EGGOMON
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EGGOMON 2025
🕑 Added 2024-12-10 22:37:24 +0000 UTC
ROXY is being worked on, she will be done before Christmas. Anniversary discussion time.
EGGOMON 2025 Roadmap discussion time.
Firstly a bit of a personal update: I am getting laid off in the NEW YEAR. This is not a crisis for me, since I have lots of friends in my industry and am already pivoting to land somewhere. I am simply letting you all know that this, combined with other family issues, is why my update planned for Nov 20th got delayed. I have been on the internet since the birth of the web as a home network, and am annoyed by creators who stumble from personal crisis to personal crisis endlessly. That isn’t me, but EGGOMON is now eating up enough of my time and offering enough money that I consider it a SIDE GIG. It needs me to dedicate weekends + more to it. This is entirely a one man show, so when I hit bumps in the road development stutters.
Brace yourself, this conversation might trigger you. Four things need to be said up front:
EGGOMON is barely meeting my moderate hopes.
LOADS of work is being planned for EGGOMON.
EGGOMON’s “free” delivery is changing, but you have MORE reason to participate as a fan.
The theory of what EGGOMON should be is moving away from Roguelite to “replayable RPG”
No one deserves to hear this LESS than you, the financial backers of this great in development game, but here it is: EGGOMON doesn’t logically make a ton of sense to keep working on. It doesn’t make much money, compared to the amount of time it takes to develop, especially compared to its competitors which are fetish-focused VN’s churned out by DAZ software, that make loads more. There are two main problems here: Firstly it’s hard to find places to market the blasted thing, since getting into contact with Hentai Game site mods is damn near impossible. The HTML embedded export is close to 2 GB, which means it won’t host on itch.io. Most critically it’s not the game that many people instinctively want. When people SEE “EGGOMON” they instinctively code it (and desire it) as a porny version of [Monster Catcher] and when they download it they discover that the game is... Not that. It’s an unfinished survival rogue-lite. Which is a rough thing to be in a BETA state much less in an ALPHA state.
EGGOMON has come a LONG way from that initial proposal I launched in November 2023 with 20 monsters and no features except running through bushes in a single zone (that had less than half the assets it has now). Here is a nostalgic link to that early bug fixed build btw. https://www.mediafire.com/file/x7sutr1oy4wbzsz/2023_Eggomon_Dec_10.zip/file
I am so grateful that many people have believed in me as a developer. Still, there’s not really much of an excuse; if I had a better product, a better piece of art, a better game, the project would be doing better. The landscape of adult-game patronage is a cutthroat free for all, but it’s ALSO pretty damn fair. I have benefitted from the fact that ANYONE can TRY and start a NEW project, and I haven’t retained patrons or grown much in size due to EGGOMONS ballooning complexity and my sporadic time commitment to it.
So, EGGOMON isn’t really meeting my expectations. It’s also not really meeting the expectations of the average user, because development is agonizingly slow and something you vote on might take a month or more to implement (that’s not changing btw). So people try EGGOMON, it isn’t just [Monster Catcher] but with porn, and they complain. Then they don’t throw a couple coins my way, I make no moola, and I grind my teeth and focus on other work.
BUT EGGOMON IS slowly growing, all thanks to you. It started with merely 22 active patrons who were taking a BIG chance, and is now hovering around 80, after a year. Which is impressive, but that growth has slowed to a crawl. For example in May 2024, there were 62 members, and then my personal obligations slowed development so much that the lack of meaningful updates became obvious. I think people caught on to the fact that development had ground to a near halt during spring, and interest understandably stagnated, I shed patrons understandably, and gradually had to rebuild momentum until now. I fucking love transparency, and some of you have supported EGGOMON for a year so here is the raw data:
So many people would love their gig to attract this attention, their love child, their passion project. I ain’t complaining at all, understand I am merely frustrated that I cannot do even better, there’s no fault of your own. If anything I need to get serious about marketing the game. Once we have enemy trainers, we can shed one of the original ongoing (valid) complaints: EGGOMON is a porn game with an XXX == loss loop. Overdone, yuck, me want sick monsters on bad baddies and put them in stables now, please.
Ahem. Consider what a mildly competent code monkey can make, or expect to make, and compare it to EGGOMONS take. Eggomon’s monthly revenue cannot compete with a part-time minimum wage job (it’s roughly 1/3 a part time minimum wage job), and it will soon burden me with roughly that equivalent in attention as a part time job, while demanding my expertise. I, like any game developer, am someone with... SOME competence in software, so spending loads of time on something that isn’t super successful, is a sacrifice.
Fortunately, humans are not logical beings. The work I do elsewhere for some mega corp is essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and would be completed, to spec, regardless of whether or not I existed, and whether or not I was born. I don’t have a family to support, or much going on in my life, so I can choose to just double down on the only piece of unique, creative, meaningful work I have available to me; EGGOMON. So the game is what I am going to CHOOSE for 2025.
So this is all a lead up for why I am changing the monetization model of EGGOMON to be more in line with what most other PATRON supported adult content creators offer. This sort of goes back on my initial promise that EGGOMON will be “FREE FOREVER”, but I am going to bend the rules (and my wording) to read: “The latest STABLE version will be free for the public”. Obviously the final version of EGGOMON will also be completely free. Each month patrons will receive the latest EGGOMON TEST build, and free fans will have access to the latest PATCHED release which will likely be a month, or a little more, behind.
I am not going to attempt to enforce exclusivity on my patron only builds, that’s a wasted effort. BUT I do need to control the most convenient and safe access to EGGOMON (naturally my links are more trustworthy) . Stealing from, or subverting my plans isn’t cool, especially when you do it publicly to undermine my measly revenue strategy. But hey share shit with your friends to your heart's content. In DM’s. Otherwise, please don’t use OFFICIAL Eggomon threads to share the latest patron build link.
So, GOING FORWARD FROM 2025, EGGOMON will have experimental patron builds, and stable PUBLIC builds. Being a patron gets you into the latest TEST build. Starting on January 1st 2025, the first TEST build will come out, with monster saving, and free members will have to wait, probably a whole month for a version of that which isn’t nightmarishly buggy to be released. You will be able to save up to 21 monsters persistently, throughout future runs. However, to sweeten the pot for people who are not patrons, new PUBLIC votes and polls are now taking place on the Patreon, and Subscribestar at the start of every month. Polls that you can take part in, even as a free member! Although I started doing this in November my plan was always to have the free polls begin with the new revenue strategy. So uh, it was a bonus I intended to include with the 2025 plan, but started early because I finished SHINIES and figured “why not”. Be excited about it all over again, wow, what value.
Meanwhile patrons aren’t just retaining their privileges, but gaining new ones as well...
Let's look again at that beautiful CHART:
To reiterate: patrons will have access to the latest test build, while public supporters can access the latest patched build, which is probably going to be a monthish behind.
What is a mini boss vote? Vote on which world miniboss will be added to the game, the winning monster will get a unique sprite, and be set up somewhere on the map, where it will wait for you to come and claim it (or its offspring). This may be tied to a quest.
What is a WIKI? Eggomon needs a wiki, I’ll go start one then link it IN GAME, but I want the community to pitch in to fill it out. I will have to write loads for this to function, initially.
What is a shiny vote? Vote on which colors a monster will have when it is born shiny (or super shiny (ya this game is twice as cool as [Monster Catcher] now!)). Bother me about how you want a specific monster to get a shiny vote in the forums, and suggest alternate color pallets there too. Or on Discord, where I listen to people more often because they pay me to.
What is XXX Polish? All Scouts need to have their own moans, cum effects are in the works, and more special effects for a type match between scout and monster are planned.
What is a REDEMPTION vote? I promised that monsters that lose their vote will get a second shot at being added. This is that. Three rejected monsters enter, only one can be chosen to be fished out of the trash heap.
What is an Insect Colony vote, or Froggy vote? You’ll have to find out.
Finally: What is going to happen to EGGOMON long term, if it isn’t successful enough to justify working on it? Well, I WILL finish the games ALPHA, which will include the basic map loop in which you can walk all around the world, AND I will finish the first quests, and add all the scouts, and I am sure by then there will be over 100 monsters (50 bangable).
But if the game isn’t going to be sustainable once all that is in then...
I’ll probably just make all the pixel art I worked on so far with EGGOMON a CC0 public asset.
Then I’ll probably start making EGGOMON 2. With the same monster assets. Monster voting will just continue and new monsters will be back-shovelled into EGGOMON 1.
EGGOMON 2 would be a Harvest Moon style game (where you defend your farm occasionally).
OR.
I’ll make Poison Star, which is a top down space shooter where you colonize a galaxy 4X style, while also doing shooty live action space battles. Also the Galaxy is already populated by breedable aliens which must be colonized, for humanity. I definitely do not have the cash to make my biggest bestest H-game ideas though.
The reason I would do something NEW is because starting from scratch now that I know GODOT well, would allow the code to be much more optimized. However what I consider a “Sustainable” income remains undefined.
Oh, ALSO. EGGOMON rapidly added monsters, it launched with 20 (10 evolved), and added 42. That’s a whopping 3.5 monsters a month, and that pace will likely continue as the roster fills out. Remember, the unevolved forms are cute, but super easy to do since they are little static sprites, whereas the evolved monsters need a whole ass animation. I was worried that the roster would get too bloated too quickly but I won’t consider this an issue until the game hits 200 monsters (100 breedable).
Here is a link to the patched first version of the game: https://www.mediafire.com/file/x7sutr1oy4wbzsz/2023_Eggomon_Dec_10.zip/file
Hopefully this reminds people that the game IS happening and being worked on.
One final topic is the TYPE of game EGGOMON is slowly evolving into. I think that my original vision for the game isn’t going to work out. While creating a piece of art, the art has to take on a life of its own, to some degree. The original vision for the game was one which provides a 30 minute to 1 hour roguelite session where the player earns meta progress. That isn’t going to work with a POKEMON type game. People want to get attached to monsters that are there for them and they can invest time into powering up, and also have fun moments with those monsters.
My NEW goal is going to be to build an RPG game, which includes a small save system for your favorite monsters, which will persist into future campaigns. The game still won’t have any traditional grind or level up mechanics. The NEW vision for EGGOMON is going to be an RPG with an hour long campaign with MULTIPLE ROUTES and ENDINGS. Retaining a heavy focus on replayability. Your favorite named monsters will persist, you can pull them from a computer in the base at the start of a run, and will save at the start of each day. As you do more runs, your monsters (in lore these are just the monsters the scouts had previously) will gain more power, and it will be worth it to invest in maxxing out a bloodline so it can be fed more fruits and get all the bonuses. Each run you will earn exp, and at the start of a run you can purchase supplies with that exp. EGGOMON has expanded horizontally for some time, its features stretching out. These features, and the UI, need a lot of polish, but I think that once all these features are IN the game, I will be able to very comfortably expand the game vertically, at a drastic pace. Shit will come together and the conversations can turn to balance and monster uniqueness from features the game still needs.
That’s how game development works, and that’s the plan.
Comments
Maurdakar Lancaster
Honestly what moved me off of the roguelite fixation more than anything, was the argument that 'monster catcher' RELIES on you having a relationship with your monsters. So the Save system will just be a persistent BOX mechanic.
Apples
Litel thing i'm not sure if it's a bug, but when you switch mons mid battle the turns don't advance in fact seems like the turn resets, if the opposing mon is faster than yours they will be able to attack every time you swap, also if you defeat an opposing mon or if one of yours is defeated the turn also doesn't advance for that specific turn... And you can "Switch" into the same mon that's already on the field
TotalFuckingLoser
Appreciate the candid talk. Glad to see the game is moving towards an RPG and not a Rogue-lite. I remember writing a big ass post on f95 with that as my biggest gripe. I empathize with struggle with monetary goals as that's what keeps food on the table, and we aren't all swimming in dosh to work solely on passion projects. All I can do is wish for the best for you and your future work.
Maurdakar Lancaster
For sure I will be doing that eventually.
1upermario
Been following this game for a while. Been loving the concept and I hope you keep moving forward with this! Maybe you could make an end or post game upgrade that either lets your scout survive an impregnation? Or even s upgrade that has your scout not get lost when when lost in a wild battle via being impregnated?
Slothlord
Found the project at its very start through F95. Was immediately hooked on the concept, it's easily one of the things I look forward to seeing updates on every month. Having a full roadmap is exciting, the full scope of the game not even being able to encompass the next year. One thing I've always wanted to mention but forgot to say, is that I really enjoy the data entries for each monster. Some of the earliest monsters have incredibly sparce entries. I'm hoping that as part of all this new work you might go back and give them proper logs.
Maurdakar Lancaster
I agree, which is why I added an item that lets you recover a scout. Also, the experience of losing and getting an egg is gonna be what enemy generic trainers are for. But I broadly agree that EGGOMON isn't what people want when they see it, at least right now.
Little Bill
Hey, this game has been an awesome experience so far and i sincerely hope that it can gain more traction from here on. Personally, I'll admit I didn't really enjoy the getting bred as a game over as the impregnation is what drew me to it in the first place. Regardless I am excited to see what wild ride you take us on. Keep up the good work!
Megumin
BTW. That space game sounds intriguing. Maybe less so for EGGOMON 2 because it might fall in the same trap as EGGOMON 1.
Megumin
It also doesn't help that ALOT of games tagged with impregnation are bad end. So there's already this stigma surrounding impregnation in hentai game.
Megumin
That comment about the game not being what people want caught my attention. I'll be real as someone who was into the project at first. I kinda felt this. I'm a big impregnation fan. I love the idea of my character getting bred. So my first impression was that it was going to be like pokemon. Where eggomon would try to breed you in combat and if it happen it would be like losing a battle in pokemon where you either lose money or something. Also getting an egg in the process. What I got instead was a roguelite where the main appeal for me is supposed to be avoided. Yes, I know there's that ranch for defeated trainers but it's still silly how getting bred once makes you a breeding sow forever. Also if you like that character and lost a battle you can no longer use her. I really wanted to like this game, but my interest in impregnation is just not compatible with this roguelike aspect of the game and I think alot of people felt the same way with how much people were arguing with you on other sites.
Lana12 Lana12
I wish this chart represented my stocks
Livid Canadian
That's a lot of text I don't have the time to read but I enjoy the work no matter what form it takes, you have my respect just for trying to make a game like this anyways
Maurdakar Lancaster
Thanks, I will work on the project full time if I ever hit 2000 dollars, and will definitely take on someone part time around 3000. But these are distant goals.
Maurdakar Lancaster
My obsessions with Tsuyu Asui ensures that one of the minor NPC factions HAD to be frog girls.
Gabe Ridley
I like the honesty, this game hasn’t disappointed me yet and I eagerly await whatever you end up working on or making.
Dediroc
Road map ftw 😎 Also looking forward to Froggy vote in the far future
Riley Knorr
Your dedication to this project is amazing. I have nothing but respect for your artistry and commitment. The transparency is great and I think your visions for the future is interesting and I look forward to it. Every once in a while a project engages me enough that I wish I had deeper pockets. I know a couple bucks a month isn't a ton, but it's more than worth it for the amount I get from it.
