Winter of the Bovine [4/5 Chapters, 50k words]

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Hi everyone. I’m Samuel Harrison Young, the author of The Magician’s Burden, and the WIPS, Mass Mother Murderer, The Twisted Village, and The Enchanter’s Misery. Over the past couple years, I have been doing a lot of brainstorming for Winter of the Bovine, and now that I’ve submitted TMB for CoG’s contest, I’m going to finally start writing this in earnest.

Summary:

Live out the life of a dairy cow on a modern, organic farm. Experience a story of struggle, loss, perseverance, hope, and friendship. When you’re caught between the systemic oppression of the farmers, and the wild, ferocious danger of a coyote pack, how will you and your herd survive?

What there will be when the story is finished:

  • ~ 75k words
  • 3 distinct endings
  • over a dozen stats detailing your physical abilities, attributes, and relationships
  • interact with a wide cast of compelling characters, including a coywolf, 3 coyotes, 3 humans, a cat, 2 dogs, 4 cows, and more.

Cover art:

received_10213778704255366
received_102137787042553663072×4096 1.59 MB

WORD COUNT:
Chapter One: 12k
Chapter Two: 11k
Chapter Three: 12k
Chapter Four: 15k
Chapter Five: ?

Total: 50k
Playthrough length: 26k

Who are your favorite characters?
Poll: https://linkto.run/p/61W1J5K7

FAQ:

Q: Why the actual fuck do you have so many WIPs?
A: Because I’m a mad genius or something. Probably or something.

DEMO LINK: https://dashingdon.com/play/mastersamuel/winter-of-the-bovine/mygame/index.php?cb=73905

If you like this WIP, make sure to “like” it so others will try it out, too. :slight_smile:

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This sounds really depressing… XD

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Depressing is correçt…
Depressingly awesome XD

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Thanks, guys. Btw, does anyone know how to imbed the image in the post instead of just providing a link? I think that would work better but I can’t remember the code for it.

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Sounds interesting! Unfortunately the image link gives an error when I clicked on it :frowning:

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Yeah, I just realize that might be a problem. I’m trying to see if anyone remembers how I can imbed the image instead.

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To upload an image you can click the Upload button and select the image on your hard drive, or you can drag the image into the post box and that’ll upload it to the forum.

If the image is elsewhere online (not in your mailbox) you can just direct link to it.

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Awesome, thanks!

The image is up, now, everyone.

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This sounds fantastic!

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The picture doesn’t help, still looking forward to it though.

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Wow sound (maybe)relaxing☺ looking forward to it since story like this is rare, for me

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Was that a cow joke? :cow2::scream:

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Thanks for flagging that comment, guys. I definitely don’t want animal abuse jokes on this thread.

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From a game/choice perspective what can cows do? I assume that the MC(ow) is a regular cow and not one of those walk on two legs humanized cows, so I can’t really expect to steal a human camera and use it take pictures of us and send it to a nice rescue. And, I can see how having too happy a life goes against your main theme.

Is this going to be more about relationship building, so MC feels bad when her friends get too old to make milk and can’t stay at the farm? Like The Walking Dead Game except with cows (I loved all the relationships and was sad when people went)?

How do choice and endings work for MCs that don’t have a lot of freewill and choice in a way that won’t alienate the players or murk your original theme/goals?

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“can’t stay at the farm” is an interesting euphemism. I’m planning on putting a demo out soon, so you’ll be able to see what kind of choices you get then.

I’m confused about what you mean about the MC not having a lot of free will. Cows are very intelligent and social animals.

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I don’t know a lot about large scale factory farming of cows, but I kind of assumed that the cows would be put close together and not alowed to rome around and do cow stuff, and therefore they wouldn’t have the freewill choice to do cow stuff (I’ve never actually seen a cow do anything before but stand, eat, and see the doctor. But, I don’t spend lots of time with cows, so I don’t know what they like.)

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Oh, gotcha. That’s the case a lot of the time, but of course I’ll be mixing in a lot of different situations, and they’ll differ greatly depending on whether you’re a veal or dairy calf.

To name a few, the choices will revolve around interacting with other cows and friendly wildlife like cats; how to react during natural predator attacks and when abused by farmers; trying to escape or not; what to do when he farmers take away your baby; passing time in the barn during winter; playing outside in the fields on rare ocassions, etc. There are also some parts of the story that I don’t want to spoil.

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Even his profile picture looks like the troll meme.

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I’ve looked his forum history and he just like to go around and piss people off for fun. Just flag him so the mods can finaly warn him and he should eventualy understand he’s being mean for nothing or get banned. Either way I’m fine with just not seing his posts.

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Hey everyone, I plan on writing this again after I submit The Magician’s Burden for the CoG contest. Check out the original post for the summary and cover art!

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