Wow, we've got a big chunk of stuff for you this month. A return to hucowery, along with the pet system and herb being finished. Put a lot of work into this one, and probably most importantly, spent some time playtesting the hucow route.

We normally test specific items and things that we make of course, but playtesting is a bit different. Rather than looking at specific mechanics or content and testing to make sure they work, playtesting involves playing the game in a more general sense. Looking more at the design and experience, things that are needed, things that should be adjusted, spotting the random unreported bug here and there.

We've got a good list of things to do to improve the Hucow experience now, in addition to the things we're already planning on doing. You'll be seeing a lot more focus on Hucows now over the coming months now that most of the things we wanted to wrap up are done. We'll still add a litte extra stuff for everyone too, of course, because doing nothing but hucow makes for sad dev cows.

Our goal is to have a nice finished/complete hucow experience by the end of the year, with some polishing and tweaks while we hold a vote and then plan out our next expansion phase. I know this particular expansion ended up taking longer than planned--sorry about that--but that's mostly because we did a lot to improve the base game as we went along... so it's not just that we were dragging things out.

Some big things in the last year:

• Sex Card Game & revised sex handling
• Evening activity system to speed up in-game evenings when needed and give a more active life to the player character. (still going to keep adding events to that!)
• New Music system with track selection and even replaceable music files for custom music.
• Unified and improved game menus, with some streamlining and plenty of quality of life improvements.
• A new transformative system that will work with future content as well as handling the hucow transformation.
• UI scaling and other display improvements all over the place, usually tweaks.
• Some attempts... to try and make a tablet-friendly mobile version. This needs a good deal of work, tbh, so want to have a poll to see if you guys want us to work on it (and an exe wrapped game too).
• A new Avatar that looks pretty awesome and has a ridiculous amount of variation so far. (I still have to draw custom stuff myself and/or wait on our artist to recover enough to even look at it again... this kinda work is killer on the mojo. Gonna do it though, if slowly, because it'll be great.)
• A lot of code revision and improvements to various systems, scheduling, milk and lactation, mutations, fertility got a lot of stuff too.
• A much better game state system than what we initially put together, with support for a lot of cool things like unlocks and such, and generally just remembering the tons of settings you can choose for playing the game. Still more to do in the future ^_^

As a quick aside, we don't have real beastiality in the game. Like, sex with fictional tentacle creatures, sure, and robots here and there, but not any actual beastiality. We did some clearing up in some areas where that wasn't as obvious as it could be anyway. I thought it was odd to have people tell us our game was taken down in f95zone (which we never even added there anyway...) for beastiality. Especially when I can name a few very popular text games right off the top of my head with actual hardcore beastiality in them that are on that site. /shrug

I guess with that statement, I should mention I don't have anything against people into that, or whatever other random kink like feet (heh). Different strokes for different folks as I always say. As long as you aren't hurting anyone (against their will, some people appreciate it), I think it's fine as far as I'm concerned. That said, none of us are into the extra spicy kinks so don't want to deal with the hassle. Feel free to make mods with your favorite stuff in it though, we'll be glad to give tips and tools and such to anyone looking to make a mod. (That's why we added all the kink gates for kinks we don't have in the game, after all!)

Well, I think this is more than enough words... especially with the change log below being so huge. Thank you guys soooo much for supporting us. Like seriously. The world is a crazy place, but you guys make this small escape from reality possible. :D

ThaumX ~ Your friendly cellar erolich

Words:  3,914,609 (26,695,371 characters)

Code:  200,936 lines of TypeScript (plus plenty of other stuff, of course)

• General Fixes and Improvements:
• Fixed issue where womb health wouldn't be increased to maximum for characters starting as a hucow.
• Pregnancy will no longer prevent semen from being deposited in the womb for characters with the cervical dilation mutation. Note: This is because of multiple causes that would allow for superfetation, so a pregnant womb could become pregnant again.
• Multiple improvements to sperm motion simulation, particularly in cases with multiple wombs and special mutations.
• Motion of semen over cervix now has potential for sperm to enter the womb in all cases.
• Adjustment of sperm death calculations for cervical penetration in certain circumstances.
• Fixed issue where motion involving multiple wombs could result in skipping a womb in rare circumstances.
• Fixed the output of the sperm info display in the cheat fertility menu, where Ovary zone A and Womb B location labels were swapped.
• Changed how cum is handled when multiple wombs are involved, particularly with special mutations like cervix dilation. System is now more accurate, with total sperm amount divided among wombs after modification for additional cervical passages.
• Some other misc fixes.
• Fixed issue with Doc Mya's special fertility treatment that prevented it from working properly!
• Some improvements and expansion to the orgasm system, including better satisfaction & arousal handling, better handling of futa cum (allowing useful results from ejaculation in cases where player sperm could have fertility effects), and override for cock sock in relevant scenarios.
• Fixed diaphragms! Diaphragms now work properly during post-creampie vaginal sperm motion simulations, which was broken in the big womb expansion (multiple wombs, multiple womb locations, etc).
• Semen now runs over the diapragm (while inserted) with a small chance for some sperm cells to penetrate under the diaphragm, based on diapragm and sperm factors such as using spermicide. (note: initial calculations upon creampie contain a chance for the diaphragm to be unseated, partially unseated, or leak with odds based on diaphragm birthcon odds and mutations influencing its efficacy (typically those causing special vaginal/cervical womb movement/contraction))
• A new job event has been added to the S.P.E.R.M job where you help with some subliminal broadcasting. A good-sized event with a fun video and premise.

• Huge Pet Expansion (Complete!)
• Herb is back in a big way, with custom gifs, lots of scenes, art, and plenty of fun mechanics like pet shenanigans and tomfuckery.
• Reminder: Herb can be obtained by exploring the institute campus, getting inseminated by a mystery creature, and giving birth to his larval form. Herb is his "official" name, but the player can name him whatever they want.
• Improvement to the pet display/menu, with information displayed uniformly and neatly in the menu system. Taking a pet action occurs in-window, and presents a button to return to the general pet menu afterward.
• Additional information is presented for baby Herb, such as his hunger level, overall growth progress toward adulthood, hunger, and when in his eggsac cocoon his progress toward hatching.
• Baby herb now gives hints toward what he is hungry for, generally revealing his food preference and informing the player if feeding him with a certain method will be particularly effective. He also will be described as full and uninterested when he doesn't want to eat anymore than day.
• Feeding calculations/results for baby herb have been redone. Fixed an issue where mixing feed types could result in hunger/growth resets.
• Feeding in general is significantly more effective, requiring less fluid to feed him fully.
• Fully feeding herb for the day requires roughly 10ml of npc semen, 1500ml of breastmilk, or 50ml of futa pc semen.
• Feeding now uses a hybrid of body condition system fluid and fertility system sperm tracking.
• Adult Herb has his own menu entry which is similar to baby Herb, but contains different information such as whether he's been shown affection today.
• Adult herb has a comprehensive description of shape, personality, and behaviors available by selecting the "ABOUT HERB*" option. (*or whatever you named him)
• Sex with Herb results in a cumflation status because he dilates your cervix with his secretions. This has no mechanical impact on the player, the duration of the effect depends on the sex scene.
• Four activities have been added that the player can initiate with Herb, each with their own imagery and scene text.
• Pet Him
• Takes up to 20 minutes
• Allows you to pet him. Stroking his tentacles will get him riled up, so you have to decide if you want to stop things from becoming sexual or not.
• Sex that happens this way involves only a single tentacle penetration and has a custom gif in addition to the scene. It is a fairly short session (in game time) compared to some other activity options.
• If you try to calm him down, you will have to pass a communication skill check. This check is significantly easier if Herb has successfully bred you in the past and you have birthed 1 or more of his babies.
• If the check is failed, you end up having sex. The scene is similar to choosing to have sex, though the way it starts is obviously different.
• If you calm him down, you are able to pet him and avoid sex.
• If you have sex (by choice or failure) Herb's affection need for the day will be met. If you blueball him, there is a chance his affection need will be met, but it is more likely that it will not be.
• Cuddle Him
• A sweet scene that always meets Herb's affection need for the day.
• Has a cute art of cuddling with Herb.
• If you have previously given birth to Herb's babies, or if you are currently pregnant (with a 75% chance), there will be no sex involved in the scene.
• Otherwise, cuddling will turn into a sexual encounter with Herb. This scene also has it's own custom gif.
• This scene is significantly more mentally beneficial than petting and takes 30 minutes.
• Sex while cuddling is more satisfying, uses a single tentacle, and results in a larger creampie than petting.
• Breeding Time
• Starts an intentional sex encounter with Herb that lasts 40 minutes.
• Has the largest scene of the actions, and a custom animated gif that was a lot of work to create (using casch animation as a base) of a good chunk of the scene's events.
• Is good for your mental health thanks to a combo of companionship, thorough fucking, and some special tentacle monster chemicals.
• Get fucked with both tentacles and a big creampie.
• Give Treat
• Gives Herb a snack, and if you have sexual fluids in your pussy, ass, or both you feed some to Herb.
• New artwork showing herb's tongue... it's not my favorite piece but it works.
• Herb will remove liquid (body condition) cum from appropriate areas, and will also suction semen from your holes (fertility system).
• Thanks to cunning Institute design, Herb won't clean out his own fluids this way, and will suck out only competing sperm.
• Removes a significant amount of sperm from your womb and ovarian spaces. removes almost all sperm from vagina.
• removing sperm from ovary areas is significantly less effective than womb, though still significant.
• If Herb removes competing sperm from your vagina, it will satisfy his affection need for the day. Otherwise there is a small chance that his affection will be satisfied.
• Scene text depends on whether he eats sperm and from where.
• Can be a good way to clean up after an unintentional creampie, particularly if repeated, but showering with herb is more effective.
• Takes 10 minutes.
• New Shower Behavior
• While baby herb is growing and lives in your shower, new gifs will display (with tentacles) on the shower menu instead of the usual shower gifs.
• When taking a shower manually, as long as it isn't a quick shower, you will have a shower with Herb.
• Assuming no special events occur in the shower, such as pink water or a lover joining you, you will see a short scene of showering with Herb. Includes a cute art of Herb being helpful and holding some soap and shampoo for you.
• Herb will also clean out your orifices of competing sperm while you're showering. This will remove all competing sperm from the vagina and rectum, and will also remove a significant amount of sperm from your wombs and ovarian spacecs. Text changes if this happens
• removing sperm from ovary areas is significantly less effective than womb, though still significant.
• If sperm are removed during the shower, there is a chance that herb will have his affection need met for the day. (having cum in both holes has better odds than just one)
• Just taking a shower with herb will not give him affection.
• Shower time is not affected by Herb.
• Acting out and bad behavior
• The odds of Herb misbehaving are lower if you have delivered his offspring (or if you are pregnant in the case of nighttime sex).
• Herb misbehaving does not reset the count of days without affection, so he will continue to misbehave unless you give him affection.
• If you go long enough without giving Herb affection (2-3 days) he will fuck you overnight.
• Results in a custom scene with some intense fucking (two tentacles at once!) with plenty of text and another custom gif.
• Gives you a really big creampie and of course an orgasm.
• You don't gain any special mental benefits from this, just the standard minimal benefits from having an orgasm.
• Herb is attracted to estrogen, and may rummage around in your purse and eat some birth control (if you have any).
• Affects the real pills basipill and lutigol, plan-b, and birth control patches.
• He will generally eat a pack's worth, finishing off any partially-used packets. 4 weeks for basipill, 2 week packs for lutigol, a single blister for plan-b, and a month box for patches.
• There is a very low chance he will do this even if he has been given affection, because he's a tenta puppy.
• If you don't own any birth control, there is a smaller chance that he'll dig in the trash instead. It so, it will make your floors and kitchen messier.
• Note: only opened birth control pills are affected. A sealed box (that hasn't been split into consumable inventory doses) won't be eaten.
• Herb is the final stage of an escaped organism life cycle, and was designed to breed humans with designer DNA, so is incredibly fertile.
• In case it's too subtle, there are hints in the text that he is affecting you mentally. He is.
• In addition to an extremely high sperm count and very high overall fertility factors, his sperm has some special features.
• It is "killer sperm" and will attack competing sperm.
• It can live longer than is typically possible for sperm, even longer than the usual 7-day max for characters with the hyperovulatory cycle mutation.
• It is immune to commonly used spermicides.
• A lot of Herb's behavior is based on his desire to care for the females he breeds.
• Herb Lives With You!
• All areas of various player homes including the hucow dorms now will have adult Herb in them (he follows you around the house, of course).
• Each one has a variety of text that can occur with various frequency.
• A new pet action button appears letting you quickly open the pet menu to check on Herb and do things with him.
• An event in your bedroom can happen if you have valid birth control where Herb sniffs it out. He doesn't eat it, but it's a bit of a warning to players that he might.
• Herb is a creation of the institute, and as such while he has special sperm cells and obviously isn't human, he fertilizes your eggs with human DNA. Thus the babies you birth are qualified for the usual birthing bonuses.
• I had thoughts to make a life cycle thing with another form and distributing them around the city, but... it didn't seem like it'd be fun enough to justify the extra work.
• A new encyclopedia entry has made with basic instructions/info about pet care.
• For now having a pet is considered complete. I've drawn up a distender beast (tentacle cat creature), but for now don't plan on working on him. You can see the arts below if interested, he's cute. If you really like this pet thing and want a distender beast too (reference to D&D optional), be sure to let us know and it could become a thing sometime in the future (at least after the sacred knowledge is complete)

• Hucowery
• A new event where you get an udder massage, featuring a nice video of big oily boobs.
• A lot of minor changes and fixes for things discovered during playtesting. Didn't make a thorough record, and I'm too lazy to scan alllll the code and words, sorry.
• You now get a starting balance of 2500 cowbux valid only for your first day as a hucow. This is to help you buy furniture and clothes and such, and really just helps you get in debt. I will probably tweak this in the future to be lower at higher difficulties.
• The base weekly cowbucks cap has been increased from 250 to 500.
• The player no longer has a milk quota until they are fully treated (as intended).
• values for milk quota, weekly milk collected so far, and total milk collected as a cow are now presented in liters instead of ml. This should reduce the anxiety of seeing a quota of 150,000ml, which is really only 150L and not all that crazy--fairly easy in fact.
• There is a new event that can occur when the player is pregnant, it is much more likely if the player is in danger of burst.
• It is an event where you get a pregnancy checkup and scan. Fairly straight-forward for standard pregnancies.
• If you are in danger of bursting, you start a large scene with Doc Mya.
• Text varies a good deal if you participated in Doc Mya's fertility trial
• If you don't have all the elasticizing treatments, you will be given them at a slightly discounted rate compared to signing up for them as optional treatments. (If you participated in Doc Mya's fertility trial, she pays for these herself).
• If you do have them, you will have a pregnaid installed. This is 30% cheaper than at Gestique. (again, Mya will pay if she gave you her fertify concoction.)
• Has a different tone than the more dire standard events, much more congratulatory and a lot less negative in general.
• Fertility treatments have been added to the hucow optional treatments.
• A new menu that is accessed from the optional treatments menu.
• A wide selection of female treatments similar to what you can get at Gestique, though not 100% of them.
• These add to your hucow debt, so can be obtained immediately
• Special texts unique to the COOP and being a hucow, as well as applying them during your work day haven't been created yet, so the treatment is given immediately with the standard text.
• Won't cause you any grief with the COOP because they are approved treatments.
• Fixed an issue that allowed the first-time hucow milking to repeat.
• Made new art of hucow milking cups diagrams drawn on a blackboard for a hucow class. Because of course, this is AW and hucows deserve a realistic in-universe milking apparatus. The class event itself isn't written yet, just ran out of time.
• Fixed milk price so that you aren't paid a crazy insane amount per ml of milk. You are now paid by the liter as intended.

• Hucow marriage
• A big expansion of the marriage system.
• A new questline for getting out of the COOP grip. The options depend on your NPC's wealth and other factors.
• Wealthy NPC can just buy out your contract and marry you.
• Poor NPC will propose you to wiggle your way out of the COOP contract. Which is risky ngl.
• Some NPC would just admit the defeat having no idea on how to get you free from your debt.
• If you manage to get married it marks the end of the official Hucow route storyline although you are able to continue playing as a free-roaming married hucow.
• Failing the quest will get you in even more debt and will cause some discipline from Abigail Crawford.
• It's hard to gauge it since the words are scattered across many files but I guesstimate it to be around 20000 chars of content.

• Herd reactions to the marriage
• Herd will react more vividly to your attempts to marry the NPC from outside of the COOP.
• The variable outcomes depend on your reaction to the accusations.
• 12000 chars, some of them are really hot ones!

• Quality of lifes UI improvements
• Milking button at the every location in the COOP.
• Easy to use bathe button in the bathroom.
• I changed this so it appears in the whole house, but only when (externally) dirty.

• Evening activity
• Hucow characters will milk themselves as a new evening activity.
• This milk will go towards the quota and debt of course.
• No more ending the evening and bursting with milk right after.

• More milking-related stuff
• Action menu now allows to get yourself milked into the can for the personal use.
• Or call the farmhand so the milk goes towards the quota.
• Both hand milking and pumps are supported. And of course the stationary milkers can be used too.
• Full canisters can be delivered to the office so they will go towards the quota. Or used for your liking line in cooking as an ingredient.

• Fixes!
• Fixed the satisfaction changes in many places. (It was substracting too little because we messed up with the numbers, sorry)
• "Drive to the downtown" clicky thing in the residental aread fixed. (Finally!) Leads to the city map now as intended.
• Some typos were fixed too.

• Besty had a nice vacation
• Just bragging.