
• Many new callouts of a slave's ethnicity if the player has that setting enabled.
• New events.
• Other bugfixes.

ALPHA v. 0.2

Assigning version numbers to a project like this is arbitrary, but I dumped enough time into this in the past 24 hours that between 0.1.09 and today's additions, Free Cities deserves to move up to 0.2.

Though it should look virtually the same from the player's perspective, the random event system has been heavily recoded. Several perceptive commenters discerned that only the last slave in the master list eligible for any given event was experiencing that event: this was a consequence of my crude code. This has been fixed, and in fixing it I also changed the event selection code so that having more eligible slaves boosts the chances of seeing an event. My solution to these problems is inelegant but one of the advantages to learning code today is that modern computers allow the novice coder to apply brute force without much of a noticeable effect. The new system will also allow me to tweak how often each event pops.

Of course, this means that many recent event bugs have probably been replaced by new ones. My thanks to everyone who has reported the old and will report the new.

Download: Mega.

Tip jar: Patreon.

v. 0.2 Patch Notes:

• Recoding of the random event system. If you have more slaves eligible for an event, you'll see it more.
• New service assignment at which a resistant or better slave will be available for other slaves to order around. Generally, this increases both parties' obedience. The end week report for this assignment includes descriptions of the racial makeup of the situation if the player so chooses.
• Race display option at game start that will stop the game giving slaves racially based nicknames and remove other racial content such as the above.
• The brothel, which previously used the independent work code, now uses the whoring code. Practically, this means it produces no reputation, but more money.
• New promenade upgrade that allows slaves to work the arcology's promenade as public servants; this is a reputation counterpart to the brothel.
• Change to personal attention: if the PC is not giving any slave his personal attention, he will spend the free time making money: cash will start earning interest at 1000, not 10000. I did not like having nothing whatever for the PC to do other than mind a slave.
• Reduced chance of receiving no end week random event to near-zero.
• Various ease of use improvements; for example, personal attention menu will now suggest fixing quirks and exploring sexuality when relevant.
• New events.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA v. 0.1.09 (September 21)

I debated bumping the version number to 0.2 today, because there are several significant additions that bring things forward towards a complete game.

I heard all the feedback about not having enough to do with money, so I've added two big ticket items. First, I threw out the old, fiddly arcology upgrades system and put in expensive upgrades that encourage the growth of your arcology's economy. The PC is a tycoon, not a middle manager.

Second, I added the first two of several planned adjunct businesses to which slaves can be assigned. These should help declutter the late game by giving players something to do with 'completed' slaves. I also intend leadership positions for these businesses; first up is a madam for the brothel. Both of the businesses cannot take rebellious slaves but there will be more restraint-oriented businesses in the future.

Download: Mega. Be sure you have 0.1.09+, since 0.1.09 is broken.
After repeated requests for a link to my Patreon, I now have one. I'm repeating everywhere I can that I am doing this for fun, I consider this a tip jar, and will spend the same amount of my time on this irrespective of Patreon.

Patch Notes:

• A separate brothel. At the moment, this is very simple, but I mean to get the bugs found and fixed before fleshing it out.
• A dairy, similar to the brothel.
• Arcology upgrades. These are likewise simple for now.
• Sweeping rebalance which mostly focused on reputation. Reputation is now calculated more smoothly which should stop players bouncing between reputation levels. It is now slightly easier to keep, but harder to gain.
• Permissive rules now cost more. This is a slight nerf to devoted slaves, who deserve it.
• Continued UI fiddling; with today's additions this may be a mess, since I haven't playtested every permutation.
• Content improvements.
• Bugfixes.

Patreon

I now have a Patreon. I debated whether to do this for a while, but enough posters asked here and on TFGames that I did so. Please consider it a tip jar, not support for faster creation of more content. For now, this is fun for me. I will not base how much time I spend on it on how much is or is not pledged via some crowdfunding site. My hesitations about setting up a Patreon were worry that it might drive the fun out of this; let's keep it a tip jar and nothing more, and that won't be an issue.

ALPHA v. 0.1.08 (September 20)

Today's patch is relatively minor, just bugfixes, UI massaging, and some minor content.

Download: Mega.

Patch Notes:

• UI improvements. This is still a long way from where it needs to be.
• Fixed an oversight that could maroon the player in the Encyclopedia.
• New scenes, including one new campaign scene.
• Buffed nymphos again. It's important to investigate your slaves' inclinations.
• Numerous bugfixes and content improvements.

ALPHA v. 0.1.07 (September 19)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

ALPHA v. 0.1.06 (September 18)

v. 0.1.05 was badly broken, especially for head girls; this one should be better. Even so, I'm pushing this one a little earlier in the day so I can rush-fix any gamebreaking bugs.

Thanks again to the playtesters who are leaving bug reports and other feedback. Don't limit yourself to reporting my imbecilities; if you want something out of this game and I haven't explicitly said I will not be adding it, let me know. A lot of the content now in game is in response to requests.

The previous patch did intentionally remove the "train another slave" assignment. That content was overlapping too heavily with the head girl's training mechanisms, and in any case was not up to par.

Download: Mega.
If you haven't seen it, check out the post on the future of the game world.

Patch Notes:

• New, non-random events. There are only a few of these as yet, for testing purposes. They tend to be relatively non-erotic, and connect the player and his arcology to the changing world. They will occur on specific, widely-spaced turns. For those who prefer to play one-handed, this content can be turned off on the starting screen.
• Weather. This will eventually mean more than it now appears.
• New quirk.
• New random events. With the basic set in game getting closer to being bug-free, I'm gradually increasing the complexity of these.
• Lots of bugfixes, including one for a particularly bad bug that stopped head girls from training other slaves properly.

ALPHA v. 0.1.05 (September 17)

Lots of minor content additions today, to address some holes in the gameplay pointed out by playtesters.

It sometimes seems like the number of bugs ins't going down (though it is). One of the consequences of so many anons doing so much playtesting is that I don't have the time to playtest each patch as thoroughly as I'd like because I have so many good bug reports to work on. My fixes often break things and I occasionally don't find them before pushing a patch.

Something that needs to be clearer in game is that if there isn't any color to text, there isn't any stat impact in scenes. For example, the freely available miniscenes on the main menu and from the slave interaction screen have no effect unless phrases are colored. For now, they're just there for fun. Another thing I need to explain better in game: nymphomania qualifies a slave for all fetish events.

Not all reported bugs have been fixed. If you've reported it, I've got in in the .doc Wall of Shame; no need to report it again.

Download: Mega.
If you haven't seen it, check out yesterday's post on the future of the game world.

Updates and fixes:

• Autosaving at the start of the week. If you encounter a bug, load the autosave.
• New slave job: independent work. This is basically setting a very obedient slave up in a little apartment and telling her to make you money and reputation and look after herself. This is bare-bones, let me know what you think of the idea.
• Cracked down on fetish content. Now, that content should be restricted to slaves whose fetishes have been discovered (some vendors sell slaves whose fetishes are already known).
• Broke the old entertainment skill out into two skills, entertainment skill and the new whoring skill, which is for the non-sexual sides of the profession. This will allow descriptions and events to focus on either high class or streetwalker type behaviors.
• New, context sensitive sex option for slaves with relationships to other slaves that gives threesome content. It needs a lot more content.
• Abortion reactions. Every so often I sit back from my writing and think, “holy fuck, that's depressing.” This is one of those times.
• Better accented speech for slaves with big lips and/or heavy oral piercings. Less brain damaged, more lispy.
• More nicknames.
• New encyclopedia entries and better context-based linking to them.
• Fixes for broken events and content absurdities.

ALPHA v. 0.1.04 (September 16)

I finally implemented a completely different way of coding relationships. It uses the new ID number system and is adaptable, meaning that new relationship types are now possible. Friendships, rivalries and romantic relationships between slaves are all on the horizon.

The code is also being cleaned up to prepare for the future of this game world.

I did not have the time to playtest this patch much, so I will leave the previous version up in case this one is totally broken.

Download: Mega.

Updates and fixes:

• Totally new relationship content system. Should be much less buggy (or at least differently buggy).
• New slave merchant, who uses the new relationship system to generate mother/daughter, sibling, and twin pairs, sold at a big markup.
• New quirks, including dislike for various sex acts and new scenes that fix them.
• New personal assistant help function, accessible from the main menu: this checks all your slaves and applies obvious rule refinements to them if and only if you tell it to. Eventually I should evolve this into a customizable default rules function, but for now it basically applies what I think are the 'best' settings. I had this as a tool for my debug runs and realized there was no reason to keep it to myself.
• Cheat mode now always comes with the same slave, who is expressly designed to be a very powerful head girl.
• If you don't like the nicknames, you can now tell your slaves to knock it off.
• Many content improvements. Special mention goes out to AmputeeLover, who did a top-to-bottom test of amputee content and submitted great feedback on it.
• Many random events that focus on fetishes will now only appear if a slave's fetish is known to the PC.
• Fixes for many reported bugs.

According to Twine's story statistics, word count is now greater than Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Future

I've just made the first steps in code to lay the foundations for the future of this project, which makes this a good time to announce it.

As some who came here from /d/ may recall, and as my introductory post here mentions, this is actually my second crack at a game in Twine. My first was a post-apocalyptic slave management and warband management game, with the eroticism and warlordism being more or less balanced in terms of content. (I'm calling it Wasteland as a project name; it needs a better one.) It quickly became apparent that I needed to aim lower or fail, so I aimed lower, and Free Cities is the result.

Free Cities playtesters who read the more descriptive passages closely may have noticed strong hints that the world outside the player's arcology in Free Cities is going to hell. I will now confirm what several anons have suspected: Free Cities, in addition to being a sequel of sorts to the present, is indeed a prequel to Wasteland.

It's my intention that there will eventually be a “continue this game in Wasteland” option in Free Cities. When it is selected, the final collapse will begin. The lights will grow dim, never to burn bright again. And the player, along with his slaves and those free men wise enough to follow him, will leave his crumbling arcology in its collapsing Free City and strike out across the sand.

ALPHA v. 0.1.03.1 (September 15)

Though I'm not including it in the list of updates and fixes, these patches include lots of little additions to content. I rarely playtest for more than thirty seconds without diving back into Twine to add a little more description here or there.

When slaves appear with a name like $activeSlave.slaveName, that means that the code tried to affect a slave that didn't exist, so it created a new one with null variables. It's usually a random event that does that; if you notice what random event you saw right before it happened I can find the problem easily. Once it appears, the only solution is to load an earlier save: everything after that will be bugged to all hell.

Download: Mega. v. 0.1.03.1 is a quick update to fix a broken random event reported by Boney M.

Updates and fixes:

• A new drug called preventatives which prevents health damage due to public duties and is cheaper than curatives.
• Curatives have been nerfed, can no longer drive health up forever, and will once again stop when they stop having an effect. I know some playtesters were using them as hands-off whore-mantainers; that's what the new preventatives are for. Let me know if they don't work like you want them to.
• Several new minor surgical options, including star-shaped areolae and reductions for naturally large tits and asses.
• Minor surgery balance improvements; it is no longer possible to fill implants to infinity and beyond, and all surgery costs more: before it was too obvious a profit button.
• A bunch of background text on the world has been moved to the encyclopedia, so it doesn't clutter up the UI.
• Changes to make the main screen descriptions more clear. Ink and piercings are now described. Shemales are given the 'masterful' description if they max out the skills their body allows.
• Improvements to some of my earlier, uglier if/elseif abominations to speed things up.
• Several new random events, including nickname events, market events, and more.
• Minor improvements to relationship content; still buggy.
• Fixes for many reported bugs.

ALPHA v. 0.1.02 (September 14)

Another patch, hopefully better playtested. The biggest changes are behind the scenes: this game is using the Sugarcube 2 format for Twine 2, which is still in beta, and I moved up to the latest build, which allows some new config manipulations that should speed the game up.

If you get an event that sounds odd, like an event that includes a mute slave speaking or an armless slave giving you a hug, let me know. The torture of procedurally created prose is that I can't think of every eventuality as I write the scenes. I can always exempt slaves from scenes, but it's better if I know the specific issue, because then I can often write an alternative sentence or two that explains things. Some of my favorite little touches come from this rewriting.

Again, I can't test every scene with every possible slave, so having playtesters tell me what does and doesn't make sense to you is invaluable. I suspect some things make more sense to me because I know the whole thing more or less by heart.

Download: Mega (outdated, find the latest version under Alpha in the sidebar).

Fixes and updates include:

• Nicknames! Added a whole new category of random events in which your slaves acquire nicknames based on their stats. The player can either allow the nickname to stick or put a stop to it. (I have now created a game in which characters can earn the nickname "Snu-Snu"; one for the obituary.)
• Slutty outfits! That is, a new clothing option by that name. This gives a slave permission to choose her own clothing, and should provide a bit more variety than other options.
• Age balance. Past builds have been tough for older ladies; age is a big component of the current beauty code. As partial compensation, age is now a positive factor in many head girl tasks.
• Nerfed head girl success chances. Previously, a good head girl was having as much impact on slave obedience as the PC.
• As mentioned above, config changes that should speed things up, allowed with Sugarcube v2.0.0-beta.7.
• Various UI improvements suggested by playtesters. Most prominently, the main menu has been reordered, and parts of it can be collapsed.
• There is now a way to reduce slaves' obedience. It's in a slaves' individual menu, and is unlimited since it's strictly a bad idea from a gameplay perspective.
• Toys should now work from the main menu.
• Since many playtesters seem to be using the fucktoy assignment, it has been buffed. Before it was a pure luxury; now it adds some reputation, though much less than public service.
• Added more restrictions to random events to stop slaves getting events they shouldn't.
• Fixed an issue that could cause conflicting descriptions of breast size.
• Fixed several issues, as usual, that caused conflicts between dick and pregnant content.
• Many other bugs and oversights.

According to the Twine 2 story statistics, this thing now has a higher word count than Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

ALPHA v. 0.1.01 (September 13)

Rush patch today, since so many anons kindly left bug reports.

To clarify, all feedback is useful, even if I don't apply it. Let me know what you want out of this game, and I'll include it if I have the ability, time, and inclination. Input from multiple threads elsewhere has already impacted this game a lot; if I had gone straight from my own ideas to an alpha, there would be no reputation mechanic, no clothing options, and no dicks.

Download: Mega (outdated, find the latest version under Alpha in the sidebar). I've heard some vague complaints about Mega elsewhere; let me know in the comments if anyone has hesitations about downloading from them, and I'll mirror it.

For now, I have engaged in a little triage and taken the ability to improve the player's arcology offline. This needs a lot of work and I've got plenty to fix elsewhere; I'll re-enable it once it's in decent shape.

Thanks to everyone who's playtesting and giving feedback; great stuff. Fixes and updates include:

• Better handling of nymphos. In game nymphomania is basically an all-of-the-above fetish that is superior to all others for strictly gameplay purposes.
• Encyclopedia includes an article explaining what the game means by "nympho."
• Nymphomania more powerful and harder to obtain.
• Slaves should no longer appear virgin and pregnant.
• Encyclopedia now includes table of contents.
• Encyclopedia articles explaining several game mechanics in more detail.
• Game should now display price of auctioned virginities.
• Easy and normal difficulties now include a head start on reputation.
• Cheat mode now permits the player to choose an eligible random event instead of getting one randomly. This is mostly for my own debugging purposes and may have unexpected effects.
• Chastity belts should now properly prevent vaginal effects of whoring.
• Slaves in confinement should no longer appear walking around.
• Fixed bad interactions between mental states for slaves with more than one.
• The economy passage should properly display reputation.
• Addressed numerous other minor bugs and content oversights.

Also, if any Twine veterans know why older saves seem to slow the game down, by all means let me know. I've already disabled passage transitions, history controls, and history tracking, and the save files don't seem to hit a size that would cause slowdown.

Planned content, known bugs and omissions, and content that will not be added

These are the known bugs in the latest alpha build. I will keep this post updated; if it's included here, I know about it and don't need to be told. 

• Odd slaves with names like $activeSlave.slaveName will occasionally appear. This is usually due to bad random event code: if you can tell me what random event preceded the bugged slave appearing I can find the problem. When this happens, you should load a previous save.
• Saving the game and then using the enter key will both reopen the save interface and advance play. To avoid this, click inside the game window after saving
• Players will see the same random events more frequently than I'd like, because there aren't enough of them yet.

These things are definitely planned and don't need to be suggested.

• More random and non-random events.
• More surgical and appearance options.
• Ways for slaves to act nicely or abusively to one another.

These things will never be added to Free Cities.

• Detailed customization of the player character. I would love to add this but it would make coding scenes more complex than I can handle.
• Slaves referred to as "he." This would be a huge coding hassle and push outside the bounds of author appeal. The in-game encyclopedia explains the Free Cities approach to slave gender in some detail.
• Extreme fetishes such as scat and guro, and underage content.
• Anything not likely to be medically common in the next ten years. This means no limb transplantation or age acceleration, for example.
• Content focusing on the player character's or his slaves' offspring, which won't work in a quasi-realistic game in which 18 years is 936 turns.

ALPHA

I've reached the point where I'm not sure where to go, other than to keep playtesting and fixing bugs. So, here it is: an alpha build.

That means the game is missing content, is full of bugs, is imbalanced, and is generally in an incomplete state. If your interest in this is as a fun little text-based h-game, I strongly recommend you come back later, because it isn't there yet. This is the first time I've ever made a game or made one publicly available, and I'm at a point where I could use feedback, not at a point where I'm pleased with the result.

I'm not posting the fact that this is available elsewhere. There's enough views coming in via the /d/ games general pastebin that I hope to get enough feedback without doing so.

One category of feedback that is less useful is complaint about the interface. Twine 2 and Sugarcube aren't particularly well suited to this game, at least in novice hands like mine. I can make small improvements, but the UI will not be completely overhauled.

Download: Mega (outdated, find the latest version under Alpha in the sidebar). Leave feedback in the comments below, please.

Known bugs:

• The latest version of Chrome doesn't like the story format I'm using. Until the format author fixes the issue, use another browser to open the .html.
• Saving the game and then using the enter key to advance play without any intervening user input will both reopen the save interface and advance play. To avoid this, click inside the game window after saving.
• Grammar in some areas is poor, because changing the code frequently damages the syntax the player sees. Grammatical errors will persist until beta at least and I don't need to hear about them.
• There are currently options for no-dick, all-dick, and rare-dick slave content. Many random events are not limited by either extreme option at present.
• Hard-coded slaves from the thread on /d/ are imperfectly statted. Rather than redo all 100+ slaves every time I change something, they're going to stay as-is until all major content is complete.
• The game is slow, especially handling random events; I'm working on this.

Progress to September 12

Continued slow progress. This is probably a bad developer habit, but my playtesting often leads to new content even when I intend to limit myself to bugfixing. I often find myself noticing holes in the content as I squash bugs.

Latest updates:

• Basic market forces. (The invisible hand, coming to an h-game near you!) This is a lot less boring than it sounds. The price of all slaves (buying and selling) now fluctuates; there are four new random events that describe major happenings outside the player's control that cause drops or spikes in the average price of flesh in the game world. This has a bunch of cool synergies with other gameplay: for example, it's now possible to make good money buying low and selling high even if you don't do much training or alteration. But mostly, it makes the text-only world feel a bit more alive. The more I playtest the game, the more I add to the decadent, anarcho-capitalist gilded-age flavor. It seems to fit.
• More streamlining. If I find myself doing the same thing again and again in playtesting and can't think of a reason not to do it, it should happen by default.
• Birth names harmonized with ethnicity, and more names added. The names used imply that the slave trade is distinctly global. I suspect the authors of this Wikipedia article did not intend their work to be used this way, but now it has been.
• Procedural slave generator overhauled; it now produces more realistic results. Starting a transformation game from a realistic point is more fun, in my opinion.
• The usual bumper crop of bugs, typos, and imbecilities.

Progress to September 9

On the off chance anyone reading this is using Twine, learn from my mistakes. Apparently closing browser windows with Twine open at the same time can delete stories. Or something. Lost a few hours of good work to some sort of issue I'm not going to try and reproduce, but apparently, archive your stuff before you close browsers. That is all.

Recent updates:

• Reworked how much slaves cost. This obviously has a huge impact on gameplay. It may amuse the Econ majors in the audience to learn that a slave's worth is primarily based on what her gross revenue would be if she were to prostitute herself for six straight months.
• Tons of balance. For example, top of the line slave whores will now attract 10-11 customers per day, which I understand is around the real life limit.
• Expanded clothing descriptions; there are now 12 clothing options, and each has 4+ unique mentions in flavor text, in addition to gameplay effects.
• In-game encyclopedia! This isn't ridiculous, I swear. Mostly it's just a tooltip with a grandose name that lives over in the sidebar so it can be ignored.
• Rationalizations of the interactions between different attributes. For example, heavily pregnant slaves can no longer wear corsets.
• A bit more content for pregnant slaves; being heavily pregnant ought to appear pretty often in descriptions and gameplay.
• Random event for humiliation fetishists.

Progress to September 7

Things are now in the downslope towards an alpha. I have the code in place and enough content for a public playtest, which means bugfixes are the only real hurdle left. I now spend more time playing than coding, which is really encouraging for a novice coder.

Recent updates:

• Lots of little alternative descriptions. I want there to be at least two ways to describe almost everything to make the game's descriptions feel less robotic.
• Reworked buying slaves. Now, the better vendors of slaves are heavily restricted by reputation level, giving the player a strong motivation to improve reputation quickly.
• Recoded to identify slaves based on a hidden ID number rather than name. This will never be visible and will never change, preventing all sorts of evils. Naturally, my poor foresight meant that this change required altering the code in more than 200 places. Lesson learned.
• Added a miniscene the player can access with fertile slaves that gives a high chance to impregnate. Of course, a slave's reaction to this is highly dependent on how she feels about the PC.
• Reworked surgery UI to make surgery sprees easier. If a slave is healthy enough to bear it, the player can go nuts.
• More work on impotence; various things can now cause it, and having it stops a slave getting most gameplay benefits of a dick.
• More rules streamlining: when the player gets a new slave one click will now apply reasonable rules, basic drug regimes, basic clothing, etc. Eventually I should make this customizable but for now it's just the basics.
• And finally, tons of bugfixes.

Progress to September 2

I had a lot of time to work on this project in August; now it's September, so the updates are going to be sporadic. The major mechanical coding is done, though. Milestone reached.

Recent updates:

• The Hole! That is, solitary confinement. This is the most reliable slavebreaking method in the game. It's balanced, though: it's also a very reliable way to damage a slave's health, and can even cause bad mental effects.
• Random event for slaves in solitary. Like several random events, it's actually pretty depressing depending on what the player does. Also, good example of what I meant in previous posts about random events and stats being tough at times. Mute slaves can't get this event; it just can't work for them.
• Less randomness! I've started altering some stats to be more granular, allowing for things to progress more naturally. This is going be a long job. For now, the changes are applied to the boob code only, so for now things that affect tits will have more frequent but less radical effects.
• Baby steps toward balance. Rebalanced drug costs so some of the drug regimes are less of a money button. Recoded some of the money stuff to make future rebalancing easier; now everything runs off a couple of hidden cost stats.

The solitary confinement event reminds me, I wanted to mention tone. The overall tone of the game is pretty neutral; I'm not trying to make it constantly funny or constantly depressing. However, this isn't a game that ignores some of the less pleasant implications of slavery.