A visual novel from Transcendent Studios, the same people that made Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme.
You play as Max, a police officer in the fictional Australian city of Axion City, assigned to investigate shipments of an illegal drug called MinX. After a large shoot-out and arrest, he finds a yellow marble that, upon investigation, causes Max to undergo a transformation, changing him into a busty woman with long hair. The game plays out as a standard visual novel for the most part, with minor decisions (like who to socialize with at certain points) being present to change what events play out, and how. However, there are also sections where the player undertakes actions akin to police work, such as investigating an area, or trying to deduce the right guilty party from a number of suspects. The game takes place roughly a year after the events of Gender Bender DNA Twister and includes several characters from it.
The game was finally completed and given a general release on February 4th, 2017.
A spinoff, Alluna and Brie was released in April 2019. A sequel, Max's Big Bust 2: Max's Bigger Bust, was initially released in October 2020 and completed in November 2021, with plans for more sequels announced on the date the final chapter was implemented. Another spinoff that takes place between the original Max's Big Bust and Alluna and Brie, titled My Mad Scientist Roommate Turned Me Into Her Personal Robotic Battle Maiden?!?, had an Early Access release in December 2022.
Associated tropes:
- Accidental Truth: In the anime con chapter, Max tries to question someone who's so busy chatting with his girlfriend that she can't get a word in edgewise. So she tells the girlfriend, a lifeguard, that someone "over there" is drowning, causing her to instantly rush to the rescue. A minute later, she comes back and thanks Max for alerting her because the person who'd volunteered to do the dunk tank couldn't swim.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Amber and Holly get a chapter devoted to their escapades together where Max barely appears.
- In Max's Big Bust 2, Ember is the focus of chapter six, including a big puzzle that she has to solve.
- Amicable Exes: In Max's Big Bust 2, Max is on friendly terms with all her potential love interests from the first game (except possibly Ethan, who has yet to make an appearance).
- Amusing Injuries: Pretty much all injuries in the game are played for laughs, but Max gets hit with it most often since she's a Cute Clumsy Girl who has a magically resetting body, meaning that no matter how serious the damage is, she's fine in a few minutes.
- The Bogan: Commissioner Pandarai. He's rude and dismissive to Max and the other officers in her division (to the point of not even bothering to learn any of their names and outright stating it's because he doesn't care), totally obsessed with watching football (to the point of ignoring the fact that he's at the scene of a homicide because there was a game on), and has a major feud with Captain Nekorai that involves trying to steal credit for anything Nekorai's team discovers. In Max's Big Bust 2, he's even called a bogan by other characters.
- Breast Expansion: Max ends up going from being merely busty to having outright massive boobs in Max's Big Bust 2: Max's Bigger Bust.
- The Butler Did It: In the murder mystery chapter, one of the butlers is murdered. Max suspects that the other butler did it, based on nothing but this trope (and is 90% convinced she herself didn't do it). As it turns out, it was the real estate developer who killed him, after an argument over drug distribution.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: There is virtually no nudity in this game due to its nature, but any nudity that does happen is pixelated (played for laughs).
- Cast Full of Gay: All three of Max's female coworkers (Amber, Holly, and Victoria) turn out to be lesbians.
- Cat Girl: Captain Nekorai is a rare Cat Guy, and his daughter is a cat girl. Police Commissioner Pandorai is a Panda Guy. Holly becomes a cat girl after the girls' night at the bar.
- Call-Back: Amber grabbing a MinX marble plays out much the same as when Max did, with a police pair getting into a shootout with criminals before discovering the marble that transforms one of them. The only difference is that Amber picked it up on purpose knowing full well what would happen.
- Cardboard Prison: Every criminal that Max arrests over the course of the game gets let out of jail after only a couple of days at most- the majority end up getting only community service or parole. Max and her fellow officers regularly lament just how corrupt the mayor and city government is to keep allowing this to happen.
- Combat Stilettos: Max winds up wearing high heels her second day as a woman due to Holly telling her that they're part of the female uniform. Brad points out that believing anything Holly says is naive even for Max.
- Continuity Nod: There are numerous references to things from Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme, including posters for the band L-Mitless, several characters who showed up in the previous game (one of whom, Zara, makes numerous references to the events of that game and how she got stuck as a bunny girl), and as a successful Kickstarter goal, a return to the water park that was featured in several characters' stories.
- Covered in Gunge: Happens to Max, Holly, Ember, Victoria, and Brad after Max successfully destroys the tentacle monster on the cruise ship.
- Cowboy Cop: Max and Holly are both more than willing to use their stun guns to solve a problem. Captain Nekorai is a police captain version of this and is implied to have been one back as a regular officer.
- Crack is Cheaper: In-universe, it's noted by several characters that Holly would be able to afford a much larger and nicer place to live if she didn't obsessively spend all her money buying manga and manga-related merchandise every month.
- *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Every time someone gets shot with one of the department's stun guns, they end up on the ground screaming about how much their spine hurts.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Mostly averted in Max's Big Bust 2: Max's Bigger Bust by providing only vague details of the previous game, but Holly and Ember are revealed to have gotten together (and then broken up under less-than-ideal circumstances), indicating that Max did not enter into a relationship with either of them.
- Dark Horse Victory: In the Witch Trial puzzle in the second game, Max is the only candidate to successfully complete the trial, but the winner ends up being Alfred, who wasn't even participating. Max immediately predicts this as soon as she realizes that he's there.
- Double-Meaning Title: "Max's Big Bust" refers to both the important police operation to deal with MinX as well as the notable chest Max gains when transformed into a woman.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Jock, one of Max's new coworkers in the second game. It's zigzagged given that he has an extremely feminine body (including fairly large breasts) but wears masculine clothing most of the time and identifies as male. He's also apparently got a rather large penis. This was the result of being zapped with magic about six months ago.
- Dumbass No More: In Max's Big Bust 2: Max's Bigger Bust, a side effect of the Breast Expansion Max receives is that her morphic field stabilizes, causing her to suddenly become much more focused and losing all the ditziness she had in the first game.
- The Easy Way or the Hard Way: When Holly first tries to dress up Max in her new female form, you're given two options: begrudgingly go with her or run for dear life. Choosing the latter loses an opportunity at getting a heart with her and results in her chasing you across the mall and stunning you with you ending up at the same place either way.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The title of chapter 3 in Max's Big Bust 2 is "Max gets turned into a dog." No prizes for guessing what happens in said chapter.
- First Law of Gender Bending: All the genderbending goes strictly male>female, and with a few exceptions where they can switch back and forth but can only spend so much time as men, when they become female, they're stuck that way.
- Flat Joy: Whenever Ryley talks about their duties at the Coffee Shrine while they work off the debt, you can expect more than a few of these from Max and Brad, combined with some "I hate you, Ryley"s interspersed throughout. They really do not enjoy working for her.
- Fourth-Wall Observer: In the second game, Max and Captain Nekorai both are this. Max is continually commenting that it's not another RPG, she doesn't have to worry about stat-boosting equipment. And it turns out that Nekorai actually hangs out in the "not canon" areas to provide hints if Max needs or wants them during the puzzle sections. This even gets used as a gag in Chapter 11 because Captain Nekorai was heading to the non-canon area of the puzzle when Commissioner Pandarai runs into him and starts talking. You're required to find a way to distract Pandarai so that Nekorai can get to the non-canon area of the puzzle in order to proceed.
- The Full Name Adventures: Implied by the "A Captain Nekorai Tale" part of the title, though the focus is almost entirely on Max.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Max and Brads' relationship starts at 3 hearts, as opposed to the other romance options, who start at 1 or 2 (if that). Makes sense, given that Max and Brad have been partners for a while prior to the novels' events and are explicitly stated to already be friends.
- Gaydar: Zigzagged. Max doesn't have any trouble telling that Amber and Victoria are both gay, but completely misses that the much-more-obvious-about-it Holly is also gay.
- Gay Option: Max has both male and female options when it comes to potential endings in both stories.
- Gender Bender: Max, and some minor NPCs, have gone through male-to-female transitions. Brad does too, as part of working off his debt at Coffee Shrine.
- First Law of Gender Bending: Played with. Of all the transitions shown in the game, 2 are shown to be permanent (Max and Sarah), if not nigh-permanent, but there are some that are only temporary. However, a majority of the transformations (if not all of them) are male-to-female.
- Second Law of Gender-Bending: Max and Sarah both seem to be more comfortable in their new genders as the game progresses. Max's female coworkers even comment on how surprised they are by how quickly Max adapts to womanhood.
- Brad's route has him finish paying off his debt to the coffee-shop (see below), but continue to work there for the ridiculously high pay. Max starts to worry that he's starting to become a little too okay with transforming into a girl.
- Third Law of Gender-Bending: Played with. Max and Brad are both forced to work as coffee-shop mikos to pay off their huge tab, but they both hate it. They're actually forced to be girls in order to do the job, not forced to do the job because they're girls (Brad is allowed to turn back into a man after his shift is over).
- Genius Ditz: Max is a good cop when she focuses but a bit of a scatterbrain otherwise. She apparently had a serious reputation at the police station long before the game started. She can actually become less ditzy in the game itself it the player makes sure to do things like getting everyone's coffee orders correct.
- Gimmick Matches: The first hang-out with Brad involves going over to his house to watch a wrestling event called "The Floor Is On Fire." It turns out the floor is actually on fire and the wrestlers are forced to stand on chairs and tables to avoid being burned. Max and Brad are both shocked, having expected that it was just going to be some sort of metaphor or fake.
- Godiva Hair: Ember in her elemental form.
- Gratuitous Japanese: The animated cutscene in the mall has Max speaking in Japanese due to the animation having been done by a Japanese company. In-universe, Max's explanation is that she's bilingual and will sometimes accidentally switch to Japanese when she's stressed or excited.
- Hammerspace: At one point, near the end, Max is wearing a slinky dress with no room to conceal anything bigger than a wallet, yet is able to pull out her stun shotgun, apparently from thin air.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Ember. Holly and Victoria warn Max about the dangers of getting into a drinking contest with her when they have a girls' night at the bar.
- Hidden Depths: You'd never know it to look at her, but Max is actually a skilled ballroom dancer.
- Hotter and Sexier: Max's Big Bust 2 has better artwork combined with a lot more sexual content than the first game.
- Hot Witch: Victoria, after studying Max's transformation leads to her learning how to do magic.
- How Unscientific!:
- Averted by Victoria in the first game. Her reaction to evidence that magic is real is to study it so she can understand how it works. She becomes a full-fledged witch in the process and learns how to cast spells.
- Played straight by Dani in Chapter 5 of the second game. She's attempting to prove that magic isn't real (despite all her first-hand experience with magic in Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme). Of course, Dani was always a bit unhinged.
- Insistent Terminology: Heather insists that she is an exotic dancer. Everyone who knows her is aware that it's just a nicer term for stripper.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Parodied with Captain Nekorai and his disco ball. Everyone who sees it is utterly terrified and crooks always confess once he uses it.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: At the end of the murder-mystery chapter, Max and her coworkers agree that they're not going to talk about what might have happened that night.
- Little Miss Snarker: Captain Nekorai's daughter, Kitty.
- Magic Pants: Justified; Ember buys herself fire-proof underwear so she doesn't end up naked if she needs to use her fire powers.
- Maximum Fun Chamber: The horrifying disco ball.
- Mind-Control Device: The Dacite Staff which has the power to control everyone within a several kilometer was stolen from Santa (seriously) in the second game. The thing is, it requires someone of a very high level to use, meaning the pool of potential suspects is very small.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Toyed with. After meeting Ethan, the now-female Max fantasizes about him in a dream, though he's initially grossed out by it.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Discussed. Apparently getting "kemonos" typically causes the person to gain some dietary and behavioral characteristics of the associated animal. Captain Nekorai, for example, is now lactose intolerant and likes playing with pieces of string.
- My Little Panzer: Kitty, Captain Nekorai's daughter, has her own police stun gun. She's frighteningly good with it.
- Mundane Fantastic: In-universe, gender-swapping is commonplace and is easily reversible...except in Max's case, to their dismay.
- Mundane Utility:
- Max discovers that her body magically resets itself every eight hours, making her immune to disease or injury. She uses this to eat as much as she wants without having to worry about getting fat.
- Heather turns herself into a succubus so she can make more money working as a stripper.
- In the second game, Victoria wants to join the Sisters of Neria because the Breast Expansion that occurs as a result of their initiation ceremony would make her gaming streams more popular.
- National Stereotypes: Police Commissioner Pandarai uses so much stereotypical Australian slang that his speech is almost incomprehensible. Nobody else uses anywhere close to it, though, and most of the characters think he's a wanker.
- Naughty Tentacles: The tentacle monster that attacks at the end of the game assaults everyone's orifices. Yes, even Brad's. Not that's it's shown on-screen.
- Never Gets Drunk: Doubly subverted by Ember, who can get drunk, but due to her magically resetting body she goes from falling-over-about-to-vomit drunk to stone cold sober in less than three seconds. It's sufficiently unpleasant that she decides that she never wants to go through it again.
- No Backwards Compatibility in the Future: In Max's Big Bust 2: Max's Bigger Bust, after you arrest Hector Von Haus for trying to open up a Frakk, Ellie and Aisha try to hack his computer for his emails, since Max couldn't use the USB stick intended for that purpose, seeing as the computer is 1994 vintage. The problem, along with the whole 1994 vintage thing, is that it uses an obscure proprietary OS made by a small (and long since bankrupt) Australian tech company in the 90s with a source code described as "notoriously difficult to work with." They have to source another computer of the same model to develop a hack they can use to get in without losing the data.
- Noodle Implements: Apparently, Captain Nekorai has an interrogation method that involves... a disco ball?
- And Holly's plan to attend a convention later on involves 16 rolls of fabric, five guns, eight bags of ribbons, several different types of spandex, a whole heap of bracelets, and a bandana…for her cosplay costume.
- Noodle Incident: Nobody in the police station will let Captain Nekorai have milk after the time they discovered that getting cat ears made him lactose intolerant.
- The Nudifier: Whenever Victoria casts a teleport spell, it tends to only work on the target's clothes, or work on the target but not their clothes. She starts doing this deliberately.
- N-Word Privileges: In Max's Big Bust 2, at one point Jock jokingly calls Max a bitch after she's turned into a dog-girl. Wolf angrily says that it's highly offensive for non-canines to use that word. Jock immediately apologies, at which point Wolf laughs and says that no, he just made that up- wolf men actually don't care about the word at all.
- Oblivious to Love: During the Amber route, Max misses several 'hints' that Amber is looking for a romantic relationship. Later on, it turns out Max has been Obfuscating Stupidity, out of fear that a relationship would be doomed from the start due to her desire to turn back into a man resulting in Incompatible Orientation.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The attendant on the train in Amber and Holly's chapter is much more concerned with upholding company guidelines than with the fact that Amber and Holly are police officers chasing wanted criminals. Holly eventually decides that it's more efficient to shoot her with a stun gun and steal the key they need than it is to talk her into helping.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: After Max gets gender swapped, Victoria orders her a new police uniform. It has a skirt in spite of Max specifically requesting pants because Holly held Victoria at gunpoint and made her pick the skirt option.
- The Omniscient: The "Heart Beats" app knows the relationship status of every user.
- Otaku: Holly. She spends most of her money collecting anime figurines, manga, and cosplay outfits. Also Victoria, but she's not as extreme about it.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Or not. While there are ghouls in Axon City, they're pretty much normal people with blue skin who have returned from the dead. None are particularly interested in human flesh or anything of the sort, nor are they particularly antagonistic.
- Plot Tailored to the Party: During the bomb threat at the cruise ship, Victoria dispatches Ember, Holly, and Max to three locations where their elemental forms would be best hseful: Ember to the central furnace, where her fire immunity would keep her safe from the heat, Holly to the bulkheads where they may already be flooded, and Max to the engine room with all the electric transformers. The first two are clear, but Max finds goons at her location, where they're throwing Minx overboard, which wouldn't trigger an explosion. It's for something more nefarious.
- Police Brutality: Max's Trigger-Happy nature is called this a few times, because apparently the stun guns really, REALLY hurt and she is completely okay using hers on people who aren't committing crimes or who are already cooperating, simply because it's fun. Nothing comes of it, however.
- Putting the Pee in Pool: Discussed in the waterpark chapter of 2. Holly mentions that evaporating is the only real threat that the sun has for her when she's in her water elemental form and she's been regularly topping off at the swimming pool. Max asks if that's really a good idea, given how many kids are using the pool. Holly is immediately horrified.
- Rapid Hair Growth: Part of Max's transformation involves her hair growing from the short style she'd had as a man to a flowing ankle-length mane. Amber and Holly also have this happen as a result of their transformations.
- Really Gets Around:
- Max's sister, Heather. In fact, she ends up getting around so much that she turns herself into a succubus- apparently it happens if you have sex with enough people. This was done entirely on purpose, so she would be even more popular as an exotic dancer.
- Holly reveals in the second game that she's been having sex with every monstergirl she could. She says she's had sex with at least 20 succubuses alone. It's also possible to have several optional encounters with her in that game before entering into any sort of committed relationship.
- Max can optionally become this in Max's Big Bust 2, as there are multiple chapters where she's able to have Optional Sexual Encounters with various characters before getting locked into a romance with a single character in the Water Park Chapter.
- Retcon: In Max's Big Bust 2, Max's ditzy tendencies are changed from being a normal part of her personality pre-TF to having been the result of her transformation being incomplete, which left both her body and mind in an "unfocused" state. Following her new transformation at the start of the second game, she becomes much more focused and loses her food obsession and tendency to mistake cardboard cutouts for people. This gets brought up a lot.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Played for Laughs. Max goes on one of these after Martin S. Gully AKA Flamboyant Dancing Guy is found dead from self-inflicted MinX overdose, despite the rest of the cast's comments about how stupid it is. It's apparently common enough for police to do this that Nekorai basically shrugs and tosses a revenge shooting form into Max's paperwork afterwards.
- RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Becomes one after magic and the frakk are discovered, with people speaking about how high their magic level is.
- Running Gag:
- "My spine!"
- Every time Victoria attempt to use a teleport spell, everyone's clothing gets left behind.
- Max keeps mistaking cardboard cutouts for real people.
- In Max's Bigger Bust, everyone seeing Max's new, larger breasts and commenting that she looks like a stripper now.
- In Max's Bigger Bust, people trying to distract Max by talking about food or tricking her into thinking that a cardboard cutout is a real person, only for her to get annoyed and say that neither of those things work on her anymore.
- Sex Comedy: Max's Big Bust 2: Max's Bigger Bust falls squarely into this trope, with numerous jokes about Max's breast size, her promiscuous succubus sister, the sexy witch cult outside the city just being a bunch of lesbians who orgy every night, and other such things.
- Shipper on Deck: Hooking up with Brad has Holly reveal that she's been writing a fan-fiction involving Max turning into a girl and dating Brad for years. The police station hosts book club meetings whenever she finishes a chapter.
- It's also revealed that the entire mall has shipped Max and Brad together ever since Max turned into a girl. Except for Zara, who was convinced that Max would get together with Holly instead.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Victoria. She's both one of Max's potential love interests and the first person to study Max's transformation and discovers how to work magic in the process, becoming a witch.
- Stupid Crooks: In chapter six of Max's Big Bust 2, Ember busts a ticket scalping ring, right after Natara calculates what the two organizers' profits for it would be. The profit, assuming they sold every single ticket, would have been negative forty three dollars.note Natara: You two are fucking idiots.
- Sucks at Dancing: Holly, if you choose to spend time with her at the Tattered Sail. Ember says that she looks like she's having an epileptic seizure.
- Super Gender-Bender: Max discovers that her transformation actually gives her some degree of lightning powers. In fact, she's actually been transformed into an immortal lightning elemental and has a more powerful elemental form that she eventually learns to shift to.
- Swapped Roles: In the first game, Brad is the serious, more level-headed partner and Max is more of a distractable Cloud Cuckoolander. In the second game, after Brad gets gender-swapped into Bonnie and Max gets magically powered-up with a Breast Expansion, Max becomes the more rational member while Bonnie starts exhibiting more ditzy traits.
- Teleportation with Drawbacks: Victoria ends up learning teleportation magic, but her control is imperfect, causing her to teleport the person but not their clothes. She eventually starts doing this on purpose.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Max's sister, Heather, who moves in after she loses her job and proceeds to eat all of Max's food while she lazes about all day. She then proceeds to simultaneously flood the apartment and set it on fire, resulting in Max's eviction.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Casanova Wannabe Alfred does not take it well when he discovers that Bonnie, the sexy coffee-shop waitress that he's been obsessing over, is actually Brad the police officer using a gender-bending potion.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: This is where Max stores things like her phone and wallet when she has to wear something with no pockets.
- Voluntary Shapeshifter:
- Max eventually learns how to transform into a lightning elemental. In the second game, she also gains the ability to turn into a dog girl and a succubus.
- Ember and Holly gain the power to transform into into a fire elemental and a water elemental, respectively.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 12 of Max's Big Bust 2 ends with the reveal that Pherusa was the mastermind behind the events of the game and that Jock is working with her, leading to Max and whomever they've formed a romance with, which could be Jock himself, getting captured.
- Work Off the Debt: Max and brad get a $5343 debt to the Coffee Shrine, which Ryley forces them to work off. To do so, they have to transform into fox girlsnote and work four hours every Saturday for eight weeks. Brad/Bonnie is not amused by this in the least. Ryley tries this a second time in Max's Bigger Bust, but ends up arrested for violations of labor and debt laws and illegal use of magic after a few days of getting the duo to work for her again, due to another officer learning about this scheme.
- World of Buxom: Lampshaded; Ember and Max are surprised and a bit intimidated in a lingerie store when they discover it sells bras of up to 32 Z size.
- You Don't Look Like You: Non-living example, the water park that was featured in DNA Twister Extreme shows up again, the differences in appearance being handwaved as a result of it having been rebuilt after the storm in that game's climax.
- You Don't Want to Know: This is Ember's response when Max asks her what degloving is, after Ember tells her about a woman who was attacked by Drop Bears note .
