Is your focus after job & home is sex & pregnancy, right? How do you expand the sex scene? Do we have a kid by that? And do you plan the kid can be fattened up too? It's just my curiousity about what might you make on that.
For the sex scene, I'm planning an optional, short rhythm-based minigame where the goal is to bring both yourself and your girl to orgasm. I also want to add lots more variables, including location, positions, kink stuff like feeding and bondage, teasing, moaning, etc.
The pregnancy side of things will only include the actual pregnancy and the growth associated with that. There won't be any characters in the game below 18, so the result of the pregnancy won't feature as an interactable character in any way.
It's a tricky one, as I want the consequences of pregnancy to exist and for the game to be somewhat realistic.
What I might do is make the mother unavailable for interaction when caring for her child, similar to what happens when she's at work. The free slots for dates would be when the child is at a nursery or with their grandparents. If the mother is, or becomes, too fat to care for the child, the child would be permanently moved to live with their grandparents. When the child reaches school age, I'd probably have them permanently sent away to a boarding school.
So instead of children being characters, they'd act as a second, temporary job for the mother.
I welcome any feedback or suggestions on this.
Carefully weigh your options here so you do not run into ethic problems, which could upset the fanbase (and others) more then having less game content.
Im sure you are aware of what controversies "life sim" games can cause.
It is reasonable that you have decided that offspring will not be actual game characters. Even if you would let these characters age to adults immediately, you would have to block certain interactions with them anyway.
Make the consequences of pregnancy even more minimal?
Like: having a short story about parenthood, sleep deprevation, and that everything went well in the end ... years later ... the younger generation have grown to adults and live thier own lives ... you continue the game.
If you really want to have parenting included in the game then the player character should also have the chance to partake in that. Like losing a timeslot when your partner is not available for whatever reaason.
It is also clear that all family members have to always be cared for adequately.
Personally i could perfectly enjoy the game without the whole "pregnancy and its consequences" theme. Yes it means less content but also less problems.
Choose wisely on how to approach this!
Thank you for your feedback! I've thought it over, and I think the safest way forward might be to have a short scene of a couple of sentences at the end of the pregnancy, stating that the birth was a success, and it's been agreed that your son/daughter will be raised by their grandparents. Then they are never mentioned again, and the game carries on as normal.
Ultimately, Second Helpings is an erotic fetish game & I don't want children (or anyone under the age of 18) anywhere near that.
I don't see why have the option to have kids if you don't get to rise them in anyway. I not one of the peeps who wanted the sex & pregnancy update, I was down for the Personality & the Jobs update.
but I feel if you going to have an update to make sex more meaningful than the act of having a child & being able to rise them into adulthood would be the most fulling thing too those who want to roll play a happily ever after with their in-game wife.
Cause other wise just rollover the sex mini game over into the personality update as a way to enhance interactability with the women at that point.