Growing Explorations
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
This is an open-world RPG game. The main focus is FMG (female muscle growth), thus I do not recommend playing if you do not enjoy such themes.
The game includes exploring an infinite world while defeating enemies, as you do so, your character grows more muscular and robust over time.
Check out my DeviantArt and consider joining my discord server for more info.
You can also pledge on our Patreon if you want to receive updates earlier and get exclusive content.
Big thanks to Vlision, who is the other main developer besides myself. Also, I would like to shout out Meredosia, who donated sounds for the game. Another significant contributor is HMBurner, as he made sprites for the player character.
I hope you enjoy playing!
Download
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Development log
- Version 0.4.1Jan 07, 2024
- Version 0.4Jan 05, 2024
- Version 0.3Sep 28, 2023
Comments
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Yo man, how's it goin?
The programing for the update is done, there are only renders left. The reason for the delays has been my and Vlision's university schedule. You can expect a release by mid May.
How's progress on the update?
The update is pretty much done! There is just renders and pixel art left to make before release
My big, main complaint is there's no save function; when I died, the game closed and I had to restart from the beginning. This is very frustrating.
I noticed that you are gonna implement some new races and here's my suggestion: a tiefling-esqe race. Really, I just want muscular demon girls. Glowing eyes, glowing hair, multiple sets of horns, red and/or purple skin pigmentation, the works! I could've added more descriptors, tell me if you want more of them. You want descriptors? I've got descriptors.
Something else I think that could good is seeing our companions grow too, and at their own rate. Perhaps at each stage of growth, their distinct feature would become more prominent and numerous, too?
Have you ever watched and/or played Spore? If you haven't, there were these tings called epics, massive beasts to be avoided lest you catch an early appointment with death. They were meant to represent that, however strong you became, there were simply some things that you always ought to avoid. Perhaps you could implement a similar system to showcase that our character is not the first to pursue physical improvement. That there are some who've progressed far enough along this same path that they've become behemoths and, perhaps, a glimpse of the player may become.
Something that absolutely need to happen though is a greater enemy variety; the world's dangers cannot just be slimes, wolves, and bats! It'd be very limiting if it were.
This is probably just me, but I'll put it here anyway: everything is too square. Bodies of water should be more ovular.
I may post again if more ideas come to me. Have these ones been absorbed?
There is a save system! You have to press ESCAPE while in game, then hit save and choose a save slot. You will need to reopen the game to load a save though. With the new version, there will be more info about menus.
I have thought about a demon race and it will for sure come sooner or later. The next one will be Orc. After that, the focus will be on implementing all growth stages which will be 10 in total. With that done, a new race will come every 1/2 updates. Races are really easy to implement it is just the renders need to be done, which is what limits releasing them frequently. If you want, I would be glad to see a description for a demon race! If you have any other suggestions, you can either comment here or contact me on discord (faustto), which I check more often.
By companions do you mean the NPCs? They grow even at the current version! It may be because of the bad explainantion of how to play the game, but there is a little story with interactions and fights too, which do involve them growing.
I have watched a few videos of Spore and having very strong enemies is indeed a great idea. There is something simmilar coming in future updates, which is more like a boss, which you will need to outgrow in order to defeat. I will think about making something like that.
More enemies are coming! The main problem, because of which there are only 3 right now, 5 if you count the bosses, is because sprites for enemies are hard to make and the artist I comission works quite slowly. I am now having them reowork the sprites for the old enemies, after which I will implement 1-2 per update, some of which will be much stronger as the current ones are 'Tier 1' opponents.
As the game is focused on pixel art, the current lakes do a great job. Making them circular will be very hard, as it will involve making a pixel art shader, which is very hard and I don't think it would make the game better in any way.
If you have any other ideas, feel free to share them either here, the game's discord server or personally to me!
Okay, so! My vision for a demon race is for the model to not only gain muscle mass, but also to gain features(horns, etc.) and to enhance upon existing features, too. For example, the character starts with a short set of horns, and as she grows, so too does her horns.
Here's a list of features that I can think of:
*A scaled prehensile tail.
*A elongated tongue.
*Demon horns. At later stages of growth, perhaps they, too, could emanate fire.
*Glowing eyes, perhaps with a serpentine slit pupil.Perhaps the glow emissions would intensify as growth progresses? Maybe with black sclera, too.
*Glowing hair. I personally think that all the glowing bits ought to be the same color, but you do you.
*Demon teeth. You ought to distinguish this race's teeth from a an animal's if you decide to implement a beast race, and certainly from the orc race.
*Sharp nails or sharp fingers. Perhaps they could retract or reshape themselves during civil discourse?
*Toe talons or toe claws.
*Black nails and toenails.
*Wings, but I'm not sure how you'd make that work. If you do, I suggest scale wings or black feathered wings.
*Assertive posture. She should look like she owns the place, confident or overconfident, with perhaps some vanity added too.
*Extra arms, if you want to get nuts.
*Red, purple, or black skin pigmentation. Maybe her skin changes color as she grows?
Something of note is that red fire is not the hottest there is: that belongs to white fire. If you include light into the demon race design, perhaps you could have the light change color to signify a growth of power.
I once watched this video about how red, blue, and purple have come to be associated this different concepts. It's called "The color of corruption - how purple is used in video games" by Razbuten. My focus is fading, I'll return to this later.
Thank you for the in-depth concept! When a demon race eventually comes, I will make sure to take inspiration from the ideas you gave! Some of them, are a bit overboard like the extra arms, but stuff like the demonic features growing along the character, are definitely up for consideration. Also, the video you linked was very informative!
could you make an android or at least browser version
I have thought about making an android version, but it will be like rewriting the code of the whole game, so it probably won't happen any time soon. As for browser version, I don't think it will be possible, because of how heavy the game is.
This game is great! I actually came up with my own race idea: Goblin! This is supposed to fill the role of a speedster class, but to compensate overall stats are low.
Positive Trait: Nimble (Max move speed increased by 20, Goblins are pretty fast!)
Negative Trait: Dim-Witted (Magical Power Gain reduced by 30%. While Goblins aren't dumb, they are dumb when it comes to magic and the arcane.)
Special: Survivalist (Heal HP Passively 50% quicker. To be a Goblin is to be resourceful.)
Special Ability: Thousand Cuts (While in this state, each attack you land on a given enemy boosts the damage of the next. If the first attack does one damage, the second does two, the third does three, and so on.)
Starting Stats:
HP: 8
Physical: 2
Magical: 0
Defense: 1
Resist: 1
Thank you for the kind words! This race concept is amazing! As you may know, there is a new race coming in the upcoming update - the Orc. It pretty much has the exact same negative and special traits, so if a goblin comes out, its will differ. Nonetheless, I really like the idea of a very quick race and have been thinking about making one, after the Orc is out. Don't know what it will be but, I may get some 'inspiration' off of your concept!
Thanks, it's an honor :>
have you considered having the attack be aimed by the mouse? it is hard to hit enemies diagonaly or aim at all especialy with how slippery the movmenet is
It is supposed to be like this as the game is four directional. I can easily make it aimable, but I don't know how fitting this would be. I think the combat is fine for the time being, but in the future there for sure will be some changes coming to it so this problem shouldn't be apparent by then.
Seems fun so far but i do wonder if there will be more stages added?
There will! Currently there are only 5, but in total, there will be 10. So we are halfway there I would say! Though new stages won't come in the next update too, because we are planning on adding a new race instead.
gobbo hype
are you working only on muscle theme?
Well, yes! But there is some Height and Breast growth too, although not very much.
Not bad though I've noticed some issues. For one if playing as elf or dwarf when talking to the first npc after her growth sequence the model in menu changes to human. It's fine beyond that. Another thing is that using the elf's magic attacks doesn't allow you to gain any exp. Enemies you kill during that buff give zero exp. Forcing you to use the crap sword swing. The dwarf fortify also doesn't work. As during it you cannot move or attack so it's currently a useless move. Also buying a buff potion from the shop locks your movement. Making it so your unable to move at all forcing you to restart the game.
Thank you for reporting these issues!
I will now comment on what you mentioned:
- The first issue will be easy to fix, so I will patch it soon
- I will look into the elf's skill. I personally haven't experienced this bug so I hope I can reproduce it
- The dwarf's skill, should work, as when I test it it lets me move just fine, a little slower though. The damage reduction should work too.
- The potion bug has already been reported and I will try fixing it soon
update?
The newest update is currently only for Patrons. It will become public pretty soon, but if you want to check it out right now here: patreon.com/faustto
how do you talk to people
You can press E when their name pops up above them. You can see the game's controls by pressing ESC then clicking the controls button
The discord link doesn't work?
It probably has expired as the server does not have boosts. Here is an active one: https://discord.gg/JYgMMnZaBs
Is it being abandon?
No it is not. I have been very busy with work the past two months, which has slown the development a lot. An update is coming before christmas for sure.
yep take your time
I like this so far, unfortunately it seems like the boost from growth points doesn't get saved! Tried boosting Peaceful and Frail (playing as an Elf) and they went to level 2, but after reloading they were back to level 1 (with the growth point still spent).
Sorry for the late response! I have replied to your comment on patreon so I won't repeat myself too much, but the bug will be fixed by next update.
when next update?
Can't say an exact date yet. Probably somewhere within this month.
ok ty one thing can u say me what app u use to make the game?
The game is made with the Godot engine. It is a node based programming engine, which uses GDScript or C# for its scripts.
You can have an android version
Making an android version will be pretty much remaking the whole game. I may someday do it, but I can't say when yet
I like the new update, especially how it completely overhauls the UI and the little content update on top. Still, I have found some issues:
- This game has a render problem. The sprites flicker and vibrate a lot to adjust with the moving camera
- Enemies still spawn on water and shore tiles. This is even more frequent due to the more distant spawn rates.
- There is no indicator in the UI for a level up. It's easy to miss that you actually leveled up when you kill a lot of enemies on the screen.
- The level up screen and stats are only accessible through key bindings. This is very unintuitive when you already have a hand on the mouse to attack stuff. Let me click on the profile or give me an extra icon to let me level up my character or to open my stats. Same thing goes for the quest log.
- The special cards for the characters skills appear way too low. In 20 levels, I only got them once in the same except order and group as shown in the image. This isn't really random.
Content wise I would wish for a little starting area or starting ruin to mark the starting area better and to connect the world more. I would also really like it, if you would add some trees into the world generation. Taiga or Forest without trees is just different painted grass.
Thank you for the feedback! Most of these issues are known, so I will explain why they were left to come with the update.
The rendering problem happens only if your monitor has a refresh rate above 60 Hz. This is because of the game's engine and I am not sure how to exactly fix it. You could enable VSync in the settings, it should help to an extend.
The enemy spawning is known to have this problem. I have tried fixing it a couple of times, which made it more rare, but it still happens occasionally.
You have an XP bar under you HP. Also a sound is played whenever you level up as well as a little popup text appearing onto your character. There are some UI changes coming in 0.4, which will improve the ability to see these things, so it should be better then.
There will be clickable icons in the UI to access all menus with the overlay update I am doing, so entering the menus should be a bit easier.
You gain the special cards only when you experience a growth scene. You can then use e growth point to choose a skill to enhance. Also they are the same skills every time unlike the random ones you get upon level up. Keep in mind that they have a max level each, meaning you can upgrade them only 3 times.
I know what you mean by having a better environment, but as I haven't found a pixel artist who is willing to make sprites for the game, making such things is quite hard for me and as I am not a very good at arts, I do not want to ruin the look of the game with my doodles, so this will be held off for a bit until I have someone who has the skill to do it.
"You gain the special cards only when you experience a growth scene." I only got them once at my theoretical level 2 when I reached level 5. I guess there is a bug when there are multiple level ups stacked on top of each other, you don't get the special cards. I got to all 4 growth scenes and never got them again, because I used the cards at levels that were not dedicated to the growth sequence.
It doesn't matter when you use them. They are stored as points, which are displayed under your stats. It is written like "GP x (amount of points)". As long as this text is displayed, you can press K to level up a trait. The points work fine when I try it out in the exported version so I don't know what the issue may be like.
this have 2stages no?
You can grow 2 times in this version. New stages are coming in the update which is coming this friday, so stay tuned for that!
ok ty
any chance for an android apk?
It will be very hard to make, as the game will need to get almost completely revamped for it to work. It may come in later releases, but is not on the horizon on the coming releases.
There is a lot of potential, but i think the world needs some more content.
And i thing it would be nice to have companions who (maybe fight with you,)grow with you or maybe also if you want them to, outgrow you.
For that it would be cool if you could make potions similiar to your other game just with clear catagories and clear recipies.
Also i beg you, it would be amazing if you could ad mobile.
Thank you for commenting! Your ideas are great, although they will be hard to implement.
Companions will probably come to the game at a later version. Currently, the main focus will be on making the first story chapter. When it is done most of the more essential features of the game will be present.
As for potions, they will get an overhaul pretty soon. They will not be as 'advanced' as the previous game's, but will definitely work in a different manner as they are currently quite overpowered.
Finally, mobile will be very hard to do, as it would be like making a whole new game. As I said, the current focus is to finish the first story chapter, after which I may try to make a mobile adaptation, if it is demanded by the community.
Also, as for content, stay tuned for the next update, which may or may not be coming in a few days. :)
thanks for aknowledging my comment
Looking forward to it
I'm loving the game so far, but I'm confused on how many growth stages their are, I'm level 40 but I'm only stage two?
There are 2 growth stages as of now - at levels 5 and 10. There will be more coming in the following updates.
It's a great progress in such a short time, but still, the gameplay has some problems.
- there are no predefined enemies. The world is empty and can be reduced to "walk in a circle, because the enemies only spawn near you". There are hardly any enemies that spawn outside the view of the character.
- the enemies can spawn next to you and immediately hurt you.
- enemies can sometimes spawn on water.
- with more enemies, you have to do more fighting and since levels are cheap, you easily level up mid fight. The problem is: There is no indicator for the level up in the main UI (where is the experience bar while playing?), there is no sound for the level up and there is no confirmation of what perk to choose. It's extremely easy to level-up and badly skill your character without even noticing.
- the sounds and music balance is off the charts. The music is incredibly quiet while sounds are so loud it hurts your ears. Please use a volume normalization tool like MP3Gain or something like that.
Thanks for the feedback!
I would like to explain some reasonings behind of the stuff you pointed out.
Making the enemies predefined will be quite laggy aa I have tried doing something of that sort . I know the current spawning is not very good as it indeed has the issues you pointed out. I will be fixing them for the next update.
I have been thinking of making a xp indicator, but as I thought it wouldn't be needed I didn't implement it. The level up interaction will be reworked in the next update, as it will focus mostly on that.
Currently the sounds have problems, but there hasn't been this inconsistency, which you mentioned - the music being silent while the effects deafening. I will look into it anyway.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this version and I very much appreciate your comment!
I don't know Godot, but you should apply some rules for off-screen enemies, like: "Don't render, don't move, don't have AI". Also you should increase the radius of spawning and add a minimum spawning range. I strongly recommend to look what other hack & slay games (PoE, Titan Quest, even Diablo 2) have in their main UI, how they explain stuff in the main UI and basically copy stuff until you can add your own flavor to it.
Thank you for the suggestions!
Big improvement over the last iteration, I've been enjoying it. I do have a bug to report though.
I bought 4 experience potions which seemed to have leveled me up twice, but because I did not choose my stat before getting the second level up, the game broke. As in it completely froze.
Thank you for the feedback! The potions will get changes in the next update, so they will be fixed by then.
How many muscle stages are there ?
There are 3 stages. Last one is reached upon getting to level 10
good concept but needs work
Enemy spawn rate is way too low, I would walk for 30 secs without finding an enemy.
Make maya mapped to a button because I've had to restart twice because I needed help and couldn't find her.
More things to do (I know you guys are implenting them)
I like the ideas though!
The enemy spawning currently is quite bad, but will be changed next update. Maya should always spawn 2 tiles to the left of the player. There is possibility she is in a hole, but it shouldn't happen too frequently. I will look into it regardless.
no i mean like once you move away from maya far enough you cant find her again, she should just be mapped to a button for no backtracking
Making her mapped to a button will not be a great idea in my opinion. She will move to specific positions due to the story so do not worry about finding her.
noice
is this nsfw?
It may be in the future but isn't right now
phew thanks
make it nsfw
great concept. I’d be happy to donate a theme song and some sound effects if you intend to keep working on it.
I would be be happy if you did so. Hit me up on discord. We can talk about them there. My discord is: faustto
Is there going to be an android version?
Probably not, as it is quite difficult to make. It will have to be another game in itself.
dawg, you really gotta do smth with spawn rate
The next update will be focused on spawning, so it will get better then
THERE'S A FUCKING Wacatac.B!ml TROJAN IN IT
can anyone verify this or no? I hadn't downloaded this yet, but this makes me very concerned if true...
Multiple test have been ran without getting any virus notification, but apparentely 1 or perhaps a few anti virus programs see it as a Trojan virus. A lot of people have downloaded it without any issue. If you want to be sure you are always welcome to join the discord and ask people to verify it's not a virus.I have ran it through my 2 paid anti virus programs and didn't receive anything.
Ok thank you so much, I've downloaded their older game and I didn't get anything but I saw this same msg on their deviantart page for this, so I was greatly concerned.
There is no virus. It is just that I don't have a code signature, so some antivirus programs give warnings. I am sorry for the inconvenience.
I relly like the pixel art stile it looks realy good but the mor realistic looking one for thr Growth scen etc. dosent realy fit the vibe of the game (from my point of view) and i would like to see maybe pixel art or somting not so realistic.
Well, you see as this project is currently made by me and an artist who specializes in 3d art, it is the best solution for the moment. Pixel art is quite expensive and as the game doesn't have the funding, I can't make too far of a stretch to make pixel art style portraits.
I must say that it shows that you have improved as a developer. Both with the engine and in the gameplay. It's a neat foundation for later updates. I especially like the sliding as it gives a faster gameplay than most of the RPG Maker games I see around here. And fast gameplay is good gameplay.
The only problem is that this game is still too empty. Not because of the barren landscape, that there is only one enemy type or that it doesn't have an objective yet, but because the enemy spawn rate is way too low. After you reach level 5 or 6, the spawn rate for constant leveling is so slow that you have to run 30 or 45 seconds to find a slime that you can take down in one shot after training strength twice for 10 % of a level.
I would strongly recommend that you should work on keeping the player hooked on grinding to see the growth before you add anything else. A little algorithm for enemy groups or stronger enemy versions would highly benefit the gameplay.
Overall, I'm excited to see how this game will develop as it is much better than your previous game.Thank you for the kind words! I know of this problem, but as I have decided on revolving the next update on enemy spawning, it will greatly be improved when it is out. Also, keep in mind that the slime will be the weakest and thus the enemy which gives the least amount of XP. As more, stronger enemies come, it will become easier to gain the requirements to level up.
This is what I meant by focusing on enemy spawns and enemy variations. This will entice players to keep playing until they encounter the stronger enemies. I would recommend experimenting with what types of slimes you could add before adding new enemies like goblins or the like. Larger ones, smaller ones, even changes to the color palette would be beneficial as I've seen you need help with sprites. This will be a good base for new enemies.
eh it's ok but it need more enemies instead of waiting for them to respawn sometime outside of view, you should do is make the enemies respawn round the main chsracter so i dont have to look every far and the others despawn if you go to far
It currently works like that as there aren't many enemy types to spawn. Also the spawning mechanic will be reworked in the next update so it should be better then.