First the ears, sliding upward and changing into furry triangles… that’s how he knew it’d begun.
Then a shiver down his spine as pressure mounted in his—
Dan’s yowl of surprise did little to cover the explosive sound of a long, feline tail punching through the seat of his pants. He jumped forward from the sensation of it— and then it was gone. The tail shrank away back into his spine, his ears relocated to the sides of his head once again, and, finally, the hole in his pants sealed itself back up, disappearing entirely as if it’d never been there.
That was his first attempt at the first “level” of his new game, the “Mendamorphosuit”. To play, you simply put on the outfit, use the handheld device it comes with to select your level, and then allow the suit to transform your body. The goal of the game was to make it through all of the changes without tearing or losing any piece of the suit; taking anything off was off-limits. Upon losing, your changes would all revert and anything that’d been damaged would repair itself.
Level 1 was appropriately titled “Cat”. Over his next few tries, Dan would get closer and closer to becoming an anthropomorphic housecat, before some new thing would catch him off-guard and send him back to square 1. He overcame the first obstacle by routing his tail down a pant leg and keeping it still (no matter how weird it felt) so it wouldn’t destroy anything. The game continued to introduce new ideas one at a time, such as the transition from human feet to paws throwing off his balance, or the growth of claws on his fingers making their aid in adjusting his clothing quite risky. Dan wasn’t sure if he considered it “well-designed” or not. It kinda felt like each new change was guaranteed to get you at least once, because there really wasn’t much of a way to see them coming. It occurred to him, however, that it might actually be intentional in this case… designed to make players change back and forth and back and forth, over and over…
The last few changes of level 1 were something of a victory lap, as they consisted of largely cosmetic features that didn’t threaten to tear the Mendamorphosuit. Fur covered his body, his face changed a little, and then it was done. The handheld played a little victory jingle and showed him all the rewards he’d unlocked. Looked like there was a higher difficulty version of the level, something about a “zen mode”, and an option to remain in anthro cat form for as long as he wished… but there was no time for any of that. The next level was waiting.
After changing back into a human, Dan moved on to level 2: “Mouse”. This one was much easier, and he managed to beat it in one try. Its primary gimmick had to do with the small size of the target form; instead of keeping the outfit from ripping, he had to make sure none of it fell off of his shrinking body. Once again it started with his ears, just as a warmup, and then began hacking away at his height while white fur grew in patches all over his body. He almost made the mistake of trying walk, which would’ve resulted in him stepping right out of his socks and ending his run, but with a touch of self-control he managed to stay rooted to the spot and endure the intensely bizarre feeling of everything growing around him. By the time he got to the end, he was barely 3 feet tall as opposed to his usual 6, clinging to his belt with his pink little paws, everything on his person looking hilariously bunched up and oversized. No one else was in the house with him, but even so he felt a bit embarrassed as he shuffled over to the handheld and returned himself to his default form.
Subsequent levels had Dan working out ways to get through various scenarios without damaging the Mendamorphosuit like a bunch of little puzzles. He found himself learning the exact timing of each transformation, factoring the amount of time he had to complete each preparation and the best order in which to make those preparations into his strategies. The levels began incorporating different pieces of clothing and accessories that came with the set, such as swapping the t-shirt out for a button-up shirt (undoing the top button to give the chest fluff room to breathe is feasible after the claws first grow in but once they grow in size and clumsiness it gets much harder…) or adding shoes into the mix (tying the laces around your ankles so they can just hang there next to your feet effectively allows you to take them off, but it’s so hard to pull off with all the distractions…). Starting a level would make the clothing jump to life and position itself on Dan’s body however it saw fit, so it wasn’t possible to cheat by preparing beforehand or leaving out certain pieces. Its design was surprisingly airtight.
Later, when his obsession had finally burned through all of the game’s levels, Dan went back to that “zen mode” thing he’d been unlocking for each level. At first it seemed no different, until he screwed up and winced as a massive pair of rabbit paws shredded through his socks… and the changes simply kept going. He stood there silently as he realized what had somehow eluded him until now: losing this game felt good. And he could keep doing it, over and over, in new ways, with no consequences or sudden reversions whatsoever.
What other discoveries about himself would this game bring to light?