Brainstorming for Cow Girl Flash Game

[SoylentOrange]

For me a top 5 would be an item to increase weight, increase bust, increase lactation and maybe Two different kinds of milking machines. I think that would cover a lot of the basic engine bits.

[TickTock]

Originally Posted by SoylentOrange

For me a top 5 would be an item to increase weight, increase bust, increase lactation and maybe Two different kinds of milking machines. I think that would cover a lot of the basic engine bits.

Those are all great suggestions but I want to see if I can tap into some specifics, items with back stories even, if possible. But a general consensus on what needs to be does help.

As for the weight gain, I'm planning to have an activity that the cow girl can have which is essentially overfeeding her for a shift, which will have all sorts of fun positive and negative effects.

[Muhznit]

1. Charm Bracelet: Depending on what charms are attached to this, the cowgirl and possibly others around her will experience various magical effects. This can probably be used for quick configuration of how a cowgirl will grow, sort of like an equipment system, but not as extensive as clothing.
2. Standard Issue Cow-Print Bikini: Each has a unique pattern of spots chosen from 4,294,967,296 different styles, i.e. the limit of an unsigned integer.
3. Leather/Steel Collar: For those that want to mark what cowgirls are their own, but aren't into branding. Having a cowbell attached to it would be appropriate.
4. Wheelbarrow: For cowgirls whose busts exceed their musculature, this affords them more mobility. Some may need two.
5. Sybian: A machine built for women tired of using their fingers to masturbate. Keeps cowgirls "occupied" for long hours of milking.

[Lurking Guy]

1. Truck. Used to take goods to and from town, as well as transport people (farmhands, friends from in town, cowgirls, etc) to various locations. Can be upgraded to increase max room and weight to bring more products and people along for rides to various locations.

2. Knit-kit and Paint. For creating new clothing for characters and for painting buildings.

3. Whistle. For training purposes, mostly athletic exercises to keep your stock in shape.

4. Combs. Everyone needs to take care of their hair, cowgirls are no exception. If you really want to bond with them, you can comb their hair. Or you can give them combs and let them do it themselves.

5. Tool Box. For repair of appliances and electrical systems, as well as upgrading and installing new equipment.

[Tinn]

1. Bust-increasing herbs: To increase bust size and the amount of produced milk a cowgirl can store without feeling uncomfortable. I favour herbs over potions and magical doodads as transformative items because, if you think about it, cows eating plants sort of works.
2. Milking stool: To allow cowgirls to be milked without machines. It might not be as efficient as the mechanical option (especially at lower skill levels), but it would be cheaper to run and maintain, and the more personal touch could be better for morale, relationships and/or sexy text descriptions.
3. Cow-print Bikini: Because Muhznit was onto something: It's a classic cowgirl fashion choice, fits a variety of body shapes, and is cheap in terms of materials. Besides, in a lot of places it's the smallest amount of clothing a girl can legally wear in a public, which is likely to be of interest to at least some players.
4. Milk urns: Because it always struck me as weird that so many games with milking allowed the user to create containers for milk out of thin air as part of the milking process. Milk urns are an important and realistic part of farm logistics! Also, having to keep a sufficient supply of empy urns could add an extra element of strategy to gameplay.
5. Milkmaid outfit: Because it's too obvious to be left out. Wearing one should probably increase a cowgirl's ability to milk other cowgirls, her rate of milk production, or both.

Co-incidentally, I do think it would add something if clothing could still provide bonuses when a cowgirl's skills are maxed out.

Reading your blog, Shinigamis Past, I see you're trying to get out of the indentured servitude/slavery concept. I've already posted a couple of ideas on that front, but here's another couple:
1. Have the farm run as a sort of shared commune, where the cowgirls partners, instead of property. This would explain why they don't get wages, encourage the player to think of them as friends, and would open up the possibility of playing as a cowgirl.
2. Have the cowgirls be volunteers working in exchange for basic food and shelter. This would work, but is pretty unrealistic, and would open the game up to unpleasant interpretations, such as being about homeless girls bribed and blackmailed into working for less than minimum wage.
3. Actually pay the cowgirls a nominal wage. The amount needn't be much, as long as cowgirls contribute more revenue to the farm in a day then they get paid in the same amount of time. Realistically, this is how businesses operate in the real world - and it's not even hard to balance: Just add one cowgirlmonth's wages to the amount of money you want the player to earn from a single basic cowgirl's worth of milk per month.
Heck, you could even make wages paid have an effect on morale: Not paying on time could reduce it, wheras giving bonuses could gived it a boost - though there'd have to be a limit on frequency to prevent that from getting too grindable.

Anyway, if you really want to avoid connotations of slavery while keeping the 'pay money for more cowgirls' mechanic, you could make the 'cost' of a new girl be a sort of bride-price paid to their families for the priviledge of living with their daughter. This would make the player's herd more like a family, albeit one with a noteworthy gender imbalance.

[Kelberon]

I like how the 5 items contributed by most so far are about affecting the girls, but Lurking Guy mostly goes for practical items. I like the contrast.

As for the possible unpleasant connotations, I would suggest running the farm like a small business. Every one of the cow girls starts off as a hired employee, regardless of their stats or position. You don't buy them, you hire them. More personal feelings can develop from there, either of friendship or romance, but each cowgirl has a regular salary you have to pay out on a monthly basis. That could also be something you can develop in more detail in later revisions about who answers ads for new employees, what their stats are like, and how well they would fit the advertised position. That doesn't rid the game of all possible unpleasant connotations, but it means that rather than just losing an employee randomly or selling them off, you lay them off, or they quit for some reason.

Along the same lines, you could have a system for how much you alter a given cowgirl, and their feelings on it. For example, a cowgirl that's just a milker might have no problem with being given repeated items that increase their breast size and how much they lactate, but a cowgirl that does other jobs as well, or doesn't get milked at all, will resent it if you try to give them too much of such items, or give it to them at all. That's another idea for later revisions of the game, but the more each cowgirl can seem to have their own personality, the less they'll feel like items you own on the farm.

Finally, has the gender of the protagonist been set? I know that I'd like to be able to play both a male and a female version-you could even start as a cowgirl yourself, for the "easy" version of the game, since you could try to support the farm on your own to start.

[Lurking Guy]

Originally Posted by Kelberon

As for the possible unpleasant connotations, I would suggest running the farm like a small business. Every one of the cow girls starts off as a hired employee, regardless of their stats or position. You don't buy them, you hire them. More personal feelings can develop from there, either of friendship or romance, but each cowgirl has a regular salary you have to pay out on a monthly basis.

Oh my. If not handled properly, the connotations of that could be even worse.

The idea of the ranch being sort of like a boarding house/farm/factory hybrid would be dandy. The girls being characters rather than objects who are willingly employed due to personal/economic situations seems like it works well. I feel the best way to handle it would be for them to receive food and shelter along with an allowance as their form of payment, allowing them larger sums if they take on other responsibilities on the ranch (cooking, cleaning, repairs, plumbing, exercise coordinating, budget management, etc). It also allows for you to go into town to look for new recruits, and for people to have differing ideas on whether what you do is right or wrong.

Originally Posted by Kelberon

Along the same lines, you could have a system for how much you alter a given cowgirl, and their feelings on it. For example, a cowgirl that's just a milker might have no problem with being given repeated items that increase their breast size and how much they lactate, but a cowgirl that does other jobs as well, or doesn't get milked at all, will resent it if you try to give them too much of such items, or give it to them at all.

To be honest, I'm not keen on the idea of items affecting the bodily status of the girls. I think that their lifestyles (what they eat, how much, exercise, work hours, stress, milking, etc) should influence how they change. Some of this can manually be changed, but I think it would be nice for personal interaction to play a role on how the girl acts and how she changes. Especially for younger ones.

Originally Posted by Kelberon

Finally, has the gender of the protagonist been set? I know that I'd like to be able to play both a male and a female version-you could even start as a cowgirl yourself, for the "easy" version of the game, since you could try to support the farm on your own to start.

I like the idea of being able to choose between human and bovine.

[Muhznit]

I suppose I'll give my .02 USD on a "light" backstory.

•In <timeperiod>, there is a shocking discovery that human breastmilk was drastically healthier for humans than cow's milk. (who knew?)
•As humanity slowly adjusted to this realization, the social stigma of "breastmilk = icky" began to decline and numerous women started to volunteer to give their own milk, sometimes for profit.
•After a stunning discovery of <plot device that gives you an advantage no other competitor has> You <and possible love interest> attempt to enter the competitive market.

If we get to hear names of competitors, at least one of them must be called "DD Dairy".

[Enji]

Personally I'd prefer if appearance has little to do with performance of various tasks. I know it's not a realistic view on the whole idea, but getting too realistic with an idea like this will start creeping into the realms of uncanny valley/squick. Some generic stats with baselines determined by your cowgirl's "breed" and how difficult it is to raise a particular stat would be fun enough for me.

Errrr let me try to reexplain, I'm of the camp that all types of cow girls can max out any stat, just a matter of how difficult or long the process will take depending on their body type/breed/whatever.

With drugs, there should be a diminishing results effect. Like the more you feed her a breast growth drug, the less effective it becomes. That way most things shouldn't hit the realms of insanity like barn sized boobs or something crazy like that.

There should also be a quality system for the milk as well. Depending on your particular cow's stats, determines the quality of the milk she produces. The better the milk, the higher a price it fetches. I think this would be able to overcome the hurdle of producing enough money for later game stuff without having to have a gigantic herd of cowgirls.

[Kelberon]

I have to admit, I'm not sure how running a farm like a business could have worse connotations than outright owning the cowgirls there. But as for items that change their stats, I think that while changing their lifestyle makes sense, players will probably have an easier time keeping track of concrete objects they give to the cowgirls. So I wouldn't count those out as an option.

As for size restrictions, that's a matter of personal taste...so maybe having that as an option in the game would be a good idea, so those who prefer things to stay more realistic (in a relative sense) can toggle that when they start a new game, and don't have to worry about it again. Then others who don't care as much about realism can leave it as is, and make things as crazy as they want. Or vice versa.

[Tinn]

Originally Posted by Enji

With drugs, there should be a diminishing results effect. Like the more you feed her a breast growth drug, the less effective it becomes. That way most things shouldn't hit the realms of insanity like barn sized boobs or something crazy like that.

Hmm, this isn't a bad idea. As much as I like the idea of barn-sized boobs, they probably shouldn't be too easy to attain. Perhaps each girl could have a limit on the amount of transformative items she could gain a benefit from each month/week/hour, with there being a diminishing chance of items having an effect if they're used before the time limit expires? That way, lifestyle and ongoing effects could have a much more important part to play, making caring for cowgirls a more important part of the game.
...And perhaps ironing-board-to-barn-sized effects could still be granted as a reward for completing certian extra-long subplots.

This touches on another area I've been meaning to bring up: specific effects of certian sizes. With both breast expansion and weight gain, certian sizes should realistically bring advantages and disadvantages, such as (for breast growth) difficulty reaching certian things, an increased liklihood of tripping, the inability to be milked without assistance, loss of the ability to stand, complete immobility, inability to pass through doorways, the ability to be used as shelter for other cowgirls, the ability to be used as a flood barrier, and so on. Now, some of those only make sense for sizes that might not end up being in the game, but it would be nice if some of the smaller sizes had an effect on (at least) the flavour text for actions and events.
Perhaps certian items could be used to get around some or all of these disadvantages (Muhznit's wheelbarrows or specially-modifed tractors would work), or more mobile cowgirls could be given the task of 'helping out' girls too big to move, reach and/or milk themselves?

Originally Posted by Enji

There should also be a quality system for the milk as well. Depending on your particular cow's stats, determines the quality of the milk she produces. The better the milk, the higher a price it fetches. I think this would be able to overcome the hurdle of producing enough money for later game stuff without having to have a gigantic herd of cowgirls.

Yes, let 'ratio of cream' be a statistic!

[Muhznit]

In a game practically built around a form of objectification, negative connotations are going to be there whether we like it or not. I mean, the majority of women we'll interact with in this will have lactating tits the size of her head. It's probably best to just deal with the lesser of multiple evils instead of trying to eradicate them altogether. It's not like we're milking them to exhaustion then sending them off to the slaughterhouse.