ALPHA 0.6.5: "Youth versus Experience"

One of the legends of games design once described a good game as "a series of interesting choices." I really like this way of thinking about games, and I try to keep it in mind while I work on FC. If at any point in the game the player doesn't really have a choice, or one of the available choices is clearly superior, that's not good. Of course, erotic games like FC have an added requirement: they should be full of choices that are both interesting and sexy. There are some interesting decisions in FC, and a lot of sexual ones, but the best are both. This update should improve some old choices, and add good new ones.

I'm working around some hard limits when it comes to PC customization. The basic problem is this: the time it takes to write a scene is probably proportional to the square of the number of PC options. I mention this because this update adds an age choice to PC customization, and I'm sure I'm going to get requests for younger and older options. Unless I go back and add a lot more code to scenes, mental changes, initial slave feelings, and reputation, I need to assume that the PC is energetic, handsome and/or pretty, and has had at least some time to accomplish things before we meet them. If we get outside the 25-50 range I've been assuming all along, that gets increasingly unlikely. To allow the player some room for imagination, the choices are "surprisingly young," "early middle age," and "late middle age." I suppose it's possible to write a backstory that fits with what we see in game for a really remarkable 20 or 60 year old PC, so feel free to interpret those vague descriptors.

Finally, I've added an option at game start to disable "extreme content," which I've provisionally defined as amputation, muting, rib removal, surgical mindbreak, and gelding. To be blunt, having this option should not be controversial. Your FC experience will be unaffected by the availability of this option if you play with extreme content active, so I'm uninterested in hearing complaints about letting someone else avoid what they consider a boner killer. FC is officially pro-boner. The corollary to the current trend towards acceptance of other people's notions of what's sexy is that it needs to be okay for people to find things unsexy, too. Comments insulting others for not wanting to see amputee content will be deleted just like comments insulting others for wanting to see amputee content. Take it elsewhere. That said, if you'd like a refinement of the current definition of extreme content to exclude something else you don't want to see, or to include something you don't want pruned, by all means leave feedback.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. 0.6.5.2 is the latest hotfix, 1045 PST 3/31. Probably save compatible. Latest hotfix addresses rep bug.

0.6.5 Changelog

Starting options

• Player character age. Available options are young, early middle age, and late middle age. The older the PC, the higher their starting reputation, the easier it is to maintain reputation, and the lower their sexual energy. New slaves may react to a significant age gap with the PC.
• New starting option to disable extreme content; this is currently set up to disable amputation, muting, rib removal, surgical mindbreak, and gelding.
• Extreme content and nicknaming toggles added to options.
• Made starting slave customization much more deterministic to discourage spamming the same choices in hopes of getting a specific result.

Sexual energy

• The game now tracks the PC's sexual energy, a hidden derived stat. Fucktoys and master suite slaves will receive greater or lesser effects depending on the ratio of such slaves to the PC's sexual energy.
• Added a new alternative focus to training slaves personally or focusing on business: sex. This raises the PC's sexual energy for the week and is useful if the player wishes to quickly improve many fucktoys or slaves in the master suite.
• In compensation, improved the business focus effect on arcology prosperity gains.

Future societies

• Added laws to Maturity and Youth Preferentialism. Each law eases reputation maintenance and improves the business focus for PCs of the corresponding age group.
• Eased the inappropriately unforgiving advancement curve of Edo Revivalism.
• The Concubine now counts towards the size of an Arabian Revivalist harem.
• Added a demand element to the body type future society laws (Asset Expansionism, Transformation Fetishism, etc.) that slightly increases demand for slaves that fit the model.

New events

• The PC can walk in on sadistic slaves verbally torturing anal virgins.
• Generic sexual event with a fisting option, per an old request.

Mental revisions

• Getting a slave to Worshipful and Absolute Trust is now slower without personal attention, but quicker with it.
• Increased stickiness of Extreme Hatred and Abject Terror.
• Worshipfulness will break a slave loose from Extreme Hatred; Absolute Trust will break a slave loose from Abject Terror.
• Renamed Daring to Perverted to avoid similarity to Caring.
• Recast High Self Esteem to Insecure based on feedback.
• Boosted reputation gain from trust and devotion overflows.
• Abuse will now produce a much wider variety of flaws.
• Reviewed all fetish changes to reduce frequency of changes and add devotion as a factor where it wasn't one.
• Greatly increased the natural incidence of slaves without fetishes.
• Slave relationships
• Slaves on luxurious rules with lovers or wives get an upkeep discount, since the two can share a room.
• Lots more slices of life for slaves with lovers or wives, randomly visible on the main menu.
• Revised long form relationship and relationship rules descriptions to make what the PC is permitting clearer.
• Slaves in the Head Girl suite will not form relationships with the HG unless they are Accepting or better.

Other updates

• Rebalanced slave costs: minimum prices increased, value curve flattened, importance of many qualities changed.
• Heavily increased effectiveness of expending virginities during whoring or public service.
• Added artistic Asian tattoos.
• Added cheerleader, club netting, and shibari rope outfits.
• Added a weather cladding upgrade that hardens the arcology against the weather, dropping the weather down one severity level for damage purposes.
• Now possible to rename the arcade, club, and brothel: this function will be extended to all facilities in the future.
• Reformatted the end of week reports to prioritize the slave's job performance and make things clearer.
• Moved several options from the main menu to the options menu.
• Better rules assistant logic to avoid wasting money when applying body mods and cosmetics.
• Rebalanced reputation element of prosperity growth to discourage the player from ignoring reputation.
• Expanded massive corporate investment to virtually exhaust the corporation's cash on hand.
• Basic first turn walkthrough added to the encyclopedia.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.6.4: "Test of Character"

My plans for FC have a way of going sideways, but this should be the last in a series of framework-extending updates; the next few updates at least have a lot of content to fill out.

This update adds to the mental system. An unfortunate choice of terminology early in development is going to introduce a lot of confusion here. 0.6.4 renames everything previously called a quirk to a flaw, and adds a companion system based on characteristics called quirks. Confused yet? There are now quirks and flaws; the quirks are new; and the flaws are what used to be called quirks. The basic idea is that a quirk is a positive quality that a slave gets from careful training that preserves her uniqueness while removing a flaw.

The system is in a fairly early state: quirks do not interact with many other mechanics yet. I also plan to add more ways to add beneficial quirks to slaves. However, I do intend to resist the inevitable demands that it be made possible to easily give any slave any quirk the player desires. That would devalue the character the system lends to individual slaves. Since well-broken slaves tend to resolve their flaws naturally, a sort of urgency appears to quirk training. I like the implications of this: the player has to race the grinding effects of slavery to rescue something of a slave's uniqueness before devotion destroys it forever. I'm concerned that softening is a little easy at the moment, so there's little reason not to do it, but we'll see.

This update adds Revivalist future society models for Edo Japan, medieval Arabia, and imperial China, because they've been requested for a while, and because I like them. I'm sure I'm going to get questions on a couple of thematic choices I made. First, Revivalism is not at all about historical accuracy in the FC world: it's about grandeur, decadence, and the player character showing off. The Rome of Roman Revivalism probably looks a lot more like the film Gladiator than the real Rome. For this 0.6.4, means that Arabian Revivalism does not include direct references to Islam. It borrows a look, a focus on slave trading, harems, and little else. Second, I decided not to include a eunuch feature for either Arabian or Chinese Revivalism, despite the obvious opportunity. The trouble here is that in both these cultures eunuch roles were entirely or almost entirely nonsexual, and the surgery involved removal of both twig and berries. Since that isn't possible in the FC code, it isn't included.

Also, Twine is a favorite platform among some tribe of moralizing scolds, apparently? Lovely. When a comment and a bit of confirming Google research informed me of this, I felt my shriveled black heart expand a bit. Then I went back to using Twine to recode how FC calculates the profits the player receives from forcing sex work on slaves that appeal to popular racial fetishes.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work.

0.6.4 Changelog

Expanded quirks and flaws:

• Existing quirk variable renamed to flaw.
• All flaws can now be softened into a beneficial quirk that can only be given to slaves that have the corresponding flaw.
• Quirks added to random slave generation, though they are very rare.
• Head Girls can be ordered to soften flaws instead of removing them; softening a flaw is much harder than removing it and requires that the slave be Accepting or better.
• The PC can soften flaws using personal attention; softening a flaw is harder than removing it and requires that the slave be Ambivalent or better. The PC has an advantage over the HG at softening flaws.
• All quirks provide extra Devotion or Trust in at least one situation that appeals to them.
• A spa staffed with an intelligent Attendant can soften quirks. Other facility, accessory, and job based mechanisms for resolving quirks remain active. If the player wishes to soften a quirk, this should be done with delicate training rather than on the job.
• Muting will remove quirks along with the associated flaws.
• Appropriate fetishes can soften flaws based on a slave's combined Devotion and Trust; if a quirk is already present the flaw will be removed as previously.
• Slaves with quirks are not prevented from acquiring more flaws, though quirks can remove the corresponding flaw. Softening a new flaw by training will replace the existing quirk.

Future societies:

• Edo Revivalism: advanced by providing a large number of public servants or a well staffed club and held back by failing to do so. Improves efficiency of public service and service in the club. Increases beauty of Japanese slaves. Law greatly enhances efficiency of societal spending.
• Arabian Revivalism: advanced by keeping a large harem of personal slaves and held back by failing to do so. Once well accepted, grants a significant bonus to bids recieved when selling slaves. Law enhances efficiency of societal spending and provides a modest rent increase.
• Chinese Revivalism: advanced by maintaining a Head Girl, Recruiter, and Bodyguard, and held back by failing to do so. Maintaining all three rapidly improves prosperity. Increases beauty of Chinese slaves. Law enables your Head Girl to train another slave each week.
• Additional choice for the arcology acquisition rumor PC customization: societal engineering, which unlocks the first of three future society choices at game start.
• Revisions to Gender Radicalism per feedback from enthusiasts. The society now mildly approves of girls with balls provided they're reasonably contented with their lives, and does not disapprove of them, ever. Adoption of Gender Radicalism will reduce and eventually reverse the beauty penalty for both dicks and balls.
• Gender Fundamentalism now causes additional beauty penalties for dicks, but this penalty can now be reduced by gelding, to keep at least one future society with direct castration beauty bonuses.
• Updated future society clothing restriction list.

Minor changes:

• Additional choice for the career PC customization: arcology engineering, which reduces the cost of upgrading the arcology.
• Boosted base slavebreaking speed of the Cellblock and Servants' Quarters.
• Personal attention will now correctly prevent slaves from hitting weekly devotion and trust gain caps.
• After long, uninterrupted service, a Head Girl can achieve basic prestige on her own merits. The length of time necessary depends on her devotion, trust, and intelligence, but even a perfect Head Girl requires at least 20 weeks to become prestigious.
• Significant additions to the encyclopedia to better explain areas where players expressed confusion.
• Descriptive phrasing and text color changes to make information clearer at a glance.
• More player-inspired slave buyers.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.6.3: "On the Horizon"

It has been brought to my attention that the cellblock, spa, and schoolroom are bad. To address this, 0.6.3 adds a contract services function. If you have any of these facilities staffed, and fewer than five of your own slaves in the facility, the Wardeness, Attendant or Schoolteacher will have time on her hands. She'll bring citizens' slaves in for training in the background, making money based on how much extra time she has and how good she is at her job. Good staff can make a reasonable profit, making it worthwhile to set the facilities up even if they aren't always needed for the PC's own slaves.

I don't have a long term plan for what I work on or when I'll work on it. I mention this because I don't want this update to give anyone the mistaken impression that a sequel to FC is imminent. When I switch over to working on that, which should probably be after FC 1.0, it'll be obvious; new content for FC will dry up for a long time. The change in 0.6.3 that invokes the future of FC is the addition of a simple long term threat. I'll leave the mechanics to the changelog below for those who wish to avoid spoilers. It's fairly punishing by design, and one-handed mode turns it off.

I've been surprised and gratified by players' interest in some of the more simulationist aspects of the game. Thus encouraged, I've added basic demographic tracking to the game to give the player some indication of the thousands of lives involved. The PC's arcology will start with slaves heavily outnumbered by free citizens; I've never actually made this clear, but that's how I visualize things. (Otherwise, the high demand for slave prostitutes seen in the game doesn't make sense.) However, a healthy arcology will naturally skew harder and harder towards slaves as slaves are imported and wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few. Population will otherwise tend to slowly follow prosperity, but some future societies can also impact it, as noted in their encyclopedia entries. In turn, the ratio of citizens to slaves will impact the efficiency of sex work. This effect is balanced so that in 0.6.3, for example, whoring starts out more profitable than whoring in 0.6.2, slides to parity with whoring in 0.6.2 in the midgame, and eventually becomes less profitable than whoring in 0.6.2 in the lategame. I promise FC won't turn into a full-blown erotic simulation; for that, you'll have to play Crusader Kings 2.

Feedback requests: I've played so much FC at this point that I could use perspective from players who don't know the mechanics by heart, on two things. First, how's the balance from your perspective? My 0.6.3 playtests felt too easy, but I wonder if that's me knowing all the tricks. Second, what don't you understand from playing the game or looking in the encyclopedia? I suspect I need to do a better job of explaining mechanics, but again, I need outside perspectives on that. As mentioned on /d/, I'll consider suggestions for more lategame specializations of future societies. Also, if you post what you'd look for in a slave market, I may include you as a potential "prominent citizen" buyer.

Download 0.6.3.2: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. With the current versions of Twine 2 and Sugarcube 2, Firefox seems to run the game somewhat better than Chrome does, though both work fine.

Latest hotfix at 1655 PST March 17. Addresses most reported bugs. Save compatible. 0.6.3.2 is not fully playtested. 0.6.3.1 is still up on Dropbox in the unlikely event it's unplayable.

0.6.3 Changelog

Major additions:

• Demographic tracking for the arcology's population. It starts with citizens outnumbering slaves but will naturally shift towards slaves. Some future society choices will affect this process. Demographics will affect the efficiency of sexual services like whoring, public service, and the Arcade.
• Arcology-wide laws that can be implemented when a future society is fully adopted, the arcology is completely customized to support it, and the player has enough money and reputation to overcome the strong Free Cities resistance to such things. These vary from changes to leadership positions to radical modification of the output of the random slave generator.
• Options menu for the personal assistant. As your personal assistant develops, she will offer the option to select her virtual appearance. This will be visible in her options menu, and will reflect what she's doing at the time, if anything.

New events:

• A new kind of once-per-slave event for slaves who have undergone major changes since being enslaved. Two such events are possible: one for heavily feminized slaves with dicks, and one for MILFs who have learned to enjoy sex. Based on a suggestion from /d/.
• Generic inspection event for terrified slaves.

Significant rebalancing:

• Severe weather conditions will now damage the arcology, requiring costly repairs. One-handed mode disables this.
• In some situations, excessive devotion or trust now overflows into the other rather than being lost.
• The cellblock, spa, and schoolroom now allow their leaders to earn money by contracting out slave training services if the PC has fewer than five slaves in the facility.
• Complete rebalance of the sexual release rules.

Minor updates:

• Two mutually opposed future societies: Youth Preferentialism and Maturity Preferentialism; these are very basic for now.
• More potential slave buyers, based on /d/ anons' preferences; selling to any of these will produce unique reactions from other slaves.
• Distinct vaginal accessory rules assistant settings for virgins and non-virgins, to allow automation of virginity preservation.
• Better drug logic for the rules assistant: for optimal asset expansion, set curatives to fix unhealthy slaves only.
• Unless the Transformation Fetishist or Asset Expansionist future societies are active, Head Girls should be less aggressive about implanting their personal slaves.
• The arcade will now do its best to maximize inmate fluid production by applying lactation drugs where appropriate.
• Additional options for existing events.
• Continued event option balancing between devotion and trust.
• Numerous minor UI revisions.
• Updated gameplay information in the encyclopedia.
• Bugfixes.

ALPHA 0.6.2: "Side Effects"

This update includes a couple of fairly invasive changes to the way players are able to control slaves' sex lives. I (obviously) think they're changes for the better, but as with all such changes I'm sure there will be dissenters. This area is going to see a lot more work, however, so if you're not satisfied with your control over when, who and how your slaves fuck in this version, be aware that I'm actively working on it.

On the subject of changes that may prove controversial, I've removed the upfront health penalties of the more powerful drugs and replaced them with a hidden stat that tracks the long-term damage done to a slave's body by drugs powerful enough to accelerate healing or cause rapid breast growth. In the short term, this makes drugs much more effective, since they have no upfront health cost. In the long term, however, players who make heavy use of growth hormones and the like will start to see minor, transitory conditions appear in slaves: headaches, heart arrhythmias, night terrors, that sort of thing. They're not mechanically different from the health penalties they replace, since their only impact is to chip away at health. But for slaves who spend most of the game on drugs, and especially if they're older, these will become common.

From a strictly mechanical perspective, this change probably makes the game easier, since these effects take a while to appear and rarely subtract more health than drugs used to. But I'm fine with that, because it's interesting. As I've mentioned before, I'll take interesting over mechanically balanced every time. If the game confronts players with an easier path whose price is the tiniest sliver of one's soul, so much the better. I actually considered and rejected this particular idea earlier in development. I've gotten enough feedback since then from players who seem to enjoy these facets of the game, however, that I decided to implement it after all.

As always, thanks to everyone who took the time to report bugs in 0.6.1. I've done my best to address the hundreds of bugs reported. Recent playtests have gone fairly well, but I'm sure several remain unfixed despite my efforts.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work.

Hotfix 0.6.2.3 includes patches for most reported issues thus far, including the glory hole cash bug. If you have not started a new game with a fresh 0.6.2.3 download, please do not report bugs.

0.6.2 Changelog

Major additions:

• Listing a slave for sale will generate a list of interested bidders. Bids will vary in value, and accepting certain bids will produce minor mental effects on other slaves.
• Continued new game improvements, including two new PC customizations that give some choice regarding his or her backstory and skills, and a normalization function that awards one or more hardcoded slaves and/or cash at game start to reduce the impact of luck.
• Seven new quirks: slaves can now be devout, liberated, gluttonous, repressed, shamefast, sexually idealistic, or sexually apathetic; these new quirks fit into the existing quirk system but all offer some unique behaviors as well.
• The generic health impacts of most drugs have been replaced with a hidden system that tracks the long-term health impacts of using powerful drugs and can appear with a vengeance after long-term drug or hormone use. Going drug-free will slowly reverse the systemic effects of heavy pharmaceutical use. Youth and good health can reduce but will not eliminate these effects. Curatives are not exempt: they certainly cure immediate ills, but medication that powerful has side effects. Preventatives will not cause further drug damage but will also prevent effect reversal.

New events:

• Three random events for fucktoys; master suite slaves are also eligible.
• Two random events for rapey slaves enjoying rules that permit their little proclivities.
• Random event in which your concubine can be allowed to go on an old world talk show without your supervision; she'll affect your reputation positively or negatively with a series of skill and attribute checks.
• Five random events, one for each slave school, that offer the opportunity to improve the schools' approaches to slave training by endowing support for the new direction. Purchasing more slaves from each school increases the likelihood of that school's endowment event appearing.

Significant rebalancing:

• Interactions between fetishes, quirks, and extremes of devotion and trust have been reworked and extended: quirks will appear more logically and more often, but will also naturally resolve themselves more frequently.
• Severely reduced the likelihood of generic recruitment events to prevent reputable arcology owners from drowning in them.

Minor updates:

• Better autosurgery settings.
• Midsection descriptions; these are derived from numerous other stats, with weight and musculature most important.
• Kitchen upgrade that forces slaves to suck off food-ejaculating dispenser phalli in order to eat. Many slaves will resent this, but it can cure slaves of oral reluctance and eventually inspire oral fetishes.
• Upgrade to administer appropriate drugs via sodomy by a pharmaceutical-ejaculating fuckmachine. As with the food-ejaculating phalli, this has various mental effects. Will not be applied to anal virgins.
• New universal rule that defines whether slaves are required to get consent before boning other slaves. Declaring open season will generally please devoted slaves and terrify unbroken ones, whereas requiring consent will build trust.
• Removed the sapphic rule, since it conflicts with the universal consent rule. An effect similar to the old sapphic rule can be achieved with restrictive masturbation rules and no consent requirement.
• Added many more circumstances in which unknown fetishes can be discovered organically; for example, training that involves repeated oral sex may reveal cumsluts.
• Listing a slave for sale now requires a listing fee, to prevent abuse of the new slave sale options.
• Huge plugs and dildoes now slightly increase fear in slaves with tight holes.
• Reworked hair mechanics and descriptions.
• Short shoe descriptions for more than 100 possible combinations of shoes and clothes.
• Short hair descriptions for more than 100 possible combinations of hair and clothes.
• Obedience requirements for admission to the Servants' Quarters reduced.
• New choices for old events, including some based on player suggestions.
• Many new or refined descriptions for niche combinations of physical attributes.
• Continued revisions of old content to better reflect PC attributes.
• Numerous code revisions for better performance.
• Migrated to the latest versions of Twine (2.0.11) and Sugarcube 2 (2.3.1); both updates mostly patch bugs.
• Bugfixes.