Astro Kaen
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Experiments and Research make the Dream Work
🕑 Added 2025-04-09 23:22:17 +0000 UTCHey everyone! It’s TT back with some more MonXXX devlogs!
Today we’re going to be talking about research, stats, and how the progression works.
Research
Research is the #1 thing needed to run the facility. You need research both to fund the experiments by providing research to M.I.S. as well as to use your research to improve your experiment techniques. Today you just have to focus on your job: to get research points and run some experiments! Experiments come in all sorts of flavors, like physical, mental, behavioral, elemental and biological research. Some kin will excel at some experiment types, and fail at others, but both give research!
Even experiments with negative outcomes are a learning opportunity, though the kin may have different opinions. Failing an experiment, or getting a negative outcome can affect the Kin’s happiness, and unhappy kin are prone to outbursts, or can become aggressive!
Research points are awarded for completing experiments regardless of outcome. Research points can be invested into increasing affection, unlocking perks, discovering info on the kin, info that can lead you to new experiments, or point you to obscure behavior that could lead to uncovering the kin’s secrets!
Early version of the research screen for Flare, small boxes mean fitting text was a challenge 
Money Money Money
Research points are needed for both advancing as well as maintaining the facility. The facility has to be maintained in order to keep operating and the main way to do that is to sell research to M.I.S. who will continue to fund the research facility as long as you’re making headway with your research! Selling research points gets you funding for buying repair kits, supplies, items and makeovers for the kin’s rooms, and upgrades for the facilities, but as all things balance is needed, as research points also helps you unlock useful info about the kin!
Affection vs Happiness
I’ve talked about happiness and affection in the past few devlogs, and figured I’d chat about the differences since they aren’t the same! Happiness is what you imagine, kin are happy if you do things they like, and become unhappy when you do things they don’t. This is mainly affected by experiments, experiments most of the time are often frustrating or invasive to the kin, but all kin have preferences, so sometimes experiments are less negative than others, and some can even be positive if it’s an activity the kin particularly like. Many things will affect happiness for example repeating the same experiment over and over is fatiguing, and so the decrease in happiness may grow if you don’t change it up and try other things. Kin may come to loathe an experiment if you do it too much so even positive experiments can cause negative outcomes.
Unhappy kin will sometimes have outbursts during the workday leading to a facility emergency lock-down that as a researcher you’ll need to resolve! (I’ll go into more details on this later!)
Affection on the other hand is your bond with the kin, this can be improved by spending time with the kin and over time building your relationship. While you may do experiments and make them unhappy sometimes, their affection will never decrease. Increasing your affection will unlock new dialog and new scenes with the kin, as you become closer with them. This is essentially the primary way to progress a kin’s personal story.
Energy and Efficiency
Doing experiments is exhausting, and so kin who do many experiments run out of energy over time. As kin lose energy they also decrease in efficiency, a tired kin is less likely to produce as many research points as they’ll be less cooperative and potentially prone to a mental break. Kin need time away from doing experiments in order to recover, but it’s a balance, let them rest too often and you won’t get the research needed to keep the facility afloat with all it’s maintenance costs. Some kin recover faster than others, but they all need breaks. Happiness also affects recovery time, an neutral or unhappy kin will recover slowr than a happy kin. Managing kin’s time and energy to do research experiments as effectively as possible is a challenge but it’s your job to overcome it!
Tabbed idea we’re considering, better for putting text, plus we can add longer tooltips! 
Next Few Months
Okay so that wraps up this update! However for now things are going to be quiet on my front, unfortunately I have some IRL stuff happening over the next month and a half so there won’t be any stuff done on the programming side and I won’t be posting again until May but rest assured I’ll be back in May as we continue work! I’ll post an update when I get back in mid May where we’re at. Currently we’re still working on getting a demo of the new game loop, which we’re currently hoping to aim for July some time, though things could change.
On the art and writing side we’re going to be testing stuff internally so I don’t think there will be any posts about it, but rest assured I know the things we’re working on will be exciting to many so stay tuned in for that! I’ll make sure to post something about what they came up with once I’m back.
ALSO! If you aren’t I HIGHLY suggest joining the Discord! I started hanging out over there so if you want to chat about the game definitely join and I can answer questions for you!
