Progress Report 2021.06.14

Progress Report June 14, 2021

Hi friends,

Happy mid-June! It’s been a crazy busy month for me as I try to wrap up the end of Chapter 1 Route B. A lot of work has happened, but there’s still so much to get done before the end of the month.

Two weeks ago I was pretty hopeful that I would be able to have the route finished by now, but that is not the case. Some sections—especially the section where the MC and Aeran find the chalice and then need to decide what to do with it—took a lot longer to write than I had expected. Funny how you can have something on your outline that you think won’t take too long, but in practice it turns into a multi-day project.

I did briefly think about making it a little less complicated, but I really like how that section has turned out and I didn’t want to compromise on the MC’s options and choices, and the resulting consequences.

Game Updates

The current status of the game is as follows:

New content (drafted, still to be edited and added to the alpha build)

• Location where you find the chalice – 45,574 words (complete)
• Red herring location – 9796 words (still to be finished)

Content still to be drafted

• Section where the MC elects to go back to the Count empty-handed
• Confrontation with the Count (will borrow text from the Chapter 1 Route A boss fight)
• Recruited by Zenaida (will borrow some text from the Route A Zenaida encounter)
• Leaving Rona (will also borrow some text from Route A)

The game is currently standing at approximately 345k words of total content. Some of this is repeated text that has been edited for continuity and put into different passages because of behind-the-scenes variable changes, but it is pretty content dense for replays.

To kind of get an idea of total content vs. content you see on one playthrough, I did a few tests last week and found that the average length of the existing Chapter 1 Route B is anywhere between 21,000 words and 35,000 words, depending on where you go, what you do and what you say. There is a lot of variation packed into this chapter and your playthroughs can change drastically depending on how your skill checks go and what choices you make.

Most chapters are not going to be this content dense (Chapter 1 is probably going to remain the most complex chapter in the entire game, simply because it got split into Route A and Route B, it wouldn’t be nearly as long if Route A didn’t exist). For comparison, Chapter 2 is probably going to be around 30-40k total. 

Chapter 1 is kind of like a microcosm for the entire game. Choices you made early have consequences that come back at unexpected times, things you do or find in one place can affect scenarios in other locations. The type of events that play out in Chapter 1 play out in the full game on a larger scale and at a slower pace.

Other Updates

This past weekend I closed applications for playtesters. I am really excited about having new people on the team and hopefully with a large playtester team, we will be able to find all of the mistakes and errors I didn’t catch when I was editing.

Changes to the Patreon benefits mentioned in the last progress report are still TBA, as I haven’t had time to really sit down and make some decisions. I feel a little guilty for not spending time on this. I’m thinking of finding some old material to share as surprise bonus content (so it wouldn’t be one of the topics that was voted for in May since I don’t have time to write that content), but I’m not sure at this point.

New Tentative Schedule for June

• June 15 – Finish red herring section
• June 16-18 – Draft section where the MC elects to return to the Count empty-handed
• June 19-21 – Editing and coding
• June 22 – Update alpha build with new content & get playtesters searching for bugs/errors
• June 23 – 30 – Draft the end of the game.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that a full chapter launch unfortunately won’t happen in June. There’s still too many sections to fill in and finish, and I have some back-end coding to fix and improve (this will break some of your game mechanics for existing saves, I’m sorry!). I don’t want to set a tentative launch date as I need to see how this week actually goes and how much work I get done.

I will also be taking some time off, as my birthday is on June 24 and I need a bit of break.  Writing and editing over 50k in two weeks is a bit much. 😅

Thank you for your support! Have a great week! ❤