The Parenting Simulator- Now Available on iOS, Google Play and Amazon!

Hey there! Having recently submitted Nuclear Powered Toaster for publication, I wanted to move on and try something very different before deciding whether to do a sequel to NPT or not. The title is a WIP too; I will likely drop the Quite App-Parent part and just go with The Parenting Simulator. It’s dry but easily searchable, and that has value.

In this game, you don’t fly spaceships, use superpowers, go back in time or confront eldritch horrors. You do something a lot more intimidating: you have a child. Quite App-Parent will feature a large (as in 50+) variety of small scenes that provide you the opportunity to raise a child as you see fit. Many will be randomly selected from a pool of available scenes for each year of their life (2 out of 5 in the first year, 2 out of 4 most others), although some are mandatory (such as potty-training, the first day of school, etc). It’s a stat-lite affair, with only a handful of opposing stats that will help shape who your child is and how they see you. Later chapters will have specific scenes generated based on your stats, as well as the outcome of previous years. It’s sort of an experimental thing, so all feedback is definitely welcome!

6/12/19

First draft is done at last! Word total: 160,265. Feels good.

5/23/19

Surprisingly short amount of time in quick and random testing, so probably means there’s a horde of unnoticed bugs and errors. This year clocks in at 7,445 words, and while I don’t know the project total offhand and my daughter will wake up in…about three minutes, my guess is it either just clicked over 150k words (code excluded) or it will very early into the next year. Currently 33k or so per playthrough. Next up will be the graduation!

5/8/19

I did something remarkable this time out: I kept it short. The new update is just under 6,000 words, and this brings us ever-closer to the conclusion. Year 17 will be the last ‘full’ year, with year 18 for the graduation and Moving On, and then a short epilogue (though it’ll only be short to y’all given the number of different ending permutations I expect there to be). Enjoy!

4/27/19

Year 16 is up, has 11,600 words of drama, chilling and the driving of comically large vehicles. Enjoy!

4/9/19

New longest year, surprise surprise. 15 hits 13k thanks largely to the numerous activities involved. Some small stuff has been added elsewhere this time: karate is now a selectable activity, and the money star has been adjusted, with a couple of opportunities for promotion at work in years 8 and 15. I feel pretty terrible, as I am fairly sick and the pneumonia meds have me feeling even sicker. May put getting 20k words this month in jeopardy. At least I did do it last month.

3/16/19

By far the longest year to date, 14 is done and is over 12,000 words. The total for the story is official over 100,000! How funny that at one time I thought I might finish the whole story and have trouble even getting it to 100k, and here I am at that vaunted number with no end in sight. Still, we’re having a good time, aren’t we?

2/22/19

I don’t remember offhand how long this is, but it is the longest chapter. Probably 9,600 words. In other news, @Isa has been selected to do the cover art for the story! Next month will be one of my word-heavy ones, so expect the next update to come sooner than this one did.

1/27/19

Sure enough, the word push did allow for a second January update. Year 12 weighs in at a respectable 8,588 words, and pushes the total to 83,00 and change. I have just a few days left in the month to hit my 20,000 word goal, but I am also less than 2,000 words away so hopefully it will happen.

1/15/19

Words over 70,000. This chapter’s just a hair away from 8,000. It’s late (I mean, for a work night), so see ya!

1/4/19

The rest of year 10 is completed and the gate has been lifted from the activity section. The 9,036 word length of year 9 lasted as the record-holder only until this new chapter, which is the new champeen at 9,349. Starting a big push in January, so hopefully at least one more update this month. Perhaps two? Stranger things have happened.

Random reminder: while it’s not that similar thematically, if you like my peculiar blend of sad attempts at humor and laughable attempts at dramatics, my first story has already been published and is available for sale on Steam, Android, iOS and Amazon. Nuclear Powered Toaster gives you a lot of insanity and hopefully a fair amount of fun for just $2.99! If you enjoy it, please leave a good review, it’s extremely helpful and in the case of Steam would keep my own cold, lonely review company. If you don’t enjoy it, just say you did anyhow, and then direct your enemies to purchase it as a really roundabout form of revenge. Genius!

/shilling

12/22/18

Woof. Ms. Quick kicked my butt this morning for nearly an hour and a half, but we are here! The 9,000 word Year 9 blows away all previous chapters in length, despite having only one long scene and another shorter one. I also included the half of year 10 that was done. Aside from more words, this brings the money mechanic into play, introduces the option to de-randomize (which may or may not remain in the final build, as has been discussed at length elsewhere), and brings a handful of achievements into the mix. I’m going to take a nap.

11/18/18

Years Seven and Eight are live, bringing almost 13,000 new words in for a total of about 47,000. Words per playthrough is about 15,000. Semi-NaNoWriMo total for November is about 14,900 words, leaving just over 10,000 to hit the mark between now and the 30th. Why did they do this on a 30-day month again? Just poor forethought. No surprise since we’re talking about writers here.

11/4/18

Year 6 is finally done. I am hoping to have the next chapter up a lot faster than this one was. 6,035 words in, so pretty much right at the 1/3 mark if this story actually does end up around 100k like I was thinking.

10/8/18

Year Five is up, and is by far the longest year yet at 7,224 words. There are only three scenes instead of four due to the length of each one. The total is now 28,768 words with 28.3% (or about 8,164) seen each time out.

9/17/18

It was a long time between updates, but on the plus side Year Four is also the longest chapter to date, at over 5,600 words. This brings the total to 21,000 and change. Playthrough length is around 6,600, so still hanging within that sweet spot for words seen per run at about 31%.

8/7/18

Year Three is in the pan, the total tops out in the high 15,000 range and just over 5,000 per playthrough. Vacation is coming next week (woooo Daytona!) so might be a while before Year Four pops, as it will have four sequences to write that do not yet exist.

7/25/18
The new word total is 12,400 words, and Year Two joins the list of completed chapters. Next up will be to complete Year Three.

7/15/18
The initial demo clocks in at around 9,500 words. The opening chapter and Year One are both complete, barring minor alterations. Year Two and Three are partially completed.

To try your hand at raising a virtual rugrat, go here: https://dashingdon.com/go/2877

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Is Chester’s kid actually named Name? :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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Hey, don’t knock them for an alternative parenting style! Which is totally what it is, by the way. Not a typo or anything.

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Continuity error - I took the babe to the Pediatrician and a sinus infection was diagnosed. I then went to pick up the prescription but the next choice was “somebody was going to see her or else” and “I take her home.” I chose take her home (after all i got the medicine and she saw the doctor) and the text is about how I huff and puff my way out and I’m back at the choice that sent me to the pediatrician in the first place.

Edit: Here is where the loop begins.

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Awwwww, bless, loved the demo and getting to be the terrified overprotective father I figured I would be. Logical question of where the other parent is might be something to think about, unless you’re definitely heading down the single parent route…

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Probably it will be single parent; I thought quite a bit about a spouse. Although I only started working on this in February, I thought up the idea in August and almost bailed on NPT to do it for the contest before realizing I might not have enough time to start over and still hit 100k. All through that time I went back and forth on it. But in the end, it is a Choice game. And if I introduce a spouse you would have to either lose a lot of agency in what to do with your kid, or constantly have to run every decision by your other half which could be repetitive.

I do have a prospect for a follow up that would be a full family, with spouse and multiple kids. But one thing at a time.

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Oh my gosh, I’m already in love with this game.

First of all, the sense of humor is really infectious, but it’s also so refreshing to see a game that doesn’t deal with super huge stakes.

Granted, raising a child is still a big deal, but then I don’t have to make sure my character has to fight the Immortal Guardian for possession of the MacGuffin etc, etc. Sometimes it’s nice just having a character deal with normal situations and normal issues! I’m definitely going to be following this game closely.

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@hustlertwo
Pronoun error, in the below option:
I still feel like this is not a big deal. $!ahe} will get better on his own.

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Thank you! Glad you’re into it thus far. I did want it to be a bit of a different feel than a lot of the other titles out there. A little less gamey, a little more of an interactive story. There isn’t any true winning or losing (one reason I suspect it will be a HG rather than CoG), because parenting doesn’t work like that. Different endings, but whether they are good or bad will largely depend on your point of view.

Thank y’all for those bug mentions, I should be able to tackle them this afternoon and get an updated version out.

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Ah, I see it’s not just a clever username.

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Oooh, love the concept! Reminds me a lot of the game Alter Ego!

Until how far do you plan on taking the parenting simulation? Cause I think it’d be great to see the different ways a parent would react to their kid raising their own family and seeing the parallels of the way you raised them and the kid raises their kids :blush:

Excited to see where you’ll take this! :heartpulse:

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lol that title ! I though it was a real APP…I was like…whats that again ? :stuck_out_tongue:

Then though…Oh nooo…My Sims already got a kid…Nooooo ! No more XD

Yeah , like the above said . Very remind me of Alter ego…although…that one was quiet limited in scope .

Gonna try the demo now! Let tha horror Beginnnnnnnnn! :rofl:

@StormL2 That is definitely a concept I am interested in going forward. This particular one would just be taking one child all the way to 18 and high school graduation. But a connection from this to a future follow up could be expected.

Just looked at Alter Ego; that is definitely interesting, though I find navigating those icons really confusing. I guess I’m just more used to the interface here.

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Ashley’s kid doesn’t have a name. Unless it is name then the kids future is doomed.

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…Love it! :slight_smile: As mentioned above it definitely feels like alter ego(how have you not played that game up till now btw? :open_mouth: I always assume pretty much everyone on here has played that game at least once). Glad you will get to play until your child is eighteen, and agree with your logic about being a single parent, though some background(of the player’s choosing?) about what happened to the other parent could be good. And again as already mentioned love that it deals with normal situations, I’ve said it before, but yeah that’s definitely one genre under represented on COG, can’t wait till the next update. I also like the idea of the random events, that too is kinda similar to alter ego, as in you can only pick so many events in one playthrough(and it has some random events kinda too), will definitely increase replayability.

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Will kids of different genders have some different scenes by the way? I think despite modern times boys and girls still go through some different experiences growing up with school, health and their possible wants and needs.

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Who’s Ashley I only meet Arnold or Chester?

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I don’t know, I played as female with a male kid and just from there.

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@hustlertwo, I can’t wait until it gets to ages 7-13 and you have to constantly pull them off iPads and Fortnite.

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This reminds me of playing that part in Fallout where you’re a kid and you work on increasing your S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Very cool concept.

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