The roots of transformation stories lie in mythology and literature, from fables told by ancient storytellers to the latest fantasy novels. Prose has many advantages for the genre: it can help the reader get into the head of the transformed character better, it is often better at concealing changes until the right time, and, of course, it saves on special effects. Thus, it was only natural that when video games began to use text to create a more immersive world, the theme of transformation would follow. Though the commercial heyday of text adventures has passed (and with it such games as Infocom’s 1986 sci-fi spoof Leather Goddesses of Phobos, in which the player’s brain is swapped with a gorilla’s), the medium lives on in the Internet, with or without illustrations. Individual writers and collaborators alike have contributed to interactive tales of TF that range from the merely thought-provoking to the raunchy. Without further ado, it’s time to look at 5 of the best transformation text games.

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5) Counterfeit Monkey

The nation of Anglophone Atlantis takes wordplay to its logical extreme. Not only is everything in the country themed around literature and puns, but they’ve actually weaponized the language by developing devices capable of altering reality itself by changing the names of items (in English, of course). You can turn a lock into a clock, or a blouse into a louse, just by using waving a device at them, or even conjure people out of the blue. Of course, people themselves can be affected, and that’s a bit of a problem. You see, being “gelled” and transformed into inanimate objects is a common punishment used by the repressive government—a fate that you, as a professional smuggler named Andra, are currently trying to avoid by escaping from the island.

In order to do this, however, you’ve set up another type of transformation altogether: you (a woman) have merged with a man named Alex, creating an entirely new woman by the name of Alexandra, whom nobody should recognize. And with only a letter-remover to start with, you’re going to have to do some pretty quick changes. The game is primarily a story-based one with puzzles to solve, but it positively encourages you to zap everything around you not just to advance the plot but for the sheer fun of it to see what new words you can come up with.

Some of you might not have noticed that Trials in Tainted Space got a public patch a few days ago – it did! At the time I forgot to include the image pack version of the public release. You can grab that now:3. Oh, and there’s a CoC2 Backer patch out as of yesterday too! Now, on to new backer content! Some of you might not have noticed that Trials in Tainted Space got a public patch a few days ago – it did! At the time I forgot to include the image pack version of the public release. You can grab that now:3. Oh, and there’s a CoC2 Backer patch out as of yesterday too! Now, on to new backer content! Tone and Thickness. Tone and thickness determine Captain Steele's physical appearance and will most likely factor into appearance descriptions. Tone refers to muscle definition and is scored from 0 (featureless) to 100 (chiseled). Thickness refers to the body and limb width (relative to the height) and is scored from 0 (scrawny) to 100 (stocky).

Alex’s reaction to becoming a voice in the subconscious of the protagonist and the conflicts they can have, not to mention his thoughts on sharing a female body, make for some interesting musings on TF in the form of narration. Ultimately, an interesting commentary on how words have the power to transform how we see the world around us, and good fund—sorry, fun.

4) Transformation Arena!

Strictly speaking, this is more of a platform for individual scenarios than a single transformation text game, and as such it lacks a single overarching storyline, but it makes it work with its open-source nature. The creator previously worked on a text-based Rock-Paper-Scissors game involving transformation, which entertainingly combined incremental changes to characters (such as corruption, TG, and reality shifts) in text blocks with illustrations provided by anime-style art generator “Kisekae 2”, and after a highly popular response to the small number of scenarios in that game, chose to open up the concept to multiplayer and player customization. Transformation Arena! has a bare-bones UI and relatively simple mechanics for just that reason, and if you’ve played a JRPG, you know what to expect: hit points, magic points, poison that does ongoing damage, confusion to cause random actions, and so on. The best part, at least for fans of slow transformation, is that as with the rock-paper-scissors above, TF doesn’t occur solely at the end of the match, but incrementally as players lose more HP, accompanied generally by text that varies in length from a brief snippet to long paragraphs. You may frequently find yourself tempted to play to lose—but I would recommend doing so against another human player, as the AI tends to be absolutely brainless and unable even to land a hit when you want it to. Still, there’s nothing that’s satisfying quite like doing double damage and watching your enemy shift twice in one round.

The customization aspect of the game is a primary draw, andyou’ll find not only OCs but also preexisting characters from other media aswell as many different varieties of TF to inflict upon them. This creativefreedom is the game’s best and worst feature in different ways—while there are somecharacters that are frustratingly bare of description or have almost no text toaccompany the pictures, there are many creators who have put a lot of time andeffort into long, descriptive blocks of text. Thankfully, there’s no shortageof ways to filter for content you’re not interested in, sorted by character:almost every imaginable kind of TF can be included or excluded in yoursearches, as can characters who are complete or illustrated throughout. And, ofcourse, if you prefer to exclude explicit sexual content, you can. But there’sa bit of something for everyone, tame or risqué. If you like a spark ofcompetition in your TF fiction, give it a shot, and then make your owncharacters.

Transformation Arena! online, free(Adult Content)

And if you love the arena aspect to this game, be sure to check out TF Card Battle too.

3) Transformania Time

If the above game was a customizable, competition-basedthemed only loosely around the concept of an arena, this one leanswholeheartedly into its theme—a TF-based game show, in which the players competeto see who fully textually transform their opponent, body and mind. The focusthis time is on detail and frequently quite slow progression, with each bodypart given its own status and transformed progressively as the round goes on,often in great detail. They’re even thoughtfully shaded from blue to purple topink to show gender changes. And how, you may ask, does one represent a gameshow in a primarily text-based format without illustrations? Simple: minigames.Each round is one of a number of fast-paced races against the clock, and theresult gives two or three stages of transformation for either you or youropponent—shifting clothes, chests, minds as you frantically click at shapesthat pop up, play memory games, or try to guess where a discus will be in a fewseconds. (I recommend trying it on easy first, unless you have the reflexes ofan Olympian, or, of course, you’d also like to lose.) The game gets regularupdates of new characters from the creator and from the fanbase despite beingon the older side after its release in 2013, and it’s customizable as well. Loadingnew characters as simple as using a dropdown menu or, if downloaded, pulling upthe text files containing their data in your documents. There’s even acharacter creator in the folder of the downloadable version. Those scenariosthe users have already come up with certainly can’t be faulted for theirentertainment value, either, nor some creative TFs, such as a macho big gamehunter into a strong anthro lioness, an anime fan to a female tanuki, or a haughty rich woman to aliteral gutter rat. Obvious care and effort went into it, and though it’s allvery, very explicit, some transformations move beyond the merely titillating tothe actually thought-provoking. Overall, it’s something most of us can onlywish we saw while channel surfing…

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