Dev Journal: Monster Girl Recruitment

The Problem:
    Monster girl (MG) recruitment is something I haven't had a clear plan for up until now, but I think I've arrived at a method that will not only work mechanically, but also incorporate some fun scenarios that we may not get a chance to touch on otherwise.

    In this game, Vessels are your main units. They're easily accessible through the gacha and have skills that are meant to complement each other and the player's strategies. MGs, on the other hand, appear almost entirely as enemies. They are not easy to obtain and they often will have skills that are a direct detriment to others on their team or even themselves. However, the player can still recruit and use them, and maybe even create interesting strategies based around their off-beat skillsets.

    The problem is- getting Vessels? Easy. You get them from the gacha. Lose a Vessel? Easy. Get them again from the gacha. But I want to create a clear distinction between Vessels and MGs. I don't want to just make them gacha bloat, so they need their own form of recruitment and recovery. More than that, I think it's fun when something feels "unintended" and you have to put in extra work for it, so I want to make dealing with MG hires a little difficult- without making it annoying.

The Solution:
    Recovery we have sorted. There's an upcoming NPC that will be able to resurrect fallen MGs by "rebirthing" your other units into them. But recruitment hasn't been nailed down. My first idea was that if you KO an MG in battle and then feed enough of your units to them, once their digestion finishes they will flee the battle and join you at the end, but that's awkward.

    So instead, my working idea is that if you KO an MG, then eat them with a carrier, the carrier's digestion will not automatically start and they will be kept safe inside her. At the end of a battle, any MGs that remain safely inside your units will be "captured." Captured enemies will be detained at your base, where you may interact with them, bring them gifts, and even force them to eat vessels to gain their favor. Max out their favorability and they will join your side.

    It's been my plan before that you'd only be able to recruit one of each MG, but I think with this method I may allow the player to get duplicates. To make them still feel distinct, I'll be giving MGs random names instead of leaving them with a generic class name, too. There will also most likely be some caveats to this, you may not be able to recruit duplicates of certain units like the Goblin Lord or Dusk Lamia, and MGs that do join you will likely be adjusted to not be completely broken or useless.

General Update:
    However it goes, once this update's out my first order of business will be to finish the art for the MG Rebirth NPC, so a skeletal version of the capture system may show up alongside her release. Speaking of, that will be out later this week. I'll be doing a beta release first on the Discord, since there's been a lot of destroying and rebuilding core game systems in this update and I expect some pretty bad bugs, but once that's dealt with I'll release the fixed version here. Thank you so much for the support, I'm looking forward to finally drawing some new characters for the game next week!