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

@No_This_Is_Patrick and @Phoenix_Wolf

They are the same person; the friend’s name is randomly generated from a list of 6 names per gender, just like his/her baby. Their gender is always yours, and the baby’s gender is always that of your child.

On that note, figured out the issue with the kid having no name. Will be fixed forthwith.

@Eric_Moser Choosing how you want to introduce video games will indeed be in there. As well as being an event I will likely face soon in my own real-life playthrough. As for Fortnite, fie on it. Never played, but it sure sounds like PUBG would be more up my alley. Crafting is just not my cup of tea. I don’t want to build the axe, I just want to hit someone with it.

@Carlos.R I loved that part; Fallout 3 is in many ways inferior to New Vegas. But the intro is not one of them. It has one of my favorite first hours of any game I can recall.

@derekmetaltron I think the difference at kid age will be minimal. I thought about limiting sport/activity options by gender, but realistically some boys do dance or gymnastics, and some girls do football or basketball.

As teenagers the differences will be more pronounced. If not entirely unique scenes, at least wildly different versions based on gender.

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@CreepyPastaKittyFay As for Alter Ego, I think it is because I really wasn’t familiar with IF in general before coming here last year. Not completely ignorant; I had played the middling Sorcery 3 and the excellent To Be or Not to Be, but by and large I was not familiar with it. And I still am not outside of this place.

Oh, edits are up. Should have fixed everything y’all mentioned, as well as one thing no one caught.

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I’m enjoying this, and it all feels very true to my experiences.

You might want to rethink the choice “blue, like his eyes.” That ends up strongly determining the appearance, including the race, of the child.

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But Name in my play through was a male but my baby was a female. Is it perhaps a bug?

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Easily could be. There was a buttload of code involved in the friend intro, where it runs through the 12 name possibilities for both parent and child, as well as defining gender pronouns for both characters and whatnot. I cleaned up a lot from Quicktests this morning before publishing, but there were plenty of other moving parts where something might have failed.

I’m curious how will this wip be different from Alter Ego? Can I also own pets?

Well, based on what I saw of AE it seems like that is from the perspective of the kid. You are the parent. If it doesn’t seem different, you have definitely never been a parent.

And yes! Pets are a mandatory even that will pop around 8-9. Depending on the animal it will feature prominently in later years too. You don’t have to get a pet, though. But you will always have the option in every playthrough.

Oh and @Guntram that is good advice. I want to leave appearance as a blank slate for people to project thenselves upon, so anything that gets in the way of that may need to change.

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I really like this demo so far! I didn’t think it would interest me as I’m abhorrently against the idea of having children, but this was surprisingly endearing.

I was a bit disappointed that Harvey wasn’t a romance option, and also a bit disappointed that there’s really no romance options at all so far. I kind of expected a “do you have a partner?” choice at some point during the first year. Are you planning that at any point, or shall I be doomed to a single, husband-less life forever? :laughing:

I also noticed that the few sentences prior to the first choice read a little more towards a female PC. I had to double-take to read it again, and I had to think for a bit about how to justify “the chaos of delivery” for a male (it wasn’t hard, but I had to double-take). That might just be me, however, and I understand why you wouldn’t want to make the first choice the PC’s gender.

I also encountered the name bug. It was certainly interesting haha. Hopefully you figure it out!

Moving onto positives, I really enjoy the humor in this game. The PC and Harvey have a fun dynamic, and the PC is really witty and charming. I felt invested in interacting with others after the 1st year because I felt how strangulating all that alone time with my baby was. Your writing is incredibly clear and enjoyable without being too obtuse or unfulfilling. I really like that there are so many different approaches to parenting available. You managed to get a man who doesn’t like children to enjoy a game about being a parent, so I’d call that a success! :wink:

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Glad you have (mostly) enjoyed it! I would almost certainly not have any kind of dating aspect. I think one of the most common and most egregious mistakes that Choice games make is shoehorning in romance as an afterthought to the story. Not to pick on a story I did legitimately enjoy, but Fielder’s Choice is a good example of this. There’s literally zero mention of anything romantic for a solid 75% of the story, it’s done in a slapdash manner, and makes little impact on the story as a whole. And for a game that is harsh about missed opportunities it sure let’s you just crack away at every available party until you find one that’s interested. It lessened the overall experience.

I think if I had something like this, it would be the same. And if it wasn’t, if I devoted enough time and effort to make the relationships really worthwhile, than I’ve diverted enough from the main point of the game that I’m gonna need a name change. If anything I would just introduce you already having a spouse, but I already mentioned my reasons against that. This one has sort of a laserlike focus. Parenting at the expense of most other things. I only added the friend because I wanted to inject some dialogue, and give you someone to provide guidance while being someone whose input you can completely ignore without consequence. Whereas if you do that over and over with a spouse, we’ll need a divorce chapter later in the game.

The intro…yeah. It’s hard to figure out a realistic, non-tragic way for a guy to be a solo parent. So I just haven’t really added one yet. It is something I might revisit sooner rather than later.

Is the name bug still on? I thought I fixed it this afternoon.

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This is a really endearing game. I particularly like that it doesn’t treat raising children as all sunshine and rainbows, nor does it go on and on about your child’s negative effect on your life. It strikes a subtly ironic tone that’s perfect for the subject matter. Also, despite the chaotic nature of parenting, I like that it doesn’t have a plethora of stats about baby-raising to juggle.

There’s a bug during the first steps scene:


“he” should be capitalized.

Also, I found it weird that despite the MC going back to work in the first steps scene, no mention is made of hiring a babysitter, which sort of gives the impression that the call about the child walking came from some supernatural agency that monitors how well babies walk.

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How can we be with the child like

It’s good story can’t wait for more

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Heh, I was trying to be vague to avoid stepping into the mess of who is watching your kid when you’re a single parent. Presumably it is daycare, but if I make that assumption apparent people may ask why there wasn’t an option for little $!{aname} to be watched by family. But if I make it an actual choice between daycare and family it is a bit presumptive, since many don’t have that choice at all.

It is similar to how I mention feedings but never say what it is you are feeding them. Breast is best, of course. But if you’re a single dad that raises some tough questions on where the milk is coming from. There’s milk banks, but now we’re headed way down the rabbit hole and starting to lose the plot.

I do like the idea of such an agency, though. Let’s call them Get to Steppin’.

@Harley_Robin_Evans I can’t tell if you suffered from premature postulation with that first remark, but very glad you like it!

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Super-duper excited with year five.

If this game doesn’t end up with some bizarre nonsense I’ll be disappointed. I want the kid to turn out weird. I want there to be surprising horror elements. I want there to be zero explanation.

Body is too similar to what you just posted

Shut up, forum robot! You’re not the boss of me!

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Well, kids are weird. Poopy diapers and moody teenagers are horrors beyond Lovecraft’s imagining. And zero explanation is what parenting is all about!

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Well i dont like weirdness.

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Life is just dealing with weirdness. What happens if the parents suddenly have to move to Australia for a job? What about if one of them gets a brain aneurysm? What if their child is disabled? What happens if the in-laws lose their life savings and have to live with the parents for a few years? What if the town’s water supply gets poisoned by lead and they have to live off of water bottles? What if a tornado hits? What if the house is swarmed by wasp nests? What if the kid grows up being bullied relentlessly for his first name?

I don’t know, it’s just that the realism gives me an uncanny valley effect, in that it’s a little too perfect. Things go wrong (well, not yet, but I assume so?), but nothing truly unexpected happens that throws you for a loop, which is actually totally unlike real life.

EDIT: Bread and Name are becoming really good friends.
EDIT 2: Oh that’s the end.

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I must say. Evangelion was nothing compared to Princess Maker! The true magna opus of Gainax studio. And I fully endorse your endeavor. This is a good idea for a game!

Dang, so the Name thing still isn’t fixed. I will look at that tonight.