Update #2 - The three species

It hasn't quite been a week yet, but I usually post social media updates on Sunday, and figured I should get in the habit here as well.

I think I'm going to do this: every week I don't get much done in the game, I'll post some details about my plans for the world and plot. That way, if I don't work on the game enough, eventually I'll spoil everything. I'm hoping that will motivate me to work more :p

I'm thinking a large part of the game's world will revolve around the interactions between three groups of species: mammal people, lizard people, and mermaids. Mammal people are the weakest of the three, and this creates tension between them and the other species. Lizard people are nearly always at least twice as strong as mammal people, mermaids are quite large, and both have high natural intelligence. In theory, either could obliterate the mammal people, and together, their forces would be unstoppable—however, lizard people are genuinely not interested in doing this, and mermaids usually keep to themselves in the ocean.

The tension comes from mammal people having a hard time believing this, because among other things, the lizard people have a dark sense of humor, and inappropriately joke about this a lot.

A petty way this is expressed: lizard people's intelligence and cultural emphasis on irony gives them incredible prowess at making memes, most of which make fun of mammal people. A lot of mammal people are self-deprecating enough to enjoy the humor, and appreciate the biting social commentary—but some feel that memes are a "lizard person conspiracy" designed to make mammal people feel that lizard people are more competent than them, and strongly reject them.

(This in particular would likely not play a very large role in the game's plot—although it could be fun to make some of these fictional memes as bonus material or something :p )

Because of things like this, most mammal people are more accepting of mermaids, despite mermaids having much more of a history of hurting mammal people, simply because mermaids do not actively go out of their way to screw with mammal people the way lizard people do.

The protagonist is unusual for being exceptionally open-minded towards other species, and is much more familiar with lizard people culture than most mammal people. He doesn't know much about mermaids, though, since not many of them come to the surface, and some plot twists could revolve around what he finds out about them.

Mammal people are also a bit unusual in that, in many contexts, they consider themselves to be part of the same group, but are actually many different species that cannot interbreed. However, taboos against interspecies relationships prevented them from figuring this out for a long time.

The minutia of how each species reproduces could also play a role in the plot. (In particular, mammal girls go into heat, and the consequences of this would be more thoroughly explored than what I've seen in other furry works.) However, this would probably be better suited to another blog entry, and could get into spoiler territory, so I won't speak about that very much right now.

I hope that's enough info to be interesting. Stay tuned for exciting updates next week, hopefully! :p