Out of curiosity what do you all think is going through our protagonist’s head when she’s transforming? Do you have any headcanons or imagined motivations as to why she would continue down a certain path.

Here’s some of mine.

unhealthy could probably be her just giving in and blowing caution to the wind about what happens to her. She’s just going to eat what tastes good regardless of what happens. After going through so many of the transformations she probably has had enough and just wants to eat something that isn’t gross not caring what happens to her physically. though as she gets in the habit of mindless consumption her standards lower which leads her to consuming moldy sandwiches and oranges just cause they’re there.

Leach and centipede seem to change her mentality after she becomes one herself. It seems to just become the new normal for her.

same for anomalous, though more so because what’s considered normal wouldn’t seem appetizing to her. I’d like to think she comes to see the alien objects to just make sense to her like they were always common place with her while regular food would be the thing she reacts to with uncertainty.

liquid could probably be just an undying thirst. The rest of her dries up so she must keep consuming, never feeling quenched despite feeling so bloated and sloshy

similarly the fetus path seems to be some kind of cannibalistic hunger, like some kind of rabies.

I feel like dialogue from her when she changes to give us some insight about her experience would be helpful, maybe a check option for reading her description for the food she received rather than seeing it more than once after the first time and not selecting a food item will tell us about how she’s feeling in her current state.

does anyone know which coin amounts guarantee a specific item or type? Especially anomalous

who’s starving man and why does the game keep resetting every time he dies?

I think some status changes to the transformations would be interesting. It would help convey something is changing about her and add more weirdness.

Healthy- Because apple seeds are so abundant perhaps healthy should be the easiest form to lose, receiving more money possibly being a reasonable trade off. Big pay out but harder to maintain.

Unhealthy- You get a chance of reviving unhealthy food with every selection from the vending machine. Non unhealthy food fills less hunger as if it’s not as satisfying and simulates struggling to diet without starving yourself.

Parasite- Alien insects show up in your inventory, as if they’re drawn to you.

Anomalous- Randomly gaining or losing hunger and thirst. Coins can change to different amounts.

Liquid- More drinks spawn but get thirstier.

I think a button that would pause the game and give us her thoughts would be neat, especially if there could be corresponding images to go along with some of them. Like she could comment on her current transformation and various aspects about it or something about whatever she ate last.

Could include some small tidbits like checking herself out in a puddle or her reflection in the vending machine or just looking at her body herself and any issues that would come with being the way she is.

Examples:

Healthy- Waving to people passing her by and feeling confident about her toned arms and stomach. Some kind of astral projection into some greater cosmic awareness.

Unhealthy- Clutching her stomach from the queasiness of adjusting to a bad diet and realizing just how much more of her there is as she does so. Struggling to just get up and how tiresome it is to move being so heavy with so little energy and stamina.

Parasite- Checking out her maggots and mutations. Showing a nest she built at her final stage.

Anomalous- Adjusting to accepting strange as the new normal, the world around her seeming more foreign.

Liquid- Seeing just how much of the black liquid is pooling around her.

Likewise, there should be comments from passerby’s about your current condition but to maintain the surrealness and leaving the player wondering who’s still giving her money the people walking by could still retain their same scornful attitude, as if what’s happened to you is equally as repulsive, shameful and inconvenient as being homeless. The healthy route probably being the exception.

Healthy:

At worst, people walking by will resent you for “wasting” your looks when you could be making something of yourself, but mostly people might not even assume you’re homeless at all, receiving compliments when they do. By the time you assend to a higher plain of health the people around you see you as an idol, giving you offerings like your presence compels them to idolize her.

The girl comments about feeling good about how she looks and how she feels. Even when she’s hungry she doesn’t seem to feel like it’s enough that she feels sick. Her outlook on her situation is more optimistic as she seems to be doing pretty well all things considered. When she’s ascended she has grown beyond mortal material needs.

When she receives something healthy she’ll comment on how good it will feel to eat it while unhealthy food will make her wince a little, like she’s thinking about her figure. She’ll especially be weary of gross and unusual stuff.

Unhealthy:

When it comes to other people they react like she doesn’t need money to buy food, that she’s clearly been eating plenty as is and could stand to starve a little. Some regular dialogue suggests people recognize her from before as they pass by so they could say they’re disappointed the money they gave her went to just fattening herself up, like she took advantage of people’s good will, or if they don’t recognize her they assume this is what she already looked like and say some fatphobic stuff about her, like wasting her money on food was how she got to be homeless. Also because she gets so sweaty they can smell it which repulses them. When she’s turning into a blob the dialogue could stay the same, as if how she looks then is no different that just being overweight.

In terms of herself she could have a sort of defeatist optimism about it, almost like the healthy route but more so like she’s resigned to letting herself go to survive. She’s certainly well fed so that’s got to count for something. Kinda feeling she’s left not wanting for food… except she is, almost like she feels guilty for even suggesting someone in her state should complain about eating to survive, like it’s ungrateful. She’ll also comment on what it’s like in her body, that it feels weird feeling so big and heavy in such a short time . Once she’s huge in phase two she comments more about it in an absurdist light. That she’s ridiculously heavy and large and she practically has to lumber herself around to move. Once she’s turning into a blob at phase three, four and five she starts to stop thinking about much other that how much it can fill her up, eventually devolving to simple minded thinking about wanting more and never not feeling hungry.

When it comes to plenty of unhealthy food, soda especially, she seems to treasure it like a delicacy and that she’s looking forward to trying it. So perhaps the first and second phase is your typical situation where someone is addicted to junk food, finding it hard to not have another or to choose something else. Her responses to food will basically be like trying to diet, she knows it’s better for her but she’s still thinking about how water doesn’t hit quite as herd as soda, or that she’s craving something more sugary when eating non sugary food. When it comes to moldy stuff, like she says about the moldy bread, it’s starting to become appetizing though she knows that’s kinda a bad thing, which could be carried over to the other non unhealthy foods like bugs. And again, the later three she’s becoming an eating machine that doesn’t care about taste or what it is. She just needs more.

Parasitic: 

People treat her like a leper during stage one and comment on the maggots. They’re basically glad she’s on the streets away from them and don’t want to get close to her and catch what she has. When she mutates she’s treated like an insect, wondering when pest control will take care of this thing already.

She feels sick and is miserable, mortified by the maggots in her, then once she’s huge mutates she’s aware she’s losing her humanity as voices in her head, parasites infesting her thoughts, are swaying her judgement. Then once she’s a full insect she thinks of it as having finally metamorphosed, as if her human form was a chrysalis.

In terms of food the more parasites she eats the more she’s compelled to eat more, thinking of benefiting a colony inside her and implying there’s some vague final goal to achieve (becoming a hive mother) which brings her despair. The voices will disway her from eating anything else as it will not benefit the colony.

Anomalous: 

For the first stage she realizes all these strange foreign things she’s been eating really are some kind of dimensional mix up, pondering if they came from somewhere where they’re normal or are just some kind of logic error in reality being churned out. As the stages progress she starts to talk oddly and think in ways that seem alien to us, like her mind is conforming to what would be normal in that foods dimension of origin.

People respond to it like she’s a freak but their words start to make less sense, eventually turning to gibberish, like she can’t understand their language anymore.

When she reacts to the anomalous food she starts to enjoy it more, and think about it like it makes sense dialogue about stuff that’s normal starts seeming alien to her, like that’s they’re the questionable thing.

Liquid:

Feeling bloated but continuously more and more thirsty. Not much I know what to add.