ALPHA 0.6.1: "As Seen on TV"

As expected, this update is mainly bugfixes and content filler for mechanics added in 0.6. However, it does make a couple of significant changes. One of them is likely to prove at least a little controversial: the promenade has been rewritten into a nightclub. Some new mechanics just weren't working with the promenade from a description standpoint, and I had long felt it was a dead end thematically. The promenade girls' roles were starting to overlap with future society upgrades, and the Concierge was starting to overlap with the Concubine. No longer: the girls are clubgirls now, and the Concierge is the FC version of a DJ slash club personality. The mechanics of the promenade are the same, however.

The new club and the preexisting brothel have a new feature, though: ad campaigns. It's now possible to spend ¤ advertising these facilities within the arcology. Veteran players may recall the variety bonuses available at the brothel and the old promenade. What advertising does is disable the relevant variety bonus and replace it with a larger bonus for slaves of the advertised type. For example, without advertising, brothels get a bonus when they have a balance of slim and stacked slaves. If you focus advertising on stacked slaves, though, you can build a purely stacked brothel workforce without sacrificing profits. Generic advertising can also be used if the player wishes to leave the variety bonuses active.

Several comments here and elsewhere asked whether Trust is simply another Devotion stat. Mechanically, that's a fair question; there are some nuances, but the two stats work together to do one thing. From a gameplay and writing standpoint, however, I'm deeply pleased with the change. Both revisions of old scenes and new scenes can now present a real gameplay decision ("Do I want to make this slave like me, or trust me?") rather than a purely flavor decision.

On suggestions and bug reports, I've always been willing to take feedback of any kind via email. (Time to reiterate that, apparently.) I understand Blogger's comment functions aren't the best, believe me. I'm realizing that bug reports in particular are often better by email, since they're easier for me to sort and address; commenting here will still work, of course.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs.

0.6.1 Changelog

Major additions:

• Expanded voice stat, with deep, feminine, girlishly high, or mute voices rather than simply mute or not. Voice has a minor effect on beauty, can be raised by surgery, and can be affected by hormones.
• Remodeled the promenade into a nightclub, since the promenade was not up to standard, was difficult to bring up to standard, was starting to overlap with cosmetic arcology upgrades, made little sense with the ad campaign option this update implements, and was less interesting than a more defined location. Partially inspired by suggestions from Boney M.
• Added an ad campaign option to the brothel and the club. When active, the campaign replaces any or all of the variety bonuses with bonuses for slaves that match the advertised characteristics.
• Extended the option to sell acquired slaves immediately to cover most enslavement opportunities, with reactions from the slaves, and added many unique induction options specific to an acquisition event.

New events:

• Three new recruitment events for different specific configurations of the player character.

Balance changes:

• Most obedience tests can now be passed by slaves who are at minimum either devoted, or frightened and resistant, or terrified.
• Revised the way entertainment and whoring skills apply to public service and prostitution, respectively. Both skills improve performance at both jobs, but the matching job is much more important.
• Curatives now synergize with rest, keeping the slave asleep most of the time to maximize health gains.

Minor updates:

• Numerous minor mentions of the player character's characteristics.
• New slaves now receive a devotion and trust effects from attraction to, sympathy for, or dislike of the PC's characteristics.
• New slaves now receive a devotion and trust effects from their initial reaction to the arcology's culture, if one is well-established.
• New slaves now receive a devotion and trust effects from seeing how other slaves feel about you, if the average feeling is strong either way.
• Gender Radicalist and Gender Fundamentalist future societies approve and disapprove of PCs with female characteristics, respectively.
• Asset Expansionist and Slimness Enthusiast societies enjoy high-voiced slaves of their preferred body type.
• Changed Degradationism's focus to slave intelligence, not education, since education cannot be removed. Head Girls and Recruiters remain exempt.
• Rules assistant handling for brands.
• More conversational topics for slaves asked about their feelings.
• More and better explanations on how to play in the Encyclopedia.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.6: "The Prince"

This update makes invasive changes to virtually every passage in FC by taking a blowtorch to the devotion system. If you are playing this game for fun, I strongly recommend waiting for 0.6.1 or 0.6.2. Play 0.5.11+ in the meantime, since 0.6+ is liable to be terribly buggy and badly balanced for at least another version. I've certainly playtested 0.6 myself, but once again I'm leaning on you all to help me there, since with all FC's features a reasonably complete test would take 10+ hours. I had a long list of goals for this long-deferred revision of the devotion system, including:

• Add character to individual slaves by adding more nuance than a simple devotion stat can provide.
• Provide alternative paths to players by offering approaches other than making every slave worshipful.
• Make the path to a mentally perfect slave less predictable and linear.
• Provide interesting choices that force the player to consider tradeoffs between benefit now and later.
• Confront nicer slaveowners with choices between cruelty and inefficiency.
• Create situations in which some of the most wantonly cruel options can offer a gameplay advantage.
• Differentiate between event options with mechanically identical outcomes.
• Reward individual attention to slaves while keeping the game playable for those who prefer to rely on the assistant.

I've attempted to address these goals by adding a trust stat in addition to the existing devotion stat. All mechanics that previously affected devotion now affect either devotion, trust, or frequently both. I'll leave the exact balance for playtesters to discover (mostly because this is a complex enough system that I want to see if any unexpectedly good stuff emerges), but the basics are as follows. Slaves are now somewhere between terrified and trusting on the one hand, and hateful towards the player or devoted to him on the other. Obedience is no longer a range on the Devotion spectrum; it's now a derived and hidden stat based on devotion, trust, or both, and differs for each task. Devotion and trust are good, of course, with one enormous caveat: if a slave does not yet accept her position under the PC, it is better for her to fear him than to trust him. Methods of creating enough fear to break a slave in the short term also reduce devotion, though, pushing the eventual goal of raising devotion farther off. The trick to slavebreaking is to find reliable ways of creating the minimum necessary amount of fear while doing as little damage to devotion as possible.

Oh, almost forgot. There's one other small addition: it's now possible to play as a woman, or even an intersex person. These options are very broad-strokes. Rather than implementing full player character customization (which will never happen), this update allows the player character to choose, for example, a vagina or a penis. I'm holding the scene complexity down by keeping the options on the order of penis/vagina, rather than full PC description. Furthermore, I like having the PC nice and vague, and the transformation focus on the slaves. There are many, many good h-games that involve PC transformation; I consider the market well-served, so I'm not eager to spend time on it. On the other hand, I haven't seen a good femdom slavegame, so here we are. A word of warning: female PCs in FC are going to behave a lot like male PCs in FC. From the slaves' perspective, there's rarely going to be much difference other than being molested by a strap-on rather than a bona fide dick. Gameplay effects like future society interactions for female PCs are very much planned.

There's been yet another wave of questions asking if I'm ignoring suggestions. So, yet again: I read every single comment I get, and seriously consider every single suggestion that isn't something I've publicly ruled out. The chance of any single suggestion making it into the game promptly is very low, however, because my time is finite. Please understand that I get so many suggestions that many good ones don't get addressed right away. If you can code or are willing to learn, though, there's one good way to make your suggestion more likely: email me, and I'll let you know if I'd add it, were you to code it. Four contributors are currently adding to FC, that I'm aware of.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs. I do mean it this time. If you load an old game the code won't be able to tell whether your character has a dick or not. Latest hotfix at 1930 PST; patched issues include misapplications of the female PC rep malus and the high trust / low devotion conflict penalty.

0.6 Changelog

Major updates:

• New introduction sequence to better introduce the game world and start options to new players; veterans will find a skip option on the first intro screen.
• Devotion and all related mechanics have been broken out into Devotion, Trust, or both. Most Devotion checks are now quite severe, but can be passed with low Trust (e.g., a terrified slave) instead. High Trust combined with low Devotion is extremely negative. Trust is very similar to Devotion, mechanically.

Major balance changes:

• Devotion and the new Trust stat now apply multipliers to slave cost, to more accurately price the value of a devoted and trusting slave over an unbroken one.

Minor additions:

• The upper bound of Devotion has been lowered to match that of the new Trust stat, and to preserve overall balance, since many preexisting Devotion-raising mechanisms now affect Trust instead.
• Devotion and the new Trust stat now have a lower bound in addition to an upper bound.
• Devotion and the new Trust stat can now become soft locked at the lower bound, like the way in which Devotion can be soft locked up at Worshipful.
• New drug regime, hormone enhancement, that doubles a slave's chances of seeing hormonal effects.
• Arcade upgrade that milks and/or cockmilks appropriate inmates at severely reduced efficiency, and attempts to drug them to increase relevant asset sizes whenever their health can take it.
• Rules assistant option to automatically apply lactation inducing drug implants.
• Added customization options at start to specify whether the player character has either a dick or a pussy, either a masculine chest or feminine breasts, and whether the character is addressed as Master or Mistress. Female characteristics make it harder to maintain reputation.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.5.11: "Daily Routine"

I have no set benchmark for the release of an update. In this case, enough minor content additions, recoding, and bugfixes have accumulated that there's an update's worth. Updates of this kind are going to become more common as FC moves from rapid addition of new mechanics to filling out, improving, and debugging existing mechanics. Unlike updates that added things like corporate management or societal manipulation, 0.5.11 is simply a slightly faster, less buggy, and more complete experience. The latter is what really absorbs an immense amount of my dev time, and fortunately, it's a lot of fun. For example, there are certain comments a slave can now make that the vast majority of players will never see: little touches to make the rare girl that qualifies seem a little more alive.

The core of 0.5.11 is a comprehensive recode of all facilities and most assignments. A contributor reorganized the existing facility code to cut down on the number of loops the game has to run in order to generate facility and assignment reports. The need for me to review this work line by line before including it meant that this was a good time to make balance changes and minor content additions to the facilities, too.

There are several intended behaviours being reported as bugs. Some event options will only appear for appropriate slaves; if you see the same event for different slaves, it's entirely possible that you won't have the same options both times. I try to make this clear when it happens, but in places it would give away undiscovered fetishes to do so.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs. Latest hotfix, 0.5.11.2, at 1945 PST. Addresses collection facility assignment and report bugs.

0.5.11 Changelog

Major updates:

• Complete review and recode of all facilities and many assignments. This should reduce end of week lag. Based on coding by bob22smith2000.

New events:

• High-reputation event that gives a glimpse into the life of a female arcology owner.
• Three new dilemma events.
• Event for a busy master suite with a concubine, that involves sex with, and calls out, every single slave in the suite.
• Individual event for slaves who hate oral. Written by anon, coded by Boney M.

Significant balance changes:

• Heavily reduced on-the-job skills gains to encourage use of other training methods.
• Comprehensive facility balance changes, generally to reduce (but not eliminate) the advantage of a facility with a good leader over work under the PC's direct supervision.

Minor updates:

• Many more possible topics for slaves asked about their feelings.
• Additional options for preexisting events.
• Increased the minimum obedience requirement to work in the collection facility and dairy.
• Eliminated the obedience requirement for amputees to work in the collection facility and dairy.
• Upgrades for the collection facility and dairy which eliminate the obedience requirement for working there.
• More fetish changes in leadership positions, preventable with smart piercings.
• Improved relative recruitment system. Based on coding by Boney M.
• Recruiters' effectiveness is now affected by entertainment skill.
• Improved job-related injury system: some upgrades and skills now give a chance that customers who hurt the girls will have to pay; this system can be affected by certain future society choices.
• Societal slave renaming can be turned off from the new options menu, or can be mass-applied from the future society menu.
• New nationalities: Malians, Tunisians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Emiratis, Omanis, and Libyans.
• Added natural and implanted statuses to main menu slave summaries.
• New encyclopedia entries on requested topics.
• Autosaving can be turned off from the new options menu, accessible from the sidebar.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.5.10: "The Inner Girl"

This update adds content to previous mechanics, adds events, changes balance, and fixes bugs. The only mechanically significant addition is the ability to ask slaves about their outlook, and that's a fairly simple, if time-consuming, mechanism to code. That should make this one of the more stable releases.

Feedback request: if you read the options available during an random event, and there's something that you'd like to do but isn't an option, let me know. I need to know which event and what you'd like to be able to do in response to it. Many events have only two options and need a third at minimum, and I will include four or even five if the scene supports that many good ideas.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs.

0.5.10 Changelog

Major additions:

• Slaves can now be permitted to choose their own assignments. Their logic for doing so takes into account their obedience, health, education, skills, fetishes, and some future societies. This is best applied to devoted slaves, and the rules assistant option for the setting is limited to devoted slaves.
• Slaves can be asked their opinion on their lives. They will currently comment on their feelings towards the PC, their sexual tendencies, what their favorite part of their bodies is, their relationship status, their skills, and their work, but this feature is almost infinitely expandable.

New events:

• Individual event for slaves whose lower backs could use a rest in the pool.
• Individual event for subordinate servants who can't figure out how to get out of a walk-in refrigerator.
• Alternative event for slaves who qualify for the too-common forbidden masturbation event.
• Recruiter events for older sisters, mothers, and twins; with both XX and XY slaves enabled, recruited slaves' biology may not match the recruiter.
• Acquisition event for Ancient Egyptian Revivalism, featuring incestuous siblings. Written and coded by Boney M.
• Prestige event for former abolitionists. Written and coded by Boney M.

Significant balance changes:

• Reduced reputation efficiency of public service, and reduced power of promenade bonuses.
• Reduced health improvement in all facilities for already-healthy slaves, except the Spa.
• Gave Attendants a chance to restore sanity, which Paternalist societies approve of. The ability is strongly limited: the chance is small and dependent on the Attendant's devotion, it requires the slave to have already been healed in the spa for some time, and the Attendant can only attempt it with one slave per week.
• Permissive or sapphic release rules now offer a small chance of revealing undiscovered fetishes.

Minor updates:

• Several new slave induction options. Written by Boney M and DrPill; coded by Boney M.
• Expensive, high-upkeep collection facility upgrade that milks lactating slaves at reduced efficiency.
• Empty facilities can now be decommissioned; overfull facilities will now display a warning.
• Better logic for perverted Head Girls.
• More nicknames.
• Special slave names for Degradationist arcologies; slaves will appear with appropriate degrading names already in place.
• Slaves can be reverted to their birth names with a single click.
• Additional future society specific descriptions for facilities.
• Future society breakdown in the encyclopedia.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.5.9: "Land of the Pharaohs"

These changelogs rarely include all the little balance changes and bugfixes I constantly make. However, there were two bugs in 0.5.8 that could really affect how the game played, so I'll note them for optimizers' benefit. First, concubines were bugged to be almost totally ineffective. They are now working as intended, and it's very useful to have a pretty one. Second, age lifts were being counted twice in beauty calculations, so older ladies were getting an unintended boost.

As before, any regularly contributing playtesters should let me know in the comments if I can give the proper credit for their efforts in the credits.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs. Last hotfix at 18:50 PST; fixed problems include a brothel customization display issue, misspellings, and some rules assistant issues (RA may remain troublesome). Hotfix is save compatible.

0.5.9 Changelog

Major additions:

• New future society, Ancient Egyptian Revivalism, which is mutually exclusive with Roman Revivalism. It is advanced by and improves reputation when owning a large variety of races, keeping many slaves in your Master Suite, and having slaves in incestuous relationships; and it enhances the bonus slaves receive for prostitution and public service with relatives.
• Future society specific cosmetic arcology upgrades. To give these upgrades a gameplay impact, future society adoption is periodically gated by purchase of the next cosmetic improvement.
• Many new clothing options, including future society specific options that are only available after a society model is partially adopted. Paternalism unlocks conservative clothing, Degradationism unlocks chains, Pastoralism unlocks Western clothing, Physical Idealism unlocks body oil, and Roman Revivalism unlocks the toga. Ancient Egyptian Revivalism unlocks a special golden collar. Slaves allowed to choose their own clothes will prefer these options. Added one vanilla clothing option, a slutty quipao.

New events:

• Individual event for whores who've had a rough day.
• Individual event for slaves allowed to have an opinion about what drugs they want.
• Individual event for older slaves with age lifts who could use a nice day off.

Minor updates:

• Increased reputation decay to compensate for the recently added reputation sources, but increased the floor at which it starts.
• Dilemma events involving a slave now permit the player to pay to keep both parties happy, and receive the slave.
• With either Roman or ancient Egyptian revivalism active, slaves may be renamed to a random name from that culture.
• Prestigious concubines and sexually veteran concubines now grant an extra reputation bonus.
• Lip reduction and tendon restoration surgeries.
• Slaves allowed to choose their own clothes will now select their own shoes, too.
• Increased likelihood of clit growth from all sources, and made it possible though unlikely for slaves with ovaries on strong male hormones to see clit growth.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.5.8: "Lord of the Manor"

This update includes two little events that I had a lot of fun writing. The player will occasionally be called upon to resolve disputes between citizens of the arcology, like the modern-day Lord of the Manor the PC resembles. These events only occur once each, since they lack randomized elements and would otherwise become obnoxious. Let me know what you think about these events; they're a nonsexual side of the PC's life that we could see more of, or ignore entirely.

I'm starting to pay more attention to the UI. This update adds several hotkeys to the main menu; I've selected them so that the game should be comfortably playable with one's left hand on the keyboard and right hand on a mouse. (Naturally, playing one-handed is still acceptable.) I am playtesting FC on a gaming rig with a 1920x1080 widescreen monitor and on an old 1366x768 laptop, using Firefox and Chrome. If you're using a common setup that isn't one of those, and FC doesn't look right, let me know.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs. Latest hotfix is 0.5.8.1, 10:00 PST January 4. Fixed issues include pharma glitch, buttplug glitch, bad addict event descs, erroneous nickname omissions, and more.

0.5.8 Changelog

Major changes:

• Expanded hotkey support; a full list can be found under "Keyboard Shortcuts" in the FC encyclopedia.

New events:

• Introductory fetish events for pregnancy, breast, and pain fetishism.
• Two of a new type of event that requires the player to resolve dilemmas between two citizens.
• Events for Wardenesses, Attendants, and Concubines.
• Two new crime and punishment events, and made such events available earlier.

Minor updates:

• Burmese, Afghan, Yemeni, Nepalese, Algerian, Iraqi, Sudanese, and Uzbek slaves.
• Additional choices for preexisting events, and reshuffled event distribution.
• Lip injections.
• The surgical assistant will now apply multiple surgeries per week to very healthy slaves.
• Vaginal and anal surgeries now affect related skills, similar to how lip surgery affects oral skill.
• Doms, subs, and sadists now slightly improve the obedience of slaves assigned to sexually service them; sadists slightly damage their health.
• All leadership positions can now give a fetish to slaves that do not already have one.
• Various fetish updates: submissives now get a bonus as spa Attendants; some rules, clothes, and accessories can cause fetishes; and more.
• Better handling of the Head Girl's relationship with her girl.
• Better logic for the Head Girl's modification of her girl, including much better attention to the PC's societal goals, and use of some of the more extreme surgical options. Sadistic Head Girls are particularly aggressive.
• Arcade upgrade that converts mindbroken slaves from an overcrowded arcade into human sex toys and sells them.
• Several minor upgrades for the penthouse.
• Many improved descriptions.
• Code streamlining for better performance.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.5.7: "Her Girl"

This update addresses three major requests that have been echoed often enough to deserve some work. First, the starting sequence has been revised, with hardcoded slaves having a much less significant impact. For now, the player will receive only one regardless of difficulty options. Second, the Head Girl has gotten some love. Third and finally, it's now possible to customize slaves in facilities in a limited way. I may relax these limits further if possible, but for now they're necessary to keep the game playable.

I'm pretty confident playtesters will find all sorts of delightful ways to abuse the new starting system for fun and profit. A major limitation of my own internal playtesting is that I know the code very well - having a great memory is tremendously useful when creating the game, but it means I can't easily play the game from the perspective of someone who doesn't know its mechanics by heart. Balance feedback is very useful.

Since this is a mechanics-heavy update, bugs are likely. Event-heavy updates tend to be much more stable, since the code in them is usually well tested and doesn't cause serious trouble if it's not. As I've said before, I consider this an alpha, so I'm focusing on creating content, not making sure it's perfect before it goes public. In any case, unless the truly unforeseen occurs, the next several updates will focus on content, events, and bugfixes, making 0.5.8+ more stable than 0.5.6 and 0.5.7.

After three consecutive mechanics-focused updates, the game is now in dire need of some events. The new facilities, leadership positions, the corporation, and the new fetishes all need multiple events. I'll focus on them as much as I can, but that pushes the need for many more generic, sexy events with slaves even further down the list of things to do. This is therefore a good time to post my answer to a question on /d/ about event submissions:

I will now consider event submissions. However, anyone who wishes to submit an event should carefully consider the requirements before spending time on it.

• Authors must be willing to resign all rights to their work. I won't intentionally butcher anything, but I need to be able to make code and lore changes as necessary. That means I need to be able to edit everything in the game freely.
• Authors must be code-literate, or willing to learn. I am not posting a tutorial on doing this. You must be able to open the game in Twine to see how the events work.
• Events must be well coded and code-consistent with the rest of the game. This is my first major project and I usually don't have enough time to fix my own bugs, never mind others'. For veteran coders, this will probably mean copying some of my imbecilities to stay consistent.
• For now, events must be independent in code terms. I will not be adding stats, items, etc. to support event submissions.
• Events must be fairly consistent with my writing style and totally consistent with the existing lore. A new player should not be able to immediately tell that a submitted event has a different author than the rest of the game.

I am aware that these are pretty onerous, and I'll be neither surprised nor disappointed if no submissions appear. On the other hand, if anyone is willing to subject themselves to this, I'd be happy to have FC profit by their enthusiasm. To avoid wasting your time, I strongly suggest you email me an outline of your idea so I can jump in with guidance if your plans don't fit into the game. The ideal first event submission is probably a single-slave scene without major stat impacts, like about half of the scenes currently available.

Also, OldHuntsman discussed FC on his blog! If Google Translate can be trusted, he played it for a while, and had a bunch of feedback. JoNT started me down the path to FC, so this pleases me immensely.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs. Latest hotfix at 12:20 PST, January 2. Hotfix should address all reported issues up to that time.

0.5.7 Changelog

Major additions:

• Revised intro sequence: the player will now receive a single hardcoded slave and a varying amount of money with which to customize any number of starting slaves at a reduced rate. Starting slaves will be pseudo-random, but after committing one, subsequent slaves can be based on the first one.
• Penthouse upgrade that puts your Head Girl in a suite of her own. A single slave can be assigned to live with her there, improving her effectiveness and subjecting that slave to the HG's tastes in clothes, drugs, surgery, etc.
• Major UI improvements, including the ability to alter some settings, apply surgeries, etc. to slaves in facilities.

Minor updates:

• Three new fetishes: masochism, sadism, and dominance; the last two will be expressed mostly towards other slaves.
• Reviewed preexisting fetish content, including how fetishes interact with assignments and relationships.
• Nicknames for all leadership positions.
• Cash-rich corporations can now invest in assets at an accelerated rate.
• The corporation will now track how many people it's enslaved, to keep the player informed as to approximately how much human misery they've profited from.
• Slaves' stats will now track how many kills they have in lethal pit fights, and the arcology will track how many slaves have died in pit fights.
• The rules assistant will no longer put slaves in positions in which virility is advantageous on female hormones.
• Bugfixes.