Applicant [Ongoing] - Version: 0.40

What's New in Applicant Version - 0.40?

A Third Smaller Download

The artwork folder went from 1987 MB to 1314 MB with nothing on screen changing. Stills are now WebP (698 files, 685 MB -> 55 MB), short GIFs became animated WebP (70 MB -> 26 MB), and every frame and frame duration carried across unchanged. The heavy animated scene packs were deliberately left alone — measured re-encodes were either -14% for minutes of CPU per file or visibly choppy.

Relationships Have Stages

Every relationship now sits on a ladder: acquaintance (5), someone you know (15), close (30), inseparable (55). The Mirror shows the stage as a word beside the number. Stages are capped per character (Leonard, Mark and Larry stay transactions; Jack, Elizabeth, Claire and Edward can be close but never inseparable), and dropping back needs 3 points of hysteresis so one refusal cannot flicker you across a line. The ~30 gates the writing already used had clustered exactly at these rungs — the ladder regularises what was already there, and stage 4 is where a route can end. It latches.

Talking Is No Longer an Infinite Faucet

One small talk per character per day pays +1 relationship; one substantial talk pays in stats instead. Everything above that comes from doing things with someone. At stage 4 talk pays no relationship at all. The screen says all of this out loud — the cap used to be silent and read as a bug.

Gifts

Money had nothing to buy after about day 55. Gifts are bought at the hypermarket counter and given in eight hubs: something small ($40, +1, 2-day cooldown), a proper gift ($180, +3, 5-day), something lavish ($500, +6, 10-day). Cooldowns are per person, so buying affection is a schedule, not a lump sum. Character matters: Alim accepts nothing until he considers you his; Jack and Jenny are embarrassed by the expensive tier.

Jack Finally Has a Track

The landlord — the person you see every night — had five relationship sources in the whole game, four buried in one library event. He now has conversation in his office, the loan reads his standing, and the hostel work ranks below are the other half.

The Hostel Runs on Two Axes

Cleaning and sleeping around no longer feed the same counter. $hostelStaff grows only from labour, $hostelrep only from sex work in the hostel, and the lobby shows them as different things.

Refusing a Tenant Now Costs Something

Turning down an offer to “help” a resident rolls the dice: on a failure the disgruntled tenants undo part of your cleaning, and you read about it in the lobby. The odds rise with your reputation and stored resentment, and fall by 10 points per work rank. The further in you are, the less freely you can say no.

Work Ranks Discount the Rent

Labour ranks at 15/40/80 knock the bunk from $150 to $110 and the private room from $250 to $190 across the tiers. Rank 3 also tips you $20 on a cleaning job.

Two Hubs Stop Disappearing

Reaching the route ending used to REPLACE Nick’s flat — along with Nick, Mark, the television, self-study and the way out. Same shape in Alim’s room. The ending offer now sits above the hub instead of instead of it.

Consumables

Seven items bought at the hypermarket, carried in a bag, spent automatically where they apply: energy shot, 3-in-1 coffee, wet wipes, mints, chocolate bar, isotonic drink, pocket toy. A consumable amplifies something you already do — it never cancels a consequence and never extends the day. Wired into the gym, self-study, masturbation, the library reading room, the community centre, classes, training and the park; deliberately not into conversation, work or events. Auto-spend is a per-item toggle. Vending machines in the hostel and the centre stock the line at a 40% markup — you pay for the hour, not the goods.

Three Purchases That Were Not Doing What They Claimed

The sex shop’s eight toys had no reader anywhere — masturbation granted no promiscuity at all, so the solitary path fed none of the counters the vice locations pay from. Both ends now connect. The salon’s “Full Spa & Body” and “VIP Spa Day” overwrote each other in one slot — separate slots now, verified to stack to +20. Six fitness items costing $460 stopped paying once raw fitness passed 51; the gate is lifted to the general ceiling.

The Park Franchise

The glory hole in the park becomes something you run rather than visit: client flow from advertising plus Claire’s boost, a d100 roll against promiscuity/bar standing/streak, heat that drives the chance of trouble, and what you wore matters. Three event families (clients, crew, trouble) and three new screens. Claire’s route into the park gained two screens of her own and +23 lines — the largest single block of new writing — and a burned Alim route no longer leaves her quest invisibly dead: the park states what stage the plan is at. Vice pays on the first day now (the glory hole used to pay $0-9 against the cafe’s $50-90).

Twenty-One New Outfits

The wardrobe goes from 57 to 78 entries, including nine complete work uniforms (bar, cafe, library, office, massage — the bar had none). The mall gained an “Evening & Party” tab. Ten outfits marked as sex-shop stock were unbuyable from the day they were added — shop windows now filter the catalogue by shop instead of listing id numbers, and the card you click is the card you buy (fixed properly, with a canary harness).

A Shift Is Not a “Get Money” Button

Social cards are back in the work decks — each with a choice of three reactions — carried by two new bar screens; the cafe and library cards are wired to their dispatchers instead of sitting unreachable. The hostel’s cleaning offer now carries who is actually asking (one man / a woman / two of them / a group) and the tier resets on entry.

Five Things That Were Paying You to Play Badly

Character creation printed money (six clicks of “-10” returned ~300 points: intellect 90, $100,000, every skill). Two scenes advanced the day directly, skipping interest, collectors, the over-limit penalty, the jealousy tick and the rent night — in scenes that mean “you lost control of the evening”. Wages paid debt down one-to-one and halved the remainder — carrying debt was a buff. A promiscuity limit below 20 was a permanent stat-drain trap (no longer sold; old saves healed). Vice paid nothing on day one — see the park.

The Day Is Visible

The panel shows the day and the phase as an icon plus a “3/4” tracker. Character creation closes once the run starts. Both night bypasses are shut, and the three repeatable earners now have daily gates. A shift costs 1 AP again — the escalating 1/2/3 experiment was reverted because it taxed working several different jobs in one day, the most interesting way to play.

The Economy Pass

Entry wages raised on the bottom rung only (cafe $50, bar $62, library $58). Jack’s credit: 15 days / $450. The 2->3 AP fitness boundary moved from 30 to 13 — the old one was a two-week bootstrap trap. Sleep comforts cap at +3 energy together. The community centre study shelves cost 1 energy and one subject a day (reading about waitressing used to beat waitressing). Debt bookkeeping: a second loan no longer inherits the first one’s principal, and warning strikes cap at 4. Jealousy caps at 25; promiscuity headroom caps at 150.

Old Saves

The wardrobe catalogue lives in the save and was only rebuilt when missing entirely — a continuing player saw 57 outfits of 78; purchases and the worn outfit survive the rebuild now. $Rand is seeded (ten passages branch on it; a blank screen was possible). The hostel split migrates at zero — the old build credited cleaning to reputation, so there is no honest work history to convert. Jack’s trust, tenant resentment, the daily gates and the consumables bag are seeded on load.

Editorial Pass

An editing pass went too far in three decks (PaulaEvents -83%, RadaEvents -66%, LeonardRandomEvents -53%) and was only caught by diffing the two builds — every case, link and image was intact and only the prose was gone. Restored and merged back case by case. In three smaller decks the pass had systematically rewritten taken control as negotiated control — on canon for Elizabeth, against it for Mark and Paula; five scenes rewritten to keep the edit’s economy with the canon dynamic restored.

Art

About 190 new frames: clothing 31, items 32, dialogue portraits 30 (new as a category — small character faces beside their lines), bar 16, library 14, cafe 11, Alim/park 9, pawnbroker’s office 8, salon 7, hostel 6, misc ~20. Plus four animation packs restored after the compression flattened them.

Housekeeping

Four animation packs flattened by the conversion were restored (AlimLeft3, AlimAnger, Shower1, Shower2). The static auditor was blind to four BOM-carrying passages — it read 167 of 171. WorkEvents lost a word-for-word duplicate of the glory hole deck deliberately. The Rada/Edward entry roll had been thrown since 0.36 and read by nothing — connecte